Military Model IV

[F_Smith]

Just a random musing . . .

For deployment orders, does 'left wing' or 'right wing', or anything so specifically tactical, really work on this strategic scale?

Should orders given represent more of a 'strategic' scale than actual location of individual units? More like:

[*]'Refuse battle' [*]'Attack ignoring losses'[*]'Attack until x% losses received'[*]'Defend at all costs'[*]'Fighting withdrawl'[*]'Recon in force'?[/list]

In other words, don't give the Task Force 'deployment orders', but give them 'mission orders' on how to react to an enemy presence?

Just thinking out loud.

[Mark_Everson]

F_Smith:

I think both types of orders have a place in the game. At least left flank will have meaning if the battle model isn't greatly simplified from what it is now. (Though for front-level modern battles such things don't mean as much.)

But I think since Krenske is just working over the battle model that its much more practical to work on the more generic type of orders first. We could go a long way just with the more strategic sorts of orders and a very simple battle model like my old demo 4 one.

What do you think Laurent & Krenske?

[F_Smith]

The main thing I'm thinking about 'tactical' orders is that this will be so dependent on local battlefield terrain and conditions (a scale so small that we won't be including any info on it in the game) that there is almost no way to make that kind of decision in advance.

Agincourt's deployment worked *only* because of the specific terrain and weather. On a flat, open plain with no rain, the tactical choice that Henry made would have been suicide. I just don't see playing this game on that level of detail.

Am I wrong?

[Lord God Jinnai]

I haveto agree with F_Smith here. For most player, deciding whether to hold your cavlry back for a surprise flank won't be happening too much. Also he's right about the terrain. What good will a charge order do uphill against the well defended enemy as apposed to downhill? The player won't know whether the batte is uphill or downhill, but will be able to tell his generals to pull back if there's too much loss (and depending on the general, since ocassionaly the general will disobey because he thinks he can win or doesn't want his men to die needlessly).

Also for what the AI is concerned, when determining how these battles are won or tied, i think we should keep it simple w/o sacrafising too much in strategy because this will really bog down turns later in the game if your generals have all the various type of options your thinkng about.

[Krenske]

At present I am working on having no actual deployment orders as it does not truly fit with the scale and needs to take terrain into account. General execution orders do though have a place. I currently believe that a TF should be given various orders which effectively break down to move, attack, fortify and defend. These will have a intensity qualifier that ranges from light to all out. The order determines the type of engagement and the intensity is used in morale checks to see if the TF has reached its retirement point.

Terrain is taken into account as a modifier to the defence values and as a limiter on opening engagement ranges. The effects of terrain can be reduced/enhanced through scouting and successful maneuvering. The more mobile force, with better scouts and a good general will normally make much better use of terrain.

Please note that with many weapons unit dispersal is minimal and thus they have a very low maximum benefit from terrain. In the days of legions and phalanx's both sides strove to maintain dense formations and as such they have almost no benefit from terrain due to the commanders of each side looking for suitable battle terrain. In fact trying to fight with low dispersal in high terrain values will incurr major penalties to firepower due to disruption of formations.

Tactical orders could be used if actual battle maps were to be used with individually maneuvreing units. That though is not what the initial model is to provide. It should be a way of determining the results of a battle between two forces somewhere within a X Km across square.

[Mark_Everson]

Hi All, good discussion! I think Krenske's approach strikes a reasonable balance. What does everyone else think?

It occurs to me though that maybe we should divert some effort at this point to specing out some units at least approaching the final stats we're going for. The reason is that building of units ties into econ and population (and maybe even ethnic group) areas. So I think it would be beneficial to at least sketch out this area in more detail so we find any inconsistencies quicker. We certainly should be able to build units / TFs in the demos fairly soon.

Because the battle model is more self-contained I'd favor pushing some discussion of building units ahead of it. Since just a raw comparison of military power a la demo 4 can get us fairly far IMO. Opinions, flames, etc.?

[Krenske]

Hi all

I have started a new combat model draft, it is available at http://www.usq.edu.au/users/krenske/game/g/combat.htm .

I will gladly update the pages with any alterations desired and decided upon.

