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Just a question here. I am not looking to change anything in the game, but I wonder what other people think.

Why are textiles required to build an "army" and "corps" container, but none are required to build an infantry unit of 10,000 men? This question has popped into my head many times while playing.

Are the soldiers being sent into battle naked?

Anyone have any thoughts?

My guess is textiles are meant to represent high-quality "fine" cloth, and soldiers would wear gross, coarse, scratchy stuff. The fine cloth is only for the officers.

It's the tablecloths for the Officer’s mess… especially for all the generals… you don’t expect them to eat on a table without a fine linen table cloth do you? [:D]

The divisions don't take care of things, so many things are not issued to those. All the good and important things are issued to army and corp HQ where items can then be issued from-hand receipted on everything, of course.[;)] Hard count, by the number.

It seems to me that using textiles must be some form of abstraction.  Textile production was a VERY important economic activity of the era, and I assume it means the producion of fine clothe rather than coarser materials such as wool.
 
In any case when I see a cost for a more advanced unit and it includes textiles I have rather seen it NOT as it literally requires textiles, its NOT that the officers require fine uniforms, or tableclothes its rather that there are materials required for production of this unit that detract from the overall ability of the nation to have produced textiles in the first place.  So the skilled labour that would normally have went into the production of textiles instead went into the fabrication of Sextants and gearing for other complicated maritime items.  Similarly to make rifles instead of muskets or what have you.
 
This doesn't jive too well with the complaint "Well if its how you say.. then your suggesting that production of wool or cotton is needed to make sextants and rifles" well I don't have much of an answer to that other than it is an abstraction.  Otherwise we need machinists and artisans and all sorts of special raw materials for unit construction, we would need to know how many sextants can be produced or how many gearing mechanisms for a capstan etc etc.  Instead we have Textiles which were historically a very important item nationally regarding production, and we use it to stand in for a whole class of manufactured items.  We either have to believe the uniform and tableclothe argument (or some variation of it) or we have to believe textiles is a convenient stand in for other things.. both have flaws.. but I think the stand-in one is easier to believe.
 
 

Mr. Parker's take is certainly reasonable and fully agree with his deductions.  Would add however, that container units also represent the administrative and logistics tail and so the cost in textiles might also represent the craftsmen and contractors who supplied non-ordnance goods and services to the armies in the field.  Adding such skilled labour to the military means essentally subtracting them from the stream of commerce.
 
One can also imagine that the quantities of tents and tarps alone required to support a hundred-thousand man army in the field could represent a significant portion of annual textile production even before the first uniform is procured.
 
I can easily accept that the resources in CoG-EE represent abstractions rather than specific items.
 
Best Regards

I recall a discussion about this back in the early COG days in the forums.  If I remember correctly, textiles are not textiles per se, but an abstraction of something else.  The cost was to show the impact on the overall economy, national will, etc., so I think randomizer has it right.  If that's true (again, I may not have it correct), I probably would have found another way to do it (like leadership points, or like the new "fame" points that have emerged in COGEE), but the game designers thought it was a good representation and went with it.  It does, after all, keep the purchase of such units down rather substantially and makes it a real accomplishment to finally get them.  In any case, I've just come to accept it for what it is.

ORIGINAL: bjmorgan

I recall a discussion about this back in the early COG days in the forums.  If I remember correctly, textiles are not textiles per se, but an abstraction of something else.  The cost was to show the impact on the overall economy, national will, etc., so I think randomizer has it right.  If that's true (again, I may not have it correct), I probably would have found another way to do it (like leadership points, or like the new "fame" points that have emerged in COGEE), but the game designers thought it was a good representation and went with it.  It does, after all, keep the purchase of such units down rather substantially and makes it a real accomplishment to finally get them.  In any case, I've just come to accept it for what it is.

Would it be possible to mod reducing the textile (and probably iron/wood) costs of some of these units, but creating textile (and again iron/wood) upkeep requirements?

This way your textile stockpile would remain really low if you had standing armies and fleets so you wouldnt be able to build additional rare units/containers, but you would see more of entire armies created from scratch after a huge defeat, which you see repeatedly throughout the period.

ORIGINAL: Mus


Would it be possible to mod reducing the textile (and probably iron/wood) costs of some of these units, but creating textile (and again iron/wood) upkeep requirements?

In the Master.txt file you can adjust the costs of units in resources or money but there is no way to adjust upkeep to include resource requirements in that file, just the money cost for upkeep.

Suppose we consider that the textiles a country creates represent materials that contribute to the economy, well-being, etc, of the society.

OTOH, forming 10,000 men into a division subtracts from those things. My reasoning is that textiles, as a part of the cost for raising a unit, represents the loss of those materials within the society because the 10,000, who formerly contributed through consumption and creation through working, are no longer contributory but, rather, removed from the extended economy.

