The List - Combat

[Awsric Armitage]

I actually like that idea a lot.

You could even add in your general units for leader types and start them as say captains with a 1 range of influence and supply extension with the combat bonuses for command and control influences and they increase in rank with experience or battles/campaigns won. Then this unit is actually supplied or extends the supply range of the infantry units that act as temporary supply and communication points or hubs. This is a very valid way of modeling the supply lines and the communication lines by stringing together infantry units which would create and then 'guard' or staff the 'ammo dump' and the regional 'HQ' temporary supply points. They could even be two seperate temporary tile improvements and after helicopters and VTOL you could add a third temporary FARP, forward area refueling and rearming point of fire base. I really like this idea because it does not add more units just a few temporary tile improvements that are automatically defended by the creating units 'encamping' around them. This is valid also for ancient roman style RON or remain over night style fortifications as well as modern. Then after the campaign the units can become unanchored and again revert to their pre-tile improvement 'guards' or 'staff' assignments removing the temporary tile improvement and again becoming infantry units. This would be very cool and really not too difficult to add to the current code 'tags' by adding some modular code but then making the temporary supply points be attractive targets to the AIs units. Good idea and the terrain and distance from other more stable permanent supply points effects its effective range i.e. the deeper into enemy territory the shorter the extended supply ranges from the temporary tile improvements making the additional range extension of a regional command unit even more attractive tactically and strategically.

A good system that combines several thoughts of the posters here and is not too unworkable nor too unwieldy to manage.

[lajzar]

Originally posted by Awsric Armitage
I actually like that idea a lot.

You could even add in your general units for leader types and start them as say captains with a 1 range of influence and supply extension with the combat bonuses for command and control influences and they increase in rank with experience or battles/campaigns won. Then this unit is actually supplied or extends the supply range of the infantry units that act as temporary supply and communication points or hubs.

As I understand it, you are saying that infantry has a supply node radius of 3, and generals would have an enhanced supply node radius. I'm not sure that is a good idea. It would encourage players to spread the army thinner around where the general is, which is the exact opposite of reality.

How about letting the general be a supply source and leadership bonus for units within 1 tile, but not to extend the supply radius. Basically, any unit in position to receive the general's aid is never out of supply, but he does not otherwise affect the supply network.

Do you think that only fortified infantry should be able to act as supply nodes, or should they act as nodes simply by existing? I think the latter is easier to work with.

This is a very valid way of modeling the supply lines and the communication lines by stringing together infantry units which would create and then 'guard' or staff the 'ammo dump' and the regional 'HQ' temporary supply points. They could even be two seperate temporary tile improvements and after helicopters and VTOL you could add a third temporary FARP, forward area refueling and rearming point of fire base.

I'm a bit dubious about the tile improvement to extend the supply. In Civ, you can't generally own a tile improvement inside another nations's borders, which kind of defeats the potential benefit of that tile improvement. I suppose you could build those in neutral territory.

However, the sheer quantity of supplies needed for any serious campain pretty much excludes the possibility of using airlift as the primary supply mode. Drinking water alone for say, 1000 men for a week is about 7 tonnes! Add food, ammo, mail, replacement parts, medevac, and airlift quickly becomes non-trivial. In fact, apart from the Berlin airlift in the old war, I can't think of a single example of supplies being exclusively delivered by air. So I think we should drop the air based resupply networks.

Also, I'm not sure if I made it clear, but this model should require no new units or graphics. The presence of ammo dumps and communication hubs is implied by the string of infantry, and not created as tile improvements or separate units.

...Good idea and the terrain and distance from other more stable permanent supply points effects its effective range i.e. the deeper into enemy territory the shorter the extended supply ranges from the temporary tile improvements making the additional range extension of a regional command unit even more attractive tactically and strategically.

The one aspect that concerns me is how the supply nodes should interact with terrain. We could say that the supply nodes extend the supply by 3 movement points instead of 3 tiles, but I'm worried this kind of thing might quickly become hard to visualise. Anything that relies on movement points to determine spacing is also very likely to disrupt the visual imagery of infantry guarding a line. Probably better to leave it as 3 tiles, regardless of terrain or improvements.

