One of the things that's always niggled me a little about IH was the
abstractness about some of the Determinants involved. Abstraction is
necessary, of course, or the game would be unplayable, but I'm a person
who likes concreteness. In particular, I've often wondered about the
interrelation between a society's scope, its economy, and its armed
forces. The formulas we have seem to work pretty well, but I've never
been able to get clear mental pictures from them.
Well, the other night I was re-reading Sun-Tzu's "Art of War". For a
book that was written two and a half millenia ago, it's aged well. Now,
in Chapter 2, 'Waging War', Sun-Tzu says that to raise an army of
100,000 men, equip them in all respects, provision them for a march of
330 miles, and then support them in the field, will require the
expenditure of 1,000 ounces of silver per day. That works out to a
total of 22,812.5 pounds of silver per year to maintain that same army.
Silver is currently trading at $4.79/oz, so a little math tells us that
in the year 500 BC, a Chinese army of 100,000 men would consume the
rough equivalent of $1.75 million per year to operate as a field force,
or $4,790 per diem. Sun-Tzu's figure of 1,000oz of silver includes
expenditures both at home and in field, plus allowance for unforseen
events, such as emergency repairs.
Now, obviously, drawing straight comparisons like this is slightly
absurd, because the cost of maintaining an army depends on things like
the level of technology and the cost of living. Still, it does give us
some ballpark figures. Going by Sun-Tzu's estimate and assuming a
similar tech level(equal to the Warring States period or to the early
Roman empire), for every 100 men in your army, you can expect to spend
an ounce of silver per day. So, using the tables from the IH Rules
Site:
Scope Daily Cost
------------------------------------------------
Vast >200,000 >2000ozAg
Huge 200,000 2000ozAg
Great 100,000 1000ozAg
Big 30,000 300ozAg
Fair 10,000 100ozAg
Mediocre 3,000 30ozAg
Small 1,000 10ozAg
V. Small 300 3ozAg
Tiny 20 .2ozAg
Of course, this completely ignores the possibility that a nation's
standing forces may include or consist solely of naval units.
Maintaining a fleet and its necessary support facilities is far more
expensive than maintaining an army and its facilities. It assumes that
the army is actively campaigning. And it ignores the effect of raising
the reserves. Just as an example, if a society of scope Huge were to
call up reserves to their max of 2 million men, expenditures would jump
to 20,000oz of silver per day. Keeping those two million men in the
field for a year would cost 7.3 million ounces of silver, or roughly
$35 million of today's dollars per year. And that's not counting the
ripple effect to an economy of losing the economic inputs of the
reservists/draftees.
Sun-Tzu also points out that an army on campaign *must* live off the
land as much as possible. A large army draws heavily from the treasury,
which raises taxes to try and compensate, thus pulling money out of the
pockets of the peasants. An army's presence also tends to cause local
increases in prices, further draining the substance of the common
people. And, an army in the field has a much higher rate of
wear-and-tear & supply consumption; for example, the current model of
combat boot used by the US Army is rated for three year's use in
peacetime, but only six months in wartime. In Sun-Tzu's day, these
factors meant that a peasant family could lose 30% of its income to war
taxes and war inflation, while their government finds itself spending
40% or more of its revenues to support the army in the field. Again,
these figures are for China in 500 BC, but I think a rough parallel may
be drawn.
What this little exercise should bring home is the fact that war, in
any era, is *expensive*. Armies are *expensive*. Sun-Tzu was absolutely
right when he said that "There is no instance of a country having
benefitted from prolonged warfare."
And what may this imply for the nations of Qaiyore? Well, as the rules
already state, prolonged war with full mobilization *will* eventually
hurt your society's economic determinants. No if's about it. The cost
of war, even without that mobilization must be considered. Cedonia,
before 1420, was large enough and secure enough to embark on a program
of conquest using only their standing army. An examination of what
Sun-Tzu has written suggests that even that would not have been
sustainable in the long run. And then, of course, the Sinari went on
crusade. Even given that the Sinari invasion was not quite twenty years
ago, most of the societies directly involved in fighting them should
probably think twice about getting into another conflict so soon. Mir
is probably an exception to this, AFAIK the Sinari never came close to
reaching the Island of Mir--of course, with a society Scope of Fair,
going on a conquista could get expensive.
As for Cedonia and myself, civil wars are a different kettle of fish in
terms of costs. Much more expensive for the common man in some ways,
and far harder to stop.
Andrew Janssen
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