Military Model V

[colorrr]

In civ III I have the impression the fortity command has no defensive effect. Anyone to confirm this?
I guess what LDiCesare is saying that all units that execute the fortify command gets a defensive bonus?

[Plutarck]

In Civ3 any unit which uses the "Fortify" command gains +25% defense when attacked. Thus having such a command would go quite well in Clash, and also allows TFs who are fortified a way not to get called up when you choose "Next TF". Would make management easier later on, certainly, and you can more easily keep track of who's a garrison and who isn't.

You might want to tinker with a combat calculator for Civ3 to see how it handles it. I have a modified one available online using my customized LWC rules, but it's pretty close to how Civ3 does it. Here it is: http://207.191.20.18/civ3/lwc-civulator.html

I would, however, reccommend that the Fortify command be handld more gradualy, such as a unit gaining +5% per turn they spent Fortified, up to a maximimum of some amount (25% seems a good number). An instant bonus of 25% always seemd to hurky-jurky to me, and I think most people would agree.


Also, my post in the Terrain thread mentions how I believe such terrain defense should be handled, as well as terrain movement, so I'll just link it here rather than re-post it. Makes more sense in context anyway (my post above it also deals with related issues):

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=709769#post709769

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by LDiCesare
I think the fortify order as in civ represents this quite well.
Additionnally, in the current code, legion units have engineer elements which are used to put up fortifications at the beginning of a fight.

Hi Laurent:

So if you were to sit there for two turns would you get more benefit from your engineers? Presumably in real life you might from another month's work at hardening a position in a square. Can you remind me how the engineer bonus is calculated.

It occurs to me that it would be useful to have a synopsis of what is coded so far, and what is going to be there in the near future. It could go here, or in a new "Military Coding" thread. (At least I don't think we have one of those yet!) Are you game for that? You could probably grab most of it from the emails you have sent us other coders over the last few months... At least I think it would be a useful reference.

[LDiCesare]

So if you were to sit there for two turns would you get more benefit from your engineers? Presumably in real life you might from another month's work at hardening a position in a square. Can you remind me how the engineer bonus is calculated.

Not currently. Fortifications are built during the manoeuver phase (you can refer at Krenske's model, but actually the fortification bonus I set depending on the number of engineers rather than rounds of fight). Additionnally, a fortify order can give defense bonus. I doubt that an army without getting extra credit to build fortifications would get any bonus of entrenching / fortifying for more than one month.

It occurs to me that it would be useful to have a synopsis of what is coded so far, and what is going to be there in the near future. It could go here, or in a new "Military Coding" thread

There used to be such a thread but it must be burrowed so deep I'll probably create a new one. I will try to do it cleanly so it will take some time, but I sure will.

[Richard Bruns]

The tech tree will certainly have a "Fortification" technology. It would improve both fixed fortifications and battlefield actions.

[Mikael]

A tech like "tactics" or "army hierarchy" could help an army take maximum advantage of defensive terrain. Because without an organized command structure, there's no way you can build a solid defensive system. These techs would be, as far as I understand the tech model, "level2" techs, with some applications related to them (for example "use of the battlefield radio" or, better yet, "kamikaze messenger pigeons" ).

About a post you made earlier, Mark, I thought extensive numbers would be left out of the game? Or has the design philosophy changed?

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Mikael:

I'm not sure which statement about numbers you're referring to, although I admit I didnt look really carefully. My basic position is that some will want them, and some won't. And if we can satisfy both that's best. I dont' consider that a change from what my opinion has been. For the time being we'll be showing a lot of numbers that won't be mandatory later just because it helps understanding of the system and debugging.

Long term I'd like to see an option for a number-free system, and well as an "accountant's dream" system, and a few steps between. As with everything else it'll come down to project resources and the opinions we get.

[LDiCesare]

Training

How should training be handled?
Should we have a training center facility that increases skill of units or build units with minimal training, or both?
Training centers: Can only train units which are in-town or in-civ, and don't have any other thing to do this turn. Could be handled by an order "training" the way we should have an order "fortify". If/when the unit is fully trained, it would ask for a new order.
Minimal training level: Don't allow for units to be built unless they have minimal training. The point is it will be faster to build a unit with training of 5/5 than build it with 0 and then train it, because training is all services and you may have an economy which delivers lots of services but little production, so getting all the services would be as fast as getting all the production (think training with wood poles before the metal spears are made, and learning formations without actual equipment).

[Blakis Maximus]

Hi LDiCesare,

I think units should only be able to train inside a city (which has the necessary improvement, perhaps?), not just out in the open field.

Also, I like the idea of building better trained troops as a function of time, but I think it should be harder than that. I think there is a limit to how many Navy Seals you can get out of a population no matter how much time is spent training them. Really elite troops just take a special kind of person. Thus, I think the higher the training is put into a unit (or TF), their size shrinks proportionally (or you are limited to fewer of these units - something). Now you have the situation where you could build a lot of cheap untrained units quickly, or spend a long time making fewer elite units...