Regarding ships, they are never out of supply. However, most ships should have a fuel limit, similar to civ 2 bombers. The limit should be quite high, but shisp that run out of supply are assumed lost.

[Awsric Armitage]

As I understand it, you are saying that infantry has a supply node radius of 3, and generals would have an enhanced supply node radius. I'm not sure that is a good idea. It would encourage players to spread the army thinner around where the general is, which is the exact opposite of reality.

Actually the infantry units in and of themselves would offer no supply radius only the temporary tile improvements that they create when they ‘fortify’. Actually instead of fortifying they would actually be creating either the supply node or the HQ node or the later FARP node. The later might get folded into airbases but FARPS are only for VTOL and helicopters to use for rearming and refueling. The general units or ‘command’ units would add to the already existing supply or command radius of the infantry created supply or HQ nodes of temporary tile improvements. So in effect without the ‘command’ units presence the supply range of the node is 2 or 3 tiles. However, units stacked within 1 tile of the ‘command’ unit use that ‘command unit’ as their supply source thus effectively extending the supply range from the supply node the ‘command’ unit is using for its supply.

So in actual practice the supply point of the temporary tile improvement created by the infantry and ‘staffed’ or ‘guarded’ by that infantry unit gives you a supply radius of 3. A’command’ unit at the limit of this range or three tiles away from the supply node further increases that supply range by an additional tile giving you a range of 4 tiles with a ‘command’ unit included in that stack in addition to its leadership combat bonuses of 1 or 2 tiles depending on the ‘command’ units experience levels. The supply range bonus could also be increase to 2 for general level ‘command units’.

I do not think having unlimited supply ranges for ‘command’ units is such a good idea as realistically even the best military leadership can only accomplish so much with out having a link to the supply chain in some way. This also presents the situation were capturing enemy supply temporary tile improvements will strand the enemies advance as they overextend their supply lines even if the ‘command’ unit is leading the advance. This adds tactical importance to protecting your lines of supply to your forward units or risking the stalling or stopping of an advance and placing your valueable ‘command’ units in danger. With the additional supply range extension this places the ‘command’ units just behind the front lines but not on the front lines, unless the player wants to risk them, acting to extend the supply range to the front lines and adding their command influene to the units not only on the front lines but also immediately surrounding them and the valuable supply lines. To cut these supply lines one would have to actually get 4 tiles deep at least behind enemy lines to effectively cut the supply lines to a ‘command’ unit. This presents another tactical modeling that can be added to the supply nodes or temporary tile improvements.

The temporary tile improvements acting as supply nodes would be in-range and vulnerable to enemy airstrikes by fighter-bombers based from cities on the front lines or from bombers based deeper in enemy territory. Such bombing of the supply nodes could be effectively modeled by reducing their hitpoints and this would be linked to their effective supply radius reducing their supply ranges when bombed. This would make it also important to protect your forward supply nodes or temporary tile improvements with forward airbases or air units based from cities with-in range of the supply node. This adds more strategic and tactical layers to having to protect your forward supply nodes or temporary tile improvements with the FARPs helicopters and VTOL aircraft or even with SAM batteries.

Now we are talking about some tactical and strategic level combat decisions that will engross the players into planning an effective campaign that will cost more than just the single stack of units running unimpeded deep into enemy controlled territory. It will have to include several factors that play together to form a well defined front if both players layer their forces and supporting temporary tile improvements wisely. Also factor in the high maintenace costs of the temporary supply nodes or tile improvements and you will limit the players from placing too many of them further increasing their strategic values.

Regarding owning tile improvements in enemy controlled territory brings us back to the point or rather idea brought up earlier in this thread about military control radius of smaller 1 tile radius around fortresses that would trump the cultural borders. This would also apply to the infantry building and staffing the temporary tile improvements to act as supply nodes. After all even if the enemy still controls his cities that are the cultural generators they do not control the occupied lands under the military control of the invading armies. This allows supply nodes or temporary tile improvements to exist in what would otherwise be considered enemy territory. Thus occupation not complete cultural control of the surrounding areas. These supply nodes or temporary tile improvements would operate at reduced effectiveness because of being in unfriendly territory.

