Military operations idea

[Stuff2]

If modified my "no-military-units-idea" and developed it a bit further. I've tried to incorporate the recruiment also. I'll try to explain it even though my english isn't very good.

First:
- We have men
- We have equippment
- We have money
- We have training facilities (maybe, not necessarily but training will take longer time without it)

Step two: We pay money, equipp the men and train them...voila: They are now ready to beacome a part of your army.

Step three: Once a military operation is needed u grab a bunch of soldiers and form them into a unit. Different kinds of soldiers cannot be formed into one unit. For example riflemen and archers cannot exist in the same unit. several units can be a part of same military operations. If u don't like the military operation window there is a feature that make your unit alive on the screen being able to control that way.

When an unit on the 'field' has lost men u can always grab some new men to replace those that have disappeared. This "reinforce" option is always presented whenever needed (after battles).

Since people always die (if not beacouse of war then beacouse of old age) i suggest that your army will always decrease which means that in order to upkeep an standing army you have to make new recruitment all the time.

Beacouse of the ease and speed you can mobilize an army (maybe 2 to 10 years depending on infrastructure and money invested) it's not needed to always have an giant standing army. If u find out that an oppnent is mobilizing an army you can be pretty sure that war is going to break out(maybe not with you but you can never be too sure).

[Lord God Jinnai]

First off I hope there is a way to play w/o military units as i personally dislike them, unless its a real-time war strategy game, which clash is not.

Stuff2
Step two: We pay money, equipp the men and train them...voila: They are now ready to beacome a part of your army.
-----
That's pretty much the point, but in ancient times not all armies were paid, most fought for the glory of the state or were paid basically whenever they couquered a village, ran across the enemy, etc. Salaries were not used until the later part of the age of greek city-states.


Step three: Once a military operation is needed u grab a bunch of soldiers and form them into a unit. Different kinds of soldiers cannot be formed into one unit. For example riflemen and archers cannot exist in the same unit. several units can be a part of same military operations. If u don't like the military operation window there is a feature that make your unit alive on the screen being able to control that way.
-----
On paper it sounds great in practice, this wasn't always the case, espially when you needed to get an army together really quickly and didn't have too many resources. Although ranged and melee battling units were usually seperate, warriors with sword would fight alongside those with sprears and maces.


When an unit on the 'field' has lost men u can always grab some new men to replace those that have disappeared. This "reinforce" option is always presented whenever needed (after battles).
------
Allowing that there is A> Time B> Enough reinforcements available (sometimes there may be more than enough and you should have the option of increasing the units size).


Since people always die (if not beacouse of war then beacouse of old age) i suggest that your army will always decrease which means that in order to upkeep an standing army you have to make new recruitment all the time.
-----
This can be handled via the AI. The thing the player should worry about is actually enticing new recruits (or conscripting them) and training them.


Beacouse of the ease and speed you can mobilize an army (maybe 2 to 10 years depending on infrastructure and money invested) it's not needed to always have an giant standing army. If u find out that an oppnent is mobilizing an army you can be pretty sure that war is going to break out(maybe not with you but you can never be too sure).
-----
Actually depending on the type of doctine, it could be even less time. FE, say every memeber of society had to learn some level of combat (barring slaves if app and women and young children if the player wishes). Lets say that this combat training specializes in weaponless and cheap weapon combat (quarterstaff FE), then you'd already have an army ready, although not the best, it may be an edge simply by shear numbers.

[Richard Bruns]

I would prefer the following option:

There are no little men on the map. None.

All armies are handled by province. To deal with the armies, you go to the province menu.

All troops garrisoned in a province are normally treated as a single army corps. They attack, defend, and move as one combined arms unit. Of course, it would be possible to split them into two or more corps.

Men age and retire, with average turnover of four to twenty years. If possible, the troops are replaced to keep force strength at the same levels.

Defense is automatic, with a province's garrison automatically engaging to meet any invasion of the province.

To attack or explore, you simply click on an order button and click on a nearby province. Each army has a range of operations, similar to an airplane's range.

Airplanes in the province are assigned tasks in an Air Missions window. They have a certain range, and within that range they can bomb provinces or support military actions.

Navies are treated like airplanes. They can attack, explore, or patrol within their range. Amphibious assaults are handled from the Navy screen.

After a territory is conquered, you can choose to settle the territory or return to base.

If you choose to settle, the attacking army becomes the new garrison and your people start to move in if possible. The province is now under your control, but there might be occasional unrest. If you can't get your own people in, you will have to recruit the locals or let the army wither away.

If you choose to have your army return, the province becomes a satellite state and you deal with them diplomatically. The people keep their own government but pay tribute to your civ. They could revolt if you tax them too heavily, but generally your army in the nearby province keeps them in line. Satellite states would be a good option in many cases, as they are convenient and the locals are happier. They also guard your borders so you don't have to do all the fighting yourself.

