Something has occurred to me that I think would make a number of strategy games far more believable is if the armies had followers, the soldiers had spouses. I am going to give a historical shpiel, so go down the the last paragraph if the history bores you.

Prior to the establishment of the modern military regimental system and modern military supply, which largely came into its own during the Enlightenment, armies were followed by trains of people who were not soldiers, but performed various tasks for their armies. Collectively, these were called "camp followers". That phrase has a nasty connotation of prostitution because among the camp followers there would frequently be prostitutes; however, they were far from the only people who followed the camp. An army, in particular, would require armorers, cooks, leatherworkers, people who forage for food either from the local area, as well as entertainers of various sorts, such as bards, minstrils, etc. as well as the infamous prostitutes. These followers could be of either sex, and have any relation to the soldiers, including being just people from the local area who might make some coin cooking for the army or even just some adventure travelling with them.

While actual female soldiers in the day were rare, it was not at all uncommon in period for a soldier's wife to accompany him off (and sometimes on) the battlefield. This is a perfectly natural for her: she loves him, wants to be with him, and wants to look out for him as she can, so perhaps she cooks for him and his troop, or forages, or helps him loot the area after the battle is won. She would be armed, if lightly, because travelling in such a situation would be potentially dangerous. If he fell in battle, it was even possible for her to fight in his stead.

In a game like most nation-builder real-time-strategy games from Age of Empires onward, there is a distinct gender bias in the characters in the game. Generally, only the citizens and perhaps a few support units can be both male and female; all of the soldiers are male. That the units that are male should be is of course realistic; even among the Elves and the Woses of Arda I don't see the average soldier being just as likely one sex as the other. However, I do see some of the races having the wives of the soldiers being much more caring and much more dedicated to their husbands than even real-world humans. In fact, even among Men in Arda I see some groups (the Edain) having their females more likely to follow their loved ones (think about Morwen, and Huor's wife).

It seems to me therefore that some of the races should have follower spouses of the soldiers. So, here is how I would suggest it: every time a soldier is produced of a race where the females are particularly devoted to their spouses, a wife for that soldier is produced as well. She can't easily be controlled (though she probably can be given a "conceal yourself" order so that she doesn't tip off the enemy where your army is). Instead, she would follow her husband around, provide logistics bonuses to him as long as she is alive, and be a functional but not necessarily great combatant if she should get into trouble herself. Of course the soldier would cost more in the first place, since you get two units for the price of one. I would generally say that the Elves, the Edain (and some of their descendents) the Woses, and possibly the Hobbits, should get this feature. Dwarven females are sufficiently similar to the males that if you dressed them up in armor you couldn't tell them apart (and I get the feeling the Dwarves did this), not to mention of course that there are only half as many of them as Dwarven males. Easterlings, Haradrim, and Orcs don't get this feature because their marraiges are more often loveless.

Hmmm.... I'm not convinced of the "purity" of this suggestion. Vary rarely did Tolkien ever mention women accompaning men when at war. Tolkien never went into great details about "camp followers" as well. The impression I got from him was that the armies of Arda did not require these sorts of followers, and that they could sustain themselves in their own way. Women are viewed generally as non-combatants with the exceptions of the Wainriders and Rohirrim, and even then they usually just stayed behind to guard their homes. In general, I think it isn't a good idea for purists wouldn't make sense out of it for nothing ever alludes to this.

That, and how incredibly hard it would be to do.

The NAAFI of Middle-earth?

Well, from a purist's standpoint, you get the impression that the sex ratio of Tolkien's races (even Men) is very heavily male-baised, since you hardly hear about females at all!


I can accept not including it because it's not described in any of Tolkien's books. To be honest, Tolkien makes a number of glaring historical errors in his stories (or, at least, they would be historical in that real people with real technology and society like that he is portraying did not act that way). Put simply, Tolkien is writing in the Romantic style, where he glosses over everything that is not, as someone put it, "Ringing, Singing, Sword-Slinging Heroes". The only serious exception to this is his Hobbits, who come off as real people. Since Tolkien was himself well-acquainted with warfare (he was in the Battle of the Somme), I do not doubt that he was aware that he was not writing something that could really be "historically accurate" for his imaginary world. Nonetheless, this is how he wrote.

Ignoring the soldiers' wives (who would be following them in many cases), the Last Alliance is going to have the same Romantic feel to it: it will be a game that glosses over a lot of the details. Maybe this is what we want: something romatic that has the same atmosphere as Tolkien's writing (especially that of the Silmarillion). Nonetheless, that means that any real Arda fan is going to have to pause the game fairly frequently just to imagine what is going on!



