Few ideas of how to improve strategic aspect of the game (supply lines and more)

here are my ideas (some of them are influenced by discussions on this forum) that i am planning to realize in my mod to come some day:

STRATEGIC CONCEPTS:
* Supply lines: land units need supplying them if there is no link with any of friendly cities (road or water way with no enemy culture - works similar to trade route). Units with no supply gradually lose their hp.
* Supply units: special units carrying 'supply points' (representing fuel/ammo/food/medicines) to supply an army in enemy or neutral lands (with no connection to homeland). Supply reserves are consumed each turn. Supply units instantly restore their reserves if stay one turn linked with any of home cities by road or water way.
* Movement in enemy lands: there is no penalty on movement speed, and roads can be used, but supply units must be quite slow (say 2/3 moves per turn) so defenders have an advantage.
* Blitzkriegs: units start to lose hp 1 turns after their supply was cut off. so there's possible to make blitzkriegs by fast units (there are 2 turns to capture enemy city and establish communication with own lands). Tough mounted have to have -N% attacking cities.
* Siege: city that is cut off other cities can supply not more than *sity size* troops. if there are more defenders than city size, they start to lose hp (but slower than completely unsupplied stack).
* Foraging: certain amount of supply can be obtained from enemy lands by foraging unit mission or by pillaging (significantly more supply but improvements are destroyed).
* Military units affecting surrounding plots owner (see post #6). Also spies can be used for making areas of land temporarily neutral or of any minor presented culture.
* Water transport can not move and unload troops at the same turn (for defenders have time to react).
* Ships can not move and pillage/bombard at the same turn (same reason).
* To move by rail road, units must be loaded into it as they do loading into transports. Land units can not to move by rail road and attack at the same turn. You can not to load more than N units on rail road from the same tile.
* Roads as the rail roads have to cost more for player. Maybe they have to require to maintenance. This will prevent player from building roads and rail roads on each plot.
* Land units can not use rail roads on the enemy territory.

TACTICAL CONCEPTS:
* Different artillery: artillery never dies in attack. It bombs units/fortifications/population/improvements. Ships works as an artillery attacking coastal tiles.
* Commanders: Great General unit gives modifiers to units of his stack. He receives experience when units under his command fight, get levels and promotions affecting units under his command.
* Occasional promotions: see my post here.
* Defender withdrawal: defenders can withdraw. In that case battle with next defender is automatically started.
* Panic: units can flee in panic if their stack suffers great losses. Fled units move the direction opposed to attacker and lose their movement points next turn.
* Mobile withdrawal: fast units can escape from battle moving 1 plot from attacker. Movement cost is substracted from next turn MPs. Withdraw at full HP if a 'worry state' is on.
* Ranged Combat: ranged units can fire upon approaching troops before actual battle occured (like in civ3).

do you like it?
please comment what do you think of it.

Two threads you may be interested at having a look at:
Ammunition Idea, Civman33, 13/3/09
Make Naval More Important, pat4, 26/2/09

Tactical concepts are a bit of a sticky point. Many people (including me, to a large degree) are against implementing anything too tactical into civ, as it is meant to be a strategic, not a tactical game. Having said that, as long as it improves the game within the confines of what civ is about, and so long as it doesn't lend itself to too much tactical thinking and calculations, then it should be fine. What you have suggested as your tactical concepts would not be what I would count as tactical, as they don't require any specific skill on the part of the player, but you need to be cautious that it doesn't head in that direction.

Camikaze said:

Two threads you may be interested at having a look at:
Ammunition Idea, Civman33, 13/3/09
Make Naval More Important, pat4, 26/2/09

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thanks, i'll check it

Camikaze said:

What you have suggested as your tactical concepts would not be what I would count as tactical, as they don't require any specific skill on the part of the player, but you need to be cautious that it doesn't head in that direction.

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They are tactical it terms of warfare so i named them correspondingly
What's about battlefield-scale micromanagement, i completely agree with you, this should not to be in the game.

Logistics is a strategic consideration. The leaders of nations make decisions of when or where to go to war based on the sustainability of forces.

Unit maintenance is a fine simplification of this for normal garrison purposes. You pay your unit commanders and they pay and feed the troops and buy the bullets. The king would decide how many troops to have based on the treasury. However, once in war, something more complex would be the ruler's concern. A simple system should be created to reflect this. Here's an idea.