[lajzar]

So what you're saying is that when infantry fortifies, t creates a supply node tile improvement? Wouldn't it be simpler to just assume that any fortified infantry unit is a supply node, without making a separate tile improvement?

Regarding hostile armies taking over land, I think the best way is to have any combat unit exert a zoc that affects city population trying to work the land. Forex, you have the grid below:

ABC
DEF
GHI

There is a city in tile A, and a hostile army in tile B. Tile A is always workable as it is the city itself. Tile B is unworkable due to tehenemy unit being there. Tiles CDEF are also unworkable due to teh zo exerted by the enemy unit.

[Awsric Armitage]

So what you're saying is that when infantry fortifies, t creates a supply node tile improvement? Wouldn't it be simpler to just assume that any fortified infantry unit is a supply node, without making a separate tile improvement?

Well that could be the case except I am thinking that the fortifying infantry units will get to choose initially from in between a supply node or ammo dump or whatever the era decides to name it and a field HQ to later including the modern FARP as an option as well. That would be three total options for consideration at this point.

Argueably the HQ and the Supply node could be lumped together but not necessarily so as their functions would be slightly different. Supply nodes we have discussed already but field HQs would give something like what radar towers do in the future eras increasing local fighting abilities but by smaller amounts and not having a sighting radius as well as not being permanent structures.

Also more importantly I was thinking of making the temporary tile improvements actually cost the player a certain amount of time as the Infantry actually constructs the temporary tile improvement similar to workers . That way their are not the situations were supply lines and nodes can be constructed and deconstructed very quickly. It should take at least 3 turns to construct and maybe 2 turns to deconstruct back into an infantry unit again; were as, infantry fortifying would only take a single turn. This models the need to build actual structures and logistic and communications lines as well to get the additional benefits of the supply node, HQ, or FARP rather than just infantry digging in.

Regarding hostile armies taking over land, I think the best way is to have any combat unit exert a zoc that affects city population trying to work the land. Forex, you have the grid below:
ABC
DEF
GHI
There is a city in tile A, and a hostile army in tile B. Tile A is always workable as it is the city itself. Tile B is unworkable due to the enemy unit being there. Tiles CDEF are also unworkable due to the zoc exerted by the enemy unit.

I do like that idea for restricting the access of a city to resource extraction when an occupying army is encampped and extending a ZOC. In addition I think larger armies moving through territories would automatically reduce improvements one level for each turn that they actually mill around a tile. If actually encamping well there goes all the improvements. This would also be considered the beginning of laying siege to a fortified city. In addition we could have the armies option of encamping taking several turns after which the city is considered sieged and no supply lines can be traced to it by the enemy and additionally the army so encampped would be considered to be in supply as they are taking the cities noraml resources. Of course at this point the army is no longer mobile and can only remain in a siege encampment posture and would require 2 to 3 turns to disembark or break camp at which time normal supply rules would again apply. The ZOC for controling the resource extraction of the city layed siege would happen after the army encamps next to it and lays siege to the city. This also would create situations were armies might go a few turns without supply deeper into enemy territory in order to actually reach a target city to siege.

Sure would be fun to actually mod in and test some of these ideas in actual game-play rather than just theory.

[Kramsib]

I hope this is the correct thread, I haven't see the link to this thread in the general Civ 4 list .

FROM THE SPANISH COMMUNITY LIST

UNITS

8. A more realistic combat system which includes hit points and supported damage.
9. Include an option in the editor to create air units in a Civilization II style.
10. Allow barbarians to take cities. Allow negotiations with barbarians to avoid an attack or pay them to attack other civ. At least, make this an editable option in the editor.

[lajzar]

8 - We have that, and have had that, in all versions and spin-offs since the original Civ.
9 - Definitely. I thik each terrain should have a default move cost, and units should have "move cost [n] in [terrain]" as a special ability. This would also allow hovertnks able to move over land and sea.
10 - Yes. Civ 2 had the right idea here.

[lajzar]

Going back to teh supply model being discussed...

