MOVEMENT, SUPPLY, ETC. (ver1.0): Hosted by don Don

[ml_4da3]

It is quite natural for ships to sail on both rivers and the sea. But it is only some ships, which both sail on the ocean and rivers or just rivers or just the ocean.
Most oceanic ships cannot sail in shallow waters and very small ships cannot sail the ocean very well.

The engineers should be able to modify existing rivers too, that should be less expensive in resources than building a brand new canal. This could be very useful, and it should be a very expensive option. Maybe a new Wonder would be good to introduce here.

[ember]

I forgot to clarify somthing. The reason I'm proposing a deployment system is to reduce micromanagment in the late game. It takes an huge percentage of each turn to move all my armor from all over my kningdom to the end where i'm preparing an invasion. With this system, you wouldn't have to bother with all the hassle of pathfinding, using cpu/graphics time, etc.

My thoughts about supply.
keep it simple. You are in supply within your borders. you cannot repair units if they are not in supply. naval units are alyways in supply (very mobile, realsitically, some of the fleet can travel back to port and bring some supplies in a turn). In my system repairs cost gold. We could make field repairs full price, repairs in a city 2/3 price, or 1/3 price with an appropriate structure (barracks, airport, port)

------------------
"Any technology, sufficiently advanced,
is indistinguishable from magic"
-Arthur C. Clark

[don Don]

But what happens when enemy units move into your territory? The "border" is now meaningless. A unit could be well within your borders, but cut off by enemy units from any path to any of your cities. So you have to take enemy units (and their ZOC) into account.

Supply has no effect on unit support costs, only on effectiveness of that support reaching the unit. Supply would extend some limited distance from the nearest friendly city not in rebellion. Supply radius would start at 1; increasing 1 with wheel or horse and again with auto. Supply cannot be traced through unfriendly units' Zone of Control (including Fighters). Any unit in supply moving to a tile in supply gets movement costs cut in half. Any unit not touching a tile in supply takes damage each turn depending on distance from nearest tile in supply. Display grid could be toggled to show supply status instead of city radii.

That's simple enough. The computer does the work, you just move your units.

Regarding your deployment idea: doesn't that sound just like airlift in civ2? Or perhaps I should say, the idea is good but must be distinguished from airlift. Maybe you could set a GoTo path (w/waypoints) that "stays in place." When you GoTo a unit to the starting point it takes over and moves the unit on the established pathway.

[Harel]

Don Don, are you realzing what you just said? That the enemy units will "invisbily" block the way... A pre-check, for EVERY unit, in EVERY location, compared to the directions of towns.. if one way is blocked by an enemy, check another... That will be SSSLLLOOOWWW.
And so very hard to plan. The border plan will keep is clear, and simple. You always know when you are in control, and when you are not. Starting to checking enemy flanking positions? Araggh... Who has time?
I mean, it real life, inside your borders, you will always have some village or something to give you food. You are always ok when inside your borders.
Beside, if an enemy has invaded so far inland, won't he conquer terratory and expand his borders, sinking you into his nation ( Inside he's new borders ).

[VaderTwo]

Just another trial balloon.

It would be interesting if there could be, in addition to its terrain, three different types of coast squares:

Beach - units can unload and load from/to transports and units with multiple movement points can move again or attack

Normal - units can unload and load from/to transports but multiple movement points units cannot move again or attack until the next turn.

Cliff - units CANNOT unload or load from/to transports from this square

[ember]

The main benifit of having the deploy ability is how it will speed up the game. It is only effective in your own (or allied teritiories, reducing the time you spend telling everything where to go. No pathing is involved, reducing cpu time. It represents the fact that a fighter squadron is not built in one city. The different pieces of equipment are built in deifferent (or multiple) locations and brought together.

In the border thread I saw it proposed that military units could "sieze" disputed teritory, that is teritory that is next to the border, not deep within their territory. Capturing cities always works.

