Nothing But The Stabby Stuff: Raiding And How Axioms Handles Low Level Conflict
War, what is it good for, and more importantly, what is it?
Introduction
As I’ve noted previously Axioms doesn’t have a sort of binary war/peace mechanic. Formal declarations of war are actually the equivalent of Commitments. A Delcaration prior to a conflict contributes to your honor/trust modifiers and can be part of a wider legal/cultural framework with penalties for a failure to adhere but you can fight whenever you want.
Similarly whether allies or vassals or your liege or w/e come to your aid is complex. Low level raids, faux-banditry, privateering and so forth are all possible and much less likely to lead to an expanding conflict. you might be told to harden up and/or get your shit together unless formal war or actual conquest is on the menu.
As mentioned in the previous post regarding troop morale and cohesion there are all sorts of ways to engage in proxy or hidden conflict and you can additionally simply avoid leaving evidence of your involvement. Things like using common or generic equipment, removing cultural/religious signifiers, and so forth.
Of course when you are not hiding your loyalty you can still engage in conflict that doesn’t cause an alliance cascade. Burning fields and buildings, blockading roads and ports and straits, and other stuff typically will only draw the attention of local potentates. I think informal war is very underutilized and the lack limits the power and the fun in map games.
Who Raids And Why
Different social systems will have different feelings on raiding and goals for raiding. Nomadic groups might raid for honor or wealth and rarely for land. Tribal groups might follow relatively similar patterns at low complexity levels. Raiding back and forth among northern germanic tribes in the classical era was quite common. Generally there were many societies that were less concerned with conquest per se than supporting their kinship groups and surviving. Often particular ambitious leaders might organize larger parts of the culture for a period but this wasn’t generally a continuous rign over an advancing state. More settled and organized societies might raid for slaves and loot as well but there is less cultural pressure there.
Raiding sometimes was employed as a military strategy within a larger conflict. It could even be more political than material. The chevauchee was a strategy of the medieval period often in France or England, most famously the chevauchee of the Black Prince. This activity both damaged the economic power of the enemy as well as upset those who owned taxes or manpower in exchange for protection. It impacted the population directly as well as causing lesser lords to petition their liege and to complain. It could be part of a greater conflict or purely punitive. These raids were less concerned with gaining wealth for their perpetrators than they were trying to harm the wealth of an opponent for some purpose.
Raiding upset the populace and the lower nobility and created political and economic problems for the high lords. Lieges who failed to respond to these kinds of raids often ended up with revolts and allegiance swaps that greatly weakened them.
How Raiding And Banditry Work
A raid in Axioms is generally an informal conflict although you might formally declare a raid for punitive purposes. Some number of men, often but not always mounted, would form up under colors or in disguise and ride out to burn fields, sack cities, grab slaves, and so forth. Raids are generally distinct from banditry in that raiders have some sort of long lasting coherent society behind them.
The character initiating the raid will generally decide on some goal and then build up a force to achieve it before deploying that force. You may or may not lay ground work through the intrigue system. Perhaps you want Characters near the target to be off helping through some excuse, or to have their person or their forces elsewhere so they can claim they can’t/couldn’t help. The raid will than move across provinces achieving local goals before moving on and then eventually returning.
Bandits will be very small groups who will remain semi-permanently in a province engaging in perhaps slightly lower level actions. Their primary impact is causing unrest and causing a need for caravan guards and perhaps guardposts and other practices which raise the cost of administering an area. Banditry generally wouldn’t generate a profit or cause significant infrastructure damage. It will be possible to generate “natural” bandits by creating relatively lawless areas with bad economic conditions as well as create and supply “bandits” that actually work for a specific society/realm/group.
Systems And Mechanics
The previous post mentioned some of the mechanics that support low level conflict. Multiple armed forces can operate in a given province and the ability for them to locate each other depends on many factors. Bandits are relatively hard to locate due to their small size and low standard of equipment and living. Various administrative options like adding outposts and couriers and garrisons and so forth will help, as will engaging in intrigue. So sending agents to talk to the populace and root around in woods and hills and such. Of course there are also various magic options like scrying or detection wards and such.
For raiding you generally avoid notice through fast movement. Smaller and faster forces can sort of stay ahead of the intel network unless there are fast couriers, town garrisons, guard posts, magic and other stuff that can move information faster than the raiders can travel. Of course large mounted forces are easier to track for obvious reasons. But you need a larger force to handle raiders typically and they cause much more damage.
An intrigue or military or even economic unit could select a stance or something as well that would impact intra-province interactions and then inter-province travel times.
Populations in Axioms have a “wealth” statistics that builds up over time and depending on trade and other factors. This is also what the tax values you assign apply to. Axioms does not create money out of nothing like Illwinter or Paradox games or Gothic Labs do. Or not tax money anyways. Wealth is still partially abstracted. This is also part of why Axioms doesn’t bother with tax modifiers and such. You can tax your populations anywhere from 0 to 100 at your discretion but you better offset the unhappiness through other means.
So you are damaging wealth as well as potentially stealing items, resources, goods, and damaging buildings, and of course killing or enslaving parts of the population. Raids can also damage infrastructure like bridges, guard posts, courier stations, and such that are distinct from settlements and you can also burn fields or forests. If you are raiding for loot you might want less wanton destruction vs raiding for harm to an enemy lord.
You can also do a “peaceful raid” where you just demonstrate to the population that their lord is powerless. In case you want to conquer that land. Many populations/characters won’t be interested in this for ideological reasons, though. They want that loot! You can also demand that enemy officials/administrators and soldiers/servants and such are handed over, leaving the local populace alone. This can also result in the current lord punishing the populace which can help divide them.
One other ancillary benefit of low level conflict is training and loyalty. Getting your soldiers used to various aspects of being on campaign in a low stakes and relatively safe way, getting them some easy loot, and pretty unique to Axioms learning about the territory and how to handle the terrain in preparation for a more serious conflict later. Though guides or traitors could also provide this info. Of course the effect would stack with diminishing returns so why not both?
Unsafe Seas
Axioms of course has a map gen model that creates more and larger navigable rivers, lots more coastal land, and more inland seas and gulfs. What does this mean? Boat raiders! Pirates who raid shipping, viking-esque coastal raiding, long distance slavery, potential for “tolls” and other unofficial taxes and so forth.
Brown water raids and coastal raids are quite interesting for a lot of reasons. Most raiders will spend much more time at sea and thus be better sailors and they’ll also have more knowledge of the “terrain” so to speak and of course other factors that improve the ability to escape. You can’t easily corner naval enemies. Plus true military ships have a different purpose than raiding ships and are often much slower. Boats can also assist in the escape of land raiders. Most importantly boats don’t leave tracks so if you lose vision you probably can’t expect to track corsairs down as easily.
Conclusion
There is of course some amount of RNG in small scale warfare and provincial stability mechanics but I try to provide a variety of options, including just ignoring these attacks if they are minor. Even relatively heavy raiding won’t totally destroy a society. You have time and options to handle things. And of course directly or indirectly destabilizing NPC realms can be super fun.
This part of Axioms is relatively experimental. There aren’t any good games to crib off of. Playtesting will tell how popular these features are. I do think they add both verisimilitude to the fantasy world simulation and also alternative strategies. And it is less dull than mashing a support rebels button or something.