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Here is how I would program this: I do not know how many players you intend to have on the map at one time. What I would do is double that, and have each player be paired with a "spouses" player, who would be AI-controlled and allied to its player. Each soldier's wife unit would be continually given orders to follow/protect/guard her husband. The units themselves would be created using scripts (i.e. new soldier appears, give him a wife and assign her to him).

I would suggest that what happens is perhaps a tent (a population supporter? I don't know how population will work in TLA) has a wife standing outside, or coming outside occasionally. I doubt that the wives would follow the men actually into battle against orcs.

I think that having the soldeirs wives could be annoying because they would get in the way of things, or look out of place if they followed just one unit around like a soldeir manning a wall, they might also cause lag from having to many units. But it could work if the wives would only follow people in companies, and instead of coming from the AI or another player they could just appear from house or tents like Drashkurz said.

Well, Beren, your points are worth of praise, historically speaking. The problem is that we try to depict Tolkien's Arda from a purist point of view, was he right or wrong in what he created it doesn't matter much.

Nice point,anyway

You cold even do it so that you don't actually see the wife. Perhaps it could be randomized (like Drakes with and without wings), so that every once in a while when you create a unit, he has a "wife". You don't ever see her, she just adds resources or bonuses to the gameplay over time. Then again, dealing with the purity of the books on this matter, women and children were sent away from the fighting, such as at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields. PJ just left them in so he could get that sad feeling when the men rode out to take Osgiliath again (and it worked).

When considering adding features such as the one that Beren IV suggested you also have to consider how it would effect the game play. Would having wives and other people do anything positive for the game play? or would it become another level of micro management?

Also about the game being "romantic" instead of realistic, I think that the team wants to keep the same feel that is in the books, and you also have to remeber that alot of the civs arn't normal men like in our world; so just because something is "historically" true in our world it dosn't mean that the same rules apply in arda.

This is actually a very good idea: both realistic, easy to overlook if you are a purist, and easy to program. Good thought!

This was really only a suggestion. Obviously, trying to be "Tolkien purist" and trying to keep the same feel as in the books themselves is a good idea. Although, that said, Tolkien talks about females so little in his books that if we were going to be true purists there probably shouldn't even be female villagers - the only female units in the game would be the occasional heroine.

Myself, I prefer to imagine what Arda is actually like rather than just how it is depicted (which is frequently ambiguous and sometimes jarring to suspension of disbelief - but that's another story). That said, I tend to envision a much more fantastical side of Arda than what TLA is portraying, based on the unit lists for the First Age Showcase Civs. However, I also believe wholly that variety in interpretations in fantasy literature is a good thing, and I already have a mod for Age of Wonders Shadow Magic that fills my side, so I am glad that TLA is doing something a little different.

Nonetheless, I do see married couples of some of the races, the Elves in particular, as being generally inseparable, and that means that if an (Elven) soldier is on the battlefield, his wife is probably at least watching.





Well, that was Gondor and Rohan. The people of Gondor I get the impression have less emphasis on love and more on loyalty than many other peoples. Moreover, they were fighting on home territory, and the women of their territory were no more than a day's march from Minas Tirith, so you wouldn't necessarily expect to see them. The Rohirrim came in riding horses as part of this army, and it was not that far a ride, actually. Nonetheless, it would be a glaring plausibility error for Eowyn to be the only female of their army on the field that day.

I was not thinking that the garrison "Guard" unit should have wives (or if they do, they are just extra female citizens). Most of the Gondor soldiers in the WR probably were Guards. That the guards have wives isn't the issue; they wouldn't follow them on campaign, not because they don't love their husbands but because their husbands don't go on campaign. I was thinking more along the lines of a huge army going some distance to war. The wives of the Grey Company (or some of them, that is), for example, should be not that far behind them. I bet there were a lot of female Elves who at least saw Nirnaeth Anoediad, even if they didn't fight in the phalanxes.




Also true. In fact, it is interesting how Tolkien has the females of the Men of Darkness being generally described as more adventurous and independent as those of the Rohirrim, Gondor-men, etc. One could suggest that Tolkien believed that a woman's place was in the home and that it was against the will of God for her to be elsewhere. I do not believe that Tolkien was that sexist, due to the number of genuinely heroic and capable female characters in his legendarium among the good side.

I would assume that the more the males and females of a race tend to love their spouses, the more likely the females would follow their husbands on military campaigns. This means Elves, it means Hobbits, it means Edain. It's only occasional in the case of other kinds of Men. Orcs I don't think we need to worry about. And Dwarves have an already skewed sex ratio.

About the Drakes im pretty sure there is an upgrade that gives them wings instead of it being random.

