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Wow. This looks good. Can't wait for the finished article.

this looks really good

i will try it later.

does the ai know how to use the supply system? or understand the morale system? those are my only questions so far.

did i mention this looks really good.

Maybe you could work the unit morale with the city happiness in some way?
I s'pose you already did that, but I'll say it anyway.

I think he was suggesting more that the war weariness and morale might be linked.. not that happiness in general should be factored in.

Well that has happened in a lot of wars if I remember. Empires crumbled like that.

That's what I was planning to do for my own mod, yes.

The thing is that defeat tends to have a polarizing effect while victory tends to have a unifying effect... so with a defeat, things can really go either way. Sometimes defeat after defeat simply hastens the collapse as more people give up and decide the situation is hopeless. But there's always some who see it as a sign that they have to fight even harder and so you get troops in the field and people at home rallying just when the cause seems lost.

But usually it's a bit of both... though one is usually emphasized more than the other historically. WWII is a good example... by the end, the Germans were surrendering in droves to the Americans and British, but then you also have at that time some of the most tooth and nail fighting against the Soviets for Berlin and government personnel and paramilitary people executing anyone who they felt was a hinderance on the cause such as deserters or people who they felt should've been in uniform and weren't.. You had children manning barricades and such...

In a less extreme example, after the defeats suffered by the Union in the summer of 1862, there were those who were ready to throw in the towel and accept splitting the country into two republics and rebel sympathizers who were emboldened by Confederate victories, and on the other hand, you had people who fought even more fervently to prevent that from happening... recruitment was pushed harder than ever, fundraisers became more common, speeches more intense, political rallies larger...

I guess the other important factor is the stakes... how much is this war really worth?

I mean, if you're enemy is going to burn your villages, rape your women, and use your children for meat for their armies and leave nothing but piles of skulls and burnt structures in their wake, you'll probably be compelled to fight to the last man.

I'm hesitant because I don't see these things as increasing morale but they would certainly increase determination... so there's things that the invader might do that would in fact undermine there own effort and embolden the enemy. Razing cities in one thing that leaps to mind... the civics might also be an important factor as well.

A democratic country might be more inclined to fight off a totalitarian enemy than vise versa...


EDIT: Also, now that I think about it, waiting is often times more destructive to morale (or at least as destructive) than actual defeat... If troops are sitting around doing nothing when they feel they should be moving and fighting, the result is disolution, boredom, and frustration. At least when you're getting your butt kicked, there the thought of survival to keep you fighting.

Lord Olleus said:

You make a very good point. However, I think that morale could also be used to represent determination. You could use the diplomatic modifiers to influence morale. Say your relation to another civ is - 10 (because they razed loads of cities), you could get a +5 for morale. It would be worth trying out. The thing is I can't think of a way to get the AI to understand this.

Click to expand...

Understand what? The negative consequences of razing? (And it sounds like a good idea too... two birds with one stone... diplomatic factors and city-razing)

Maybe you could be driven by anger at another civ. Let's say civ X has -15 with civ Y because of nukes. Civ X declares war on Y, and gets so many points of morale for the anger. That would make things very interesting.

Olleus: I have already implemented a Mod that can pool all the GreatPeople Points of a Civ into a central Player level pool of points, feel free to make use of it if you like, the code is in the CCCP and taged with "GreatPeoplePointPooling" (no spaces). Basicaly theirs a boolean check on a new Game Option at the begining of all the GreatPeople functions which redirects all getting and setting of data to the new player varable. The UI shows the player total in every city bar.

On Morale: I think a distinction could be made on the location of the Unit when it battles a forign unit. If your fighting in forign territory and losse you should losse morale, but if you win you dont gain any morale. If your fighting in your territory and losse you dont losse morale, if you win you gain morale. Or perhaps some other variation on this theam, the central premise is its harder to become de-moralized when defending then it is when attacking because people always fight harder to defend their homeland then to concour someone elses.

On another note I see you have Morale as part of the unit Info, aka when an archer get built it will start with 70 Morale. I dont realy see why this should be a property of the Units technological level and weaponry. Morale is a purely human quality independent of all technology. I would sugjest droping morale from the UnitInfo and allowing the starting morale of a new unit to be determined by various Empire wide factors such as WarWeariness in combination with local building bonuses (Barracks could add +10 morale for example). These would be applied ontop of a GlobalDefined "New Unit Base Morale" probaly 50%, concripts recive half normal morale as well.

The loss of experience durring retreat seems unessary, the unit will probably be killed in its weakened condition and the unless your planning to actualy remove promotions when a unit falls below an exp level their will be lots of times when the lost exp dosn't realy hurt the player. Perhaps a loss of half the remaining Morale of a routed unit is a better, this will leave them nearly useless for some time.

Morale should be lost when a unit suffers bombardment damage or combat Damage and regained when a unit is fortified and healing up to a cap determined by various Empire level factors (Civics, Traits, WarWeariness) this cap could exceed 100% as that means your troops are simply super brave and will take a beating before they even consider retreating.