So what you are saying is that by default units get the fortify ability. With certain techs, infantry units gain a few extra abilities, such as the "make supply node" option. This would give the defensive bonus of fortifying, but take longer, and act as a supply node.

That sounds cool. I still say certain units should always be in supply, possibly limited by terrain. Early melee units should always be in supply just about anywhere they can find food.

[Awsric Armitage]

So what you are saying is that by default units get the fortify ability. With certain techs, infantry units gain a few extra abilities, such as the "make supply node" option. This would give the defensive bonus of fortifying, but take longer, and act as a supply node.

Yes thats exactly it. Linked with the tech trees would be certain advances or groups of advances that would enable the infantry units to build the temporary tile improvements. Say certain trade, construction, or military organizational techs for the supply node, HQs, and later FARPs. Other ideas for some of these might come up in the alpha testing but I think those 'types' of temporary tile improvements are along the right lines. As long as each are limited in what, when, and where they can do it and also are only temporary.

That sounds cool. I still say certain units should always be in supply, possibly limited by terrain. Early melee units should always be in supply just about anywhere they can find food.

I absolutely agree. Certain ancient era units and single units should be able to fend for themselves. Only if they remain by themselves and not part of a larger organization such as a formation or an army. Both formations of 3 to 4 units and Armies of 3 to 4 formations would require the support functions to be able to effectively operate.

This is also opening up another discussion area for stacked single units vs combined arms. I am for both actually with combat and coordination bonuses for formations and larger Armies which are actually groups of formations. Formations require support and Armies require even more support if that is possible to model. Maybe just with their inherent maintenace costs should be OK as they would be composed of several individual units but would move and operate as a single unit with large bonuses and possibly additional abilities.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Although I'm still not sure exactly WHAT model should be used to reflect unit supply-lines (after all, I really LIKE my idea , but I like the ideas that Lazjar and Awsric have posted too) I definitely feel it SHOULD be in Civ4! It would help to eliminate what I feel is the worst element of the civ game-the 'Stack of Death'!! Basically, a player can simply overwhelm an opponent by sending massive stacks of offensive units, without any thought about strategy! Supply lines, of any sort, would force a player to consider short term goals, as a means of securing supply lines. For instance that pissy little city, on your border, is suddenly worth taking as it gives you a great place to set up a 'supply point', 'supply node' or whatever you'd like to call it! In addition, hills, forests and other terrain features will feature in your attack plans-either as secure locations on which to base your supply points, or as restrictions to your units 'Operational Range', as in the case of mountains, hills and jungles! Also, it might allow pillaging another use in the game-to reflect units 'living off the land' and thus reducing the chance of hp loss for one turn!

Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker.

[lajzar]

I think the best way to avoid the stack of death is simple. It was implemented in Civ 1 (badly) and in SMAC (quite well).

Basically, if the defending unit loses, all units in the same stack take collateral damage.

I'd modify that so that the amount of collateral is proportional to the technology of the attacker, and that terrain improvements (on the tile itself), city population (if the tile is being worked), and city improvements (if the defender was in a city) are also subject to collateral damage.

[Awsric Armitage]

My 2 cents and probably more later.

I think stacked units should recieve collateral damage if stacked and the defender loses as well as being retreated from the tile that was attacked. Reason being this creates incentive to group units into formations for better fighting effectiveness of combined arms. Single units defend singlely even if stacked by the best defender in the stack were as units placed into a formation act collectively to defend against attackers adding mutual support for combined arms and raw numbers.

If modeled this way there is much more incentive to place stacks of 3 to 4 units into formations that fight, move, and act as if an independant single unit. These formations have much greater flexability in attack and defense strengths; however, have the additional cost of requireing supply to be fully effective. They will be more effective than a single unit even when out of supply and at reduced effectiveness just because of their size.

So in effect stacks of single units could roam deeper into enemy territory as each unit foraged for its own supply. I propose that in such a system a system of quantifying how many single units are stacked together must be devised. More than a single unit or maybe three units per tile would require that the tile be pillaged to support more than one unit for free.