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"Any technology, sufficiently advanced,
is indistinguishable from magic"
-Arthur C. Clark

[don Don]

Harel: Played Civ2 lately? ;¬) I think you'll see that when you move the computer checks for enemy ZOCs every time.

Ember: Still that doesn't differentiate from airlift. If you can deploy that way, why have airlift? Why connect cities with RR except on tiles that would gain the RR bonus? I'm exaggerating; I just want you to clarify your ideas.

(BTW, I've also provided for aircraft movement directly from city/airbase to city/airbase in § 3c of the proposal in <A HREF="http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum6/HTML/000520.html">MOVEMENT (1.0)</A>.)

[ember]

The difference beween 'deploy' and airlift and RR is the speed a unit gets there.

Airlift is instant and allows the airlifted unit to defend in the following turn. In effect an airlift is a priority deploy. You use the fastest transport to get it there right away.

RR is faster still for short distances, it allows the unit to activate active defense if it has sufficient move remaining. I don't think RR shopuld be truely unlimited move. Pathfinding AI always moves you over some roads eventually and you lose movement that way also.

Deploy takes minimum one full turn, during which the unit can be destroyed, but offers no defense. If that is too quick you could make it take one turn to add a unit to the deploy list, then the next turn you place it, and the turn after that it arrives, 2 full turns to re-deploy a unit, or 1 to deploy a new one.

The comp. only checks ZOC when you try and move, doesn't it?

------------------
"Any technology, sufficiently advanced,
is indistinguishable from magic"
-Arthur C. Clark

[Flavor Dave]

I read most but not all of this thread. Sorry if I'm plowing tilled soil.

1. First and foremost, I want to reiterate what someone else posted--THIS IS NOT A PURE WARGAME!!! Anything that too dramatically enhances the importance of the military part of the game messes it up.

2. Bombers either have to be made alot cheaper, or they have to have the ability to attack and return to a city. As it is, they are a big waste of shields. At deity, the AIs play all sorts of games to prevent itself from falling too far behind in science, and will steal flight in a heartbeat. Your window of bombers unhampered by pesky fighters is small.

Another point is that both fighters and bombers should have unlimited, or nearly so, MPs as long as they are traveling between cities. This would enhance gameplay. One of my frustrations with Civ2 is that you can't really use the 3rd leg of the triad much.

3. I favor a WOW that enhance the movement ability of caravans. Details in the Wonders thread.

4. In another place and time, I made the following suggestion--there will be 3 kinds of shields. Fuel, building material, and exotics. Each square is given a value, totaling 3 points. 1-1-1 means an equal portion of each shield is fuel, building materials, and exotics. This would be equal over the whole board, but there would be concentrations in different areas--one area might be heavy in building materials, or weak in fuels.

Anyway, you would have a building advisor, who would keep track of this for your empire as a whole. Let's say your empire produced 100 shields as a whole. As long as each of the 3 elements was at least 25 (1/4), you're OK. But if you are 20-25-55, then you lose the last 20 shields of exotics (to get your lowest to 1/4 the total), and lose them in each city in proportion to the shields produced (20 of 100 is one of every 5, so every city producing at least 5 loses one, if 10, loses 2, etc., until you've lost 20 shields).

I think this would add an element of strategy to the game, and also enhance the value of explorers. If you find your home are is weak in a certain element, you need to think about tradeoffs--conquer your pesky neighbor, or that other, nice, neighbor, who just happens to be sitting on a bunch fuel.

The random element should be similar to the terrain, where some areas have alot of mountains, but no huge mountain ranges. It might be simpler to triple everything--cost in shields, and the yield too.

I put this here b/c it is similar to the idea in Jeje2 posted 05-20-99 14:01 EDT

[don Don]

Thanks, ember. That makes deploy significantly different from airlift etc. How should deployment work before the modern age with isolated cities? For example, you get a city on a distant island (a goody hut bonus city). Would you be able to deploy units to that location? I would think not; it should be a challenge to get military units out there to defend you new territory. How about a less clear-cut case: an empire split between two nearby continents. What limitations to deployment should be imposed?

ember (and Harel, if your still there): The computer checks ZOC when you try to move. But when the enemy units moved into their current position (last turn, or X turns ago) it checked for ZOCs then, too. The computer is always checking, every time every piece moves, so having it maintain a map is very little overhead (bit-toggling).

