Civ VI: Armies & Logistics

plastiqe

plastiqe

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You can put as many units as you want in one tile, but support costs rise in proportion to how many units are in a tile. Eg. it costs more in maintenance to have 10 units in one tile that it does to have 10 units spread out.

Units in the same tile can be grouped together to form Armies (and later separated if you want). An Army is a group of units that moves and fights together and costs even more to maintain than if it were just 10 units in the same tile. Good Armies are much more effective that the same number of solo units. Eg, if you attack with an army of 10 Spearmen it's more powerful than 10 Spearmen attacking one by one. However, a diverse army with 3 Spearmen, 3 Archers and 3 Chariots would be stronger still.

When Armies fight and lose sometimes units within are destroyed, sometimes damaged depending on the units used by the winnner and the losing Army's composition. Veteran units can increase your chances of killing the enemy or surviving themselves. Great Generals are generated through Army success and can lead Armies to make them more efficient & powerful.

The more units on one tile, the more effective using artillery against that tile becomes. A Catapult that attacks a lone Spearman would do some damage to the Spearman, but if it attacked a tile with an Army of 10 Spearman it would have a chance to damage several units.
 
I don't like this idea. It falls back on the same problem that all previous Civ games experienced, where the only metric that decided wars was who had the bigger army all stacked into one tile. The only difference now is that the factor that determines who gets the bigger stack is entirely removed from the military aspect of the game and made a purely economic consideration; whoever generates the most gold gets to have the biggest, strongest army. It completely removes the potential for tactics in the game that Civ V introduced. No more ranged units, no more flanking, no more line-of-sight considerations. Every unit just has a strength and a bunch of modifiers to that strength. Boring.
 
Thanks for a well thought out response. I appreciate that not everyone (ok, probably most people) won't like the idea. Maybe I can convince you otherwise. : )

Snes said:
I don't like this idea. It falls back on the same problem that all previous Civ games experienced, where the only metric that decided wars was who had the bigger army all stacked into one tile. The only difference now is that the factor that determines who gets the bigger stack is entirely removed from the military aspect of the game and made a purely economic consideration; whoever generates the most gold gets to have the biggest, strongest army. It completely removes the potential for tactics in the game that Civ V introduced. No more ranged units, no more flanking, no more line-of-sight considerations. Every unit just has a strength and a bunch of modifiers to that strength. Boring.
Click to expand...

Why couldn't you still have ranged units, flanking and line of sight if there were armies? I guess I should have stated such but in my head I was assuming a catapult was ranged when it was attacking spearmen in the example I wrote. And surely there must be ways to counter superior numbers; army composition, veterans and artillery are a few examples I gave but tactics would be another.

I would optimistically point out that if a civ tried to amass an unbeatable stack-of-doom army with twice as many units as anyone else the cost of such a monstrosity would be so prohibitive as to cause their downfall. Tying armies and maintenance costs together is just another system of resource management; how you allocate your troops so you get the best bang for your buck.

Lets say armies are more expensive the further they are from your territory. In order to fund a prolonged conquering force you have to sacrifice a big chunk of your GDP whereas it's less costly to stay at home with your armies and defend your territory. If you're facing superior forces an option could be to stall, defend and try to use your lower costs to turn an economic advantage for yourself.
 
DudewiththeFood said:
I wouldn't mind limited units stacking but there should be more restrictions than just who has the most money.
Click to expand...
Like what?

I think anything that curtailed creativity or gave less flexibility to make choices would probably be less fun to play. But maybe you'll think of something I didn't and it'll be great.
 
DudewiththeFood said:
I'm not sure but more money already equals more units. It shouldn't also allow enhanced capabilities with those units.
Click to expand...
Armies or not, you are supposed to try and generate more gold (or more hammers, or culture, etc) that's how you win regardless. Army maintenance is just another way you can spend it.

For the sake of argument if only CivA was allowed to use gold to support Armies, then it's overpowered. CivA would always win because they can do something CivB can't do every time. But the "enhanced capabilities" of creating armies with your units are open to everyone.