Blakis

[colorrr]

This is an interesting question.

I like the idea of barracks producing recruits, an amount per turn depending upon how many barracks build. These recruits can the be used to form new units or replace losses in existing ones.
The new units would be regulars in experience and moral and the player could train them more by placing them in a military academy, or he could use them as they are.

Are we going to picture small elite forces like Seals in the game?

Jorgen

[Mikael]

I thought there was a "military" infrastructure class in the econ model. That would model barracks and the like.

[Mikael]

And if we follow the model it would be modeled on a province level. So my guess is that training level should be a function of several factors:

- amount of money spent on mil. infra combined with time.

- techs. Not really techs, rather doctrines such as "nationalism" or "conscription" or whatever.

- culture attributes. The more agressive and militaristic cultures should be able to produce elite units easier than the others (Sparta, Prussia...). For a peaceloving culture that would be almost impossible.

[Mark_Everson]

I think that units should be built with The Minimum necessary amount of training for it to function. But minimum does not mean 0. The minimum amount of training should be different for every unit. It should be relatively high for phalanx and Roman legion units, and also high for modern tank units and such. After that we should handle training separately at some sort of training facility. However, there could certainly be a civ-wide training slider where the player could move the default training level for units between something like 50% of normal and 300% of normal. I agree with Blakis that the combat effectiveness you get out of training should be on a nonlinear scale (diminishing returns).

I have always thought it would be useful to have two different scales for units, one for training, and one for actual experience. Both would give diminishing returns as the inputs increase. But the attractive part of having two of them, is that lots of training with no experience only gets you so far, and vice versa. It is only with lots of training and lots of experience that you can get a really elite unit. However, this may be too complicated for the game...

I'm not sure I like the idea of local training facilities, since it is a potential source of micromanagement. At this point I'm thinking that may be just doing the whole thing at the civ level would be adequate. But I need to think on that a little more.

As for small elite forces, personally I think that's too detailed. But one could have an elite element in an otherwise normally-trained unit that could give it some extra punch. I do agree with the basic point that you can't have All elite units kinda by definition . But I'm not sure about a good way to handle that. IMO we should wait until things are further along before we worry too much about that.

Colorrr, I don't see why barracks should produce recruits. The recruits are there in the population anyway. Maybe its just a language issue. I would phrase it that training infrastructure takes recruits and turns them into trained soldiers, though at a cost.

Mikael, there may be military infra, just haven't gotten that far yet... for now all the infra is at the square level, although that may turn out to be impractical later on. I'm not sure I see how nationalism affects needed training. The nationalistic zeal of the troops doesn't go that far on the battlefield if they're incompetent. I agree there should be cultural tie-ins, but that's another one that should wait until everyone has seen what is in the govt/social model and played with it in demo 7!

[Gary Thomas]

I would like to signal the beginning of another of my "let's do it differently" efforts.

My personal preference is that elements should be available to the player who wants to manipulate them. Also, I believe the size of an element should be determined by the number of men in it, which should be a variable in the element. I also think that the player should be able to set these sizes, and arrange the units in the way that they prefer, rather than having them given in a fixed form.

I have two thrusts for this preference.

One is that the course of the Pacific war was determined by the Japanese SNLF (Special Naval Landing Force) which were element sized, not unit sized. It is impossible to replicate the course of that war with the present Clash military model.

The other is that the present model precludes a player making some of the significant changes that have affected military history. The Marian reforms of the Roman army, for example, would have to be presented externally under the present model ("OK, now you are able to build a manipular legion"). I like the idea of players being able to experiment with different organizational patterns (or not, if they don't wan to).

I certainly don't like the way in which units are currently constrained to 10 arbitrary elements completely outside the player's control.

I don't feel that Seals or Commandos have ever had any significant effect on military history, so while they could be built under this system, they would be ineffective at the strategic level. On the other hand, the SNLFs were effective at the strategic level.

Cheers

[LDiCesare]

Training:
I will build units with 0 training and hopefully have some infrastructure so that units where there is military infra will be able to train. I would like a slider to say how much I want my troops trained. I bet coding that is still quite far so I won't elaborate now.
As for diminishing returns, it's easy to have. It is also easy to put experience in the code at the same level as training except gained differently, (even though I don't like it much).

Gary:
What you want is basically a Unit workshop.
This has been discussed and not decided upon I think. Mainly, the idea is to allow various organization changes based on techs. If you want reorganizing elements in/between existing units, it is a bit more complicated but just () in the code, not in the model itself. Units are a benefit if you don't want to merge together all the elements behind everytime. They also give value to organizational warfare techs.
Also,
Units are not limited to any size. You can have 1-element units, although they may be quite weak if fighting alone against big units.
I think most ships will need 1-element units, or fewer than 10, since 10 war ships was already a big flotilla as far as I know.