Well, actually there are some non-heroic female figures in Tolkien's works.
Rosie Cotton, Ioreth and some more. The fact is thatthey played secondary roles, imho. I'm not saying that this is right or wrong, it's just Tolkien vision. We don't want to twist that, after all.

Even from the perspective of a historian on 0 A.D., the presense of women on battlefields is sort of a silly notion, in honesty. The subject of females in combat has been discussed several times, and the conclusion is this: women stayed home, and should stay home in the game. If the men and women, who is left to tend the crops and the children? Or who is left to buy and sell for the family's business?

It's impractical to suggest that any sort of females commonly tagged along, except in more barbaric cultures (and the corresponding cultures in Tolkein's world (Arda?) seem have no females at all).

And even supposing that women actually did fufill such a role (if every wife of a soldier was a Molly Pitcher), it would be incongruous with Tolkein's romantic and, understandably given his time, seemingly ist universe.

Either way, Beren, you did do some research. Quite respectable. That's the kind of can-do community that will help to make Wildfire Games' projects sucessful in both production and popularity.

CraztThunbs: Check out the technology list for Morgoth's Forces. There's a research for making winged drakes more likely.

Well, if the wives of the Edain used to follow their husbands to the battlefield at all, Morwen would have been the last one to stay at home, don't you think?

I'm not thinking about women on the battle field, here, at least not as soldiers.

Besides, I am not sure what fraction of soldiers' wives followed their husbands around in historical campaigns. It was sizable, I know that - but if she had some reason to stay behind (e.g. she had children to take care of, or a business to run, as Titus Ultor suggests), she probably would have. But not everybody had children yet, or a business to attend to. This is my best guess for Morwen, speaking of whom, although I doubt she really stayed home even so (she was out and about doing stuff - she's a witch, after all ). Rían I know did follow Huor to die on the mound.

Luthien did follow Beren into battle. But then again, she was very capable of defending herself. Speaking of the Silmarillion, don't you think Eilinel and Gorlim's story is sad?
Off Topic: Don't you think this picture of Feanor suits him? I wonder who drew it.
http://img-fan.theonering.net/rolozo/image...rano/Feanor.jpg

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I hate that picture of Feanor ...
he looks ugly ... the picture would better fit to depic Morgoth
I myself prefer that one ...

LOL

Wives did follow their men into campaigns, not battles. Maybe not in the Greek-Roman ages, but they surely did follow in the Crusades to give an exemple.

Isn't it the new concept artist that drew that Fëanor?

Only a pretty small number of women followed their husbands on the Crusades. However, that's only if the Crusade was embarked upon as a means to gain a fortune or a new life. If the soldier or knight ever wished to return home, he would most certainly leave his wive to attend to their belongings (be a farm, home, business, or anything else) while he was off in the Holy Land.

Why rule out female villagers? It seems the most logical course of action.

Okay, I am going to play the academic game.

1. Can you give me a source for this information?

2. Most of my information is later in period, 14th-15th Century, in smaller-scale campaigns in Italy and Switzerland. I will try and dig up a source for you regarding it.





Because Tolkien rarely mentions the smiths, the weavers, the people who make the crafts and arts of his various cultures as being women. In fact, he seems to imply that they are male: the great smiths among the Noldor, for example, are the princes, who are also the captains at war. Women normally just don't get much mention in Tolkien's writing, unless he is talking about specific, otherwise noteworthy women.



<span class='edit'>This post has been edited by Beren IV: Today, 06:02 PM</span>

There will be female villagers. Just check out the noldorin concept art.

It's not true that only a couple of women followed their men on the crusades. If we speak just about the second crusade for instance, there were a lot of women, doing nothing. But this is an exception. In campaigns, women did follow men, but then they weren't their wives, but cooks and such.

My comment on having no female villagers was a (partially) outrageous suggestion that, if we are going to be absolute purists and include nothing that isn't part of the books, then they aren't really part of the story. Myself I am of the opinion that if something isn't in the books, but we can infer its existence based on what is in the books, then it is worth including. I have this opinion because I feel that a more complete Arda is a richer one, and more fun to play in!


I'm still looking up that reference.

You're talking about crusades, but those are a very special kind of campaigning. It wasn't to war your neighbour and gain some land: it was to wage a holy war in a far away country and many soldiers weren't thinking of going back, but were thinking of gaining a small piece of land for their own. It's only logical then that they took their wife with them.

The only comparable situation in Arda would be the campaign of Feänor and his family, against Melkor. When they sailed from paradise to Middle-Earth. And indeed: their women went with them on that campaign (Galadriel anyone?). I frankly can't imagine women fighting along side their husbands on The Last Alliance (not talking about exceptions, but in general).