If CivA decides to run bigger armies by paying more gold for them, then CivB who runs smaller armies will have more gold for things like researching techs. Maybe CivA will conquer CivB with their bigger army, but maybe CivB will out tech CivA and kill them with advanced units. And with no arbitrary limits on army size or composition, the choice is entirely up to you.

Why would you think generating gold will be Overpowered in a theoretical new system? It's a theory, can't I just tweak the numbers for balance?

Gold is too easy to come by, armies OP!

<makes gold harder to come by>
 
How about making unit maintance increase each time they move?I think that is fairly similar to real life where huge armies are really expensive to move
 
Pepo said:
How about making unit maintance increase each time they move?I think that is fairly similar to real life where huge armies are really expensive to move
Click to expand...

I wouldn't quantify it as something like 1:gold: to move 1 hex, but that is the general idea yes. Having your Army further away from your lands costs more money than it does to keep it close. Because like with real armies, it's harder to keep troops supplied the further away they are from home base.

It would take someone smarter than me to write the formula for calculating army costs based on multiple factors such as size & distance. In Civ IV the city maintenance system is very similar in that at the start of the game a small city nearby your capital costs very little or sometimes nothing, but a far away city, or a large city, or a city on another continent costs much more in maintenance per turn.

For armies, you could have factors such as buildings that reduce overall unit upkeep, adding a Great General to your army lowers the upkeep for that specific army, Governments/Civics that make armies cheaper or even a Wonder that doubles the upkeep cost of enemy armies in your territory.
 
Yeah that sound fantastic for me.for making easier to smaller cities invading bigger ones there should be a building call supply post or something that allow that city to be use for supply.it would be interesting the difference between a bliezkrieg that can cost you a lot or a slower pace attack securing each city
 
As I was posting in the thread that led me here, I think looking at strategic wargames and how they model supply, frontage, unit cohesion, and army organization is a good start to building a better system for Civ.
 
Historically, which is my starting point for writing rules for a history based game, armies needed to be fed, and finding food got harder the more men and animals you concentrated in one place. Since food is both bulky and relatively heavy, it cannot be moved any great distance except by boat/ship, railroad or modern trucks. For most of history, animal-drawn wagons just wouldn't do it, so the 'army' had to spread out to forage or stay very close to a source of food or starve.

This is actually not that hard to model in Civ.

Stacking limit starts at 2: you can always stack two units in almost any terrain. To stack more, you need a Supply Line. A Supply Line is a line from the stack to Water Transport or Railroad leading to a friendly city or group of cities whose population (combined) is equal to or greater than the number of units in the stack. Water Transport can be traced through coastal or river tiles from the start, through Sea/Ocean tiles after the right technology.

Penalty: If the supply line is cut, or the stacking limit exceeded, for every turn that either condition applies, EVERY unit in the stack suffers damage. Once the Supply Line is restored, the damage starts to automatically repair, but only at the regular rate (starving men and dead horses don't recover automatically, trucks or tanks that have been run without oil need new engines - it all takes time).

Various conditions:
Some terrain is much harder to supply than others. I'd suggest some pretty nasty limitations in jungle, tundra, or snow tiles, which terrain has frequently caused severe damage to armies trying to move through them. Deserts, if the stack is not sitting on an oasis or river (water source) should probably cause extra damage per turn to all the unsupplied stacked units, because dying of thirst is much faster than starving to death.

The penalty would apply only to stacks that are Out of Supply at the End of their turn - you could still make a 'forced march' out of supply as long as you ended in supply, but sitting out of supply outside of a target enemy city would be suicidal.

Cities, by the way, could have a garrison automatically in supply as long as the number of garrison units in the city does not exceed the population of the city. This would also make one of the late-game Mega-Cities very, very hard to take without some major effort - air attack, naval bombardment, massed artillery, etc. For game balance, it might be necessary to reduce the garrison limit - this would have to be tested.

All of this would still allow for tactical considerations within the stack, with various factor changes due to proper mixes of mounted, ranged, foot and specialty units, and also for strategic maneuvers - cutting the enemy supply line now becomes a very effective tactic, and cavalry now has a really good strategic purpose. The cauldron or encirclement battles of WWII now become possible, and effective in both historical and game terms.
 
