{The List-} Movement, supply, etc.

[frekk]

Originally posted by Max Sinister
I also think that you shouldn't get a lot of revenue for some rails you built into the wilderness where you don't need them for transporting your troops (and neither would anyone else, in reality)

Well, it's rail *capacity* that generates the revenue - not actual tracks. So you don't get a penny for building any track anywhere (which is in some sense a bit unrealistic, but it's hard to imagine that you wouldn't build *some* track if you had some capacity).

Originally posted by Max Sinister

I think I've finally figured out why I was unhappy with this idea of unused rail = gold. Basically, every model of rails I've seen so far implemented has rails give a bonus to shield production, not to gold.

I think you kind of proposed this as an inverse of my using rails costs gold model. Your main arguemnt against that seemed to be the lack of gold that would effectively disable rails.

But by that stage, any civ on the path to winning will usually have a hefty surplus anyway, or can reduce reserach for a turn to make one. Giving extra gold for not using your rails simply makes the excess gold syndrome even worse.

A good argument. The only problem with using rails as a shield production bonus is that then it has to be a tile bonus, and then you have sprawl.

I don't mind the idea of paying money for moving units by train, but consider this: you have to get a bonus of *some* kind from the rails to justify what it is that you're losing when you use them for military transport. The cost of transporting troops by train is negligable compared to the disruption of the economic infrastructure it causes. And you shouldn't be poorer after you built a rail network - and increasingly poor as capacity grows.


@Modo:

I see you're obsessed with steam locomotives! That's ok, alot of people are : they're cool. But I can't see many modern nations seriously considering using them for military transport these days. If you don't have enough oil to transport military equipment with diesels, you probably don't have enough oil to wage war at all, except some sort of insurgent campaign. Also, modern wars are very fast and what you're talking about is more of a prolonged, WW2 type situation that will never happen again. Other than a few banana republics, the only nation in the world today that I could see having any serious plans for using steam engines as military transport might be China, and I doubt even that. I suppose too that you could reflect your idea by saying that you need oil to get the capacity bonuses from rail techs, but already alot of things in the game don't reflect alot of things anyway, in order to keep things simple. For instance, even if you don't have oil you can move tanks by road all over the place.

[wrylachlan]

Not to derail this thread...heh... but I'd like to reiterate my rail idea from... I'm sure I've posted it all over the place. Get rid of the per tile bonus, and instead give a decreasing percentage bonus per adjacent city connected by rail. So connecting city A to B gives city A +50% commerce. A to C = +40%. A to D = +30%, etc. etc. Then give each tile of rails an upkeep.

Its really simple and creates an incentive to connect cities (the bonus) but a disincentive to sprawl (the upkeep). Furthermore, it creates a distinction between high commerce cities and low commerce cities, in that in low commerce cities, the percentage bonus may not be worth the upkeep of the rail road for more than a single connection, whereas a high commerce city you'll want to provide plenty of rail connections to.

Note that this is totally orthogonal to the question of movement/capacity, but does deal exceptionally well with the issue of sprawl.

[lajzar]

The way to give rails a bonus to industry isn't to have tile improvments give a tile bonus, but to have a rail depot city improvmeent give an opverall 25% bonus.

[frekk]

Originally posted by wrylachlan
Not to derail this thread...heh...

Yeah, quit getting us sidetracked!

but I'd like to reiterate my rail idea from... I'm sure I've posted it all over the place. Get rid of the per tile bonus, and instead give a decreasing percentage bonus per adjacent city connected by rail. So connecting city A to B gives city A +50% commerce. A to C = +40%. A to D = +30%, etc. etc. Then give each tile of rails an upkeep.

Its really simple and creates an incentive to connect cities (the bonus) but a disincentive to sprawl (the upkeep). Furthermore, it creates a distinction between high commerce cities and low commerce cities, in that in low commerce cities, the percentage bonus may not be worth the upkeep of the rail road for more than a single connection, whereas a high commerce city you'll want to provide plenty of rail connections to.

You know what ... I'm pretty good at finding things wrong with a solution in terms of game balance or how it relates to other parts of the game - and I can't see a darn thing wrong with this at all. Some people are attached to food and shield bonuses but I'm not particularly, because rails do also generate lots of economic activity, so there isn't really a 'realism' advantage either way.

