Strategic issue: bridges

[jim_steer]

I think he was refering to the fact that the battle wouldn't of happened if the river wasn't high, as the English would have withdrawn.
Any way as far as rivers are concerned i think they are alright as they are, if you think about the real world time that one ancient turn represents then the movement penalty is ok. I do think that city squares should count as bridges over adjacent rivers pre-engineering though.

[Trifna]

Oh I see :P

A movement penalty does not permit bridges nor represent correctly the whole thing since they don't create specific places to pass/build bridges (key strokes). Here's what I mean:

Goth (very bad swimmers...) could not pass the Rhin without Rome's permission: by the time they would have constructed their boats and passed the Rhin, romans would have strongly reacted. The few bridges were guarded.

Mechanized units cannot pass in more than their height of water (some exceptions?). A modern infantry, of course: it'll take 30 minutes to swim.

What did USA did when attacking Kosovo/Serbia? Bomb bridges. Consequences: their boats can't pass (bridges are in the water), nor their cars until new bridges are built.

[Gen.Dragolen]

Trifna,

Having forded rivers in the back country as part of a military unit, I can vouch for the idea that rivers are a huge obstacle to moving large numbers of men and their equipment.

Crossing a river, especially these days is a dangerous and generally unhealthy place to go for a swim. Modern armies have bridging units because it is impossible to move vehicles other than scouts/recon. That would mean all of your supply trucks and transporters for you tanks...

Not having bridges is sort of reflected in the movement penalty for units crossing rivers, but having bridges would have been a better choice from a wargaming perspective.

I have used "bridges" to funnel counter-attacks by pillaging roads on the farsides with cavalry and then leave one road intact so the enemy will try to cross there. I will have lots of cannons to soften him up before my cavalry finishes him. All I need to do is to put riflemen along the river bank to keep them from flanking me.


D.

[Trifna]

Ok.

You say that modern armies have some bridging units or something? But how come bridges are always a priority target? There are some rivers that are unpassable I guess? Too broad?

[ruby_maser]

canals

I think it is a good idea to talk about bridging one or two ocean squares but as long as we are, we might as well talk about digging canals between two seas. It would beat the heck out of have to bridge a chokepoint with a city because it HAS to be 1 tile. This could facilitate longer channels and provide significant miltary targets to be held and defended.

Of course the bridges and canals would work best with archipelagos.

[Trifna]

ruby-master, I'm NOT talking about bridging oceans, I'm talking about bridging river tiles!! The Rhin is a river that has a major importance on the way territories were through time because of how much difficult it was to invade comparatively to where there's no river. You have to get to a bridge usually.

[wrylachlan]

Just out of curiosity, has anyone here modded the rivers so that they are more difficult to cross - a bigger movement penalty? Is this even possible with the current editor? And, if so, what does this do to the AI?

[Gen.Dragolen]

Originally posted by Trifna
Ok.

You say that modern armies have some bridging units or something? But how come bridges are always a priority target? There are some rivers that are unpassable I guess? Too broad?

Trifna,

Actually the main problem is wieght: a modern MBT like a US M1 Abrams weighs about 60 tons.

For comparison's sake, we have concrete bridges on paved country roads that can only handle 60,000lbs and there are quite a few dual-axle grain trucks that are 80,000lbs fully loaded. An M 1 would be 120,000 lbs. It would be a shame to loose a tank before it made it to the battle lines...

Add in another 10-20 tons for a transporter (tractor and trailer used to move tanks long distances so you don't wear out your treads and motors) and you find that an intact high strength concrete bridge is the best way to go. Most portable bridges have a carrying capacity at around 40 tons over a 30-60 ft span. (the longer the span the smaller the load) It's been a while since I had to know the details, so don't take the numbers as dead on accurate.

Even for tanks that can fully submerge, like many of the old Russian T-55 through T-72's, it would take 3-4 hours to prep the tank and again, choice of location was important. So to allow rapid movement of your armoured assets on the strategic level, the bridge is the way to go.

I have been thinking that for the mod I'm working on, any tracked units like tanks, Mech Inf, and Mdrn Armour will not be airmobile using Airports. I am going to make them all wheeled units. The only thing wrong is that there is not way to block them from crossing rivers. Guess you have to assume that there will always be a viable ford somewhere in a given terrain square.

I would like to have seen them keep more of the wargame aspect of the game and use river tiles instead of making them a mere graphic devices. The real thinking for an officer is how to move his men and equipment from point A to point B and not have to go to the middle of nowhere to do it. I've planned out routes and have had to account for vehicle weights. Even a 2 ton truck is a loss if it gets stuck off a muddy road and there are only 10 men to push it out, so you always check the capacity of the bridges and roads in any area.

Until they start building tanks like in Hammer's Slammer (GEV's) the military will always need bridges to cross major rivers and terrain obstacles. Hope that fills in my reasons well enough.

D.

[Trifna]

Enough to put me in mind how silly it would be to see an Abram lost because it passed through and sunk in water hehehe

[Gen.Dragolen]

Trifna,

Well it happened in WWII in Normandy: they needed something to support the bridge they were carrying so they drove an M3 sherman tank into a small river with steep sides and then laid the bridge on top. Apparently it was there into the 1960's slowly rusting away...

They had this picture in an old WWII history book in the library in high school. People used to look at me a little scared when I would laugh out loud at some of the incidents like this...hehehe


D.

[Strakorfsky]

The point of rivers has been shunned away from real history in almost all the civs.

The Vikings used rivers as ways to explor inland and find trade routes with empires as far south as the ottomans.

In WWII, the american victories at getting at the enemy quickly were to that they could amke briges and bridge the gap between them. The Rhine river for example coulda stoped the American advance for almost several months if it was destroyed.

I don't think the various civs can ever truely express the importance of bridges and rivers.

Various civilizatiosn historicaly were made from the river, the vikings were able to achieve the great victories and trading from the rivers because their shiips could traverse them.

I think rivers should be considered coast sqaures in that ships should travel freely on them, and land units worker/engineers should have to construct bridges to travel them. As said before, how would an advancign army make their soldiers and horse swim across river like the Rhine, Volgda, ect...

[Strakorfsky]

Well, the civ makers made it as so for the sake of practicality.

The various principles that are needed are astounding, one would need universal rules on tiles, which most woudl bicker about.

Like a river in jungle, would it msot likely be a infested thing and there be so much obstacles that making a bridge should take much longer. Or a mountain, making a bridge would have to be neccesary with or without a river, because how could tanks move on steep rocky valleys that are slooping and bending.

FOr the sake of practicality, I think the rules in civ3 about bridges are pretty decent, taking the move advantage off is a great leap from games liek ctp.

[Trifna]

Originally posted by Gen.Dragolen
Trifna,

Well it happened in WWII in Normandy: they needed something to support the bridge they were carrying so they drove an M3 sherman tank into a small river with steep sides and then laid the bridge on top. Apparently it was there into the 1960's slowly rusting away...

They had this picture in an old WWII history book in the library in high school. People used to look at me a little scared when I would laugh out loud at some of the incidents like this...hehehe


D.