Platoon

Contents....................................................................................... 1

Introduction................................................................................. 2

Terms and Concepts................................................................... 3

Weight (W)................................................................................... 3

Resources (R)............................................................................... 3

Food (F)......................................................................................... 3

Construction costs................................................................... 3

AC.................................................................................................. 3

MaPC............................................................................................. 3

MiPC.............................................................................................. 3

Holding Fortification................................................................... 3

The Dominion.............................................................................. 4

Income........................................................................................... 5

Taxes.............................................................................................. 5

Income........................................................................................... 5

Pillaging.................................................................................... 5

Population..................................................................................... 5

Retaining Wealth......................................................................... 6

Transportation............................................................................. 6

Sea Transport........................................................................... 6

Outsourcing.............................................................................. 6

Purchasing................................................................................ 6

Building A Dominion................................................................. 7

Gaining the Dominion................................................................. 7

Inheriting.................................................................................. 7

Conquering............................................................................... 7

Granting.................................................................................... 7

Settling...................................................................................... 7

Bookkeeping................................................................................. 7

Unit Map................................................................................. 7

Storage Unit Sheets.................................................................. 7

Treasury Transaction Sheet..................................................... 8

Additional Records................................................................... 8

Construction................................................................................. 8

Towns and Cities..................................................................... 8

Fortifications............................................................................ 9

Minimum Requirements........................................................... 9

Roads........................................................................................ 9

Ports......................................................................................... 9

Typical Constructions............................................................. 10

MaPCs Constructions............................................................... 10

Small Town............................................................................ 10

Town Wall.............................................................................. 10

City Wall................................................................................ 10

Capital Wall............................................................................ 10

Holding Fortifications............................................................... 10

Keep....................................................................................... 10

Fort......................................................................................... 11

Castle...................................................................................... 11

Palace...................................................................................... 11

Other Constructions.................................................................. 11

Port......................................................................................... 11

Simple Fort............................................................................. 11

The units of measurement are the same that are used in the Net Book of Platoons and Batteries.

Weight (W)

All measurements of weight in this book are given in the unit of W. 1 W weighs about 4lb. A human can carry 11W.

Resources (R)

Resource unites denoted by R represent mineral wealth. Gold, silver, iron, etc.

Each unit of R is worth 10gp and weighs 0.05W.

Food (F)

Food units denoted by F represent agricultural products and labour.

1 unit of F is enough to keep one person alive for a month.

Each unit of F is worth 10gp and weighs 1W.

When F is a required construction cost, this represents man-weeks required to make the item. Eg a light catapult will take 40 man-weeks to make. In a major population centre, man power isn't a problem. However, an army away from home, wanting to build a catapult battery to knock down an enemies castle might find it hard to enlist people. In this situation, the only people available are the troops in the army.

AC

AC or Armour Class is a measure of how well armoured a piece of fortification is. The lower the armour class, the difficult it is to destroy.

MaPC

A Major Population Centre is a:

Small Town,

Town,

City, or

Capital.

MiPC

Minor Population Centres are located in each unit where there isn't a MaPC.

Holding Fortification

A Holding Fortification is one of the following standardised structures:

Keep,

Fort,

Castle, or

Palace.

A dominion is an area of land controlled by one person or a council of people. The dominions are often given titles such as Barony, County, Duchy, Earldom, Kingdom, or Empire.

The Dominion is divided up into Hexes or Terrain Units. Each of these is usually the standard 24 miles across. Each Hex is associated with a Terrain Type. These Terrain Types are:

Plains (MiPC)

Hills (MiPC)

Forest (MiPC)

Grassland (MiPC)

Swamp (MiPC)

Desert (MiPC)

Ice-Lands (MiPC)

Jungle (MiPC)

Mountains (MiPC)

Volcano (MiPC)

Small Town (MaPC)

Town (MaPC)

City (MaPC)

Capital (MaPC)

Keep (Holding Fortification)

Fort (Holding Fortification)

Castle (Holding Fortification)

Palace (Holding Fortification)

In addition to these types, it is also relevant to know whether each unit borders open water and if it has a river running through it.

You will notice that some of the terrain types are man-made structures. When one of these is in a Hex, it is the dominant Terrain Type and the actual Terrain is irrelevant.

Taxes

Any Ruler will tell you that taxes are essential.

When asked about his taxing system, King Richard the Cruel commented "What's the point in owning lands if you can't oppress the inhabitants?"

The standard tax rate is 70%. This provides the peasants with barely enough food to survive and enables maximum wealth to be taxed by the king.

Again King Richard had wise words on this matter "Straying from the standard 70% tax rate can only reduce the net gain we can make. Increasing the rate will result in too many peasant dying, without permission might I add. Decreasing the tax rate only provides the ungrateful among the masses to gain wealth and power that can only undermine the social values that we all hold so dear."

Income

Based on the optimised 70% tax rate the table can be used to calculate how much tax can be taken from each unit.

