Talk:Command Hierarchy

"if you don't see shared scout reports of the neighbouring regions when you log in, scout and share the reports" One presume the exact wording on the standing order itself should be a bit more IC than that...--Fodder 22:21, 5 February 2008 (CET)

Second-in-command: (nobody) and this poor guy don't have place in the militar hierarchy? he can really help marshall... Vecchioratto 22:31, 5 February 2008 (CET)

Reliability

I would gladly like to see any HISTORICAL SOURCE on which Tom supports his visions about command chain. The fact is that the King could always override the orders of his dukes, and believe me, it was never in the form of request.

Additional note, the General never send requests. He ORDERS. It´s not like "oh the general requested us to attack France, but we don´t fell like it since only our marshal can order us". No. The General does not have time to have knights thinking if they want to attack or not. The General orders. He can stay on the front lines, and issue orders to the army. His captains and Marshals would make sure the orders were followed, but he would never request things. Anna 23:14, 5 February 2008 (CET)

This Background Information page may be of some help Medieval_Warfare, though it's a little rough and ready. I am currently studying the medieval period at university, and, while it varied from army to army, things were never as organised as the modern, Clausewitzian army is. If the king was weak, he took orders from his generals, and if the general was weak, his knights might not bother to turn up.--Egregious 23:49, 5 February 2008 (CET)

Soo, we try to fit BM to english/friench version of feudal relations in Europe, huh? Actually, it is only one version of many existing that time in Europe, not very efficient one to be honest. BattleMaster in the recent form worked in the Central Europe feudality system: all knights called to war by the King and leaded by the King himself. Read about "Pospolite ruszenie" in Poland, just as an example (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pospolite_ruszenie). And when it was also the working REAL SYSTEM, then the argument "in_Middle_Ages_people_did_not_act_that_way" is NOT VALID anymore. Anna 00:18, 6 February 2008 (CET)

You have made yourself a fabulous version of history, Anna, and ask you for *your* sources. What you suggest is simply unthinkable... You speak as if the middle ages had generals with radios who would command people he didn't know who were weeks travel distance away and organise hundred of soldiers on a battlefield by himself, again, probably with walkie talkies, right? This isn't the bourgeois military, this is the nobility. It's the middle ages, where communication systems are primitive (you can't even talk with the soldier who is a few dozen meters away, even if you could hear him, much less at any distance away. You watched too many glorified movies, kings weren't that powerful anyways until much later on. And the general had all the time in the world to convince the knight, he certainly didn't walk around in jeeps. Crusades took extremely long ammounts of time, and basicly the logistics for any sort of organised campaign was hell. And as Tom said, powerful people don't need to order around, their requests are so powerful people feel obliged to follow them anyways. -Chénier

Chenier, would you mind to stop your flames on me and to check the link I have already given above. Or maybe you cannot read, can you? I am not confabulating. The army of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish-Lithuanian_Commonwealth) was based on REGION division called voivodships (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voivodship) and never based on Lords, Dukes and their caprices. In the same manner the military of the whole Central- Eastern Europe, from Russia to Hungary and Serbia, was organized, as more effective than the never-ending-quarells lords of France.

I know that people in Western Europe believe that their countries are the center of the World and that "Germany borders with Russia" (real words of ex-kanzler Gerhard Schroeder) and that in your conscience Middle Ages means the war England-France and Joanne d'Arc, but wake up and smell the coffee. Look at the facts, Central-Eastern Europe was always bigger and more populated than Western part, especially in the Middle Ages - times of the peste. So, we must say that Region division commands (voivodships) were more popular than the french Duke division one Anna 09:41, 6 February 2008 (CET)

What bugs me most on this is that we are now throwing away a lot work and evolution of realms and make gameplay "harder". Still it is possible to ignore changes and work like you have worked in the past. This only hampers those who really want to play by the system, and those who are ready to "workaround" the system will have even bigger advantage now.

But i dont mind that as much i mind about this "forcing" us to fit on certain model. My opinion would be that let realms decide how they manage their armies, how they request, order, beg their troops to move and organize. If you want to push us to act certain way, do it so that there is enough advantage to act diffrent. Other changes planned sound real good, like friendly fire, more harsh penalties for big armies moving or staying in big blump. It is just starting to feel that we sacriface too much for getting certain medieval theme to whole game, recently i have felt that game has turned NobleMaster instead of Battlemaster. It is impossible to make it so that we have exactly medieval style messaging and simulation of medieval battles. Messages are sent to other side of the continent real time on this game, or players start to use external messaging systems.

About history, French/English feudal system how armies were raised and managed was real sucky, eastern and middle Europe kingdoms abandoned it pretty quickly. And England army was so expensive/hard to raise that they hired at some point mercenary armies from middle europe. I try to dig out link where i read about it. Time and geographic frame where BM is now put is getting very thin and to period where it was evolving to more efficient way to handle armies... and since we know it sucked, we have hard times to try work in these frames. Thats why i rather see more freedom to realms let evolve their system how to handle things than put us in corner and try to force us certain hierarchy and chain of command.

If you dont like those big army blocks being so overpowered and want more smaller battles or more flexibility to army formations, change game/battle system(there is some good changes already, marshalls, overcrowded roads) and not messaging system or hierarchy. I understand these changes to Dwilight which is made for certain medieval theme for certain medieval area. Other continents have long history to be something else and i cant see why that need to be changed? -Jaune

I'm starting to think some people in the game are really stupid. Just because you don't have a huge red letter box labled Orders. You can still order people around if you want, because theres nothing stopping you. You can still be a Tyrant dictating everyones lives within your realm. Hell if I was to play a Tyrant, I'd give myself all the council position and a region. They don't follow my orders then I get someone to assasinate him, etc.

It is not a point if someone uses red or green box. The point is that the game is supposed to be DEVELOPPED while the recent move is a step back. Tom imposes the restrictions to the game instead of giving more and more options to choose. It will end up that each of us will get his part of scenario and dialogue list to play. Anna 10:08, 6 February 2008 (CET)

I fully agree with what Jaune has said above. The game is becomming less and less about Battlemaster and more about a very narrow view of a small area of the world for a brief period of time. I can sorta understand what Tom's frustration is about some people controlling too much and others not having any power but I do not agree with his methods of dealing with it. This forcing us to work within' the confines of his preffered government system or hierarchy or whatever it is simply does not take into account that this is a Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. Many people with with many backgrounds bring many different ideas to the community. The more complicated and confining the game gets the less it is a community style game and the more it becomes... narrow (I can't think of a better word than that to describe it but I'm sure someone can). I very much liked when we the players had more control over many aspects of realms. With more lee way in the system we could have disorganised rampant hordes, super orderly roman style empires, noble controlled kingdoms, sluggish beurocratic nightmare democracies or any other style of realm we players wished to form and run. After that we could have interactions with different types of realms that we could never see in the history books. This is good! What is the fun of simply rehashing a small period of history when we can look at history, combat and politics on a much wider scope? All in all we are seeing too many changes lately that seem like clerical bandaid cures for problems that may not even exist in the first place. This is a great game that Tom has created but at some point he needs to see that it is no longer his wee fragile and innocent baby anymore that he needs to cottle. Battlemaster has a life of it's own now that should not be repressed. -Balewind