If army management was based on provinces rather than units, players would be able to focus more on civ management. The armies would have the same interface as the rest of the civ, so the controls would be a lot more integrated, and military easier to deal with. The game would be less of a wargame and more of a civilization game.

This system would also speed up multiplayer games and make the AI more competent in military affairs.

It is obvious that I care more about civ management than military operations. I know that others prefer micromanaging lots of little units, but I am fairly sure that a lot of non-wargamers would like this approach and would choose it of it were an option.

[Stuff2]

quote: Originally posted by Lord God Jinnai on 05-11-2000 12:44 AM First off I hope there is a way to play w/o military units as i personally dislike them, unless its a real-time war strategy game, which clash is not.

I agree. I don't like units either. That is what made me come up with the idea in the first place.

quote: ...in ancient times not all armies were paid, most fought for the glory of the state or were paid basically whenever they couquered a village, ran across the enemy, etc. Salaries were not used until the later part of the age of greek city-states.

The way i see it is that even if u don't pay salaries to your army they will still cost money. Besides that, mercenaries was in common use during the middle ages.

quote: Step three: Once a military operation is needed u grab a bunch of soldiers and form them into a unit. Different kinds of soldiers cannot be formed into one unit. For example riflemen and archers cannot exist in the same unit. several units can be a part of same military operations. If u don't like the military operation window there is a feature that make your unit alive on the screen being able to control that way. ----- On paper it sounds great in practice, this wasn't always the case, espially when you needed to get an army together really quickly and didn't have too many resources. Although ranged and melee battling units were usually seperate, warriors with sword would fight alongside those with sprears and maces.

Yep. I have reconsidered this matter and i think that you are right. Some mix of weapon should be possible. For ease i think that there should be a number of unit types that always are 'mixable'. For example all infantry types of men can be mixed, all cavalry can be mixed and so on.

quote: When an unit on the 'field' has lost men u can always grab some new men to replace those that have disappeared. This "reinforce" option is always presented whenever needed (after battles). ------ Allowing that there is A> Time B> Enough reinforcements available (sometimes there may be more than enough and you should have the option of increasing the units size).

Yep.

quote: Since people always die (if not beacouse of war then beacouse of old age) i suggest that your army will always decrease which means that in order to upkeep an standing army you have to make new recruitment all the time. ----- This can be handled via the AI. The thing the player should worry about is actually enticing new recruits (or conscripting them) and training them.

I never meant anything else.

quote: Beacouse of the ease and speed you can mobilize an army (maybe 2 to 10 years depending on infrastructure and money invested) it's not needed to always have an giant standing army. If u find out that an oppnent is mobilizing an army you can be pretty sure that war is going to break out(maybe not with you but you can never be too sure). ----- Actually depending on the type of doctine, it could be even less time. FE, say every memeber of society had to learn some level of combat (barring slaves if app and women and young children if the player wishes). Lets say that this combat training specializes in weaponless and cheap weapon combat (quarterstaff FE), then you'd already have an army ready, although not the best, it may be an edge simply by shear numbers.

I like this idea.

[F_Smith]

I agree -- and disagree.

I think units must be on the screen. Little men, perhaps, or maybe just military X's and O's in boxes. But some sort of on-screen representation of forces that in some way shows what the forces strength and type are is, to me, a must. Generic is fine -- horse-mounted, archers, armored, infantry, mech, air. But I believe that a one-look symbol is absolutely necessary, for adequate player control.

As far as orders -- again I agree and disagree.

For defense and occupation, there should likely be two settings, "agressive" and "passive". A unit set on 'agressive' would respond to an invasion by intercepting and fighting the invaders in the field, automatically. A unit set on 'passive' would hole-up where they are, and wait to be attacked. You should also have the option to turn on a 'General' that can choose between these two options, depending on situational intelligence.

For offensive military operations, I believe it should be handled as a sub-set of a 'move' command. If ordered to move to unoccupied territory, a unit with an 'agressive' stance seeks out and attacks any defending units. A unit with a 'passive' stance would not enter unfriendly territory, playing only a recon/scout role of exploring. Altho, if the territory is only lightly defended (with less than 1/4 of the strength of the 'invading' unit), a passive unit could still 'overrun' the weak defenses.

And, of course, a general could be set to choose from these based upon circumstances.

It's a simple system that is working very well in another game being developed. Most 'army' movement is fairly automatic, with a large amount of strategic and tactical control.

[Stuff2]

The military operation window is a window where all your ongoing military operations are listed. Ofcourse u can have a military operation window in every region. But my idea is that u simply come to the same window where there are some options on which operations that are listed. When u only want to look at a regions military operations u have it as an option just as u can have as an option only look at air operations or naval operations.