Flavor Dave: long time no see (at least in the forums I read)
I have similar ideas. I want to have movement rules with more strategic generalizations = less player mmgmt [micromanagement]. More emphasis on trade shifts focus of the military towards defending trade routes rather than brute conquest. But the AI needs to be programmed to think trade. Check out the proposal in <A HREF="http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum6/HTML/000520.html">MOVEMENT</A>, especially §3) Air Unit Movement, and let me know what you think.

Resources: check out OTHER and ECONOMICS/TRADE.

[Flavor Dave]

don don--OK, I checked it out. Alot of that seemed kinda radical. I'm having a hard time imagining how it would play out. Let's face it, in this game, the AI is so weak at military planning, that all you need are howies, spies, engineers (for fortresses), armor (for partisans) and some defensive unit. Will all of that be used against the AI? And from what I've read about multiplayer (don't have MGE yet), those games are all early blitzkrieg type games.

Another thought, to enhance trade--perhaps you could have explorers build a trading post, sort of like engineers build an airbase. The trading post would have the following power--you can instantly move any caravan to it.

Another thought--the explorer could "convert" into a trading post, with the same abilities as above, and it would become a unit with a1, d3, in a fortress. That gets back to your thought about the game emphasizing other roles of the military besides conquest. The trading post wouldn't survive a war, unless reinforced with some offensive units from back home. NOTE: the trading post shouldn't get any terrain bonus, or perhaps, you can only build a trading post on a plain or grassland.

And, yes, the programmers need to get the AI thinking about trade more. IMO, they may not have realized how much value caravans/freight have. Each city should be programmed to crank out a freight at size 4, size 8, and size 12.

[wheathin]

SEALANES

An idea I had posted in OTHER as a terrain suggestion:

Problem: by the mid-to-late game travel on land is quite fast. But sea travel is so slow - it needs to be sped up. An infantry unit can move on a Railroad across land far faster than it can move across water in a ship. This makes no sense.

Solution: *Sealanes* like roads except built on water. This is easy if they are built as public works (or by some sort of "sea-former/settler"). They represent a given technology of sea transport used in a regular commercial/non-fighting fashion. 4 possible levels: Galley, Sailing Ship, Steam Ship, Supercargo ship.
- They would have terrain limits: early sea lanes couls not be built through deep waters far from land.
- They would have movement limits similar to land transport, though maybe faster early and slower late.
- They would have to begin and end at cities (need large ports to load and unload) and units could not just jump on them.
- Land units move along them just like any road or RR square, but while at sea the units cannot do anything except die if attacked. All units on a sealane move at the same movement rate and have the same MPs - they are limited by the ships they are on, not by their own ability. Same for planes (because you might want to ship a plane across a wide ocean that it can't fly over in one turn).
- They can be built and used by any player. Note that while computer units can travel along the sealane, they could not attack an enemy port at the other end. Unlike roads, since all the units on a sealane are non-combat, they should not prevent the movement of another player's sealane units through the square.

Sealanes do not render existing ship units irrelevant.
- Players who want a defensive ability for sea transport would still build transports, galleons, caravels, etc. Players contemplating amphibious landings (necessary until the first city on a continent is taken) would still need troopships and such. Players who want to power project would still need aircraft carriers.
- Before a sealane is constructed, the ocean needs to be charted and mapped, and early transit would depend on actual ship units.
- Sealanes could be pirated and pillaged like roads. Thus, a player needs a strong navy to protect sealanes thet the player considers vital.

Sealanes solve ocean movement problems.
Sealanes answer the "round-the-world-with-a- chain-of-transports" problem.
Sealanes would not alter the game balance considerably.

