The new 'Units' System

[Foxglove]

From the manual:

"Supply is either drawn from a settlement under your command, or the settlement of the Unit's origin (TODO)"

Will the second part of this (supply from settlement of Unit's origin) be implemented before the new system goes live? Or will every First One in charge of a Unit need to also be a settlement owner? Implementing the new system without the TODO finished seems like it would be a bad idea (People left with characters unable to do anything military if they lose settlements).

Also, and this might seem a bit random, is there any chance we can call these groups of soldiers something other than a "Unit"? The reason I ask is because, as far as I know, the idea of soldiers being divided in to a Unit is a pretty modern idea that doesn't seem all that in keeping with the atmosphere of the game. The main alternative name I can think of is Warband, but anything more in keeping with the game world would do.

[Cipheron]

if a unit is fed from a particular city, I'd definitely want it so that Units can be rehomed, and a way to stop someone who has an old unit that's homed to one of your cities from leeching resources. This needs to be thought out further to avoid exploits and unrealistic situation.

BTW, "Unit" is fine, it's a generic term. The use of orginized mitary units was already an ancient practice, with the Romans and later Byzantines making use of organized subdivisions of troops. It was only in the fractured early middle ages that the sort of rabble-like "warbands" were dominant. It doesn't make too much sense that an empire in the game such as Erstes Imperium would need to refer to their groupings as "warbands" to fit some narrow flavor-text definition of how the middle ages works. Sure, Western and Northern Europe had that sort of loose warband structure, that doesn't mean the contemporary Byzantines, Chinese, Arabs or Indians did, so "unit" is better since it's more neutral. In fact, baggage trains at all weren't common in the "warbands" period, so calling them "units" is the least of the problems with historicity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_warfare#Organization

[Foxglove]

Yeah, its just one of my aesthetic bugbears. I've never liked groups of soldiers being called Units in Battlemaster either. Units always brings to might 20th century warfare for me (and beyond). I'm not even suggesting that we should consult historical sources to decide what's a better term. Just come up with one that sounds a bit less modern.

[Cipheron]

https://www.wordhippo.com/what-is/the/latin-word-for-699fbfd8cc2caa69b16af16fd603aba84880941a.html
military unit = unitas militum

It's from Latin, not modern. Here's an example of it's use in context, in a book written in Latin. If you look at the start of the book, the publication date is MDCCXLII, or 1742. This shows that the term "unitas militum" as being the Latin for military unit was already attested over 250 years ago. Since Latin was an ancient venerated language that people were loathe to mess with, it's most likely to assume that this is a legitimate Roman-era Latin term.

[Andrew]

I'll be adding a secondary settlement permission to allow your knights to supply from one of your settlements.

The resupply permission will not factor into that list of settlements, mostly because it'd be a massive pain for me to draw up that in an SQL query, and because it'll serve a separate function.

If you've an alternative for what Units can be called that fits better, it's not too hard to change ti at this point. In text anyways.

[FARevolution]

I think that those settlements should appear in the list else current conflicts will be conflicted.

[Foxglove]

If you've an alternative for what Units can be called that fits better, it's not too hard to change ti at this point. In text anyways.

Company - widely used in the Middle Ages, although more commonly used to describe mercenary companies like the famous White Company.

Warband - As Cipheron pointed out, this could well be used to describe the smallish groups of soldiers of the early Middle Ages. If I remember correctly (and I'm pretty sure I do), the game is actually meant to represent an early Middle Ages society where nobles commanded small groups of soldiers.

Band - a variation on Warband.

Personal Guard - roughly describes the purpose of the typically fewer than 100 soldiers that each First Ones tends to lead most of the time.

Companions - a variation on Company.

Men-at-Arms - a reasonable description of a group of Middle Ages soldiers.

Yeomanry - same as above.


From that selection, I'd probably go with either Company or Warband. We know that people in the Middle Ages legitimately used Company to describe their groups of soldiers. Alternatively, Warband does describe pretty well the smallish numbers of soldiers that most First Ones command most of the time.