With operations i mean where u send a unit and in which purpose. The purpose
can be:

- Attack
- Defend
- Destroy xxx
- Piracy
- Police
- Guarding border
- Blockade

I can't think of any more right now but there should be some more options. During this missions u also have some other options that tell how the unit will respond to situations.
These situations are regarding civilians, rebellions, surrending armys (POW).

They are:
- Kill
- Torture
- Humiliate
- Take as slave
- Imprison
- Punish
- Disarm
- Ignore

Also you have an option on how much pillage.

What information do you get in the military operation window?

I'll give an example:

The military operation:
- Attack Berlin until army is dead (or Berlin captured)
- Ignore civilans
- Kill rebellions
- Take surrendering armys as slaves
- Pillage: Don't bother

The status of the status of the units:
- wellfed
- well equipped
- good health
- 4000 riflemen of 4200 riflemen (200 are dead without being replaced)
- 25% trained
- 10% experienced

When i speak of units i don't men little men on the screen. FE if a 'unit' has been given the task of guard the border to France which is 12 squares i it won't appear a little icon on the screen moving up and down. Instead it appears a little flag on everyone of the 12 squares adjecent to france. If france make unit moves in my territory i'll be notified and able to alert the defence troops (if i have any).
[This message has been edited by Stuff2 (edited May 12, 2000).]

[Stuff2]

quote: Originally posted by F_Smith on 05-12-2000 01:59 PM I agree -- and disagree. I think units must be on the screen. Little men, perhaps, or maybe just military X's and O's in boxes. But some sort of on-screen representation of forces that in some way shows what the forces strength and type are is, to me, a must. Generic is fine -- horse-mounted, archers, armored, infantry, mech, air. But I believe that a one-look symbol is absolutely necessary, for adequate player control.

Yep. U are right. some form of screen representation is needed. But not units walking around. I don't dislike units when they are not moving. But i certainly don't want to see them move. Especially considering how many moves i think that a unit should have in one turn. I don't want my computer spending time on graphics which u get tired of anyway after a few weeks. But sure, screen representation is a must. But i was thinking more that every square that are under my military influense should be marked in some way, i haven't figured out how yet.
Since i think that for example the unit guarding the 12 square long border isn't moving around. The men are all over this area. The more men the less probability that anything will pass without your knowledge. But they are still all over this area at the same turn (since every turn is a year). That's way i don't like the idea of an unit. The unit is trapped in one square at a time.
Maybe u could have a flag with a number that shows level of military activity in every square.

[Stuff2]

I've been thinking alot about how I would like gameplay to be. And ones more modified this idea.

This is how i want it to be.

The whole map is divided in regions (if there are political provinces in the area they count as regions, but even if they are no political provinces the map is still divided in regions if this idea will work.

Instead of having a bunch of units moving around each square u have a bunch of military units within your region (not on a specific square but in the region/province).

Waging war is easy. Every region can have certian tasks FE defend, attack, Air attack, Air defence, scout e.t.c.

And also movement and recruitment. Movement between regions that is.

The tasks are shared bye all the military units within the region, (except movement orders). This is done automatically in that way it is best done. FE there will be no ground troops participating in the Air attacks and so on.

During battle the winner takes some squares and the looser has to retreat. The new squares will automatically be a new region (where u can send units) or a part of an exististing region of yours. The computer will calculate how things goes. youre job as a leader is simply what to do and how many to do it, not exact strategic plans. After all this is not a wargame.

There are three benefits from this system.
- 1 unit or 30 units, it takes almost the same amount of time
- The Ai-player has an equal chance
- It's easy to incorporate recruitment and supply in it (if you are a math genious).

Also. You can decide how much damage a unit can take before it retrait.

[Mark_Everson]

Gentlemen:

Sorry, but task forces being able to move around on individual map squares has been locked in since before our first demo! Stuff2, I'm sure what you're presenting is a viable game concept, but we can't go shaking Clash to the foundations every time someone new shows up. I hope you can see that we would never be able to make any progress then. (Besides Richard has proposed almost exactly the same thing before) So you are all of course free to go on discussing this idea in any detail you want, but as far as I can see it's going to have no influence on the project whatsoever.

Those of you who do not want to move individual units around can turn that part of the game over to the AI. This gives you what you want, but allows the military types, which include me, to be able to move around individual task forces if we want. I think Clash would be taking a great step backwards with respect to what is in the genre if we allowed for nuanced technology, government, and economic models, while gutting the military aspect of the game .

Perhaps if this thread could evolve into suggestions for what sort of directives you would expect the AI to be able to follow so that you can only very broadly guide the military aspect of your civilization, it could help us later on.