Military Model V

[Mark_Everson]

Well, my forum access was nonexistent today This is the first try where I got anything other than "go away".

Originally posted by Gary Thomas
Before getting too elaborate about ways in which the human player can issue orders, I think that, in fairness to the computer directed civilizations, that some more effective AI should be developed. That really is the next substantial (as opposed to fiddling round the edges, like adding roads or triremes) improvement that Clash needs (Mark, are you there?).

Well... I'd rate getting technology and the social stuff basically working above significant work on a more effective AI. Perhaps Diplomacy too, although without diplomatic AI, diplomacy would be pretty boring. I know I owe an AI spec for D6, but I was thinking to do this later in the D6 cycle after some of the other elements were there. I would rather do the big military AI model in one concerted push rather than incremental tweaks on what you have now. What is your position?

[Gary Thomas]

Hey! I am just the ever so humble coder. You are the AI designer.

Nevertheless, I would like to see the computer controlled civs a little smarter, at least with the ability to group their newly built forces for an attack (or a defense).

As far as movement orders for the human player are concerned, I think clever orders should wait until after the Command gui is developed. We can live with what we have now for the moment.

Cheers

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by Gary Thomas
Hey! I am just the ever so humble coder. You are the AI designer.

I'll remind you of that when your first salvo hits my AI design!

Nevertheless, I would like to see the computer controlled civs a little smarter, at least with the ability to group their newly built forces for an attack (or a defense).

Oh, if that's what you want, that won't take very long. I even had some pretty useful balance-of-power calculations for When its a good time to attack in D4 that could be ported over fairly easily when Diplomacy comes on line.

As far as movement orders for the human player are concerned, I think clever orders should wait until after the Command gui is developed. We can live with what we have now for the moment

Agreed.

[LDiCesare]

A small status on military code and a few questions to ponder

I added a few things, and tested a few existing things, in the code.
The current system seems to be more deadly than D5 code. Maybe we can lower the number of ticks to address that, or look at the following causes.

Morale:
I changed the odds to flee. They now depend on morale and the attack ratios of both opponents. I also changed the chances to successfully flee, so an outnumbered element wants to flee but, being surrounded, has problems managing it. Here is the formula I used: always at least 10%:
// For equal sides(ratio = 1): 50%
// Fleeing when having an advantage(2 to 1, ratio = 0.5): 90%
// Fleeing when having an disadvantage(1 to 2, ratio = 2): 30%
What do you think? Testing shows it may be extreme.
Also, currently, elements flee, not units. I can change that, so a unit will try to flee only if all its elements want to, which allows me to add some factor based on how much damage this unit has sustained. However, I think this shouldn't be always the case. For disciplined armies, morale should be high and units would retreat orderly (together), but barbarians, undisciplined armies, militias, should flee element-wise because they have no formation. What do you think?

Support fire:
I added an archer and tested it (NEED AN ARCHER OR CATAPULT IMAGE). It works but seems quite inefficient in comparison to an additional frontline element. This is due to 2 things:
1) Support orders, if outnumbered, are attacked by front liners, effectively preventing them from providing support fire.
2) Fights in the code always begin at close range. Krenske's model provided several ranges of fight. When that is coded, archers will be more useful, but that will not be coded in soon.

Fortifications:
I coded something for fortifications (engineer elements). That's not tested yet. I don't really like Paul's model there, because the amount of fortifications depends on a number of rounds which I find too random. That doesn't take into account existing fortifications or terrain, just field engineers (trenches and such). Any comments on Paul's model or proposal would be welcome here. I give a bonus to defense of 1/engineer for the party which won the manoeuvre phase. This needs some capping.

[LDiCesare]

AI (not the movie)

Edit: Moved what I said to the AI Thread.

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Laurent. I've gone ahead and started a new AI thread. Would you copy your post over there, since it would be better to have all that stuff in one place. The new thread is AI -- the Thread. I'll respond there.

[Gary Thomas]

NEED AN ARCHER OR CATAPULT IMAGE

There is an archer image already.

Boarding: I feel very strongly that units should never be split when boarding another unit. The ramifications of some elements of a unit being in one square, while others are in a different square are just too horrible to contemplate. Also, boarding should only ever go one deep - you should not be able to load infantry onto trucks, then load the trucks onto a transport. Both should be loaded directly onto the transport.

Location and boarding (for Laurent): The MovementData object should know when the unit it describes is being carried by another unit, and which unit it is. Then the getSquare method should check to see if the unit is being carried, and, if so, return the getSquare result of the carrying unit. In the long run, there should probably be a location interface. When a unit boards another unit, its location object gets replaced by another which points to the carrying unit. This avoids the unpleasant
"if (isBeingCarried())"
type of idiom.

Triremes: I do not believe that triremes should be able to be used as transport. I know that they can in Civ, but that is the kind of inaccuracy that we are trying to avoid. Actual transport ships (round ships, in the ancient era) should be used.

Ship units: I do not know how the size scaling applies to shipping. The 5000 soldiers system does not work very well for shipping. Presumably, a transport unit should have enough ships to carry 5000 soldiers. This is in the range (for ancient times) of 20-50 ships.

Persistence of shipping: In general, ancient ships were built for a purpose, used, then discarded. I doubt whether very many lasted more than a single (economic) turn. Certainly, when the crews of ancient galleys left them (at the end of a campaign) they tended to rot away, or get cannibalized for the wood. By Roman times, or even Successor State times, some of the larger vessels may have been maintained for longer periods, but I suspect that that was exceptional.

