Well, if I remember correctly, many of the vikings historically had low maintenance costs. The average viking raider, contrary to popular media, was only armed with little to no armor, a bow with some arrows, and a dagger/knife. Now, I don't expect many people to send out knights to raid unless it's a high value target like a major city much like the Crusaders. Sure, they did "forage" supplies on the way to major cities, but once they got there... oh, boy.

So, you should totally read the update I made to my last post. Science has pretty much proven the system of two bullis per pillage per soldier would actually do more damage to your own infrastructure than your enemy, vastly more as it were, though as stated in the post that's without factoring in crop displacement because the specifics of how raiding damages production is not stated anywhere I can find it. The Crusaders were certainly raiders and, for a time, made an incredible amount of money killing innocents and stealing their stuff. :P

EDIT:

Even without armor, a guy with a bow and a dagger still costs more than two bullis per season to field. Twice as much, to be exact.

Yes, the starting fiefs are pretty much poor villages, which the crusaders would be foraging from. In my mind, Lundland is the poor village, and the two empires to the south are the promised lands. Although, I do agree with your concerns. You also have to take into consideration that we're starting off as the scum of the world. The poorest of paupers. Not worth raiding if you're trying to make money, yet. I mean the two empires to the south historically used Lundland as a source of practice.

Well, I'm not saying you have to be able to make much money off of raiding poor villagers, but actually losing money would break the system. No one for any reason would pillage anyone, unless they either weren't aware they were going to lose money doing it or just wanted to troll their neighbor. ^^ I mean, looking at it logically how much money would there be for the taking at the end of the day, anyway? One hundred spearmen using my system could loot six hundred bullis, and five hundred could loot three thousand, but you're only keeping half of that after expenses, risking death, not faming or contributing back home, pissing off an enemy who will likely be out for revenge afterwards and, really, there's only so much to actually be looted. What is it, half of the population's taxes over the year as a cap? Three thousand bullis or so max? Not exactly a startling amount of money, at that point it's just as much raiding for the sake of hurting your opponent as for anything else.

Upkeep is seasonal. There are 90 days to a season. You could raid more than once, you know.

psychopath makes a good point. It IS too expensive to raid. I mean maybe caravan raids are profitable, but no one has towns wealthy enough for there to be real returns yet.

Suggestion. What if raiding farmlands also gets you crops as well? For example, a single infantryman can raid and take upto 10 crops? A horsemounted unit can carry 50. And if you also attack with ships, then they double your total unless your ships carrying capacity is less than that. In which case you can only take up to how much the ships can carry as well. Also , seasons. Spring = 1/4, Summer = 2/3, and fall = full value? Winter will yield no crops.

Edit: Actually... numbers don't work. 5 for infantry and 20 for horsemen?

If I recall, someone has a town with 5,000 people and a wealth rank of Fair. But that would probably be the only exception.

Lord Monbodo said
psychopath makes a good point. It IS too expensive to raid. I mean maybe caravan raids are profitable, but no one has towns wealthy enough for there to be real returns yet.

The Vikings didn't normally raid broke villages exactly for this reason. Monasteries were the target, and in this case low level manors fill that role. 100 guys burn down a level 0 manor and make off with 1000 bullis. Raiding farmland I see as a means to pay upkeep for an army already raised.

I kinda feel like you skipped to the end here, without reading the whole thing... That is the point I was making (half of it, at least). You literally lose money raiding. It is more expensive by far to raid than not to raid. If raiding can't at least cover your expenses it is not worth it unless it is doing pretty tremendous damage to the enemy, which as my numbers show it really isn't. The upkeep of a simple bowman is twice the maximum they can make raiding. However, I was under the impression that the two bullis max was per season. Assuming you can raid more than once in a season with the same unit, obviously my entire point up until now is void.

EDIT:

Although, no, my point really isn't void even then. Assuming you're exclusively using bowmen and spearmen then sure, you could make money doing it, or at least cover your losses depending on how many times per season a unit can effectively pillage said two bullis, but what of knights and other relatively expensive units? A knight's upkeep is what, seventeen (dunno, not checking)? So if you can raid nine times in a ninty day season then alright, you've covered your losses. Otherwise, assuming it takes longer than ten days to pillage each time anything with an upkeep of six or so is still going to be bleeding money in a raid. Another thought, you act as though you'd make more money attacking richer targets, but with a max of two bullis per pillage no matter how wealthy the target (not including raiding caravans) your still making, you guessed it, two bullis per soldier per pillage.

Two bullis max is per raid, not season. We could raise it to 3 though.

Your missing the point. Three, six, ten, it makes no difference ~ it's the risk/reward ratio that matters. How many times can one raid in a season? That's the only way to know whether it's even feasible to have a set max that has nothing to do with the upkeep of the unit.

EDIT:

Also, how long are your turns supposed to be? I mean, really, your going to post every in game week saying, "yup, my soldiers are still pillaging the countryside,"? I thought the point of having seasons was that your posts each covered one season. I mean, I suppose you could order your units to just stay in an area until enemy soldiers came and made them leave, but even so how long can a group of soldiers stay in a territory pillaging before the enemy shows up with a host and kills you all?

