A bar to represent the units' supplies.

[Zegangani]

I also agree about considering the AI handling this. Because otherwise it's going to be balanced with higher lever of difficulty = bonus combat for the AI and that is NOT strategy anymore (IMO).

I dislike giving the AI Bonuses just to make it easier for it to compete with the Human Player. It would be much better if the Human player would get some penalties. This way the Game would be more challenging for the Human Player (And that's what we actually want), the AI will fail to get use of the bonuses anyway.

 

[Gedemon]

But still are putting even more focus on unit micromanagement, which is part of the wargsme side of civ.

In a game where units move only a few hundred kikmeters in ten years, and where movement is already a massive abstraction, the only point of supply is to put even more focus in the grognards aspects of the game.

not if it's automated, then it just force you to put a bit more thought on your movements, but doesn't require more actions.

 

[Sostratus]

No repetitive actions needed from the player (just try to keep an open path between units and cities), better representation of warfare, not so much of a penalty for the AI.

not if it's automated, then it just force you to put a bit more thought on your movements, but doesn't require more actions.

Now this is what I was talking about. You are an artisan of great wisdom and foresight!

 

[Duque de Ferro]

But still are putting even more focus on unit micromanagement, which is part of the wargsme side of civ.

In a game where units move only a few hundred kikmeters in ten years, and where movement is already a massive abstraction, the only point of supply is to put even more focus in the grognards aspects of the game.

I don't think this system would work well if it isn't automatic, the supply units should move alone like the caravans do, you just have to define which is the target unit that this logistic chain will supply and that's it, now it will automatically run the route, going and coming back every time the unit is losing supplies.

So imagine that now the units won't be able to go there on the other side of the map to conquer a city (something without logic), imagine that now the units won't spread randomly through the map, now they have a logic that prevents them from doing these crazy things. Besides, this is a concept that was also part of the history of civilization and I believe it should be somehow staged in the game.

 

[PiR]

But the supply units would then be defenseless like the caravans?

So imagine that now the units won't be able to go there on the other side of the map to conquer a city (something without logic)

Why is it without logic if you have a superior force and the means to transport it?
What about the crusades?
What about the colonization of Incan and Aztec empires? of African and Asian well established cities?

 

[Duque de Ferro]

But the supply units would then be defenseless like the caravans?


Why is it without logic if you have a superior force and the means to transport it?
What about the crusades?
What about the colonization of Incan and Aztec empires? of African and Asian well established cities?

The crusades had a large logistics chain, the whole of Europe was controlled by the Roman Church at the time, so whether they wanted it or not, they were very close to home, Constantinople was still Roman and Catholic territory the island of Cyprus was also and there were some cities controlled by European countries there in the East. So the crusades worked out why Europe was united. Now see the opposite, see Napoleon's case, Napoleon's armies were decimated by hunger, by thirst in his incursion into Egypt. Napoleon's armies were also decimated in Russia, the more they penetrated in Russia the more distant they got from France and the French domains and because of this more penalties suffered. Currently countries like the U.S. are able to cross the oceans and invade countries on the other side of the world because of technological advances in aviation and shipping. Logistics distribution chains are executed through advanced aviation and a powerful naval fleet that can move across the oceans in a matter of weeks.

The colonizations all relied on supply chains, the first incursions were used to establish support points, ports and advanced fortifications, soon after the Europeans formed alliances with local natives who could now provide supplies and troops to help in the war effort against the great empires. These American empires had many enemies, for they were extremely oppressive people who invaded peaceful villages to enslave and acquire people to feed their infamous rituals that involved human sacrifices daily at the top of their cursed pyramids. This fact contributed to the defeat of these God-cursed empires, because the indigenous nations that inhabited and were oppressed there rose up in revolt against these oppressive peoples at the first opportunity they found.

