Military Model III

[Mark_Everson]

I just found out from Harli that the Assault phase model had been posted like a month ago, and at least I was unaware of it. Please let us know what you think about the Assault phase model. I am reviewing the model now, but don't have anything concrete to say yet... Harli warned me that he is likely to be out of circulation for a bit. So don't take offense if he doesn't respond to your comments in a timely fashion.

[Richard Bruns]

I have posted a proposal in the provincial sizes thread that would affect the way the military operations are handled. It should have no effect on the battle number crunching, which I think is done well.

The key to the new plan is that provinces are not split up by military action and that province sizes can be very different. I think that a province based military system could do fine with this kind of map.

I proposed a province based system in another thread. I'll copy it here:

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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.
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The possibility of different sized provinces means that I will have to modify the proposal. I will concentrate on the ranges of the units and the fighting in the provinces.

The system should work well for small provinces, where most civilizations are and most fighting will be done. However, there could be a few problems with the treatment of larger, wasteland provinces.

Defending forces are assumed to be distributed throughout the province. Attacking forces are assumed to be gathered in some square inside their province of origin. The range of attacking armies would be based on this square.

If a province lies entirely in the range of an attacking army, which it usually will, the province could potentially be conquered in one turn. If part of the province lies outside the range, it will take another turn to finish the conquest.

At any time there are two enemy armies inside a single province or the province is not controlled by a single civ, that province is classified as a war zone. War zone provinces would have many different economic and social characteristics, but that is not important here.

If the two armies are entrenched and/or very closely matched, provinces could be war zones for several years. They could also be war zones for longer periods if an arny cannot conquer them all at once. The time it takes to conquer a province is based on the range from the original starting square.

As an example, suppose you wanted to have an army based in Moscow conquer a large Siberian province that had minimal enemy forces. If no part of that province was in the one-turn range, you could not start the attack this turn and would have to move the armies first. But if some percantage was in range, you could start the conquest this turn.

If no part of the province was outside the two-turn range of your armies, you could finish the conquest in two turns. The province would be a war zone for two turns. But if a signifigant part of the province was outside the two-turn range, the conquest would take three turns and the province would be a war zone for an extra turn.

The effect of this is that the larger provinces can tie up an invading army for several years. This would prevent armies from taking "short cuts" through large provinces like they can in some games with this type of territory system.

It might not make sense that a garrisom army in a large territory could defend the territory as well as a smaller patch of land. Wouldn't they be more spread out and have longer to travel to meet an attacking army? Yes, but the attacker has the same problem. The invading army will have a lot of ground to cover, so the garrison will be able to gather and meet them in battle someplace in the middle of the territory.

Also, large territories will almost always be worthless wastelands with little or no strategic value, supplies, or support facilities. Armies would almost never want to go into them.

Most fighting would be done in the smaller, more valuable provinces. These will ususally be small, with a regular shape. In many cases they will have land area equal to two or three squares in the current map syatem, so the province based fighting should be about the same as the previous square based fighting.

[Lord God Jinnai]

Actually I am not a wargammer. I like everything in your idea except the all or nothing province idea. It is a good idea for speeding up the game, but shouldn't be manditory.

Although it can speed up multiplayer games, it doesn't allow for strategic conquests of tiny areas that may be of great importance. Take for instance the war between Iran and Irag not long ago. The fought over a strip of land not 100 miles wide and not much longer either. Basically they ignored the rest of the area except to draw attention from troops or for stategic strikes, not conquest. This area, maybe an entire square in clash terms, if that, was so important because it contained the link to the Persain Gulf which each side wanted more of at the expense of the other. The entire province was NOT a warzone, just that area. With that system This type of system couldn't happen. No, instead one person would eventually have to conquer the entire province or leave.

Also another reason this *MAY* be a problem is the fact that province sizes change over time, espicially early on.

Other than that I like it. In fact I'd perfer that approach, just not ness province based conquest. I haven't ever really been for that type of conquest ever, though. I think its just simplfying things too much like RISK that to me atleast it looses a lot of appeal and would almost make me not want to play it.

[Richard Bruns]

I assumed that important strategic provinces would be really small anyway, but LGJ is right; there could be some situations where province based fighting is limiting.

Wargamers will want the square by square fighting. I find that this type of thing takes a lot of micromanagement and lasts forever. Perhaps the default could be province based, but players could order special single-square assaults if they felt the need to. For multiplayer, this ability could be turned off if people want a faster game.

[alms66]

Perhaps there could just be an order that you can give to your TF, army group, or whatever, called "conquer entire province."

[Mark_Everson]

TK:

Yep, that is the planned solution. Or at an intermediate level, you can ask the AI to specify a plan and then approve it, or suggest something else at a high level. It will only fail to satisfy the non-military types, I think, if we blow it with the AI...

Richard:

I know you are just making a suggestion of a possible alternate method of movement. I agree your approach would streamline the action and drastically simplify the job of writing the AI. But I think we would lose the interest of most of the wargaming types that play civ-type games, including me. And if we do a decent job with the AI you shouldn't have to micromanage unit movement anyway... So I guess I don't understand why you're suggesting we might want to rearrange the whole system, since it should already give you most of what you want. Even in demo 4 you can put your military on automatic. Just add a few more controls (and make the AI a Lot better, I admit) and you should be where you want to be.