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indeed, but that doesn't mean that he is always right

You are right about the crusades, Caedus, but still, in every campaign, there had to be cooks etc. to maintain the armies. But the subtitle of this topic is quite accurate, only there should be added: "to maintain their homes until they return"

I am still looking for the reference.

My source is Medieval Military Costume, by Gerry Embleton. It is obviously a secondary source, although the illustrator is John Howe, if you know who he is . I am trying to track it to a more primary source, but unfortunately the bibliography is not exactly *ah* scholarly. I have talked to a number of my SCA friends, however, and they think it is fairly accurate.

We talked about the cooks following the armies including a lot of women. There is no reason why these women would not be married, and if they are married, it would be convenient if they were married to the soldiers (particularly if they were career soldiers). So I suppose that trained medieval armies might have had some of the wives following the soldiers (such as could if their husbands were knights or officers or other 'special' soldiers). I agree that the wives of the peasant conscripts would not be following their husbands to war, except perhaps in the case where the farm was already overcrowded and the husband's siblings would continue running the farm (especially if it was the fallow time of year, before crop rotation).

As a business, following an army could be lucrative. THere are historical records of thousands of women who were involved in wars in fifteenth century Switzerland who acted in salvage roles, picking up valuables from the battlefield and the chaos of war and turning them in to the officials who licensed them (and no doubt these women didn't hand over all they had found). So it's really only if she had a farm to go back to would she have to stay home. Of course, probably most stayed home anyway - that was what was expected of women in those days. But some thousands broke the mold according to Swiss historical records (and their names were recorded, so we know they were women).

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okay okay ... I think there is a major problem here. The LotR films have turned the books into a Medieval story ... remember, Arda is our world before the world as we know it. Meaning, the peoples of Arda were prior to the Egyptians, and the rest ... hence, you can't compare Medieval Europe and Tolkien's mythology (although similar in some aspects) ... Arda is not Medieval ... I would call it "pre-Medieval" ...
Finally, have you ever seen an Elf on a battlefield? I don't think so. Tolkien's world is not our world. It is a meta-world. We shouldn't bother about wives being with their husbands on the battlefield. It may be relevant in our world, but it may not be in Tolkien's world. Same applies to Elves and Orcs. They are relevant and necessary in Tolkien's world, but not in ours.

This is absolutely true if we take the idea that our world really is the distant future of Arda (that has its own consistency problems, such as how ironworking was lost, not to mention all sorts of New World plants in Middle-Earth). But anyhow that is beside the point.

If Arda has generally similar physics to our own world (which it seems to at a glance, and has to if it is our world), then creatures living on it are going to have similar requirements. The armies of Middle-Earth are not described as sophistocated enough to be able to provide all of the services for themselves that such an army would need, just as a medieval army did not. Therefore the same sort of logic for why a medieval army would have camp followers should apply at least to some of the more familiar races (e.g. Men) on Arda.

The other thing that occurs to me is that love is a very powerful bond. If love on Arda works anything like the way it does in our world, then one would wish to follow one's love. The Elves, it seems to me, would be even more likely than Men to have the wives follow the husbands on campaigns.

The Orcs, well, let's just say they don't feel love as much.

I would rather say we simply don't know that. At least I don't know it, as I have never seen a description of the relation between male and female Orcs. In fact, I never have read anything on female Orcs at all!

I thought there was something about them in "the peoples of middle earth". Well, anyway we must have a topic about them here at TLA forums. And I don't own the HoME to my regrets

Neither do I, so that may explain why I am so ignorant about female Orcs.

The absence of female Orcs is one example of why, if we were being Tolkien Purists, we should avoid having females in the game as much as possible - Tolkien never mentioned them, but they have to exist, if the Orcs are corrupted Elves or Men!


In any case, I found my source. One of my SCA friends told me where the reference is from, so I still need to actually check it, but at least I found what I am looking for.


The title is The Medieval Soldier. One of the authors is John Howe. The book may have a subtitle "Campaigning in the Fifteenth Century". John Howe, incidentally, if you don't recognize his name already, is one of the names of ah Tolkien affeccionados. Here's his website: John Howe's Artwork page


In any case, the book says that it was not at all infrequent for women to follow their husbands on campaigns, trailing their children and all behind them. Sometimes it would get to the point where she herself would wind up carrying a musket (remember, fifteenth century).

Now, should she have stayed home and kept the farm in order as best as possible? Maybe yes, maybe no. But she didn't stay home - or at least some soldiers' wives did not, whether it was good for her family and her livelihood or not.