Military Model IV

[Richard Bruns]

Unit Icons

Originally posted by Gary Thomas
One aspect is that we will have a limited number of icons for troops, so we must accept that the same icon represents different forces, even in the same game. Here I see potential problems.

Have you seen my ideas for displaying the unit elements as small icons? This allows us to have a large stock icon to represent the general army type, with detailed icons to display the elements. Obviously I'm not an artist, and this extra display would be optional:

http://wcuvax1.wcu.edu/~rb22393/taskforces.html

Would this make it any easier to implement a "task force workshop"?

[Gary Thomas]

The map is almost unreadable as it is. Trying to add more information will just make it worse. The unit details box will give detailed information on the selected square (or it will when I get the !@#$%#&! scroll bars working).

Cheers

[Mark_Everson]

Yes, cities should have an intrinsic defence from the population. But it depends Heavily on the culture, tech level, and probably some other stuff. For D5 I'd say we should just forget it. For D6 we can fake up something.

[Gary Thomas]

On a more general note.

The original Civ games and clones all had all their military based on standing armies. Without actually doing the calculations, I suspect that about 5% of military activity in the history of the human race has been carried out by standing armies.

The four great wars of recent centuries (the American Civil War, the Great South American War, the First and Second World Wars) were all fought largely by conscripts or volunteers, with only cadres of professional soldiers. Except fo rthe South American war, each lasted only one economic turn.

Rome had no standing army until the reforms of Marius. Greece (with the possible exception of the Sacred Band) none until Phillip of Macedon.

Asian armies, except for royal bodyguards, tended to be ad hoc organizations.

In the early middle ages, the only standing "armies" were royal bodyguards (housecarls). In the later middle ages, the Spanish Tercios were a standing army.

There were small standing armies in the period from the Thirty Years War to the Napoleonic era.

It concerns me that the Clash military model has ONLY standing armies provided for.

Cheers

[Richard Bruns]

I don't know much about the military model, but there seems to be an easy way around this: make the military units cheap, able to be produced quickly, and give them high upkeep. To model reality, a turn of upkeep should be about as expensive as creating the army in the first place, but we don't have to go that far. With this system, large conscript armies could be thrown together quickly and then disbanded after the fight, like they usually were in real life. Obviously these rookies would compare unfavorably to professional corps, but the sheer numbers of these short-term standing armies would make them important.

I think that it would be good to model the scramble to militarize that most countries have historically faced when they start a war. Large chunks of the enonomy would be used to support the army, and then when they are no longer needed the army would be disbanded to allow the economy to return to normal.

[Mark_Everson]

What is currently coded has only support for standing armies. There has already been a fair amount of thought put into mobilization and demobilization including economic effects. However I can't find the relevant threads right now, and we never achieved a real spec on the issues anyway. What Richard says is certainly a decent way to handle the issue broadly. Certainly my ideas on the topic are that the very large costs of standing armies should be strongly reflected in the game. IMO this is probably a D7 issue, so I'm not going to try to put forward a detailed model at this point.

[LDiCesare]

Note that you can toy with the cost for building and supporting armies in the xml file that defines units and elements, so Richard's approach is testable. It could also be used as a way to trigger defense of a city:
If a city is being invaded, all its production could be used to fuel one kind of unit (to be determined - which kind - how?). That would require some coordination between econ and military turns, but that would solve the problem that invading armies don't lower the production of invaded squares.

[Richard Bruns]

Copy from Demo 5 countdown thread

Gary Thomas

The known bugs:
....
7. Sometimes an overwhelming force doesn't damage a vastly inferior force in combat.

Richard Bruns

It occurs to me that #7 may not be a bug at all, it might be an intended result of the mil model. Even if it isn't it could be a useful feature. In many cases, especially guerilla war, a tiny force has the ability to evade detection and direct confrontation while harassing a larger force. Even if we do find this bug, it might be good to save it and isolate it and allow partisans, guerillas, and commandos to exploit it.

LDiCesare

Point 7 may be a consequence of the fact that outnumbered armies flee in the model. I probably didn't change the square they were in, at least for defending armies.

Gary Thomas

I have a feeling that the unit was a cavalry unit, so it probably got away.

Richard Bruns

So normal units run away when outnumbered, presumably moving to some other square. I like that; it is much better than the "fight to the death" in so many other games.

It seems like it should be easy to set a flag for partisan or guerilla type units to let them stay in the same square when they "retreat" from a fight. That way they can stay around to harass the invading army, and cannot be dislodged easily.

Mark_Everson

That's a good idea on partisans Richard. You may want to stick it in the mil thread so it doesn't get lost here, though I think we'll probably remember it since it makes sense.

[Mark_Everson]

Hi all:

Laurent sent me an issue in an email a ways back, and I thought it should be addressed here.

The model gives a very
important advantage to high numbers, so it should be
tested whether it seems unbalanced: Lots of small units
will always win against same firepower but less armies. I
already biased Krenske's model somewhat, but that may not
be enough.

My take on this issue is that the asymmetry Laurent states isn't necessarily fatal, but that what we present as military power (FE what is shown in Power Circles [PCs] that the player sees) Must represent the real combat power of the Task Force. Because when the player sees two equal-sized PCs it should tell the player that any battle would likely be a tossup. Otherwise the PCs have no real usefulness! Perhaps we can come up with a simple function of firepower, unit number, etc. that can be used to show the player the real effective power of the units.

[Gary Thomas]

This thread is getting full, but I am not sure what is involved in starting a continuation thread.

Cheers

[Mark_Everson]

I can do it when I get a bit of time. If you want to do it, be my guest. Basically the formula is:
1. a link to the preceeding discussion
2. links to any other critical discussions or web pages
3. Ideally a synopsis of any new model, though in this case not much has changed.
4. Status of coding for the model

You can look at the first post in this thread to get the idea.

[Gary Thomas]

How do you create links?

Given that information, I will have a go at it.

Cheers

[Mark_Everson]

Use the little http:// box on the toolbar just above where you enter the text for a post. Or you can use html assembled by hand.

[Gary Thomas]

Sorry, that is not an adequate description. The http: button asks for an URL, and I don't know what to type at that point.

Cheers

[Mark_Everson]

Gary: I've gone ahead and done it... You can now see by example what happens. The thing I forgot to say before is that at the end of the old thread you need to put a link to the new one.

This Thread has gotten too big, and is now Closed. The discussion continues in the Military Model V thread .