This also opens up another area not discussed before in the supply lines models above and that is each and every tile having a supply or support value corresponding to its base terrain and then this is increased by tile improvements. If units are present above the number of units the tile can support then some tile improvements will be automatically pillaged by the units occupying the tile in question in improved tiles. A fortress tile improvement could support an unlimited or very high number of stacked individual units or formations or a few armies and a city could support an unlimited number of units. Where as an empty mountain tile could only support a single unit at a time and other foraging units would take hp damage because they could not supply themselves as the tile cannot support anymore free unit support. This integrates the basic tiles terrain type into the supply model as a base line before introducing any other supply nodes or other temporary tile enhancements to improve this basic support number.

Its a rudamentary idea at present but it would provide a method for integrateing the tiles base terrain type as a supply and max. unit support before tile improvements. Under such a system all units whether single, formation, or army sized would require support from the base tiles support capacity. More units in a tile than the support value of that tile and either the player would have to choose to either pillage an improvement if any exists or to take hp damage of one hp for each unit not able to supply itself. Temporary supply nodes and other temporary tile improvements of course as decribed above would increase this number over a certain number of tiles. So in order to move larger groups of stacked units, formations, or armies beyond the range of the improved tiles of civilized areas it would be first necessary to either place a supply node or other supply enhanceing tile improvement there first. This eliminates the roaming stack of death as any such stack would be slowly wittled away each turn that more units than the base tiles supply support could afford to support took damage. Killing a large stack of units that are well beyond their supply would be much easier this way as the majority of the stack would be damaged units. However this would also require adding a supply update check routine to the game loop to be processed every turn.

[wrylachlan]

Just some comments about this idea of using Infantry as supply. First off, it requires more micromanagement to have the Infantry unit build a node than to simply have a movable unit that radiates "supply".

Also, one of your stated reasons for not using a separate unit is that you don't want to necessitate extra units. The problem is that if you give infantry an extra ability it changes the "value" of the unit which means you need to give it a higher shield cost to maintain the balance versus other units. But then you're left with a hole in the unit matrix for lower cost infantry units, which, if you filled it, would lead back to the original situation with an extra unit...

My $0.02 is that the simplest solution is to introduce a separate supply unit that radiates supply. You don't need to build anything with it, just keep it near your army. No need to rebalance the costs of infantry. And you achieve the same game play results of players trying to sneak behind enemy lines and cut off the supply lines.

And as for what "supply" is, that can be argued. Maybe its an increase in combat effectiveness. Maybe its increased healing rate. Maybe its an increase on the synergy bonus of combined arms. Maybe its a combination of all of those.
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Issue 2 - The stack of death.

I think that the addition of supply will do a lot to mitigate the stack of death issue, since it's easier to sneak past one stack than a spread out front.

That said, if you are going to encourage players to spread out their units, you need to provide tools to mitigate the micromanagement associated with moving units not in a stack. Most of the reason stacks are in there (Civ3) is that they provide an easy way to cut down on the tedium of moving individual units.

One way might be to implement a warcraft-like drag box that selects multiple units in multiple tiles. When selected you could issue a group go-to, or simply pressing one of the arrow keys might make each unit move that direction.
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Lastly, but not least, in order for the "cutting the supply lines" dynamic to work there needs to be 3 things.
a)A more robust air superiority system. You need to be able to defend units in the field from bombing otherwise it would be too easy to kill supply units from the air.
b)A more robust visibility/invisibility system. If its plain to see someone trying to attack your supply lines, then defending them becomes too easy.
c)A system for non-destructive combat. There needs to be a way to "pin-down" the main force so that you can get at the supply lines. Historical stalemates and pins were pretty common, but not modelled at all in civ...

[lajzar]

On infantry radiating supply: I agree that having infantry have to build a separate supply node creates MM. That's why I originally said it is automatic and continuous. I later modified that to only fortified infantry, but these require no special kind of fortifying.

As for the hole for the cheap unit slot, I don't think that problem exists.