Cost considerations:
Sealanes need to be cheap enough so that players do not feel that they are economically better off by building transport ships instead. That defeats the purpose of the micro-management reduction.

AI considerations:
Obviously, the computer needs to be smart enough to evict any settlers on the ground or go to war to prevent a player from slipping in, founding a city, setting up a sealane, and then flooding the computer with lots of units.

wheathin

[ember]

don Don, I thought of several solutions to the isolated city/split country problem. It depends on the set up of the rest of the game engine how exactally it would work, but here it goes.

Using Regions: Each region has a 'deploy list'. Units built in a region can only deploy in that region, and units re-deployed from within that region can only be brought back in that region. You could ship a limited number of units a turn between (nearby) regions from the deploy menu. This would make long distance deployments take longer. Regions linked by (rail)road or by port cities would have an increased amount available for transfer.

For isolated cities the number of deploys per turn/ turns per deploy would mimick the small amount of supplies that can be brought in (say, muskets), combined with what can be built/trained locally (the troops to carry the muskets)

Truely isolated cities would have no regions within a reasonable proximity and would have to fend for themselves. In modern times there is so much bulk transortation (including air) that the imroved deployment in larger/national regions would be reasonably realistic. Remmber cities under siege will ALWYAS have a reduced (like an isolated city in the mid-game) number of deployments per turn. Some smuggeling will always occure on the time/geography scale that civ represents.

Deploy can only occure between cities, bases, and some naval vessels. transports and carriers can deploy, say 2 units, a turn, to represent the fact that ships move a lot faster than they do in civ, the visiable unit represents the concentrated, velnerable portion of the fleet.

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"Any technology, sufficiently advanced,
is indistinguishable from magic"
-Arthur C. Clark

[Diodorus Sicilus]

-First Post This Thread-

First Suggestion/Discussion Point:
Movement on Land should be far more dangerous than it is in the current Civ games. Right now, the only limit to how far you can explore is the coast before you have ocean-going vessels and enemy states or barbarians that occasionally munch your warrior/explorer.
In fact, crossing mountains without a pass (non-mountain tile) is virtually impossible for stacks (armies) and very dangerous for single units - read the accounts of armies from Hannibal to Napoleon trying to cross the Alps, or the Donner Party Cookbook for examples.
Crossing deserts is even more dangerous: the Gedrosian Desert in southern Iran/Afghanistan ate two armies entirely in ancient times, and Alexander the Great lost at least 1/3 of his army trying to cross it.
When you combine a desert and mountains, as in the country south of Egypt/Sudan, nobody gets through it: one reason the Source of the Nile stayed a mystery from 3000BC to the 1800s AD.
Suggestion: you end the turn in a Mountain or Desert tile/hex, and the computer assesses Damage just as if you'd fought a battle. Defense would be an established Supply Line (VERY difficult in Ancient or Medieval periods) OR Special Units (Camel in desert, Alpine in Mountain, for example). Damage level should be up to 33%, and if you spent 3+ turns in either terrain, a good chance that the unit would be completely destroyed.
This would make long-distance harassing or exploring moves much more difficult, and therefore allow us to increase the average movement rates without requiring Super Size Maps to get the same amount of exploring time in the game.

Second Suggestion/Discussion Point:

Roads and Railroads' effects are currently pretty bland and homogenized. First, road networks were a post-4000BC development, and Good (all weather) Roads not only a late development but due to several different Advances. They affect not only movement, but Supply and City Radius/Size.
Early Roads: all you're doing is leveling the ground, marking routes. This Advance is available (was available in Mesopotamia) relatively early: by 2500BC. Effect is simply to make Movement Cost for the terrain the same as for Grassland/Plains AND allow city radius to extend one tile.
With no road network, city radius is not going to be more than one tile from the city. Think about it: in 4000BC you've got no wheeled vehicles, no barrels or pottery containers - how are you going to haul anything from the outlying famrs into the city? Add roads of any kind, and pack animals at least can make longer journeys and wheeled vehicles become usable- extend the radius to about what it is now.
Paved Roads (Rome 312BC) are graded, good foundations, stone, brick, or concrete surface, require big bucks every turn for maintenance BUT provide faster movement (single riders could make 100 miles a day on the Roman roads) - possibly to 1/2 Movement Point per tile regardless of terrain. They would NOT extend the city radius again. Reason: draft animals only go so fast, and after 100-200 miles they eat up in fodder the weight they're hauling in the wagon over any kind of road: animal transport establishes a firm upper limit on how far you can haul Bulk Goods (like supplies and food). Later, in the early 19th, late 18th century, you can get Advance: MacAdamizing which gives you cheaper all-weather roads, but you still need Motor Vehicles to extend the range you can haul Food over them effectively.
Rivers and Railroads extend everything much further than roads do. A river boat (Nile River, Egypt as early as 3600BC) can haul several tons while being poled along by a couple of men. A city on a river would have a City Radius extended up and down the river several tiles. In addition, Supply Lines can be traced much, much further along a Navigable River than along any road before Motor Vehicles.
You extend your Navigable Rivers with another Advance: Canals - and more maintenance costs to keep 'em working.
Railroads practically negate the city radius: you can haul bulk goods from anywhere the railroad goes into the city. You can also supply virtually any size army/stack as long as it's in a tile with a railroad and that railroad reaches a bunch of your cities.

Third Suggestion/ Discussion Point:

The difference between ancient (oars/sails) and modern sea movement is much greater than shown in the game. A Viking Longship (replica) crossed the Atlantic from Norway taking 28 days, while a modern (1940s era) troopship (yours truely on board!) made the same trip in 7 days - and that was in much worse weather than the longship tried. In other words, between Longship/Caravel and Transport the difference is something like 400% in Movement Rate. In addition, ships have Ranges, very much like Aircraft. A Longship simply couldn't stay at sea very long because it couldn't carry a lot of supplies. Triremes had to stop every night or two on shore. A modern Destroyer cannot stay at sea long compared to, say, an Aircraft Carrier or a Battleship - and Cruisers are built for long range because of their tactical & strategic mission.
Suggestion: Instead of making open-ocean voyaging impossible to some vessels, simply give them a Range in Turns. Sample Ranges:
Trireme 1 turn
LongShip 2 turns
Ancient Sailing Galley 3 turns
Cog 3 turns
Carrack/Caravel 6 turns
Ship of the Line 5 turns
Ironclad 4 turns
Battleship 6 turns

If they end their allotted maximum turn at sea, they're destroyed.
The ancient sailing cargo ships could cross the open ocean, and did it in the Mediterranean from at least 700BC, but not unless they Knew there was a harbor/friendly shore waiting for them. The Cog was the late Medieval cargo/warship that first made Bulk Cargo profitable- the herring, cod, and woolen trade in Northern Europe. The Carrack/Caravel extended the Cog's range (and cargo capacity went up) and was the basic hull that started the Great Age of European exploration. Early ironclads had much shorter ranges than the last of the sailing ships, because they suddenly had to worry about fuel capacities: Coaling Station would be a required City Improvement in your ports to support an Ironclad/Steamer (cargoship) naval empire - just as Britain had to do in the 19th century.

[Flavor Dave]

Diodorus--please think thru how your suggestions would affect the game. It's realistic, but it ain't real. If it were, you'd play two turns and die. Pretty boring. Who cares how hard it is to get thru a mountain pass in real life??? What you suggest would hinder ancient contact, and pretty much make early conquest over rough terrain flatout impossible. Ancient conquest isn't a strateyg that *I* use, but still, I'm against anything that restricts strategic options.

I do agree that modern ships should be faster. For a frigate to be only 33% faster than a trireme is kinda silly, and also, IMO, has a negative effect on gameplay. The slowness of ships is yet another way that this game is unbalanced toward the army.

<font size=1 color=444444>[This message has been edited by Flavor Dave (edited June 05, 1999).]</font>