DESIGN: Possible alterations to movement -- the history discussion

[Gilgamensch]

Originally posted by SMIFFGIG
When the Persians attacked greece, this involved MUCH more than 100 ships, i would say its closer to 1000
So theres a second example for ya.

That is what I was referring to:

The biggest ship-battle I recall was named "the battle of 1000 ships" and it was involving the greeks (AGAIN.....).

[Locutus]

Don't have time for discussion now, but here are two interesting links for ship numbers: http://www.abc.se/~m10354/uwa/nav-batt.htm and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_naval_battles

[Gen.Dragolen]

Gilgamensch,

Another good example to indicate the scale of things is the Battle of Lepanto in 1571 had the Christians with about 200 ships and 30,000 fighting men and the Ottomans having about the same. The Turks suffered about 50% casualties, and the Christian forces about 25%.

So that meant about 150 sailors and troops per galley. And it is intersting that they were still using galleys for combat. Oars were still the preferred method of movement since the weather was not consistent or predictable enough. The other interesting point is that these warships spent most of their lives in dry dock undergoing repairs as the timber would deform if left too long in the water, and then potentially sink.

So this leads me to think we need a city improvement that would be needed to keep a fleet in repair: the shipyard. Each might be able to maintain so many ship units in an abstract logistics scheme.

Getting into some of the details about movement in historical times, I still think that land units need a range just like an air or naval unit to reflect their initial provisioning. In ancient times, units would be much better at living off the land. Game would be more plentiful since there wouldn't be so many people paving over the farmland to build strip malls, suburbs, and big-box stores.

Medieval units were more dependant on supplies from their base since they were usually much larger. With a good baggage train and footware, they should be able to move a little faster than the ancient units. Units going out of supply would usually starve to death.

Land units up to the evolution of the mechanized units, were still primarily moving around by marching. Again the primary think is their ability to carry supplies and have the logistics tail support them. So they are able to move fast and far when in supply, but would be severly limited if they were out of supply, they would be bled down until almost nothing.

Modern units have an additional needs: fuel and ammunition. Units can cover huge distances, but as soon as the fuel runs out, they are stuck.

What this leads to is the need for some additional unit parameters:
Range of Insupply movement
Movement Rate when in supply
Movement Rate when out of supply
Foraging Rate when out of supply

Getting into much more detail than that would require a large amount of details added to the terrain features which would impact the rate at which supplies can move from a depot, and the distance from the supply point. I think if would suffice to simply be able to trace a supply line back to your nearest supply point.

One good side effect of basing movement on supply status is that when the AI decides to send units deep into your territory, they will eventually starve to death when they get 15-20 squares away from their supply point. Makes the AI need to use scouts or explorer units that could be supply independant, but have no combat ability.

Anyways, there's my two cents on how movement should work.


D.

[Gilgamensch]

Just a quicklink for some historic stuff:

quite interresting:

Human-cat

[The Big Mc]

Where do you dig up this stuff

[Mihai]

Maybe the number of men in the units should vary in time. At the battle of Kadesh Ramses II had 4 divisions of 5,000 men each at few hours of march each.
Warriors could have 500-1,000 men, phalanx 1,000-2,000, legion 2,000-5,000. A stack of 12 legions of 5,000 men means an army of 60,000. There are just a few times when Rome had that many solders on the same battlefield.
Real times battles with hundred of thousand of solders can be simulated by battles of multiple stacks. Some of the big battles lasted more than a day.

[Gilgamensch]

Actually even in ancient times battles lasted always more than one day. The only quick ones wre done by a huge advantage of one side. (little bit generalised)

Any siege was taking already like 2 days to build up the siege weapons. IIRC it was only later with the introduction of the cannon that this time was significantly reduced. Just that people get an idea why:

The materials for the catapults were being transported by mules/horses/cows/whatever to the destination and being (re-)constructed there. Before people are surprised why: At this time there weren't any real roads available

No source in the moment, but like the siege of castles it took around one week to damage the outside wall enough to allow the 'infantry' to enter the castle.

[Mihai]

Well, sometimes the siege weapons were constructed on the spot if wood was avaible.
But what do you think about my idea. A 12 stack of warriors would represent a 6 - 12,000 army, phalanx 12 - 24,000 etc. The numbers can be changed to balance - even a multiple of 500 would be easy to folow.