As to the unit based discussion, I am all in favour. Unfortunately I will have be away for 3 days just now but I will be back.

A couple of notes though regarding the model as it currently stands. Each strength point of the unit (read as elements) equates to approximately 500 men. The elements would make a suitable unit building block for a square. Just about any square would be able to free up 500 men to form a element.

A legion of 5-6000 men would have about 10-12 elements that can be gathered from a range of squares within a region within a turn. Thus allowing rapid (and realistic) unit construction times. What the elements are equipped with can be the more time consuming thing. Building up a store of 500 suits of armour/assault rifles/warhorses takes time and will most likely be done ahead of time to some degree.

[LDiCesare]

My proposal wasn't so much about tactical orders as about "how can I leverage combined arms tactics?"
It is easier to do it realistically if I know the catapult is behind the phalanx and no cavalry can outflank it.
I agree with Mark that we can wait for such detail.

In devising units, can we start at the archaic and try to think of tech requirements?

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Krenske:

Thanks for putting the new model up, although I could have used to guide to what was old and what was new, since a lot of things looked really familiar . I wrote down some comments to pass on to you, but I left them at work... oops. The one thing I remember from the list is that you have a lot of things like training levels and experience levels that you imply are integers. I really want to stay away from things that change in big jumps. If you just meant that they are reported to the player as "green", "seasoned", "veteran" etc. I got no problem with that. But behind the scenes a unit that is most of the way from seasoned to veteran should fight almost like a veteran, so I think floating point values are the way to go for these things.

Just remembered another thing... in the units writeup it says that elements are 100 men, I take it that 500 is the new definition? That sounds better to me anyway... I look forward to getting you into the unit build discussions.

Laurent:

Yes, I think we should definitely start with ancient units. However, since the technology system really isn't there I'm not sure we gain much by thinking about tech requirements. I think will scratch that I think we will be there in maybe a month or so... The way I would go about development now is for us to pick two or three kinds of units we think would be interesting. (Perhaps the ones we already have graphics for would be best) We could also define some classes of Weapons, and figure out how to build either elements or whole units as defined by Krenske. Not that we should have every value that in his table yet, just a few would probably be sufficient. At that point we could then build units, train them, and also fight very simplified battles just using the units hand-to-hand range and firepower. Having different weapons types could be interesting, especially if you do a "rise of the Hittites" scenario where the player is the only one that has iron weapons. I guess iron weapons would have something like twice the "firepower" of the bronze equivalent.

Anyway, those are my opinions on the direction we should be going. I admit it's partly colored by the fact that I am running the economy model, and would like to start to get an idea of how units weapons and such are built .

[LDiCesare]

I read Krenske's model.
It looks like I'll have a few things to code .

Paul, I currently have TaskForce/Unit subdivision in the code. It seems you also have Unit/Element. I think you unit is a small task force. Currently, TFs are made of Aries which can be either TFs or Units. I'd tend to map my (code) Unit to your Element and the (code)TaskForce to both your Unit and TaskForce. I may be missing something, though. What do you think? Note a side effect of TFs being made of TFs is that you can break down whatever level of detail you'd like to (but I don't think any player would do that).

There are sevral infos about what a unit description should have in the model, but it is very elaborate given the current state of military code.
In order to define our units, we should know what will define them: I write it as a pseudo-xml format because it could be put in text files somewhere and I saw code which looked like paring xml so here it goes:
(I call unit types "archetypes", actual units referring to their archetype - the f's at the end of figures are for 'float', never mind if you do not program)
The phalanx figures ARE SILLY. I just want to show what data we could use (probably I won't code support for much of what I write here within the next weeks but well...)
I put with a ? those that I haven't begun coding at all.