[Henrique Duarte]

My take on this one:

I would prefer computer determined provinces:
Improvements would change province shape but, the improvements effect should be well considered in order to avoid micromanegement (personaly I think this is possible).
This relates to military matters because I would also like the map to retain squares/hexagons (I prefer the last). I am also of the opinion the fight for strategic possessions is a must for added fun. Full scale national wars were relatively rare events compared to all the fight that went on for possession of important resources. For those that want less micromanagement, I think that this approach would still be fun because you could have options like "wage war of attrition", "conquer rich squares A and B", "paradrop/spec op on square c", "demand square A or B in diplomatic options" etc etc.

And last but not least:
Remember that not all wars were quick marches to total victory...or total DEFEAT!

(which could easely happen if you only had one or two provinces in your civ)

[Richard Bruns]

I am aware that my system will only work if we can reduce the square size and make important and strategic provinces small, possibly as small as two squares in the current map. I think that this can be done. If provinces are static, then we can make the square size a lot smaller and save processor time by making large provinces in areas no one will care about. Then, the valuable and strategic places can have small, detailed provinces. Civilizations will then have more provinces on average, so a single province won't be as big or important as it is now. Many of the disadvantages of static provinces should go away with smaller squares and provinces.

More details about this are in the provincial sizes thread.

[Mark_Everson]

Harli (and Krenske when you get back):

The model looks really interesting, now that I've had a chance to read it and think about a bit. It looks a bit expensive in terms of calculations, but probably not prohibitively so. There are of course a lot of details that aren't quite clear at this level of presentation, but putting those aside I have one important question on the military model. That question is are you confident that you can come up with some quick-and-dirty way to simulate battle outcomes that the AI can use? This would be at the level of putting a few numbers together in an equation with random factors to gauge a likely result. P. In other words, the level of calculations for running the actual battles that occur doesn't bother me so much. But the AI needs a way to figure out how many battles that Might happen are likely to turn out. As I said before I think that "docking" your battle model to a simplified version that the AI can use is critical in getting a decent strategic AI working. Have you thought it all about how to estimate the effective military power of a task force in some way that would allow streamlined estimation of battle results?

The other thing that struck me with the model was the fact that there appears to be no interaction between the different parts of the battle. I may have missed it, or may have been inadvertently left out of the model document, but it seems that once mini-fights in a battle get going, nothing connects them. I think it's critical that a clear-cut victory along one part of the front should translate into an immediate advantage for the victor as they reallocate the troops to turn the tide in an adjacent battle sector. I won't display my ignorance any further until I hear what you have to say about these things

In general it looks Really good. Sorry I didn't see it earlier....

[Harlikwin]

Hey Mark, sorry it took so long to get back to you... Well, the interaction between the parts of the battle is conducted by a leadership check. The advantage there being a superior general will move to the more casualty/morale inflicting parts of a battle before the crappy general and will likely win. As for quick and dirty, well realisitcally there are only a few formulas to actually deal with, it's just that they have a whole lot of variables... As for docking with the AI I really don't know, though this system will have realistic results so perohaps the AI should evaluate the variables, generalship, troop strength tech differences and such rather than trying to chug through the battle by itself... Thats just my though...

-Harli

[Mark_Everson]

Harli:

Thanks for the response.

Well, IMO the inability for troops to switch over to a new part of the battle when theirs is finished is a big weakness in an otherwise good model. I might rout the other guys on the right flank first, but because there is no connection, they might actually subsequently beat me in the center and on the left flank. So the model would give the victory, as I perceive it, to the wrong side.

The AI will definitely need a quick and dirty shorthand to figure out rough battle results. I guess we can work these out when the battle model is a little further along.

[TheLimey]

The strategic iscale of the game is very interesting. Is the game only intended to be played on an epic scale though, and not be scalable downwards to a tactical or semi-tactical level, where some of the most enjoyable action was had in Civ2 scenarioes?

Also, what is the state of play with the map? How about sea cities or space stations?
Are there layers? Can you avoid combat by going 'over' or even perhaps 'under'?

I assume that TF's can sense within their range. Have you considered multi-faceted detection where different visibility classes have different ranges?

[Frank80878]

I just want to say tha tme and my friends are all waiting for clash to come out because so far it seems like the most realistic strategy type game ever. For the military aspects of the game the strategic parts look great, but I was confused about some things. I'm going to put my question in the context of the Gulf War. Would I control the individual units (82nd airborne, 101st airmobile) or would I attack have to use them as a TF (XIII corps, VII corps), or all the corps combined (3rd Army)?

On almost a seperate note if you do use individual divisions what is the smallest scale for tactical decisions (platoon, squad, or perhaps Brigades)?

In my group of friends our opinion is the more tactics the better.

[roquijad]

Hi all,

I usually don't post in military threads, I'm simply not a wargammer. As such, just let me ask you to do your best on AI, so we non-wargammers, can enjoy the game the same without using too much time on military issues.... alright? Anyway, a good mil model is I guess the most important factor for success in this type of games, so go and introduce all the complexity you think is needed!

On a different topic: Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me recruiting troops isn't yet a well developed field in the model. The only topic related to this I found was "mobilization" and it wasn't much. I ask it because it has some implications for the govt model, so I want to know how far you've gone with recruiting stuff before I explore its exact relations with the govt model.

Rodrigo

[alms66]

I'm not the military guy, so don't take my word as law, but I think the TF's are more or less to reduce micromanagement. Since it's up to the player whether or not to combine units into TF's, if you wanted to move each unit individually, you can. The individual units will be essentially just like those in Civ2, though the mechanics behind them will be more complex and realistic. But there will be some advantage to making TF's,... the combined arms thing.

And if I remember correctly, the size of a "unit" will be app. the size of modern battalions.