Design Commentary: Simplifications for Empires in Arms

This is the design commentary for some half-developed variant rules for Empires in Arms. My web page also provides access to further Empires in Arms material.

Changes to the rules for garrisons

The objectives here are:

to remove the unrealistic "I have to send this corps of thirty-thousand men to pick up that stray infantry battalion" effect;
to reduce the game's counter density; and
to reduce the anhistorical accumulation of infantry factors.

an incidental effect is

garrison strengths become visible; and
garrisons become (realistically) more capable

The one factor garrison represents military potential that can't feasibly be removed from the city to serve in a field army. This would include militia (in the sense of people who can fight, but have real jobs to do in the city from which they can't be spared) and whatever troops were needed to keep law and order (this era didn't generally have police as such, so I'm guessing these would be regular army).

The large garrison factors are to let people try to hold particular places seriously, I'm thinking of the historical large garrisons in such key forts as Mantua. By restricting their number, we restrict the total number of garrison factors available.

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