Bravo on the Mod and ideas. Seems like we have alot of common ground in our mod concepts. I have just started compiling a list of design features that I want to include in my potential mod. I especially salute your motivations behind your changes to civ's warfare. Morale and Supplies are definately a huge factor in warfare and these are things that I shall implement myself.

Seems like you have given the warfare component the most thought and the economic aspect less. I think cottages and specialists were a wonderful new addition to the series but I think their introduction was far too simplistic. My mod will focus heavily on creating a more sophisticated economic model.

The reason I submit this reply is to share a simple summary of my economic system in the hopes that a collaboration might be possible.

I will implement an economic system that dependent on specialists for the bulk of production, science, and commerce. Cities will not work tiles as this will be done by settling workers onto tiles in the form of farms/mines/plantations etc. This will represent the Rural population better. Cities instead will consist of nothing but specialists of all sorts. Laborers will turn food and resources into hammers. Merchants turn food and resources into gold and trade routes. Engineers increase production time. So on and so forth. There is alot more to my system and it will require a complete economic overhaul but this is something that I am willing to do and it is the first thing I am tackling on the mod.

Perhaps I sparked an idea or 2 for you. Love your concepts and keep em coming...

Hey there Olleus. This looks like a highly ambitious project, and I wish you the best of luck. Aside from Impalers GP mod, you might also look at TheLopez's GreatPerson Trickle Mod.

If you have not already done it, I also think you should make cottages strip food from the tile on which it is built (I know this is the direction I plan to take). This might make cottages less of a 'no-brainer'. On a side note, I actually believe that 'Bigger is Better' has been largely eliminated, but that Cottage Spam has allowed it to sneak back in, so curbing cottages in this way might help to reduce this form of pseudo-ICS.

Another approach would be to tie resources and Empire size together via efficiency. This is something I have put forward before, where the ratio of resources to number of cities impacts on things like population growth rate, building rates and city maintainance costs. Once you are having to rely on more than half a dozen resources, this effect is going to have a huge impact on the growth of your empire, and might force you to rely more on those smaller nations who have a resource surplus. Hope that makes sense.

Here is something to consider in regards to Morale and War Weariness.

-If you lose an unpromoted or conscripted unit, the war weariness impact should be greater than if you lose an elite level unit. However, victory by an unpromoted unit should have a greater positive impact on morale than if an elite unit wins a combat.

-As Always, fighting a defensive war on your own soil should boost morale and reduce the impacts of War Weariness.

Anyway, just a few brainstorming ideas. I wish you all the best in this endeavour.

Aussie_Lurker.

I think winning battles in enemy territories should count for something. Such as winning a battle within 1 civs territory gives morale against all units fighting that civ (both defensively and offensively -at home and at the front), have this bonus increase with radio because of propaganda. The bonus may be bigger or smaller than 1 -you decide. just a thought.

Perhaps have broadcasting towers as territory improvements to spread propaganda along your borders or to nearby tiles before the age of sattellites?

Black Rose was here

I'm leery about making it so that your morale goes up just fighting a battle on your own territory... because while it CAN have a rallying effect, it can also be discouraging as well...

How about this... winning victories on enemy territory and losing battles on home turf do nothing, but winning battles in home territory and losing battles on foreign territory give and take respectively.

1 thing about reserves. Do you think there should be a cap on reserves. I mean definately make it beneficial to a player to put units in reserves, however make them half price while in reserves or even cheaper. My opinion is that there should be some cost for reserves. Having a massive army in reserves is kind of unrealistic in my opinion.

In my preconceived morale model, the trait of the leader will most definately have an impact. Example: Julius is Imperialistic, thus winning wars abroad will increase morale even greater. Protective civs get a huge morale boost when invaded. Aggressive civs perhaps suffer less negative morale effects.

Of course it will have to be balanced out in play test.

As for the Supply system I was leaning toward, it is really geared toward an 'Army' approach (ala Rome Total War) rather than just a zillion single units running around. This is very ambitious (as is just about everything I dream up), but the premise is that units suffer from slight strength degredation each turn they are unsupplied. The assumption is that units with empty bellies and empty magazines can still fight, but not very well.

I like your idea of supply units as this accurately represents the concept of the 'wagon train'. Perhaps these supply units can be captured as well and used by anyone lucky enough to capture them.

I agree that the supply system should be elegant but should not require micromanagement on the part of the player. Also, perhaps this could allow a new event upon city capture. You could 'Loot' a city when you take it, thus generating a number of supply units based on city size.

Concerning my economic model, It is very sophisticated and will take a long long time to achieve, so I don't blame you for passing up such a system. I may not ever be able to complete it myself, much less drag someone else into that abyss. LOL

I'm new to the thread, but could the limit on numbers of reserves be tied to the city population size (as well as the other factors you cited)?... seems reasonable.

Multiple Build Que's is a must.

No city should be limited to just a unit OR a building, it should be able to build one of each.

Absolutly no point to that, splitting production between two differnt goals only results in two half finished things when the player could have had 1 of something finished soon.