The other thing is that this plan works with every proposition for changing rails that I've seen so far. Earlier, someone wanted movement along rails to have a disruptive effect on local economies rather than an abstracted national figure. But it was to disrupt shields, which sucks because then you might get into micromanaging in the case of a city with a unit ready in 1 turn. If it's commerce, then there's no worry about micromanagement even if it is a localized disruption.

Also the maintenance cost for rails I didn't like because it created a disincentive to have a rail network at all (you shouldn't be poorer just because you built a rail network, you should actually be richer). This system takes care of that problem beautifully - you do make money for your rail system, but you also are discouraged from building tracks everywhere with the maintenance feature. It's beautiful. Maintenance for the tracks, but compensation for connecting cities.

The only change I'd make is to give a straight up bonus to all cities connected to the capitol by rail, rather than the percentage thing. It would just be simpler.

Also, I would have the connection bonus be a flat amount (not a % increase to commerce in that city). It would be about enough to cover the maintenance for 4 or 5 tiles of rail. If you were smart, and didn't have too many obstacles like lakes to go around, you could make a small amount of money, especially with densely packed cities.

Note that this is totally orthogonal to the question of movement/capacity, but does deal exceptionally well with the issue of sprawl.

Actually, its all interrelated under some models. The really cool thing is that this system works really well with all of them. It doesn't conflict with anything, and it doesn't require any changes to any other parts of the game - it is absolutely neutral and independant. I love it!

I hope you don't mind if I pass this idea around (with credit of course).

[Straybow]

Originally posted by frekk
National Infrastructure rules for railroads. I don't think infinite movement is the really unrealistic part, depending on how long you think of a turn as being. I think infinite capacity is the really unrealistic part. Moving your entire national army on trains? How many locomotives do you have???

Using the WW2 example, lots. Modo was understating the power of rails. The Germans were able to rebuild bombed railyards and junctions and replace engines and stock lost to fighter air support as fast as the Allies could destroy them and move their critical war supplies and units over those rails.

It takes much less to build a train than to build a military unit. You only need one engine, or two for steep grades. Probably takes the same production capacity to make a train engine as a tank (for the Germans) or two (for the Soviets and Americans who had simpler tanks). The rolling stock is easily and cheaply assembled in large quantities.

A standard train in the German rail system had 55 cars. Each could carry an MBT with weight capacity left over for supplies. A train could easily move 1500 km in a night (they tried not to have them in the open during daylight) with some allowance for repair delays. How big was a Panzer division, maybe 500? One train could move a division in a month with many trips, or several trains in a single week.

Originally posted by frekk
[In response to Modo44's generalizations]
In the game, that could be represented by the Germans having a very high rail capacity.

The Soviets certainly didn't. Capacity was a huge factor. It's easy to find one example to prove or disprove a model.

The Soviets didn't drive their tanks to the front. Their soldiers didn't march hundreds of km, and the roads couldn't have carried that much traffic even if they had enough trucks. Their tanks were manufactured east of the Urals and no roads built through that area could take continuous traffic of tanks in the best weather. Most roads would not have been passable in bad weather, which was frequent.

Everything was shipped by rail to the front, and they produced at least 35,000 T34s. Likewise lend-lease trucks and other war supplies were shipped by rail from Arkangelsk because there were no roads that were passable in bad weather. I have no idea how many tens of thousands of trucks were delivered to the Soviets.

The only weak link in the Soviet railways was the Trans-Siberia Railroad. Through most of its length it was not only the sole railway but no roads existed. In many places they weren't even double-tracked. Yet the Soviets had no difficulties moving many divisions to and from the Manchurian and Mongolian borders at various points in the war.

When attacks against Finland stagnated the Soviets had to move some thirty divisions in a short period of time, and most of them came from the far East iirc.

[frekk]

This is simply incorrect.

Rail capacity has always been a defining limitation in terms of military considerations, and still is today.

Here's an excerpt from a 1991 Defence Intelligence Agency analysis of North Korean military capabilities, published by FAS:

Road and Rail

Road and rail networks follow a general north-south axis, with limited east-west routes, especially in northern areas. Rugged mountainous terrain restricts or channels supply movement to a few routes. Shortages of rolling stock, scarcity of heavy rail lines, and lack of centralized traffic control hamper the rail system. Insufficient roads, poor surfaces, and inadequate maintenance constrain the highway system.

About 75 percent of North Korea's 4,500 kilometers of railroads are electrified. A major logistic goal is to electrify all primary rail lines, which would nearly double the rail capacity without additional track. However, electrification could become a liability during wartime if key grid transformers or hydroelectric plants did not function.

Quality, quantity, capacity, and types of railroad equipment have been improving constantly since the 1950s. North Korea produces both diesel and electric locomotives. Diesel locomotives operate primarily in yards. Most steam locomotives, acquired from various sources shortly after World War II, still operate. North Korea also manufactures several types of railcars, including 60- and 100-metric ton freight cars. Despite these improvements, rolling stock shortages are frequent.

http://www.fas.org/irp/dia/product/knfms/knfms_chp4a.html

Here's another study, this time on the Soviet Union during the Cold War. It clearly indicates that capacity is a major concern in military planning.

. Max-Flow Min-Cut

The Soviet rail system also roused the interest of the Americans, and again it inspired fundamental research in optimization.
In their basic paper Maximal Flow through a Network (published first as a RAND Report of November 19, 1954), Ford and Fulkerson [1954] mention that the maximum flow problem was formulated by T.E. Harris as follows:

Consider a rail network connecting two cities by way of a number of intermediate cities, where each link of the network has a number assigned to it representing its capacity. Assuming a steady state condition, find a maximal flow from one given city to the other.


In their 1962 book Flows in Networks, Ford and ulkerson [1962] give a more precise reference to the origin of the problem:

It was posed to the authors in the spring of 1955 by T.E. Harris, who, in conjunction with General F.S. Ross (Ret.), had formulated a simplified model of railway traffic flow, and pinpointed this particular problem as the central one suggested by the model [11].


Ford-Fulkerson's reference 11 is a secret report by Harris and Ross [1955] entitled Fundamentals of a Method for Evaluating Rail Net Capacities, dated October 24, 1955:


The maximum objective value of a feasible solution, whose residual graph does not contain any
nonnegative-cost cycle of length 4, and not any of the seven longer nonnegative-length cycles considered
by Tolstoy (of lengths 6 and 8), is equal to 397,226.

http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:7hIY0AEWaqsJ:homepages.cwi.nl/~lex/files/histtrpclean.pdf+soviet+rail+capacity&hl=en

Another one from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, this time a reflection on the campaign in Yugoslavia:

Lines of Communication (LOCs) and Supply Routes Target Groups:

At the end of the air campaign on June 10th, the Department of Defense reported having inflicted moderate damage to lines of communication throughout the country. It estimated that 70% of road bridges and 50% of the rail bridges on the Danube were destroyed, blocking river traffic between Belgrade and Croatia. In addition, rail capacity was totally interdicted, and road throughput was degraded on routes to Montenegro. This was said to exacerbate Serbian ability to transport fuel from the Barr port facility into Kosovo over rail lines. It claimed that 100% of the rail and over 50% of the road capacity in the corridors to and in Kosovo had been interdicted. These estimates are summarized in Figure 24.

These percentage figures are impressive, but it is far from clear what they really mean, or what their strategic and tactical impact was on Serbian operations. Serbia almost certainly did face growing problems in moving artillery and armor. Military and civil transport certainly faced growing movement constraints and there will be conflicts between maintaining a subsistence-level economy and military requirements. The VJ and MUP seem to have lost much of their ability to rapidly reinforce across corps zone and from one part of the country to another, and resupply and sustainment will become problems if any major ground operations take place against NATO.

http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:CTe8TbBN7BIJ:www.csis.org/kosovo/LessonsExec.pdf+%22rail+capacity%22+Serbian&hl=en

It's simply ignoring history, both recent and past, to ignore rail capacity as a strategic consideration.

[Max Sinister]

Originally posted by frekk
Well, it's rail *capacity* that generates the revenue - not actual tracks. So you don't get a penny for building any track anywhere (which is in some sense a bit unrealistic, but it's hard to imagine that you wouldn't build *some* track if you had some capacity).

So you were talking about average capacity of tracks, but not about absolute capacity (= length of all tracks * their average capacity)? That's of course different. Still I'm wondering: What's the use of fully electrified tracks if there's nobody who can afford to use them?
It might still work better than the current system, though.

[frekk]

I'm talking about an abstracted national figure for capacity, dependant on what Advances you have. Get a "Diesel-Electric Engine" advance - or perhaps, assume that under another advance like Motorized Transportation - and your capacity rises. Doesn't matter how much or how little track you've got. In that way it is a gross simplification, but no more than a hundred other things in the game.

Electrified rail, if you implemented it in the game, would be just an Advance. You wouldn't need to manually build it. Again, its a gross simplification, but there you go.

There's a link in my sig to an overall look at an idea for rails that I've been working on.

[Straybow]

frekk, you're talking about North Korea and Serbia?? And this relates to giant Civ empires how? Both countries would be, at best, a couple of civ cities worth of territory. In the case of Serbia you're talking about modern precision bombing against the rail infrastructure, which is poorly modeled in Civ1/2/3.

As for 1950s analysis of Soviet rail capacity, that's talking about total capacity for military and civilian traffic. And the ironic thing is that these transportation studies were seriously flawed and had to be rule-of-thumb adjusted to reflect reality.

For example, as late as the 1980s, total road and rail traffic in CIA/DIA analyses indicated that Moscow could only support 3 million, ½ its known population. They subtracted measurable non-food transportation and assumed something reasonably above starvation level.

[frekk]

It doesn't matter if you talk about military or civilian capacity or both combined: there are limitations. And not just that, the reason for a capacity model is that you shouldn't be moving as much military as you please AND still be getting all your bonuses from rail.

Some German slogans from the war:

"Räder müssen rollen für den Sieg" (wheels must be running for the victory)

"Erst siegen, dann reisen" (first the victory, then travel)

Germany in WW2 managed to keep up troop movements by rail even under heavy bombardment, but, they had to give up on using rail for industry and economy almost totally at points. Aerial raids were having devastating effect.

Harry Truman had been an artilleryman in World War I and remembered well the lunar landscape of the Western Front. Yet, while driving from Potsdam to Berlin in July 1945, he exclaimed, “I never saw such destruction!” Almost all the great cities of central and eastern Europe were jagged with ruined buildings, pitted roads, wrecked bridges, and choked waterways. Amid it all were the gaunt survivors, perhaps 45,000,000 of them homeless, including 25,000,000 in those lands—Poland, the Ukraine, and Russia—that had been overrun and scorched two or three times. European communications and transportation reverted to 19th-century levels: 90 percent of French trucks and 82 percent of French locomotives were out of commission, as were over half the rolling stock in Germany and two-thirds of the Balkan railroads.

http://www.britannica.com/eb/print?tocId=32926

This was probably due to the fact that Germany *lacked* sufficient rail capacity, before the war even began:

In a real sense, the basic logistic tools of land operations in World War II were the railroad, the motor truck, and, carried over from the premechanized era, the horse-drawn wagon. Motor transport, when available, served to move forward the mountains of material brought to railheads by the railroads--a feat that, as the late 19th-century wars and World War I had shown, could not be done by horse-drawn vehicles rapidly enough to sustain fast-moving forces. When supplied by motor transport, mechanized armies, particularly in the European theatre, achieved a mobility and striking power never before seen. Paradoxically, Germany, which dominated operations in this theatre until late in the war, suffered from a severe shortage of motor transport and rolling stock, only partially made good by levies on conquered nations.

http://search.eb.com/normandy/articles/logistic_background.html

etc etc

As to the Soviet Union, earlier you mentioned the campaign against Finland etc. Did you realize this took 20% of all rolling stock? The Belorussian advance against the Germans in June of '44 took 65% of all rolling stock. 440 000 railcars.

Further, here's an analysis of NATO readiness in Europe during the Cold War (prior to changes in the 80s):

NATO reinforcement and resupply had been coordinated under SACEUR's (Supreme Allied Commander, Europe) Rapid Reinforcement Plan, and could be expected to work if given adequate time (a big 'if'). However, there were possible clashes in that, for example, if the United Kingdom decided to exercise its national option of reinforcing BAOR (British Army of the Rhine) with the 2nd Infantry Division, its arrival may coincide with the arrival of the III US Corps from CONUS (Continental United States) to draw their equipment from the POMCUS (Pre-positioned Overseas Material Configured in Unit Sets) sites and thus cause major logistic problems given the lack of rolling stock to go around. So, paradoxically, the greater the success the United States had in reinforcing Europe, the greater probability there would have been clashes in priority. The plan depended upon NATO forces limiting the expected interference from theb enemy (something the Warsaw Pact definitely planned on doing) and kind weather - only then would the plan have had a good chance of succeeding. Even if the forces had got there, would the logistics system have worked? Given the extended supply lines from the Channel ports across the Low Countries and the lack of operational coordination, either in defensive tactics or logistics one is left to wonder. For example, if one corps' national logistic capability became critical, the Army Group headquarters may have recommended a transfer of stocks between National Logistic Support Commands. If the national authorities refused to transfer stocks then the Army Group Commander would have to refer the decision to the Commander-in-Chief Central Region (CINCENT) who would then negotiate with the Ministries of Defence concerned. Tactical and logistic responsibility was thus separated and command was divided. CINCENT or the Army Group Commanders had no power to reallocate nationally provided operational support capabilities or resources, and did not have access to logistic information that would have helped them make decisions on redeployment or reinforcement. As logistics was a national responsibility, each national corps has a set of 'tramlines' that ran westwards. Cross corps-boundary logistics was difficult, if not impossible. While routes for such operations had been thought out, there were three different tank gun ammunition types, different fuzing and charge arrangements for artillery ammunition, different fuel resupply methods and no interoperable logistic support system for airmobile operations. All this would mitigate against a cohesive Army Group battle, particularly in the Northern Army Group. Thus sustainability would have been the NATO achilles' heel.

http://www.rickard.karoo.net/articles/concepts_logistics.html

Bit more modern military doctrine:

This is somewhat reminiscent of Operation Strangle in Italy, where German aggregate supply tonnages were sufficient for continued operations even after the Allied ground offensive, yet the German defensive posture was broken when tactical interdiction strikes completely overwhelmed the distribution system. It was impossible for German commanders to move and position men and materiel to the right place at the right time. Mobility denial, rather than supply denial, had been the key to the Allied success. Supply denial has seldom, if ever, proved to be a viable objective, and the experience in Southeast Asia tends to substantiate the validity of this premise. 12

(footnote 12) ... the road movement of a U.S. infantry division normally consumes six to eight times more road capacity than does its daily resupply requirement. If the movement is by rail, the capacity difference is even greater, averaging about 135 to one J. W. Higgins, Military Movements and Supply Lines as Comparative Interdiction Targets, The Rand Corporation, RM-6308-PR, July 1970.

http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/1977/may-jun/gilster.html

I'll finish off with a miscellaneous USMC study on logistics:

The MAGTF's Approach To Logistics In Maneuver Warfare

AUTHOR Major Paul J. Pisano, USMC

CSC 1990

SUBJECT AREA National Military Strategy


EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

TITLE: THE MAGTF'S APPROACH TO LOGISTICS IN MANEUVER WARFARE

THESIS: Unless the MAGTF makes some major adjustments in its approach to logistics/CSS operations, the logistics wars that have plagued armies of the past regardless of the style of warfare will burden the MAGTF of the 90's in their execution of a maneuver style of warfare.

DATA: The ability of an army to sustain itself has always been a problem since they took to the field to fight their enemies. Contributing to this problem is the lack of transportation, the ability to procure the needed amount of supplies to sustain troops, the affects of Clausewitzian friction on logistics/CSS operations,
the problem of high consumption rates in repairs parts, and their affect on maintenance production. The fathers of kesselschlacht and blitzkrieg developed a radical doctrine that was logistics intensive, but didn't take into account the logistics wars past armies had endured when developing and prosecuting this doctrine. Consequently, logistics and all of its intricacies played a major role in the failure of blitzkrieg.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/1990/PPJ.htm

Capacity in the real world is NOT unlimited, not even for military purposes. Usually most large industrial countries have enough capacity to supply a large scale advance, at the cost of up to their entire capacity. But there are limits, and effects. Arguing against rail capacity because difficulties were overcome in the past is absurd on the face of it; you're just throwing the entire science of logistics out the window and saying 'all that matters is production'. Well, no. Getting that production to the front is the classic problem of all wars. Rail capacity has always played a leading role - if not the leading role - in modern logistics. Just as the troops and supplies did manage to reach the front, they also managed to be produced, *even under aerial bombardment of industry* - it's like saying you don't need factories in the game because production was never a problem for the planners. It was! And the same applies to logistics like rail capacity. If it can be modelled simply, it should be included.

[Straybow]

Yawn. Nice chop and drop job, but it doesn't make the point. Yes, the toughest offensives the Soviets mounted in WW2 took high percentages of rail capacity. But: 1) they succeeded in moving the troops and equipment they needed, and 2) they won those offensives.

Therefore, rail capacity did not limit military unit movement, nor impede their strategic goals. That is best modelled by unlimited rail movement for units.

Everything else quoted above is modeled in Civ by attacking the opponent's units. If, as in Italy, you prevent the enemy from moving to a position to oppose you, and that enemy unit is subsequently eliminated, that is combat. It is a tactical event, not a strategic event.

Likewise, Germany's deficiencies were in motor transport, not rail movement issues. Reread the article you quoted. The problem was moving supplies from the railhead to the units in the field, not strategic moves of units from one front to another (which is what unlimited rail movement in Civ is all about).

Lastly, the movement of units in the Rand study cited is not relevant. The proportion of supply capacity vs unit movement capacity is not the issue. The differential between cargo and passenger transport on rail is always disparate, which is why passenger rail only exists in the US as government run or subsidized service.

Case closed.

[lajzar]

In every situation where a rail line existed, the military has always found a way to use as many carriages as it needed to achieve its goals; capacity was not a real limit.

However, in every case, using the rails for military traffic implied an equivalent loss in commercial traffic.

Thats why I think using rails should be unlimited capacity. On the other hand, the loss of commercial traffic (freight and pasengers) and the costs involved in drafting rail infrastructure (carriages) means that there should be a gold cost for each unit moved.

Possibly range could be limited as rail tech advances. Perhaps no further than 15 tiles with steam tech, 30 with diesel, 60 with maglevs.

[frekk]

Yawn. Nice chop and drop job

Better than unsupported assertions.

Strategic redeployment is always possible. However, it is limited chiefly by rail (and other transport) capacity. It is usually (I've given exceptions eg NK, Serbia, NATO in the 70s) possible to find enough carriages to build up a force on a front, however, the size of that force is limited not by the amount of troops that can be moved but by the amount of supplies that can be accumulated to support an advance. Thus, there are practical limitations to strategic redeployment which definitely limit the size of a force, even if they are not direct limitations on the number of units that can actually be moved. An "iron mountain" of supplies is accumulated before an offensive, typically, this is limited chiefly by rail capacity over time. That is, you can't launch continual offensives without having very good rail capacity. The game doesn't model how offensives occur, that is buildup beforehand. Nobody can just shuttle their stuff off into battle, there is always an accumulation of forces and supplies over time in the period prior to an offensive. This is very poorly modelled under the current rail system.

Possibly range could be limited as rail tech advances.

Limiting range is actually quite unrealistic in terms of how things really worked. Rail could move things hundreds of miles in a day where advances figured in just tens of miles a day. Imposing any realistic limit on rail ranges and it might as well be infinite. Also it does not model well the chief usage of rail which is precisely to make near-instanteneous (in terms of 1 week or 1 month timeframes) strategic redeployment easy.

Yes, the toughest offensives the Soviets mounted in WW2 took high percentages of rail capacity. But: 1) they succeeded in moving the troops and equipment they needed, and 2) they won those offensives.

I can use the exact same argument to say there shouldn't be production in the game:

"Yes, the toughest offensives the Soviets mounted in WW2 took high percentages of production. But: 1) they succeeded in producing the troops and equipment they needed, and 2) they won those offensives."

It doesn't really mean anything.

Logistics wins wars. That's all there is to it. And the chief instrument of logistics in the modern age is rail. Logistics is equally important as production and definately far more important than the more glamorous theories surrounding military maneuverings.

Therefore, rail capacity did not limit military unit movement, nor impede their strategic goals. That is best modelled by unlimited rail movement for units.

Totally false. Unlimited movement is fine, unlimited capacity is wrong, because no one has ever been able to use rail capacity to the high levels you suggest for indefinite periods of time due to the economic disruption. For a big offensive or other pressing need, it is possible to use a massively high amount of the overall capacity to get the job done, but in the game this can be done indefinitely: in the real world that's totally impossible. High capacity usage for military purposes is not indefinately sustainable.

Its not possible to say in general that "rail was ALWAYS the limiting logistic factor - just as it is not possible to say it was NEVER the limiting factor.

Rail traffic is very much like information traffic today - in "normal operations" there is plenty of bandwidth and the bits move through the routers pretty much unaffected.

The same is true MOST of the time for rail transport. The problem comes in when you "stress the system" and lose nodes to damage, have a "perfect storm' of requirements all at once, and find that its actually quite difficult to compute the effective throughput of a rail network "under attack" with a great many competing priorities all needing to be accomplished at once.

Games have traditionally done a poor job of representing the real effect of rail capability on both "strategic redeployemnt" and logistics and the crisi when you need to do both at the same time in crisis.

[Straybow]

Originally posted by frekk
Better than unsupported assertions.

Not really, considering the articles don't support your assertion.

... It is usually (I've given exceptions eg NK, Serbia, NATO in the 70s) possible to find enough carriages to build up a force on a front, however, the size of that force is limited not by the amount of troops that can be moved but by the amount of supplies that can be accumulated to support an advance.

Pocket kingdoms are irrelevant. NATO in the 70s? OK, let's see what the studies said. I won't quote again that Germany's weakness was motorized transport for supply transfer from the railhead to the front. It didn't fail the Germans in offense (which didn't falter in the Eastern Front until winter), it failed the Germans in defense as the war dragged on.

Supply denial has seldom, if ever, proved to be a viable objective, and the experience in Southeast Asia tends to substantiate the validity of this premise. 12

(footnote 12) ... the road movement of a U.S. infantry division normally consumes six to eight times more road capacity than does its daily resupply requirement. If the movement is by rail, the capacity difference is even greater, averaging about 135 to one

This is given as evidence that interdicting supply is pointless because supply consumes a small fraction of capacity compared to unit movement.

Again, from the Rand study: "Mobility denial, rather than supply denial, had been the key to the Allied success [in Italy]." That is tactical, not strategic.

Please re-read the "NATO in the 70s" citation...

if the United Kingdom decided to exercise its national option of reinforcing BAOR (British Army of the Rhine) with the 2nd Infantry Division, its arrival may coincide with the arrival of the III US Corps from CONUS (Continental United States) to draw their equipment from the POMCUS (Pre-positioned Overseas Material Configured in Unit Sets) sites and thus cause major logistic problems given the lack of rolling stock to go around.

In other words, it is congestion at specific points that might cause a local shortage in stock.

Read on.

Given the extended supply lines from the Channel ports across the Low Countries and the lack of operational coordination, either in defensive tactics or logistics one is left to wonder. For example, if one corps' national logistic capability became critical, the Army Group headquarters may have recommended a transfer of stocks between National Logistic Support Commands. If the national authorities refused to transfer stocks... Tactical and logistic responsibility was thus separated and command was divided. CINCENT or the Army Group Commanders had no power to reallocate nationally provided operational support capabilities or resources, and did not have access to logistic information...

Note first that this is talking about unit movement, not supplies. Second, the problem was the division of rolling stock among nations in Europe causing authority conflicts and chain of command failure. It would have been nearly impossible to consume and diminish stocks in the whole, but in the case of the Low Countries where national stocks are limited there could be problems getting stocks from France.

I know France wasn't singled out, but when talking of NATO it is unnecessary to name the major partners when their role is obvious. Germany is the path of any Warsaw Pact offensive, the region with the highest interdiction on rolling stock. Nobody else has the large stock reserve. (Danged Frogs were always the weakest link in NATO coordination.)

This whole article is off the point. We don't have individual nations within a Civ empire that would require hand-holding diplomacy in order to get cooperation towards common defense. If anything this is an issue for using rail systems of allied civs.

None of this says that capacity is a tight constraint on strategic troop movements. Otherwise should we not consider the tonnage capacity of road networks as well? Road capacity is usually given as the reason for stacking limits in the grognard cardboard chit and paper map wargames. Footnote 12 implies that rail capacity is up to 20 times higher than road capacity.

More important than the conclusion of this debate (which I doubt you will concede): why do you want to introduce micromanagement of rail? I can see adding/deleting game features with realism as part of the rationale, but incurring a heavy development and playtesting load just to futz with small details? No way.

PS: The citation from 1990 proved overblown. Both GW1 and GW2 were classic blitzkrieg actions in which supply was not an issue at all except for Turkey refusing passage, and not a critical issue even then. There was no "failure of blitzkrieg." The point of such studies is to make sure commanders are aware of potential problems.

[frekk]

Originally posted by Straybow

Pocket kingdoms are irrelevant.

Why? Games are played across an entire range of scales. Official maps included with the game include the eastern Meditteranean, in which Serbia would be an average civ. This is a totally false argument based on a subjective experience of the game. YOU prefer whole earth maps; this means nothing.

This is given as evidence that interdicting supply is pointless because supply consumes a small fraction of capacity compared to unit movement.

Again, from the Rand study: "Mobility denial, rather than supply denial, had been the key to the Allied success [in Italy]." That is tactical, not strategic.

Incorrect, because you have misunderstood the premise of the article by failing to read it in context. The units were denied strategic redeployment mobility not tactical mobility. This was done through the reduction of infrastructure such as rails. Supplies were not prevented because it was not possible to reduce the rail capacity to that degree, but it was possible to reduce it to the degree strategic redeployment of units became impossible. What do you think they did, shot the tires out on the trucks?

I'll give you a hint: "Operation Strangle" was also known as the "Rail Interdiction Program". These were not tactical attacks on units, no matter how you might try to twist it to seem so. It had nothing to do with tactical attacks on units whatsoever. Just do a google for "operation strangle" and you'll see what I mean quite quickly. I'd really like to see you explain how a campaign officially known as the "Rail Interdiction Program" is tactical, not strategic.

Please re-read the "NATO in the 70s" citation...

if the United Kingdom decided to exercise its national option of reinforcing BAOR (British Army of the Rhine) with the 2nd Infantry Division, its arrival may coincide with the arrival of the III US Corps from CONUS (Continental United States) to draw their equipment from the POMCUS (Pre-positioned Overseas Material Configured in Unit Sets) sites and thus cause major logistic problems given the lack of rolling stock to go around.

In other words, it is congestion at specific points that might cause a local shortage in stock.

It says nothing about congestion or local shortages; this is your own invention. It says "LACK OF ROLLING STOCK". It cannot be any clearer. There was not sufficient rolling stock for all of these activities to take place at the same time. In other words, the capacity was limited.

Note first that this is talking about unit movement, not supplies. Second, the problem was the division of rolling stock among nations in Europe causing authority conflicts and chain of command failure. It would have been nearly impossible to consume and diminish stocks in the whole, but in the case of the Low Countries where national stocks are limited there could be problems getting stocks from France.

My emphasis, I need say no more.

None of this says that capacity is a tight constraint on strategic troop movements. Otherwise should we not consider the tonnage capacity of road networks as well? Road capacity is usually given as the reason for stacking limits in the grognard cardboard chit and paper map wargames. Footnote 12 implies that rail capacity is up to 20 times higher than road capacity.

Literally hundreds of those games implement rail capacity rules. Would you like a list? Almost all Avalon Hill games did. Most games that are comprehensive enough to have supply rules also use Strategic Redeployment points, Strategic Movement points, Rail Capacity points, or some variation on those names and it always works the same: the limited points are used to move infinite distance.

why do you want to introduce micromanagement of rail?

Micromanagement? Micromanagement is where you're forced to repetitively manage something, like picking which tiles to build rail in based on production factors or something. Rail capacity doesn't need to be done that way. It can be made automatic. What management do you need to do if rail capacity is just so many points depending on tech? It's not even possible to manage it in such a simple system. It just is.

Why do I want to introduce rail capacity as a limitation? Several reasons, chiefly being to introduce some strategy to the positioning of forces and to represent logistical limitations. Currently there is none. It's biggest empire wins because they can just rail a tide of forces to the front without worrying about logistics or supply whatsoever. Territory = victory, *always*. It doesn't make for a very challenging game. In human play it comes down to the blind luck of starting position. In play vs the AI you can give the AI increasing amounts of starting advantages and the only real challenge is surviving the advantages long enough to get rails. Once you get rails, you basically win.

What I want to know, is why are you so irrationally opposed to a rule that's a common feature of many, many other games? It's not like you couldn't set capacity to unlimited in the editor if it turned out you didn't like it.