In fact, this is why the world should never be unified, because if it were unified there would be no nations to rise up against the oppressive nations. After the destruction of the Aztec, Mayan and Inca plagues, the Americas could be pacified and civilized. In Africa it was the same, the difference was that Africa was much closer to Europe. The Europeans took a long time to establish colonies in Africa, they did not arrive and dominated in the first incursion, they arrived, built fortifications and ports and only then began the colonization process.

 

[Naokaukodem]

Seems attractive but I see it as another source of frustration, die & retry, to finally having the exact same we have now when we learned to be careful enough. So I understand efforts and frustrations would have to be put in it. For example, I can totally imagine that in single player a barb camp spawns just in the middle of a supply line, and in multiplayer I would see it as too sneaky. (the game is enough this as is) So yeah, it would be yet another focus on warfare.

In my system military units are citizens like others, they can work the land too. They can move stacked up to 5, and automatically dispatch in the land to feed (food) or supply (production) themselves each turn they do move or even attack. (remember that a turn represents at least 1 year, so there's room for ubiquity here) One of the effects for military units to be citizens would be that they couldn't travel large portions of desert or ice without losing health and eventually die.

 

[Myomoto]

I would really love to see a unit supply system as an optional game mode. Basically supplies would only drain when the unit is outside of your own or allied territory.

The size of the supply would increase with tech/civics, and units would slowly perish if unsupplied.

Resupply would just happen by ending a turn inside your/or allied borders/or by visiting a fort. Another way to resupply would be to pillage any tile/raiding a trade caravan.

Different terrain could drain supplies at different rates (i.e. ice and desert would drain it more quickly as your soldiers couldn't forage as easily to supplement their rations).

The ultimate goal is to make long distance warfare more difficult, to give defenders a bigger advantage as they can 'hold out' for a time and survive, and finally to limit exploration of the map to certain phases of the game, i.e. you can't just build a scout in the ancient era and let it explore several continents by itself.

 

[PiR]

The crusades had a large logistics chain, the whole of Europe was controlled by the Roman Church at the time, so whether they wanted it or not, they were very close to home, Constantinople was still Roman and Catholic territory the island of Cyprus was also and there were some cities controlled by European countries there in the East. So the crusades worked out why Europe was united. Now see the opposite, see Napoleon's case, Napoleon's armies were decimated by hunger, by thirst in his incursion into Egypt. Napoleon's armies were also decimated in Russia, the more they penetrated in Russia the more distant they got from France and the French domains and because of this more penalties suffered. Currently countries like the U.S. are able to cross the oceans and invade countries on the other side of the world because of technological advances in aviation and shipping. Logistics distribution chains are executed through advanced aviation and a powerful naval fleet that can move across the oceans in a matter of weeks.

So you should be able to still embark for a far distance and manage to win a war if you embark with a lot of supplies (not just a caravan going back and forth), right?

 

[Lord Lakely]

The overall idea of unit supply is a good one. The tricky part is to impliment it without adding even more micro to the gameplay. Managing supply carts and the like will become tiresome quickly.

 

[Duque de Ferro]

I would really love to see a unit supply system as an optional game mode. Basically supplies would only drain when the unit is outside of your own or allied territory.

The size of the supply would increase with tech/civics, and units would slowly perish if unsupplied.

Resupply would just happen by ending a turn inside your/or allied borders/or by visiting a fort. Another way to resupply would be to pillage any tile/raiding a trade caravan.

Different terrain could drain supplies at different rates (i.e. ice and desert would drain it more quickly as your soldiers couldn't forage as easily to supplement their rations).

The ultimate goal is to make long distance warfare more difficult, to give defenders a bigger advantage as they can 'hold out' for a time and survive, and finally to limit exploration of the map to certain phases of the game, i.e. you can't just build a scout in the ancient era and let it explore several continents by itself.

Exactly! This is a perfect description of the proposal of this post! With your permission I will use your comment in the post to add details so that the next readers have a better understanding of the proposal and can see its positive points.

