A tactical way to balance the SoD juggernaut

[jj10]

Hi everyone,

I have come to this forum off and on over the years to get my civ related info. I haven't played much civ since I purchased Civ 3 collector's edition. Just recently I debated whether to get civ 5. Due to the feedback on this forum I got civ 4 instead! I played it almost nonstop for the last 4 days. Now I have an idea to control the SoD problem which I think keeps to the spirit of this game.

Please look this over and give me your thoughts on it. I haven't done any mods before but I do have software skills. I'd be interested to try to make this happen if there is support for it.

The idea is to introduce the concept of "invasion supply" to open up the 2-dimensional battle space. Instead of focusing entirely on a single tile with a huge stack of units, having supply units leads to the necessity to control land with your units (this is separate from cultural borders). I wrote up the idea in google doc and I'm pasting it below. Thanks for giving me your thoughts!





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Spoiler :

Civ 4 “Invasion Supply” Concept


Observations about the “stack of doom” problem

• Unlimited stacking has its benefits
  • easier for AI
  • easier for HUMAN - can effortlessly concentrate force, can create a powerful single point defense
• Draw back of SoD: single tile concentration of mass overwhelms tactical considerations. Terrain is no longer 2 dimensional.
• I want to introduce the concept of supply to bring back a tactical focus.

“Invasion Supply”

• Each combat unit has an “invasion supply level”, from 0 to 150.
  • Units are born with ISL 150.
  • At the end of each turn, ISL is averaged between units in the same tile (adjusting for Unit Supply Cost). This represents supply sharing. Each tile is able to show a single ISL value for all units.
• In a non-friendly controlled tile,
  • When a unit ends its turn in a non-friendly tile, its ISL decreases by 15.
  • When combat occurs, the unit’s strength is multiplied by min(ISL/100, 1). In other words, a unit that begins its march out of friendly territory at 150 ISL will have a 50 point supply buffer before combat strength is affected.
  • Units receive extra ISL deduction due to combat (especially for attacking siege units).
• In a friendly controlled tile,
  • ISL is not relevant to combat and its value does not decrease.
  • Exception: if the tile belongs to a city not connected to trade network, ISL will decrease at the 15 points/turn rate. Combat is still not effected by ISL.
• The only way to increase ISL is by receiving SV through a “Supply Wagon”, or through pillaging
  • All units in a tile receive an equal ISL increase from any supply action.

“Supply Wagon”

• Supply Wagon is a lot like any other non-combat unit, but it has a few special properties.
  • movement 2, can use enemy roads
• An SW is born with a Supply Value of 100. SV decreases by 20% each time that the SW ends its turn in non-friendly controlled territory (or near a friendly city disconnected from the trade network).
• An SW has a command to distribute its SV to combat units located in the same tile. Each SV point increases the ISL of a unit by 1 / “Unit Supply Cost’ (up to the 150 max). USC is 1 for simple units, and it can be higher than 1 for siege units and modern units.
  • this works the same whether in friendly, neutral, or enemy territory.
• If SV decreases to 0, the SW is removed from the game.
• Multiple SW’s can be merged. If the merged SV total is greater than 100, a Large SW or Super SW may be created.
  • Large SW: holds 500 SV, Super SW: holds 2500.
  • SSW can be split into LSW’s, and LSW can be split into regular SW’s.

Pillaging

• Generates SV and distributes them to units in the tile.
• The size of your army may now depending on the amount of pillaging available - but spending the time to pillage also slows you down!