Archetype name = "Phalanx"
Attack value = "1.0f"/
Defense value = "1.0f"/
DistanceAttack value = "0.0f"/
Move value = "2.5f"/
AllowedOrders value ="Attack,Garrison,Fortify"/
!-- note Fortify mayn't be allowed for an elephant unit special abilities like: Spying, Scouting, Skirmishing, can go here --/
RequiredTech name = "BronzeWorking" level = "0.5f"/
!-- power increases when bronzeworking increases beyond that point. --/
?Morale value = "1.0f"/
?Type name = "Man-based"/
?Mobility value = "1.0f"/
?ProductionCost value = "1.0f"/
?Armor value = "0.0f"/
?UpkeepCost value = "1.0f"/
?UseableWeapons list = "clubs,bronze weapons"/
/Archetype

The figures above could be the default for all types of units, we could then precise only those that are specialized when telling of a specific unit.
What info do you think are needed?
Anyone wants to add or remove some?
Paul, which ones do you deem most important if we stick to ancient warfare for now?
Mark, can you tell the econ production figures that are needed for the econ model?

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Laurent:

On building units... as far as I know in the OO design F. Smith had thought we should have units (perhaps elements in this case) assembled from Weapons and manpower with Training. Let's leave the manpower aside for now, since we will just arbitrarily grab a chunk of men from the populace until the population model gets further along. The cost to build the unit is simply then the cost for the weapons plus the cost for minimal training. I've already talked about that a little bit in the infrastructure thread, so I will just quote it here. Note that when I give the cost for unit I am lumping together the cost of weapons (pretty much solely manufactured goods abbreviated by P for production) and training which is almost purely services (S). I refer to the cost below in triples of the fundamental goods (F, P, S). If we want to have a system for specifying arbitrary units from pieces then we probably need to add a doctrine like "shock" for guys that charge at you and try to hack you to bits .

quote: Originally posted by Mark_Everson on 01-22-2001 07:30 PM I am now coding building of military units. The approach I'm taking is that when there are orders to build a military unit a temporary infra class is created to build that unit. The cost of that infra class will be the raw materials (food, manufactured goods, and services) amounts needed to complete the unit. So ancient warriors with clubs might cost (0, 3, 2) in the same order as above. The services need is mostly initial training. Additionally the people would also be needed. A legion might cost (0, 70, 50), and a modern armored division (0, 90,000, 120,000). When the cost is reached the temp infra class disappears, and out pops a shiny new unit.

So in the case of warriors, their clubs in light armor might cost 3P, and their minimal training 2S. For the legion it's a lot more of both. I hope this gives you what you need!

[F_Smith]

This may already be a part of the system, I might have missed it. But I thought I'd ask . . .

Will an 'element' be 'supported' by the province that creates it, every turn?

Like the game Diplomacy, since the time frame we're dealing with doesn't really fit with raising a specific group of soldiers (you'd have to re-raise the legion every turn), can an element be tied to the province that produces it, and that province (or mapsquare, I don't really know the specifics) provide replacements?

[Mark_Everson]

Krenske:

Here's the thing that I forgot that troubled me in the unit/element model. The description ascribes defence to dispersion and armor. For close-combat during much of the ancient period, dispersion is of no benefit. I think mixing dispersion with shields/armor is a bit weird. Did I misunderstand, can you comment?

F_Smith:

"Will an 'element' be 'supported' by the province that creates it, every turn?"

Generally not. Read the paragraph on supply in the intro to the mil model on the web page. (you need to scroll down a bit on the mil page to see it)

"Like the game Diplomacy, since the time frame we're dealing with doesn't really fit with raising a specific group of soldiers (you'd have to re-raise the legion every turn), can an element be tied to the province that produces it, and that province (or mapsquare, I don't really know the specifics) provide replacements?"

When the soldiers are at/near home I'd say yes. But if they're a long ways away they will need to re-man with locals. But an army will be able to get as far as men can get in the real world. At least that's the current plan!

[Lord God Jinnai]

I just have a question here, nothing too important right now, but i wanted to see what everyone thought.

If 2 TF units enter the same square from the same civ, but differnt provinces in a very loosely connected civ, either conferderation or loose feudal system, and the player controls in theory both of them, will they fight each other if they haven't a reason not to (ie both heading for a battle against a common enemy) and the leaders of each province hate each other. Remember, i said that this was a loose alignment, not a imperial or federation type gov where such would be more strictly controled from up above.

[Mark_Everson]

I'm not sure how far we can get into inter-provincial rivalries in a feudal or other loosely-controlled system. I think it'll just have to wait 'till we get much further along.