Cheers

[LDiCesare]

Boarding: I feel very strongly that units should never be split when boarding another unit. The ramifications of some elements of a unit being in one square, while others are in a different square are just too horrible to contemplate. Also, boarding should only ever go one deep - you should not be able to load infantry onto trucks, then load the trucks onto a transport. Both should be loaded directly onto the transport.

Agree 100%. I have moved the d5 element-based code to units, which is much simpler. I haven't checked layers yet, the only thing that I strongly believe is I must take care of the size of elements in a better way for the time there are some larger than others.

Then the getSquare method should check to see if the unit is being carried, and, if so, return the getSquare result of the carrying unit.

Yes, my question is how will you manage teh move of units on the map? Will you be able to recognize that the infantry unit cannot be walking on water thus it needn't try to call setSquare() or be taken into account as far as movement rates are considered? I won't provide any method unless asked for and return the carrier's square if asked for it.

[Gary Thomas]

I will have to think about this for a bit. My first impulse is to have carried units invisible on the map, but show up with some sort of "carried" indication in the TF box, inside the box of the carrying unit. Also, being carried is a physical thing - it does not affect commands - you cannot "carry" a command. So, as far as this is concerned I only have to worry about units. I would, in this case, need a list of carried units for each carrier. But don't do anything about it yet. Give me a little while to check the TF box code.

Cheers

[Mark_Everson]

I don't have anything to gripe about, just want you to know I like what you guys are saying...

Originally posted by Gary Thomas
Triremes: I do not believe that triremes should be able to be used as transport. *snip*
Ship units: Presumably, a transport unit should have enough ships to carry 5000 soldiers. This is in the range (for ancient times) of 20-50 ships.

Sounds like a good idea to me. So do we need a transport ship icon too?

Persistence of shipping: In general, ancient ships were built for a purpose, used, then discarded.

So long as we don't get annoying effects, sounds ok. Does this mean that merchants should be able to flash-build ships for a given purpose rather than needing to maintain a fleet?

[Gary Thomas]

I don't have anything to gripe about

Go see a doctor.

However, I was a little careless in my statements. A purpose could last for centuries - feeding Rome for example. Such ships would be replaced as needed, the whole fleet being more or less stable.

On the other hand, ferrying Darius' (or Alexander's) army across the Hellespont was an exercise in grabbing any shipping available and building some more as required. Whether the original owners got their ships back is problematical, though they probably did since they almost certainly provided the crews.

At no time until the Second World War did navies have specific transport components. And most of those in WW2 were requisitioned.

So, the mechanism would be (assuming the relevant technology had been achieved), first, requisition transport ships. This, I guess would be a government function (it sure ain't economics, except as far as the victims are concerned). Then, build the rest. You should probably allow around six months for this. This is economics.

Fleets were built pretty quickly, provided the knowledge was there. Getting crews was more difficult.

Merchant fleets plying fixed routes are more difficult to deal with. We really do not want to micromanage the grain fleets. Also, while there were depredations by pirates (or enemies) and loss to storms, that never really put a serious dent (in ancient times) in the flow of trade. On the other hand, the celebrated extermination of the pirates by the Romans would have made the ROI of the ships considerably higher. I would be inclined to abstract this part of shipping.

My main point, essentially, is that the maintenace cost of an ancient fleet, per year, is equal to its building cost, or at least somewhere in that ballpark. This includes non-consumables like shipwrights, that is, it takes as many shipwrights to maintain a ship as to build it.

And yes, we do need a transport ship icon.

Cheers

PS I still don't like two different time scales.

[Mark_Everson]

I've mostly finished the D6 Military Unit ROI approach. I went with the easiest one -- ROI is dependent upon the percentage of civ expenditures that go into Army Supplies. So if you have no army ROI is quite large, if you have a big army it gets worse every unit you build.

Originally posted by Gary Thomas
Go see a doctor.

I am sick, but just with a cold

PS I still don't like two different time scales.

Well, if you don't like two timescales, which of the following do you prefer...

1) ~ 50k turns (1mo/turn thousands of years)
2) 1-5 year turns in which any military unit can go anywhere on the globe
3) insert your favorite idea here (but its Really hard to get something that works well)

This has been discussed ad nauseam before in the Clash Scales thread, and links therein. (just skim a lot of the first post which isn't relevant to time scales) I'm game to discuss it yet again if you must, but I'd rather not...

[Gary Thomas]

It was a PS after all.

Cheers

PS I still don't like two simultaneous clocks. I just get confused.

[KrikkitOne]

In dealing with the timescale, (and particularly Experience)

I'd say the simplest way to explain it is Military units spend one month/turn in "action" the rest of the turn is recuperation, logisitics.

In which case the simplest method for handling experience would be to have it decay slowly over time (as in each turn there is a 1/X chance of experience dropping a level)..where X can depend on Training, the current level of experience, whether or not the unit has been in combat this turn, etc. (or it could just be a constant)

That way if a phalanx hasn't seen battle in 10+ turns, it should "reset" its experience. [the "lingering" of experience could be considered the "reputation" of the unit...its new recruits are innately better]

[Gary Thomas]

Actually, in the ancient era, most military units went back to important things between battles. You know - ploughing, harvesting, boasting...

Cheers