If a unit is not connected by a clear route to a friendly city it should not heal (get repair parts, replacement personnel, more ammunition, medical care, etc...) . If it is a tank and it is not connected to a friendly city with access to oil it should either not move or use up supplies to do so. Units beyond the first in a stack, in enemy territory, should actually lose hit points every turn (from starvation, desertion, vehicles breaking down for lack of parts, ammunition used to fend off raiders and hunt stray cows). This could be staved off by depleting a "supply convoy" unit in the same stack OR pillaging the tile. Supply wagons would move slowly and hold only a few unit/turns worth of sustenance while supply trucks would move faster and hold more supplies. Supply helecopters would be even better.

The AI currently builds attack stacks around AttackCity units. An AI for how many supply units to include might be based on simply calculating the number of units and the distance to the target city. Resupply might be sent triggered by starvation plus some, and units might be sent to escort the supplies.

This could be modded, but should also be in a future version of civ.

supply unit: 1 move unit representing supply, can move only by railroad.
can be loaded on water/ground transport as well as paradropped.

ground transport:
Wagon: monarchy and wheel technologies, cow, elephant or horse resource.
Truck: combutsion technology, oil resource.

here are some worldbuildered pictures that illustrate my idea of supply lines and territory military control (zones of control, or ZOCs):
picture1

Army1 and Army2 are not supplied because there are no routes between them and their home cities.
Plot under army1 and southeast from it is under indian control. Army's military controlled plots are those plots that can be reached by any of its units and that unit will return to its position in a turn. So plot southeast from Army1 is under indian control because warrior can move to it by road and get back in a turn. Plot to the north from Army1 is in ZOCs of both Army1 and Aachen garrison, so it is disputed. Supply lines can not pass through enemy or disputed territory, so Army2 is cut off their supplies, so as the Army1.
picture2

Horse archer of Army1 expands its ZOC, so here Army1 has a supply line.
picture3

Here holy roman horse archer cuts Army1's supply line off.

ps: ZOC has to be restricted to a sight radius as well.

What mod is this? Where can I get it?

Tholish said:

What mod is this? Where can I get it?

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theres no completed mod for a wile. i'm working on it now and it is quite far from completion for the moment (already realized things are commanders system and advanced withdrawal).

in this topic i have just stated my ideas with intention to receive some critics or suggestions and maybe them could be interesting for people to read.

Well, it would do lots of things.
--Form the basis of discouraging the stack of doom: when you secure your flanks to secure your supplies you advance along a front rather than in a big wad.
--Reflect the reality of logistical considerations. Unreality can be easily elegantized where necessary but reality is so naturally full of cool stuff that makes things interesting.
--make a cool looking gosh wow thing on the screen
--have a good fun per complexity ratio

Yeah!

EDIT: actually I like all of it. Needs to be in Civ 5 exactly like that.

I like it, the only problem I can see is it might over-encourage road spamming to avoid image 1.

EDIT: However, if your paying for roads in maintenance, that will help balance it.

I believe, however, that Image 1 does not constitute a viable route as it passes through enemy territory, not necessarily having anything to do with roads. However, I guess there would be a propensity to build roads a lot to overcome some possible supply problems that may come up when you have control of particular tiles. But is that really a problem?

in the present, Civ rules encourage road building on every plot for defenders maneuverability advantage. When supply lines and ZOCs will be introduced, possibly it will be useful not to spam roads in border areas so preventing invaders of using them for supply and pin their communications to one single road that, incidentally, can be destroyed

Apologies, I should have said picture 2 (thanks Camikaze).

Do you think it is easy enough to tell who will have supply? I really do like your model, but it seems to me in actual play, it would be quite hard to determine when moving if your move is likely to result in supply being cut off, or cutting off the supply of an enemy. .

I think a unit in your own territory should ALWAYS be supplied, and the only way to negate that is to conquer the territory. Supply lines only then become an issue when attacking (or indeed defending against an attack).

Can you show us some example screenshots using the supply wagon?

killmeplease said:

in the present, Civ rules encourage road building on every plot for defenders maneuverability advantage. When supply lines and ZOCs will be introduced, possibly it will be useful not to spam roads in border areas so preventing invaders of using them for supply and pin their communications to one single road that, incidentally, can be destroyed

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This is not necessarily a plus, though. Make individual physical connections too important, and they become open to things like, oh, the "Emsworth Agreement" in Civ 3, whichappears to be generally considered an exploit.

What is the Emsworth Agreement?

CivMyWay said:

What is the Emsworth Agreement?