First, melee units are always in supply in hospitable terrain (ie not mountain/glacier/desert etc). This also goes for missile units where the troops can make their ammo from local materials (archers can make quite a few arrows from a single tree. Sufficient trees exist in most 'open' terrain types). Certain units (camels in desert) are considered in supply in their home terrain. So supply only begins to become an issue from gunpowder onwards. And only for gunpowder riders (dragoons, cavalry). By this age, historically, musketeers became dominant on the battlefield, outnumbering riders by quite a bit. But how many musketeers / riflemen accopany your cvalry strike force in your games? Not many I'll wager. The same goes for modern infantry / armour formations. When rolling over the comp in the conquer phase of the game, I just never build infantry, s they are too slow. But that does not reflect the historical ratio of infantry : armour in any army since the late medieval knight.

So making infantry the supply unit has no effect on the early game when almost all units are in supply anyway, and in the late game enforces through a natural mechanism the historical build ratios.

Issue 2 - The stack of death.

Having collateral damage for losing in a defending stacks will do a huge amount to prevent the stack of death.

One little change I'd like to see is that the best defender isn't automatically chosen. It should be sei-random. For example, suppose you have a stack of 1 catapult (6-1-1) and 1 pikeman (1-3-1), you have the following:

catapult - 1
pikeman - 3

A random number is then generated, and the odds of each unit being chosen as the defender depends on the defence factor. So in that example, the pikeman has a 75% chance of being the defender if the stack is attakced. Throw in a second catapult, and the pikeman has only a 60% chance of being the defender. This avoids the ridiculous tactic of 2-3 pikemen defending a stack of 50 catapults.

In non-stacked combat, this prevents the ridiculous example above, and gives a new reason to build sufficient quantities of defence units, rather than the bare minimum to ensure the attacker can't break through. The current game design does not encourage players to build units in the ratios that happened historically.

This could even work for stacked combat. Just keep repeated this weighted selection process until defending units have been chosen up to your command limit. In a stacked combat system, this would also encourage players to balance stacks to form well-rounded armies and limit them to their command limits.

c)A system for non-destructive combat. There needs to be a way to "pin-down" the main force so that you can get at the supply lines. Historical stalemates and pins were pretty common, but not modelled at all in civ...

Actually, the civ2 zoc described this mechanism very well. It could do with some refining however. Each unit should be assigned a class (melee, missile, gun, etc), and a list of classes over which it can enforce a zoc. So under this system, cavalry enforces a zoc against riflemen, but not against armour.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

OK, in response to the notion of tiles having a support or supply value. I think that my idea for making it work in much the same way as movement costs might be a better way to go! e.g. grassland and forests might increase a units operational range by up to 50-75% (so a unit with range of 8 might go up as high as 12-14!) On plains, hills, coast and floodplains the range would be as written. On terrains such as jungles and marshes the OR might drop by 50%, wheras tundra, mountain and desert terrain could reduce it by as much as 75% (so the above units range might drop to as little as 3-4!)
Supply nodes, such as occupied cities, outposts, airbases, colonies and forts would double Operational range (as I've mentioned before) and tiles containing roads, rail or irrigation improvements would increase OR by 50%! To avoid overcomplicating the game, only the best and worst terrains would be taken into account in order to get the final Op Range. To explain, by example-lets say the unit above was travelling outside of friendly territory, intent on capturing a city 8 tiles/hexes away. Its path consists of 2 marsh and 1 mountain terrain, but also contains a road! Based on this, the final Op Range would now be 6 (50% increase-75% decrease=-25%) So, either the unit has to take its chances and try and take the city before it starts to suffer damage from being 'out of supply', or it can find an alternate route to its target which will leave its normal Op Range intact OR the player can build a fort/outpost etc. in order to double the Op Range to 12!! Of course, if the last option is taken, and this tile improvement is siezed by the enemy before the unit can aquire its target, then the unit might find itself in a WHOLE world of trouble!
Of course, I accept all of Wrylachans 'caveats' for accepting a suppy line system with the following, additional one-unit movement allowances would have to be increased, accross the board, and all roads-enemy and friendly alike (but not rail)-would have to grant the same movement bonus. I know this last point might sound like a step backward, but I accept that enemy roads not granting a movement bonus is meant to simulate (albiet poorly) the idea of supply lines. If real supply lines were incorporated into the game, then this currently neccessary distinction could be removed!

Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker.