{The List-} Movement, supply, etc.

[Trifna]

Simplest supply system thinkable

I just wondered:
Wouldn't the simplest supply system be formed of no supply units at all?


Would THIS fit serious fans and Firaxis for a coherent and simple system? The support you would get or not would be a matter of (drumroll)
*SECURED transport situation (roads, rails, plains, unpassable mountains...) between you and your supply sources*

Nothing else. You may pay for it, of course, but that's it and you have a supply system. TADA!!! No?

[Fake Boris]

OK, I don't have the time to browse through the entire thread, but don't you think that the movement penalty within enemy lines is a bit harsh in C3?

It could be reduced so that at least railroads will be treated as roads.

[lajzar]

I don't think separate supply units should have to be built, but if we are after a very basic supply model, then ordinary infantry units should act as supply nodes. That should prevent the tank-only army which normally gets built. Even in teh most mechanised forces, infantry still form teh backbone, something that isn't reflected in the normal build orders that teh game engine requires for a successful campaign.

[Trifna]

--> {The List-} Movement, supply, etc. document is attached with this post <--







I hope this post can be recognized among all others

[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???

Here's an idea I came up with to model a capacity system for rails, that is simple enough in play to be practical for large empires - at least as practical, if not more practical, than slowing unit movement in the modern era to a "mass crawl".

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=125673

Check it out, tell me your opinions.

[frekk]

On second thought, I've just read all this business about lists and I want this idea to get better exposure to more minds, so I'll reproduce it here.

Rail Capacity Transport Model - The rules behind it

-Rail Capacity limits the number of units that can be moved in a given round.
-Rail Capacity determined by playtesting, but low enough that you couldn't move very much in a single round.
-Infinite movement, limited capacity (as opposed to limited movement, infinite capacity).
-Rail Capacity represents how many locomotives you have and the kind of technology you have. Different advances would help to increase it, eg a "Diesel-Electric Engine" advance or it could be tied to existing advances.
-Possibly, Government might affect Rail Capacity (large bonus for Fascism for instance). It might also be scaled to map size.
-Small countries have the same Rail Capacity as big ones, dependant on technology. This is to reflect the fact that huge empires always have infrastructure problems. It also limits the ability to overwhelm smaller countries with sheer numbers as you will both have the same Rail Capacity. It can still be done, but takes planning.
-Units that don't use Rail Capacity don't get any movement advantage for being on the tracks. It's treated as road.
-Excess Rail Capacity will be vital to the economy. Any unused Rail Capacity generates revenue. Using Rail Capacity to its limit every round will be prohibitively expensive, but moving units will not cost money out of the treasury per se. You just won't make any money.
-Total Rail Capacity will not be high enough to defend or attack using a flow of units on the tracks. In the era of tanks and infantry it might be 10-15 points, perhaps less. Forces for an invasion - or defensive forces - will have to be built up slowly, over time, with much planning.
-In war, if a border collapses due to invasion, you'll be in serious trouble, but not necessarily doomed. If you have more than one front you'll be doomed if your defences are weak and you're relying on railroads to supply defensive reinforcements. If you can only move a limited number of units you'll be forced to choose where they go. Pulling forces from defences on other borders will be difficult because you will not be able to build them back up there again in one, two, or three rounds, and if they are then also attacked ...
-If you are expanding into enemy territory, you'll use your rail to transport new recruits from the homeland to the front, but the advance of your main force will occur by road and overland. Rails will just help somewhat to replenish your forces, but rails alone won't sustain an advance - you'll have to build up a large force during peacetime.
-In peacetime, you'll be building up defensive forces and attack forces using your rails. This will take time and planning because you'll have to choose where, and if you choose wrong, it won't be possible to change easily. It will take many rounds to correct. Also, using too much rail will hurt your economy.


Rail Capacity Interface in the Game - What you'd see in the game

-Rail Capacity Remaining displayed in the side box, where the Treasury and global warming and all that is, but also visible when a unit is displayed in that box.
-When Rail Capacity is available and a unit is on the tracks, a small Entrain button appears in its options (just like the current buttons for Fortify, Sentry, Load, and all that). Clicking on Entrain changes the graphic of the unit to a locomotive (the type, perhaps, would change according to Advances), and allows it rail movement, at the cost of 1 Rail Capacity.
-As soon as the unit leaves the tracks or engages in combat, it loses the locomotive icon and its rail movement is considered to be over, there is no need to "unload". If guerrillas/insurgents have been changed in the game as some have proposed, and you can't see them all the time, then if one surprises you on the track you are in trouble, fighting at a severe penalty.
-Finally, depending on certain factors, it might be possible to affect or manage your infrastructure, if so, it should be done at the national level (simpler) through a new minister, the Transportation Minister.

[Xorbon]

Not a bad idea, Frekk!

As another alternative, how about charging 1 gold per unit per 'X' tiles moved. So if X=16, it would cost you 1 gold to move a unit up to 16 tiles by rail, 2 gold to move between 17 to 32 tiles, etc. 'X' could be affected by technology level and whether you have sufficient 'fuel' resources. For example, for fuel resources: if you have coal X is normal; if you have oil (and the combustion engine advance) X is +50% of normal, and if you have no fuel resources, X could be 2/3 or 1/2 of normal. The exact numbers are just examples of course.

So, you'd still have infinite movement, but it'd cost you to use it. Perhaps workers could use it for free.

[Modo44]

During WWII, the Germans had no problems shipping whole armoured divisions from one end of Europe to another in a very short time. I don't remember the actual numbers, but it was under a month for sure. And that was the heavily bombed Germany, who was able to do it. If the shortest turn in the game takes a year, limiting the capacity of rails is not realistic.

There were (and still are, AFAIK) steam engines stored for war usage - they can be operated with anything that burns and some water. Logistics don't stop such a train - only attacking it directly, or bombing every rail track into oblivion can harm the transport. In simple terms: military transports always come through, as long as there's tracks.

I agree with the idea that using rails for military purposes should have impact on the economy in general. That makes perfect sense to me.

[frekk]

I really hate real world comparisons as to specifics like timeframes, distances, unit numbers. Civ is deliberately abstract this way for a reason. If it wasn't you'd either have infinite movement for all your units even offroad, or be waiting 10 000 turns for an advance. Germans might have been able to move whole divisions, but isn't that just a single tank unit in the game, possibly? The size of units and timescale and distances, all really don't mean a thing.

One thing they couldn't do is put the entire Germany Army on trains at any one time. But I do agree in a month they could transport divisions to a pretty much unlimited distance, just not all of them. I'm against getting rid of infinite movement for this, and micromanagement reasons (the tedious "mass crawl" effect).

Also, it is more for gameplay considerations ... to prevent the buildup of the "One Big Army" in the middle, but also, to encourage a distribution of forces in sort of a reasonable manner. It's a polar opposite, I guess, to finite rail ranges because it still allows an infinite range that, with some work, should be able to keep up with unit production, but disallow all the forces across an entire empire from, say, responding to a beachhead all at once.

I don't like the idea of charging money to use the rails. The problem there is, that when you have no money and you are at peace the game will be very boring! Better to have the rail network generate revenue; less revenue if it is heavily used. So you can still use it without having a big treasury. Plus it just adds extra complication to worry about fuel and distances and all that.

[wrylachlan]

Trifna:

I just read the list, and saw your question in regards to tactical movement. Most of what I was talking about was in response to people calling for tactical bonuses in a mini-map. To summarize:

Instead of having tiles cost a certain number of movement points, it should be transitions between tiles. i.e. Plains to Mountains costs X points, Mountains to Mountains costs Y points, etc. This allows things like plateaus, cliffs, impassable mountains, etc.

As for the tactical bonuses, I think that flanking bonuses should be implemented on the main map scale. Simply put a defender can only defend in the direction he was first attacked from or adjacent directions. For example: With 3 Spearmen and a Catapult in a certain tile being attacked by 5 Warriors and 1 Ancient Cav. The first three warriors attack the spearmen, establishing the direction of their front line. If the remaining 2 warriors attack from the same direction, the spearmen defend. If, however, the Ancient Cav uses 1 movement point to get into a flanking tile and then attack, the Catapult defends, and gets killed.

This makes the terrain, play an important role in tactical combat.

[Modo44]

Originally posted by frekk
I don't like the idea of charging money to use the rails. The problem there is, that when you have no money and you are at peace the game will be very boring! Better to have the rail network generate revenue; less revenue if it is heavily used. So you can still use it without having a big treasury. Plus it just adds extra complication to worry about fuel and distances and all that.

I thought I already agreed with that in my above post. The basic idea is that using tiles for military purposes (transportation included) should make specific tiles less profitable. If you consider transporting units via railroads and refer to the Civ3 model, that would be removing the bonus the railroad gives to the tile. Simple reason: local rails taken for military use don't have enough capacity to transport the goods produced in the area.


Again about limiting the number of units transported. The Germans did manage to bring every division they could spare from Russia to fight in the Normandy. They just didn't have enough in total, so they lost. Transporting people and equipment is a one-time job and can be done easy even under bad conditions. The described military trains did exist and they did just fine.

You might want to think more about supplies, because that's what can really stop a large army. It depends on how much supplies are available and how well they can be transported to the fighting units. Lack of supplies happened to the Allies after they liberated France in 1944. They had total domination in the skies and they were pushing ahead on the ground. But at some point, the fuel just wasn't there on time, so they simply stopped. They did need to regroup as well, but that was not the only reason for the break.

[frekk]

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.

I don't mind the idea of supplies, but I would expect rail bonuses for tiles are probably on the way out to limit sprawling rails and create true lines.

Also, it is an abstracted model to get rid of the strategy of building one huge army that can teleport anywhere instead of dispersed regional reserves behind defensive garrisons. The only other solution to this problem is to limit the distance you can travel on rail, which I hate and which is gained alot of popularity despite what I think is inaccuracy and will result in a tedious "mass crawl" of units and silly strategies involving banks of airfields.

Also, if you really didn't like the parameters of the rail capacity, you could just set them higher so you wouldn't have to worry about it much.

[Xorbon]

Originally posted by frekk
I don't like the idea of charging money to use the rails. The problem there is, that when you have no money and you are at peace the game will be very boring! Better to have the rail network generate revenue; less revenue if it is heavily used. So you can still use it without having a big treasury. Plus it just adds extra complication to worry about fuel and distances and all that.

A while back, someone mentioned an idea for an upgrade to roads: highways. Highways would allow (something like) 1/9 movement for units using them. That way, units could still travel fairly far without having to use the rails. On top of that, workers (and certain other units) could be allowed to use rails for free.

So during peacetime, your military units could be redistributed as you can afford, and workers would be able to go where needed for free. Since there isn't the pressing need for moving armies across the continent during peacetime, you can save a lot of money by using highways, or if you're simply impatient, you can spend the money to get your units where you want now. Using highways means you'll have more money in your coffers, and more money to spend on science, luxuries, or whatever. To me, this seems quite similar to your idea. It's just a different implementation.

[frekk]

It's a good solution, something to think about. What we always have to remember about all solutions is that values are supposedly going to be really customizable, so if you didn't like to pay to move stuff you could set it to 0. Same thing with the rail capacity - if you didn't like limited rail capacity, you just change values to really high numbers.

Still, I like the idea of unused rail capacity generating revenue better. It would be essentially the same idea - in effect, you would still "pay" to use the rails - just with the difference that there would be other incentives to develop capacity than just unit movement. Also, its difficult to imagine what economy the use of rail is disrupting if the rail doesn't generate any revenue - if revenue is unchanged before and after rail exists.

I like the idea of using the highways in addition to the rails though. I think it would help take up the slack for bigger empires and so reduce the "mass crawl" effect. The other thing I like about using the highways, is that people opposed to infinite rail movement of even a limited capacity, could simply remove rails from their game and play with just highways. If they were concerned about getting rapid movement earlier in the game, they could use the rail graphics for the highway and then tie it to the rail advance. Etc etc. I really could care less about default rules as much as I could care about rules which support many different variations and styles.

[Modo44]

Originally posted by frekk
Still, I like the idea of unused rail capacity generating revenue better. It would be essentially the same idea - in effect, you would still "pay" to use the rails - just with the difference that there would be other incentives to develop capacity than just unit movement. Also, its difficult to imagine what economy the use of rail is disrupting if the rail doesn't generate any revenue - if revenue is unchanged before and after rail exists.

I disagree here. You can know for sure that using a rail station in a city for military purposes effectively slows down other transport to and from the city. This specific city, not the nation in general. You cannot know if such a transport causes any problems to the rest of the empire. I don't like the idea of troop movements along my borders disrupting prodictivity in my core (i.e. lowering total tax revenue or whatever the effect would be). What I would like, however, is damaging economy in places where military transports actually occur. So if say 20 units pass throug a tile on the same turn, that tile should have production lowered for the turn. Tansporting the goods was difficult because of the military, so the tile "produced" less.