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It's complicated, but in brief; in Civ 3 you can only trade with someone if there's a road link between you and them (not counting sea links). So one connects to someone, trades a bunch of once-off benefits for a bunch of continuing payments, then pillages the road link so the continuing payments stop.

CivMyWay said:

Do you think it is easy enough to tell who will have supply? I really do like your model, but it seems to me in actual play, it would be quite hard to determine when moving if your move is likely to result in supply being cut off, or cutting off the supply of an enemy. .

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I think it will not be too hard, especially after some practice. rules are very simple and using existing game term (trade routes).
tough it will be quite difficult to teach AI how to understand supply lines and accomplish its strategy respectively.

For me, the biggest pet peeves are food and forrests.

Take a look at the World Map (Rhyes and Fall has a good one.) Major Cities, like Milan, Mexico city, Paris, New York and Amsterdam are always cramped and small, while Kansas City and Calgary are massive metropolises.

The key to fix this is centralised food management and distribution. Rather than having food limited to what a city can grab from its own fat cross, food should be stockpiled and distributed on a network controled by the leader, using roads, ships and granaries as the key infastructure. Like in MoO II or Civ III, civs would amas freighter points to move the food around, and could connect cities to the netword by buidling granaries.

This way, food grown in Kansas can be sent to New York, to be consumed by specialists whose work is pumped by booster buildings (University, Forge etc.) thus making a more realistic system of resource-based areas feeding manufacturing and administrative centres. Food should also be a traded comodity (Rome relied on imported food for most of its existence, as has the UK for several centuries now.)

Some other changes could compliment this to complete the picture:

1.) Make bonus resources more than just raw goods. Cities can "manufacture" new goods from raw material (i.e. Silk garmens, consumer electronics etc.) for re-export or home benefits.

2.) Make finite resources finite (either max per/turn extraction for wine, wood, or wheat, or a max cieling for oil.) The player or AI can use these resources for different things, like making buildings, supplying troops, creating new goods, making weapons, or selling abroad. Wood should be a managed resource in this way.

3.) Further encourage centralisation of manufacturing by 1.) boosting the power of specialists and 2.) allowing them to become better over time. Labourers should be specialists who make goods, and should be able to make more and better goods as time goes on (start with 1 unit of level 1 jewlery at first, advance to 3 units of level 4 jewlery, more valuable, over time. Also let production be pumped by buildings.) These skills might be transferable by spending cash to hire instructors or through espionage.

4.) Units should be interchangable with population. Cities should build weapons, not armies. Armies should be raised from any city and armed from a central armoury. Disbanded units could rejoin the cities. Could even make armies and city popultions with absolute numbers, like in Lords of the Realm II, a far more nuanced and realistic interface on many levels.

These would make the composition of any given civ far, far more realistic and would ease game play somewhat (you would have more options in raising armies to cut down on marching time and could stockpile weapons in peace time.)

Armies should consume considerable resources, but should also be permitted to forage (i.e. consume any unguarded producton within their ZOC.) for some of the costs. This makes a scortched-earth/guerrilla strategy far more viable, and would allow, for example, for a realistic WWII scenario. Supply points should be destructable, like in MoOII, through piracy or blockade, rather than having an absolute blockade the way there is in civ 4.

Finally, Forest management really ought to be radically changed. Lumber camps should be possible with bronze-working, and should provide significant wood resources, which can either be preserved or exhausted. Part of the economic miracle of Japan is that it remains one of the most heavily-forested nations on earth, thanks to radical conservation efforts by the Shoguns, which both protected fertility and allowed industry to flourish.

Other civs which wholesale demolished their forests collapsed because they did so. Perhaps the current "global warming" terrain-loss should apply to civs that over denude their forests and jungles?

Also, someone really needs to fix post-renaissance walls and fortifications. In history, gunpowder led to far larger, more expensive and sophisticated and more important fortifications. Just look at maps of any major city between 1550 and 1750 in Europe --- they've all got comically oversized rings of fortifications that cost absurd amounts to build.

Gunpowder should obsolete OLD walls, but also allow for the building of "Fortifications," to take their place.

For historical accuracy, all fortifications should have a Zone of Control again.

Le1bn1z
your speculations are interesting, i thought of several things you write here. but this thread considers warfare for very most.

Good ideas on cities and armies but i do not like absolute numbers for many reasons.

about the walls, they have not to obsolete so fast of course, fortifications were used to WWI inclusive. but i think its not necessary to introduce new buildings into the game. IMO it would be enough to use different graphics for the walls in different eras.