I propose doing away with labor units entirely, and ignoring any sort
of skill rating for armies at all (this is for the sake of simplicity.
Please restrain urges to micro-model.)
So one could, by various means, raise an army from the local population.
These are farmers who you've given a pike to and told to fight. They
are not even close to Sir Studiedalot; they are untrainable, and perhaps
you would not even equip them. Compared with the current system, the
importance of army units with large numbers is significantly less. One
strong character could obliterate lots of peasant farmer-soldiers.
> Money - Personally, I'd downplay money. The primary units you have are
> companions, and don't need monthly pay (ie. no maintenance charges).
I'd agree with this (probably -- I waver on this topic). Certainly, the
need for maintenance costs in such a system is gone. Armies must be paid
or otherwise be induced to remain in your service, so they carry their own
high cost. Big production tasks eat gold all by themselves. Since there's
no huge units we need to restrain, there's no need to pay maintenance.
Even if we kept maintenance, I don't imagine it would be the burden it
currently is. Who will notice 40 gold/month for all of their units?
-- Rich Skrenta <skrenta@rt.com> N2QAV