Each unit has its own income, which is calculated monthly. The total value that you can tax the unit's population is equal to the amount of Food (F) listed in the Income From Terrain Types Table.

Units of F can be used to feed additional families in the area who are then free to produce Resource (R) wealth.

In game terms, one unit of F can be used to purchase one unit of R to a maximum of the Resource limit listed on the Income From Terrain Types Table.

You will notice that some terrain types are capable of producing more R than F income. This means that if you want to produce the maximum amount of R income possible, you will need to transport additional F resources from other units to those units for purchasing more R.

For Example: take a barony which has two units, a mountain unit and a plains unit with a river running through it. The plains produce 300F and the mountains produce 10F.

The Baron wants to increase his R wealth and so he feeds more peasants in the area to allow them to work on R production. The Baron converts 60F into 60R in the plains and 10F into 10R in the mountains. Now he has a total of 240F and 70R.

If he wants he can convert even more F into R, but he will need to transport the excess F in the plains to the mountains. There is no point in transporting more than 190F because the mountains can only convert a maximum of 200 F into R. Therefore he transports the 190F to the mountains (at a cost of 18F, the transportation costs will be discussed later) and converts it into 190R.

Now he has 260R and 32F (50F-18F).

Pillaging

"Pillaging? Are you insane? We do not pillage our own lands. Of course fact finding missions into other countries need to support themselves, but they just take from the local inhabitants the bare essentials they need to survive!" - King Richard

Pillaging is the act of raping the land of al its F resources. The result is that you receive the entire months taxes in just one day. The drawback to this is that many of the peasants in the area will starve to death (or be killed trying to defend their crops). It will take a whole year before the unit produces enough food to be taxed or pillaged again.

Needless to say, pillaging is rarely done, except in the case of armies passing through enemy territory.

Population

Each unit has a population that produces income. The population depends on the amount of food that is available for them.

The amount of food available is dependant on the Terrain Type and whether more food is transported to the Hex.

For each F that is taxed by the ruler, there are 10 peasants. For each R that is taxed by the ruler, there are 20 peasants (10 to produce the F and 10 to convert it into R).

Retaining Wealth

At the end of each month, all income that is not being held in a Holding Fortification, MaPC, or being guarded, is lost. Simply put it is stolen or used by the local inhabitants.

Holding Fortifications and MaPCs can hold any value of wealth. If you don't have one of these, then you will need to guard your wealth with soldiers. 10 soldiers can guard up to 1000 pieces of F or R.

Regardless of guarding or locking up your wealth, at the end of each month half of all remaining F is lost. This is due to perishable foods becoming unusable (or possibly even eaten by rats).

Transportation

Assuming that you would like to gather your income to a central location, you will need to transport the taxes that you receive from each unit to wherever you want it to go to.

The taxes are transported by Transportation Caravans. These caravans cost 1 R (or F) to carry 11W one unit. These caravans travel at 24 miles (one terrain unit) per day.

Transportation Caravans can be used to transport supplies other than just F and R if you wish.

Sea Transport

Sea transport costs the same as normal transport. However, there must be a port to move units from a land unit to a sea unit. A sea port costs 250R and 250F and can only be constructed at places nominated by the DM.

Outsourcing

In larger dominions, the act of calculating transportation costs can become very complicated and time consuming. In these instances, it might be wiser to outsource the tax collection and transportation to a private company that specialises in such things.

"I couldn't take it any more, the books and paper everywhere, the nagging of the misses, all just to organise the transportation of my taxes. Thank goodness for RDTaT (Red Dragon Taxes and Transportation pty ltd). Now I receive my taxes faster and with less fuss. As for those old tax collectors… well lets just say that those good for nothing thieving public servants provided good entertainment for the peasants in the town square one morning." - spoken by King Richard the Cruel in the presence of all of the Phobanie kings at the Phobanie Empire AGM. Needless to say it is suspected that King Richard is receiving kickbacks from RDTaT.

Calculating the contracted out cost is much easier than working out the individual transportation cost for each unit's taxes.

First of all you need to calculate the total weight of taxes that you receive. (This will be total R/20 + total F). Multiply this number by one less than the distance of the furthest unit from the destination point. Finally divide the result by 11.

Ie total transportation cost = (R/20+F)*(maxdistance-1)/11

This probably won't be cheaper, but it should be simpler than organising each individual unit.

Outsourcing still requires ports to be built if the taxes are to be transported across sea units.

Purchasing

When income needs to be spent in a unit (for example paying an army, or building a keep), the R and F units required must be available in that unit. This will probably mean that R and F need to be transported to that unit from your central holding location.

In these instances, you need to use Transportation Caravans to deliver the goods.

Gaining the Dominion

There are only a few ways in which you can gain a dominion:

Inheriting,

Conquering,

Granting, or

Settling.

Inheriting

This would have to be the easiest way of gaining a dominion. Most likely all of the bookwork is already done and the dominion should run itself.