90 days, 3 days a raid, 30 times.

Well, shit, alright then. I wasn't aware there was an established rule that a raid lasted three days, suppose if anyone's fielding units that have more than sixty upkeep they deserve not to make any money raiding.

Didn't they offer soldiers pillaged loot as pay back then

Edit: since no one would pay an army a season worth of pay just to loot for 3 days, they could just offer a part of the loot to the raiders. Some goes to the raiders and some to The Lord.

Heyitsjiwon said
Suggestion. What if raiding farmlands also gets you crops as well? For example, a single infantryman can raid and take upto 10 crops? A horsemounted unit can carry 50. And if you also attack with ships, then they double your total unless your ships carrying capacity is less than that. In which case you can only take up to how much the ships can carry as well. Also , seasons. Spring = 1/4, Summer = 2/3, and fall = full value? Winter will yield no crops.Edit: Actually... numbers don't work. 5 for infantry and 20 for horsemen?

Just gonna conveniently double post real fast, because the thought of an infantryman carrying a year and a season's worth of food is just hilarious. ^^ And, I mean, five years worth of food on the back of a horse? Awesome.

EDIT:

Titanic said
Didn't they offer soldiers pillaged loot as pay back thenEdit: since no one would pay an army a season worth of pay, they could just offer a part of the loot to the raiders. Some goes to the raiders and some to The Lord.

Yes, they did, however this still isn't... I mean, are you guys trolling me? This is ridiculous. Assuming you can only raid once per season then giving them the entire proceeds wouldn't cover their expenses. Assuming you can raid thirty times in a season (which I'm pretty sure So Boerd just made up on the fly and is running with) the biggest worry your going to have is the fact that, at some point, someone's gonna show up and kill you all, and if they don't it's going to bankrupt their fiefdom, and assuming each post covers a season it's going to require some extreme micromanagement on your parts to decide just how many days it takes for someone's vassal to figure out your raiding his territory and bring a host to bear to kill you all, and... I still can't see how any of these suggestions are actually better than my very simple solution made all those posts ago, so I'm just gonna assume (hope) your trolling me at this point, and if not I seriously recommend signing up for an economics 101 class and/or drinking a cup or two of coffee.

Assuming you can raid thirty times in a season (which I'm pretty sure So Boerd just made up on the fly and is running with) the biggest worry your going to have is the fact that, at some point, someone's gonna show up and kill you all, and if they don't it's going to bankrupt their fiefdom,

I made the two bullis limit, I think I would know.

It just means you have to be strategic. That's all. I have already planned contingencies for how I would raid several houses. It works, trust me.

Your solution is nonsensical as several units have little to no upkeep. Lightly armed horsemen should be BETTER at raiding than knights, not worse.

Far more nonsensical than having up to thirty sub actions in a turn that's supposed to cover an entire season, sure. Have fun with that micromanagement nightmare. The point of my solution is that you don't have to spend hours strategizing up to (apparently) thirty posts worth of tactics and maneuvers to either catch up to raiders or, on the flip, raid without being murdered by a vassal's host, not to be realistic, which if you had been paying attention you would have picked up on by now. Also, your contingencies for raiding houses? Do try not to get your head blown off, and keep in mind that anyone whose information on doing anything illegal worth trusting will not be found spouting their immature little finger mouths off on the internet about it. <3

EDIT:

Then again, assuming the hyper in depth raid strategizing doesn't get to be too much for most people to handle, I'm sure it'll make for an interesting read, so from a purely roleplaying/creative writing perspective I do greatly prefer your system as mine is basically just, "sent one hundred spearmen to raid so-and-so's fiefdom. Stole six hundred bullis," where yours requires actual, you know, content. From a roleplayers perspective, however, even if you only write one hundred words per leg of the raid you'll end up writing novels worth of strategy by the time you're fifty seasons into the IC, which sounds, just, dreadful to have to write.

psychopathickids said
Far more nonsensical than having up to thirty sub actions in a turn that's supposed to cover an entire season, sure. Have fun with that micromanagement nightmare. The point of my solution is that you don't have to spend hours strategizing up to (apparently) thirty posts worth of tactics and maneuvers to either catch up to raiders or, on the flip, raid without being murdered by a vassal's host, not to be realistic, which if you had been paying attention you would have picked up on by now. Also, your contingencies for raiding houses? Do try not to get your head blown off, and keep in mind that anyone whose information on doing anything illegal worth trusting will not be found spouting their immature little finger mouths off on the internet about it. <3

I think he was referring to Houses as in the IC sense of the word e.g manors. Also thank you for the earlier compliment about my nation, that is what I had in mind when I made it. As far as your argument goes, I think it's a good idea to remember Flooby is still making the rules. He probably threw together the rules on raiding quite quickly, so I wouldn't take them as the final version.

FiendishFox said
Also thank you for the earlier compliment about my nation, that is what I had in mind when I made it.

You're quite welcome. :D There's nothing more important to me in creative writing than being true to your characters and setting, and when bordering a frozen wasteland it seems like having mostly scrubland and the occasional infertile fiefdom is more reasonable than having green pastures overlooking ice and rock. ^^