ORIGINAL: ShaiHulud

Suppose we consider that the textiles a country creates represent materials that contribute to the economy, well-being, etc, of the society.

OTOH, forming 10,000 men into a division subtracts from those things. My reasoning is that textiles, as a part of the cost for raising a unit, represents the loss of those materials within the society because the 10,000, who formerly contributed through consumption and creation through working, are no longer contributory but, rather, removed from the extended economy.

Does that hold up to historic evidence? My impression is that often times the mobilization for war has boosted the economies involved, not represented a net loss in production. That doesnt include wars where so many casualties result that the country starts drafting its old men and boys, but many wars are not that high intensity.

True, economies are often boosted in wartime. The problem is, the new industry is specifically targeted to the military. Hence, the troops at the front get well fed while there is rationing back home, and so on. This illustrates my point that creating new units detracts from the economy. It's a zero-sum game in which the general populace loses because the military forces win.

Well, I guess, to me, it would just make sense to require the expenditure of texiles when building divisions as well as armies and corps and avoid all the fancy accounting methods.  But I won't worry about this too much. 

ORIGINAL: ShaiHulud

It's a zero-sum game in which the general populace loses because the military forces win.

Hey I dont want to sidetrack the entire discussion, but I dont think the validity of zero-sum economics is born out in the historical evidence either.

Again, that only applies in very rare instances, in this case where total mobilization is required. But again, wars of this intensity and scale are very rare in history. How much rationing is going on because of our wars in the middle east? Zero. Medium sized forces involved in low intensity conflict.

ORIGINAL: barbarossa2

Well, I guess, to me, it would just make sense to require the expenditure of texiles when building divisions as well as armies and corps and avoid all the fancy accounting methods.  But I won't worry about this too much. 

I believe that beyond an abstraction they are also used as a balancing tool to prevent people fielding huge forces of "special" units. Tons of light infantry, riflemen, guards, heavy artillery, horse artillery, etc etc.

So its a double abstraction.

I would like to see a mod where textile cost was greatly reduced but that certain units had a certain "upkeep" requirement in raw materials to maintain. This way we would see balanced armies raised from scratch the way we did in the Napoleonic times after terrible defeats.

With the current system if a nations army or fleet is completely eradicated its highly unlikely that they recover.

As an example in our PBEM game you demanded the cost in materials of the ships GB and Russia destroyed when they ganged up on you. In reality how many years would it take Sweden to replace those materials?

But I think history shows that maintaining forces is more expensive/difficult than forming them.

According to dude you cant modify upkeep costs and such, so its just a pipedream, but I would love to see a move towards more realistic upkeep and cheaper more realistic costs for raising troops/building ships, containers, etc.

ORIGINAL: Mus

ORIGINAL: ShaiHulud

It's a zero-sum game in which the general populace loses because the military forces win.

Hey I dont want to sidetrack the entire discussion, but I dont think the validity of zero-sum economics is born out in the historical evidence either.

Again, that only applies in very rare instances, in this case where total mobilization is required. But again, wars of this intensity and scale are very rare in history. How much rationing is going on because of our wars in the middle east? Zero. Medium sized forces involved in low intensity conflict.

Heh- Like you, I don't want to belabor the point, so, my final word is that civilians create and consume, armies consume, period.

The question is always, what part of the treasury can a nation afford to devote to its military? Nappy tried to limit this with looting of the conquered and living off the land. Because you are removing functioning individuals from productive society and having to provide for them while they produce nothing, it is evident that zero-sum applies. They provide security for their society, but, it's at a cost to that society.

ORIGINAL: ShaiHulud

Heh- Like you, I don't want to belabor the point, so, my final word is that civilians create and consume, armies consume, period.

Militaries also expand markets if they are winning.

England built a good chunk of its empire during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic period.

Productivity advances mean the same amount of goods can be created with a smaller and smaller work force. One man being sent to fight does not necessarily mean one less man producing. That would be the definition of zero sum.

ORIGINAL: ShaiHulud

Because you are removing functioning individuals from productive society and having to provide for them while they produce nothing, it is evident that zero-sum applies. They provide security for their society, but, it's at a cost to that society.

And again, I dont think history bears that out. Taking a certain percentage of young men (many of them idle or less productive than the "average" man) off the streets and sending them to war has frequently been a positive for the society... not a net drain. If your assumption that only the most productive members of society were going to go to war was true you would be right. Very few countries throughout history have had their fighting done by the cream of the crop of their young people like the United States since the all volunteer Army.

I think Revolutionary France needed wars to prevent total anarchy... getting unemployed troublemakers and criminals off the streets and doing damage in other peoples countries wasnt a drain. Later on, once Napoleon started conscripting people out of schedule and people took to the hills to avoid service I would agree that it could have been starting to approach it. But that kind of scale of warfare is pretty rare.