Supporting troops

[Trifna]

There are basically two major groups in military: armed troops and support troops.

Of course troops may also support themselves on the field, pillaging or else. But another possibility (and often the only effective one) is support the troops. I just thaught that some AI-directed support troops could relay between your territory and your troops in another territory. It would be done automatically, the player wouldn't touch a thing about it (but the player could place units to protect though).

It would arrange alot of stuff about sending troop to war. War making more sense economically (you can pillage instead of support, and support may have a cost) and tactically (difficulty of invading would make more sense, protecting could be useful...).

[geeslaka]

"No you stupid convoy! Don't go around the inland sea that way! Awww crap."
Making a good pathfinding AI is usually rather difficult.

[Inverse Icarus]

i concur. screw the AI.

here's what i would do.

take a page from RoN: troops in enemy territory take damage over a period of time.

now that you have that idea, create specialized units that you can control (or that you can give GOTO orders) that restore HP to units, effectively creating support units.

i would also be for allowing troops to rape and pillage land for hitpoints. if i burn a village to the ground, theres no reason my people cant eat the food there.

[geeslaka]

Taking damage is slightly wrong. Instead, the troops should have several attributes that gradually decrease. When the troops run out of bullets, there attack power is drastically reduced. When they run out of food, their hp drops precipitously.

[Asmodean]

Well, taking damage would be okay in my book. Units that are not maintained, especially mechanized units, have a tendency to break down rather quickly. The way I see, that is equal to taking damage. But sure....attributes would be another way of representing it.

Asmodean

[Trifna]

In my own ideal system of "how to qualify units", I have permanent damage (killed) and "quality of the troops" (which includes morale, fatigued, etc.). I guess it could affect the second caracteristics, or even the first in some cases (Napoleon in Russia). Even better would be to have the two caracteristics on units that count the NUMBER of men into them (so: number of men, permanent quality like elite, temporary quality like fatigued).

About the pathfinding, perhaps we could simply ONLY give a path that is followed thereafter automatically (and can be changed)?

[Inverse Icarus]

i suppose you could go that route, depending on how much memory you want to devote to every unit.

[Asmodean]

Another thing to be considered, is that a many years ago, supply lines were often difficult, if not impossible to set up. Take Hannibal crossing the Alps. I'm pretty sure that he had no supply lines worth mentionong. He had to supply his troops by pillaging the countryside, or suffer attrition.

Asmodean

[Trifna]

Asmodean, that's why I said that a second way was to pillage
Simple: Your troops have both possibilities. From the moment you lack supplies, you can pillage.


UberKrux: Well simply puting a path wouldn't take that much, not more than a few units here or there. And maybe Civ4 will come out when we'll have 2Gig DDR on new computers

[Asmodean]

Okay, Trifna. I see that.

But a model should be implemented, so that for large distances supporting should be increasingly difficult, especially taking your current tech level into consideration.

I.e. it should be easier for an army with modern tech level to receive supplies across an ocean, than it should for an army with Roman tech level.

Asmodean

[Trifna]

I agree. I guess technology is always affecting supplies: we can think about Hannibal that couldn't bring supplies from Carthage to Italy

[Sore Loser]

I really like this. It also adds more strategy to the war theatre by allowing for such evil ploys as cutting off the enemy's supply lines or even capturing his supplies. Pillaging is also a great concept, it allows for a third military objective besides conquest and the destruction of potential threats. I also like your distinction between health, experience and morale.

How would this be implemented? Should the supply troops be actual units that you have to move yourself? It will probably have to be abstracted somehow. How about this:

Each turn, the game plots the shortest supply route(s) from the supply centre(s) to the army in question. You may also override the AI decision and plot routes yourself. Routes cannot cross tiles occupied by hostile units. The longer the route, the more supply troops are needed each turn (a little like the freighter system in MOO2, only with distance as a second factor besides quantity).

If an enemy unit moves unto a tile used to haul supplies the previous turn, then he gets a chance to capture a portion of the supplies. This means that you either have to guard each tile of the supply route, plot it far from enemy troops or take a gamble. Scouts should be able to detect nearby supply routes, and spies would be able to get detailed plans on enemy operations.

[Trifna]

What I see as possible as a way to evaluate units is to have "number of troops", "permanent status" (they wont just lose their experience), and "temporary status" (RIGHT NOW, they are exausted, bad morale...). But let's not go into this too much since we'll lose the first subject of this thread.


No need of spies since in Civ, all units are always seen on your territory (could change though).

"The longer the route, the more supplies is needed."
Are you sure?? I mean that the Americans do not need to send the double of potatoes to feed troops just because they are in Iraq instead of Guatemala.

[Asmodean]

I think what he means is that the longer the route, the more supplies you need to send, 'cause there is a chance that some or most may not arrive. But I'm not sure.

Asmodean

[Sore Loser]

I meant supply troops, not supplies. You send the same amount of supplies, but you need more vehicles and personnel to transfer them. They still arrive just as fast, for sake of simplicity.