Conquering

Taking a land by force is quite difficult. There is also a good chance that many units would be pillaged by either side. In addition, all of the records are likely to be lost and so a lot of the hard work would have to be redone in order to reorganise the dominion.

Granting

An owner of a dominion may choose to grant a portion of land to you for whatever reason. If the land is settled then this is just a simple matter of doing a bit of bookwork to organise the taxes and army and such.

Settling

This is a very difficult situation. When settling hostile lands you always need to keep guards or forts on your boundaries to prevent the hostile creatures of the wilderness from pillaging your land.

When settling wilderness territories there are three classifications of unit to consider: Civilised, Borderland, and Wilderness.

A Civilised unit is any settled unit that does not border any wilderness units.

A Borderland unit is any settled unit that boarders wilderness units. No taxes can be taken from a borderland unit. The land is only capable of just sustaining the population.

A Wilderness unit is any unsettled unit.

Any Wilderness unit that boarders a Borderland unit that has been settled and not pillaged in the last year will become settled. In this way the dominion grows and gradually the Wilderness gives way to Civilised lands.

Bookkeeping

Bookkeeping is very important. Without it you would not be able to receive any taxes from the lands. The bookkeeping suggestions provided here assume that you will outsource the collection and transportation of taxes. The manual systems are complicated to explain here. If you can work out how to record the manual system satisfactorily then feel free. You might even save yourself 10R.

The core information that needs to be kept are the

1. Unit Map,

2. Storage Unit Sheets, and

3. Treasury Transaction.

Unit Map

Initially the map of your unit might seem to be pointless, but when you have more than 1 Storage Unit they become essential.

The Unit Map should be a map of your dominion divided up into Terrain Units. Each terrain unit should be labelled in some way with the type of terrain that it is. In addition there should be a line drawn from that unit to a bordering unit, indicating where the taxes are taken to from that unit. These lines are also known as transport lines.

Example Map

The example map given here does not come out well in greyscale when printed. The parts that don't come out well are the forest region near the top right hand corner, and the 3 mountain units near the top. The rivers are also difficult to distinguish from the transport lines

Storage Unit Sheets

You will need to keep a sheet for each storage unit that you have. This sheet needs to record:

· The name of the storage unit,

· The number of each different type of terrain,

· The total income that is transported to the unit,

· The weight of that income,

· The distance of the furthest unit,

· The cost of taxing and transportation,

· Standard monthly Income/Expenditure, and

· Treasury.

Treasury Transaction Sheet

The treasury in each storage unit is also important to keep track of. It is not essential to record every single transaction, but if your DM claims that you have yet paid for your supplies to be transported to your army, it might be nice to be able to show him a written record of every transaction that you performed. If you wish to keep this you can keep a separate Treasury Transaction Sheet for each storage unit.

Additional Records

Separate from the dominion, it is also important to keep a record of your army and the cost of maintaining it.

Construction

Owning land is well and good, but building towns and cities is where the wealth is. And once you have a prosperous dominion, you will probably want to protect it with keeps and castles.

Towns and Cities

Towns and cities can only be constructed in places nominated by the DM.

The DM will typically nominate the best piece of land in your dominion as the location available to you for constructing your first MaPC. The second MaPC should be build on the next best piece of land and so on. However, only in exceptional circumstances should MaPCs be constructed within 2 units of each other.

Examples of such exceptional circumstances include:

· Fertile plains fed by different river sources,

· Elves and dwarfs living in the same kingdom (not wanting to share the same city), or

· The ruler forcing a construction of an MaPC in an area not nominated by the DM by spending 3 times more than the normal construction cost.

These are only a guide, the DM should use their discretion when making these decisions.

In addition to these restraints, A dominion:

· Can construct a maximum of 2 small towns before a larger MaPC must be built.

· Cannot construct more than 2 small towns per town.

· Cannot construct more than 2 towns per city.

· That has a capital can allow the construction of any number of small towns, towns and cities.

Fortifications

Keeps, Forts, Castles, and Palaces can be built anywhere. However, it will probably be wise to build them then places that can best defend your dominion.

Minimum Requirements

The construction of Small Towns, Towns, Cities, Keeps, Forts, Castles, and Palaces must have the minium requirements, listed in the Typical Constructions section. If your construction contains all of the elements that make up a Typical Construction, then it qualifies as that construction.

If there are multiple constructions in the one unit, then the ruler must decide on a single construction that determines the income.

Roads

If you have roads running through greater than one fifth of the units in your dominion, then the total cost of tax transportation within your dominion is halved. Roads also have the added advantage of making your army more mobile within your dominion (See the Net Book of Platoons and Batteries for details).

Ports

Ports are essential if you own land separated by sea. Without ports, you would not be able to transport your taxes across the sea. MaPCs do not include ports by standard. If you want one then you will have to build one.

You will notice that building these constructions is slightly cheaper than building all of the individual components.

"Well if the engineers want to build it that way and charge me less so be it. And if I don't like the way it looks afterward, then maybe I'll just hang the engineers on the walls to liven the design up a bit." - King Richard.