Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bluenose" data-source="post: 6470603" data-attributes="member: 49017">Do you have any ideas about the wealth and government style of each city state? How about the costs of raising and maintaining troops? The combination of knowing how much money each state has to spend and how much that gets them is probably the easiest way to get an idea of the strength of each army. The different ways a city state may be governed might suggest what sort of troops that they raise. States ruled by foreign despots are likely to rely less on local troops than they are on mercenaries, while ones with strong traditions of local autonomy will have strong militia forces to support that. To give you one example of what different things might happen with a city state, in my campaign world there's one fairly isolated state that exists on the edge of a region that's divided among a large number of other states. It's got large but rather sparsely settled territories to it's north and east, with quite a lot of problems from various tribal groups beyond - goblins, human barbarians, and others. To the south there's a dwarven city, which it has pretty good relations with, and there're other human cities to the west but also some rather nasty human barbarian tribes. Several religions have fortified temples in the area, there's a few semi-independent lords with their own fortresses, and the borders of the territory have forts in strategic locations such as river crossings or mountain passes. Adventurers are encouraged to travel to those border forts and launch raids into the hostile territories, which damages the tribes and returns wealth and sometimes prisoners/slaves - the most successful ones often end up among the lords.What you get out if this is a city state where the army consists of several groups. There's a small professional guard force maintained by the city council to keep order and guard the gates and walls in peacetime, which also guards the city standard in wartime. Different guilds - their leaders are the people who sit on the council - pay for their members equipment and training, so provide a fairly large number of moderately well equipped militia to the army. The rural population are rarely asked to turn out, though they can rely on some to turn up and serve as scouts and/or archers. The petty nobles of the area are asked to attend with their retinues, and they vary both in troop quality and equipment depending on the wealth and efficiency of that noble. The religious orders supply good quality troops and clerics. There's often a rather motley collection of adventurers available, since ones who don't turn up when required to are refused access to the territories in the future and any property they've left is confiscated. Plus there's access to dwarven mercenaries and sometimes troops from the friendlier groups of barbarians. How much of each depends on what sort of campaign is going on. In a short one it's rather easy to call up the militia and the city guard, and portions of the others that are near to the threat. For a longer one it's easier to get most of the contingents complete, but keeping the militia in the field reduces the cities income, which makes it harder to keep the army in service. There isn't enough income to keep the whole force in service indefinitely, but if the militia are sent home then it's possible to pay maintenance for the whole of the indigenous force and a small number of mercenaries. So at different stages of a war the army that city state fields might look very different. As for the commanders, the commander is usually the leader of one of the religious orders - ideally a cleric/paladin/champion of a god(dess) concerned with War. They'd rather not give command to a local lord or city official, in case they get ideas. Since those religions are also often involved in raids and small-scale warfare with hostile groups they tend to be quite experienced at least in  that sort of combat, though not always at larger battles.</blockquote>

Verification