Boris Gudenuf said:
Spoiler :
Historically, which is my starting point for writing rules for a history based game, armies needed to be fed, and finding food got harder the more men and animals you concentrated in one place. Since food is both bulky and relatively heavy, it cannot be moved any great distance except by boat/ship, railroad or modern trucks. For most of history, animal-drawn wagons just wouldn't do it, so the 'army' had to spread out to forage or stay very close to a source of food or starve.

This is actually not that hard to model in Civ.

Stacking limit starts at 2: you can always stack two units in almost any terrain. To stack more, you need a Supply Line. A Supply Line is a line from the stack to Water Transport or Railroad leading to a friendly city or group of cities whose population (combined) is equal to or greater than the number of units in the stack. Water Transport can be traced through coastal or river tiles from the start, through Sea/Ocean tiles after the right technology.

Penalty: If the supply line is cut, or the stacking limit exceeded, for every turn that either condition applies, EVERY unit in the stack suffers damage. Once the Supply Line is restored, the damage starts to automatically repair, but only at the regular rate (starving men and dead horses don't recover automatically, trucks or tanks that have been run without oil need new engines - it all takes time).

Various conditions:
Some terrain is much harder to supply than others. I'd suggest some pretty nasty limitations in jungle, tundra, or snow tiles, which terrain has frequently caused severe damage to armies trying to move through them. Deserts, if the stack is not sitting on an oasis or river (water source) should probably cause extra damage per turn to all the unsupplied stacked units, because dying of thirst is much faster than starving to death.

The penalty would apply only to stacks that are Out of Supply at the End of their turn - you could still make a 'forced march' out of supply as long as you ended in supply, but sitting out of supply outside of a target enemy city would be suicidal.

Cities, by the way, could have a garrison automatically in supply as long as the number of garrison units in the city does not exceed the population of the city. This would also make one of the late-game Mega-Cities very, very hard to take without some major effort - air attack, naval bombardment, massed artillery, etc. For game balance, it might be necessary to reduce the garrison limit - this would have to be tested.

All of this would still allow for tactical considerations within the stack, with various factor changes due to proper mixes of mounted, ranged, foot and specialty units, and also for strategic maneuvers - cutting the enemy supply line now becomes a very effective tactic, and cavalry now has a really good strategic purpose. The cauldron or encirclement battles of WWII now become possible, and effective in both historical and game terms.
Click to expand...
I'm opposed to any arbitrary tile limit in the game for the same reasons you start out with: historical accuracy.

There is another thread in this section where the poster mentions supply lines that work like Civ V trade routes. It's basically the same kind of idea but I prefer my automatic maintenance costs in the F2 Financial Advisor to any form of active supply lines where you must build a supply unit, army supply building, count the tiles from your nearest city etc.

You bring up some interesting points about terrain but I disagree it needs to be tied into a complicated supply system, just add it as a feature of the terrain.

There is already a reason not to stand on deserts because they're flat tiles with no defensive bonus. You could add a promotion that improves desert fighting or a unique unit that gets desert bonuses. Likewise Jungle could give a strength penalty to all units (like reverse hills) that don't have the right jungle fighting promotions.

I like the idea of Ice tiles causing damage to troops. It took a long time in history to explore the poles. I have a couple more map ideas like this that I'll eventually organize into a Civ VI: World Map topic but I don't think there is any reason to tie it into unit maintenance or supply lines. As I imagine it the less hidden from view things you have going on in the game the better so just put the abilities right on the terrain.

Anyways Boris, thanks for the well thought out post. : )
 
i think all terrain should damage units, unless they're on friendly territory or expressly supplied. no matter what terrain they're on. dont you think troops can supply themselves by say hunting in the forest? at best it can be a scout promotion. what desert, marsh, snow etc can do - additional damage. and on the enemy territory units should pillage improvements to supply themselves. just staying idle shouldnt give any hp unless a supply line is established.
 
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