Hi,
I am doing a lite-strategy wargame where key locations are connected to routes; right now I am setting the cost of sea travel to be highest, as my thinking is that - ships are expensive to build, they need slaves and etc.
However, as I am thinking through, I recall that in ancient/medieval times, sea travel seemed to be preferable to land. Cost-wise, which would be more, to travel via land or via sea?
Here’s a cite with a plethora of information on the trans-Atlantic economy of 1800 and prior. Not much on medieval times though.
Consider that the Europeans first made it to, say, Southern Africa or China by sea, even though it was many more miles as the crow flew than a direct overland route across more or less geographically contiguous landmasses. Consider too that ancient Romans and Greeks and Phoenecians were pretty active in navigating the Med. et al., even though most of their trade partners/colonies were accessible overland (and this is even taking into account the impressive Roman road system). Even smallish boats can carry a good amount of cargo/weaponry (at least compared to what a footsoldier could carry over terrain). Horses or other draft animals can increase overland capacity to carry stuff, but they need fodder, they aren’t exactly cheap/free either, and what happens if your gameworld has mountains?
First, you seem to be ignoring the cost of transporting bulk goods overland. Either you need a massive amount of people carrying the goods, or you need animals. Whatever the case, you need provisions for them, and if you’re going a long distance you severely limit the amount of bulk goods you can carry as you’re carrying your own provisions. Not to mention, you need a road infrastructure in order to make ground transport practical. Finally, traveling across land is generally longer than by sea.
And since you mention “ancient” in regards to sea-travel, and how ships would need slaves to row them; the ancient Greeks never (or almost never) used slaves to man their ships. The coordination necessary to effectively navigate a trireme ensured that only citizens, well-trained ones, rowed. (I do not know if Rome used citizens or slaves to man their ships. Anyone?)
As late as the 1800s, it was more economical for merchants to ship ice from New England to India by boat than for the Indians to transport ice the much shorter distance down from the Himalayas by land.
Sea travel was almost always more economical.
Example of the differance that having an effective maritime force could make - from ancient times.
The Battle of Thermopylae is the famous battle of the 300, however the object of this stand was not to defeat the Persian Army, but to buy enough time for the Greek Navy to inflict enough damage on the Persian Navy that it would not be able to resupply its land based army.
In the event, the sea battle was a stalemate, but enough damage was caused to the Persian Fleet to slow them down, ultimately enough time was gained for the Greeks to regroup and inflict a heavy defeat on the Persians at the Battle of Salamis.
Its this defeat that ensured that Persian land based army could not be resupplied, and its this that lost Persia the war, you’ll note that land based resupply was not reaslistic, not enough material could be moved quickly enough to keep a sizeable army moving.
Even a fairly modest vessel would be capable of shifting a hundred tons and more -and only need a dozen sailors to do it - to make long journeys over land to shift a few thousand tons of supplies - probably using asses and oxen you are looking at far more time, far more men, and you would use up a goodly portion of your cargo just keeping the carriers going.
Moving cargo by sea might have a high initial cost before you start moving anything at all, but once in place, it would then cost very much less to move large amounts of stuff about, it would be faster - much faster, and would be safer.
If you had a military leader, they would commandeer suitable vessels or be required to return some sort of military service in return for trading rights and protection, so the cost to the rulers would probably not be all that great.
If you are going to put shipping into a wargame, then the main issue would be the length of time of the conflict, balanced against the rate of lossess incurred by the fleet - it would probably not be possible to replace a signifcant loss in a short period of time, it would certainly take months to replace shipping and possible a few years.
War campaigning was in distinct seasons where conditions would be more favourable, heat, storms etc and also suitble winds to shift good about on your boats.
You could have a build up of maritime forces, and of cargo vessels, it was quite normal to move your armies around by sea, but then you could set a scenario whereby loss of shipping cannot be readily replaced, and thats when seizure of enemy vessels and repair of damaged ones becomes absolutely crucial - and this means having materials avaliable to do those repairs, nearby shipyard facilities etc.
The disparity in the difficulty in transporting an army by land vs. by sea was at its greatest in medieval times, due to the low quality of the roads and associated infrastructure.
It was much, much cheaper, easier and faster to move the massive amount of stuff necessary to support an army by sea.
The excepetion were armies of horse nomads, and the seeming miraculous speed of such armies in part explains their success in defeating their more civilized neighbours. The reason: as long as they stuck to areas near the eurasian steppe, they could live off the land and move as fast as their horses.
Not exactly the question you asked, but in “Guns, Germs, and Steel” (I think it was ) there’s a bit of analysis showing a great cost advantage of shipping goods from Northern to Southern Africa by sea versus using a camel train.
In the context of the OP I would have thought the transport cost should maybe go something like:
Lake
Large River
Sea
Small River
Road
Grassland
Hilly terrain
Desert/Mountain
in order of increasing cost.
The board basically linked locations by three types of routes - well-built, paved road, roads that cut through terrain (such as mountains, hills) and finally sea routes.
One thing that is clear to me travel by the roads is definitely cheaper than a route that cut through difficult terrain. The one thing I can’t decide on is if traveling by a road cost 1 unit of resource, and traveling through difficult terrain costs 2, how should I peg the cost of sea travel? (assuming that no cross-sea navigation, strictly by the coast and from ports to ports)
Edit: After seeing this post, I am deciding on:
(Assuming that getting additional resource income is difficult)
Road: cost 1
Difficult Terrain: cost 2
Attacking via Sea route: cost 3
Traveling via sea route controlled by you: cost 1 (or free, even!)
Is this, abstractly, ‘realistic’?
Correction - it was “The Power of Gold” by Bernstein.
It’s not absolutely clear to me how you are treating a well-paved level road cut through difficult terrain (like an inca road which would probably be easier to traverse than a bad (muddy, poorly-maintained) road through easy terrain. Usually the distinction is more like good road, bad road, no road (easy terrain), no road (horrible terrain). But I’m speculating arbitrarily.
Based on your categories I’d probably go for:
Road: cost 3
Difficult Terrain: cost 8
Attacking via Sea route: cost 3
Traveling via sea route controlled by you: cost 1
Assuming that attacking via a land land would probably give you something like an x2 modifier.
What if we assume the roads are comparable to the Roman Empire’s quality? Will that make a significant impact?
Thanks for your suggestion! I suppose I should decrease the cost of sea travel to emphasis its ease.
One factor that may be significant to you is that the Romans, IIRC, were almost entirely infantry. They would not have had to transport much cavalry or heavy equipment.
Hannibal did try to transport cavalry (both horses and the famous elephants) across Europe and over the Alps to attack Rome. He eventually made it, but he lost half his army along the way.
Well, the infantry did often have to haul a lot of siege equipment, wagons of supplies and so on, despite acting as mules themselves. Also the Roman empire supported a lot of trade, and although they favoured boat transport a good deal did go by land.
Incidentally, the OP might find this a useful starting point, particlarly Logistics and Transport with the distinction introduced between packed and paved roads, use of fleets in support of armies, use of troops to carry stuff, etc. and strategic and tactical mobility which again touches on roads.
Thanks for the great links! I will be sure to check them out for a more thorough understanding.
