Province Size?

[tinkthank]

How big are provinces?
I am trying to imagine this and am having problems. On the one hand, a province must be large enough to encompass at least one decent size town and take a troop of, say, 20 one month to move through it. On the other hand, it must be small enough so that a province defence of, say, 10-20 men can patrol it and automatically meet any force moving in; it must be small enough so that an invading army of, say, 10-20 men automatically meet up with some defending force of, say, 10-20 men on some field.
This seems incompatible. But I want to try to figure it out.
I think provinces which are portrayed in the �world� map are much too large � a PD of 3 can never patrol an area the size of Wales � or Texas � and hope to meet up with anything. What are the chances of you successfully finding a friend with whom you agree to meet �next Thursday� in �New York City�, or �Chinatown�? You�ll never find her.
No, provinces have to be smaller.
But now let us imagine something like... some Alms somewhere between Unterammagau and Oberammagau. Unterammagau has a population of about 5,000, Oberammagau of about 15,000. It would be unlikely that a troop of 10 men would meet up with an enemy troop of 10 men on some alm there, but if you give them a month, it is sure to happen. Perhaps a patrolling PD force of 10 would have a chance of finding incoming strangers, given a month of time. Yet it takes about 1 to 1 and a half hours to walk between the two. Let�s say it would take 5 hours to walk if wearing full plate mail and carrying all your gear, that at a slow pace and looking for enemies hiding behind cows and trees and whatnot. But not a month. (Province type: Farmlands, Mountains.) In a month, even heavily armed troops can move from Texas to Nevada.
So it seems that a province is either too small to limit troop movement to anything under 10 and too large to give troops a snowball�s chance in hell of finding one another.
So what do you think?

[Gandalf Parker]

I always think of a province as being the size of a US county. That would also seem to about fit the "beginnings of medieval" 1-castle small made-myself-king province, which later became duke-doms swearing fealty to one of the kings?

[Hakko]

Not an expert on medieval populations, but 10,000 is a lot of people for, say, a 12th century English county, unless it contained a large city. Wilderness regions like, say, the Auvergne in France, could easily have a couple thousand folks scattered over hundreds of square miles. OTOH, China had many cities of over 100,000 at that time, and a couple over 1,000,000.

My handwave is to accept that individual units of normal troops are actually company-sized (i.e., 100 men). Then large scale battles of 200+ units might be armies of 20,000, which is about right for the biggest medieval land battles. Magical units are what they are, of course. But it's easier to imagine that dispossessed spirits are company-sized, while a Lord of Hell is just one bad mutha----a.

[bone_daddy]

Hmm, let's see. Typical infantry can move through two friendly no-terrain penalty provinces in a month. Assuming that a typical infantry unit can traverse 15 miles in one day, that would come to 450 miles in one month.

So a typical province should be about 225 miles across.

Of course, the 15 miles in one day might be high. If you factor in the time spent on making encampments and foraging, it could easily drop to 10 miles per day. This would reduce province size to 150 miles across.

Gandalf's probably right for counties in the Western U.S. In the eastern part of the country, it would be about five counties or so in size.

[tinkthank]

I would like to think of it as a county as well, since this feels right in terms of population, magic sites, etc.

However, militia and heavy troops can only move 1 province in a month. If such a unit can march only 10 miles per day (which is shabby), that would still be about 300 miles a month, or about 450 kilometers.

That is somewhere between the breadth of England and Germany.

See what I mean? Either province is too small to allow meaningful map-movement restrictions, or it is too large to be a platform which can handle PD and battles.

[Gandalf Parker]

OK but do we have any choice? Should movement be more restricted? A game like this doesnt like to keep information from one turn to the next. It wants to read the info for each turn processing. So if we made it that "forest" ability allowed movement of 1 province a day, and non-forest capable moving thru forest areas took 2 or 3 turns to do it, I think we are looking at an entirely new non-PbEM style game.

Which they can do if they want but I think it would be another game, not an "improvement" of this one. (Not arguing, just thinking as Im typing)

[bone_daddy]

Actually, after giving it a little more consideration, you're right. Ten miles a day is pretty low. It should probably be double that figure, assuming an average marching speed of 2 to 2.5 miles per hour over a period of 8 to 10 hours, which yields a range of 16 to 25 miles per day. So the province size should be about 600 miles. Which would be like marching across Texas.

[bone_daddy]

Hmm, I should have read the intervening posts. Makes my last one moot.