So you should be able to still embark for a far distance and manage to win a war if you embark with a lot of supplies (not just a caravan going back and forth), right?

No, to cross the oceans over long distances without a resupplying plan is crazy. The navigators' plan was if possible to land to find fresh water, which was the big problem at the time, once the explorer's goal was reached he had two options, he could resupply with food and water, establish an outpost there and leave some men garrisoning (with supplies of course) or else once resupplied resume the journey back to his nearest port of origin.

Your supplies are consumed while you move, so if you don't resupply periodically, your troops will suffer a penalty (here again feel free to choose which penalty you want to impose in these situations). In the proposal we have presented would be given alternatives to the player so that he can guarantee a resupply without the support of a logistic unit, the player would have to find for instance plantations, wheat fields (maybe wheat field or other food resource in a neutral area) to resupply, so you are free to decide this, to decide what would be the alternative ways of resupplying, but you must keep in mind that these alternative ways must be much rarer for the player or with some risky to feel more concerned in establishing a logistic chain to resupply his troops during his long distance exploration activities.

Defeating and destroying barbarian settlements would be a possibility of resupply, so imagine that you just defeated a group of barbarians by invading your settlement and in the process you got spoils there, food, drink, weapons and so on. So with this you got supplies for your troops, imagine you find some prisoners in these settlements, then some of them can be recruited to your armies, with this you also recover the health of your troop which represents your amount of soldiers integrated into your military unit. Then defeating pirate ships or barbaric settlements can help you recover and stay away from home longer. It's risky, but it's an alternative.

The overall idea of unit supply is a good one. The tricky part is to impliment it without adding even more micro to the gameplay. Managing supply carts and the like will become tiresome quickly.

Well if you can read the comments and the proposal itself, you may notice that it is not about adding more micro management, I believe it was very clear both by me and by others who made complementary comments that the supply units would be automatic like the caravans that are going and coming from city to city autonomously, you just need to define which route and the rest it will do.

Maybe build a unit for suplly chain, and supply the unit in city state and after back to the front

Perfect, exactly this!

 

[Henri Christophe]

Again, that sounds like a wargame design. On the scale that civ operates at where units can only move a handful or tiles per year or dozens of years even (so everything dealing with movement is heavily abstracted to begin with), it's even more military nitty-gritty that turns Civ from a 4X into a Wargame.

Civilization is a war game. I just play domination victory

 

[Evie]

It isn't a wargame, though it's increasingly trying to mimic one.

If it were a pure wargame, I wouldn't play it.

 

[Duque de Ferro]

It isn't a wargame, though it's increasingly trying to mimic one.

If it were a pure wargame, I wouldn't play it.

War is also part of civilization and the proposal of the franchise "civilization" has always been to stage the various aspects of civilization in history.

 

[Evie]

Definitely, but like everything else in the game, it should be presented in a simplified, high-level form - not at the detailed wargame level. Otherwise that's taking one side of the game and elevating it (far) above the others. At which point the game stop being a game about civilization - and become a wargame with some empire building thrown in.

 

[HiRezAudio]

Do you want to see the constraint of supply because it is realistic, or because it would add to gameplay?
There are a number of implementations to satisfy a gameplay consideration that may be a bit more elegant than tracking a resource bar. What is the deficiency you see in current civ6 combat that a supply mechanic would fix? (As I understand what you are suggesting, basically it would make war tilted towards the defenders a bit.)

Which would be much better - it is far, far too easy to roll over the AI in war as the AI cannot fight a war.
In the real world this would be the reality of things - I cannot remember who said it, but the quote is along the lines of 'any fool can raise an army, but you start to run into trouble at suppertime'.
Logistics really should be a thing, along with supply lines unless you have a special ops unit that can survive - also, what about the sanitation problems caused by an army on the move?
With a little luck, health & pollution will be the focus of the new district we are being promised.