Analysis

• Due to rapid SV decay, it’s costly and ineffective to keep supply units traveling with the invading army.
  • This means you have to use supply chains. Keep SW’s in your rear, and move them up when the main army needs it.
  • It’s necessary to make use of flat terrain and roads. Being able to move supply units quickly, along good infrastructure, can be important to the campaign.
• Unnecessarily large SoD’s are costly and not smart. They can also deprive you of the forces needed to protect your flanks. Flanks must now be guarded to create the rear area for your supply units. You may no longer ignore by-passed units. You have to watch out that you’re not strategically flanked, cutting into your supply. There are optimal supply routes and alternate supply routes.
  • Border Defense. Continuous line is no longer required. You can use a string of forts, which if an invader by-passes, can threaten his supply line.
  • Different strategies to run supplies through the enemy gauntlet: area control, heavy escort, small units dispersal
• Supply is not a consideration when on the defensive, fighting in friendly territory.
  • However, units near isolated cities will not maintain their ISL. They're not useful for staging attacks.
  • You may try to cut off a city which your opponent is using to stage an attack.
• The ease of management, ease of force concentration of the stacking system is preserved, whether defending or attacking.
  • Units never die from lack of supply. Usually you don’t have to worry about their supply level.
  • Supply is important on a big offensive. If you’re chasing barbarians outside of friendly territory, you might need the occasional supply wagon to replenish ISL.

Possible Dynamics

• Spies can pick up on the existence of invasion supply. This can tell you if his intentions are defensive or offensive.
• Explorers are exempt from invasion supply.
• This might work for naval units, too.

 

[theskibum]

I like this concept a lot as this is really the only part of Civ 4's strategy that I don't like in that it is very one dimensional (SoD). Your implementation is well thought out and I like that it can affect the strength of your units in enemy territory making it a crucial part of the game.

My only concern would be how well the AI would use the mechanic. It might not "get it" without some AI re-programming to utilize it. If the AI didn't understand the importance, it would seriously hamper the AI's ability to make war and an underpowered human could pick off an invading AI stack with ease as they were affected by lack of supply attrition.

More intensive micromanagement for warfare, check
AI programmed to use it, check
Improve tactical game, check

I'm on board, please write the code for me!!!

 

[jj10]

It's a good point that the AI will need a lot of work. Have you tried BetterAI and know a bit about how that was done?

 

[theskibum]

It's a good point that the AI will need a lot of work. Have you tried BetterAI and know a bit about how that was done?

I use Better BUG AI, which is BUG mod merged with BTS Better AI. Sadly I have all the programming skills of a hungover, crack head, slightly lazy eyed, easter bunny.

Which is to say, I have no programming skills.

 

[Psyringe]

I agree that this concept would reduce the current superiority of having huge stacks.

It's a bit more complicated than other possible solutions though, which include: giving more counters against stacks (e.g. more collateral damage), giving combat bonuses if your units occupy several tiles next to the attacked tile (done already by a mod), adding a gold cost that scales (non-linearly) with number of units in a tile, etc.

The increased complexity of your idea will make it more difficult to implement, especially if you want the AI to understand it. I'm not sure whether your idea has advantages (compared to the simpler approaches I mentioned above) that outweigh this disadvantage.

But in any case, if you manage to implement such an idea, it will definitely become a popular mod.

 

[jj10]

Thanks for the feedbacks.

What I like about supply is it has realism at a strategic level. Historically, Chinese and other agricultural civilizations found it was hard to deal with nomads, because the agricultural guys couldn't move infantry over a long distance, couldn't keep them fed on hostile territory. They used manpower to move supplies, and the manpower consumed the supplies they were moving. The supplies had geometric decay (after some supplies are eaten, some of the guys could go home) with a high decay factor (lots of drivers, guards, coolies). But the horse nomads had five horses per person and they could live off of the grassland. Several times the Chinese did have success against the Xiongnu -- it was by emulating their horse cavalry to have the same strategic mobility.

Civ is a great platform for us gamers because it has fun ways to make things and to move them around. I think supplies can be one other type of thing you can make and move in civ and it can be fun to do this. These supplies can interact with terrain, infrastructure, cities and armies all in 2 dimensions. This adds to the grand strategy when playing (which is already a great strength of civ).

AI will be very hard and personally I'm not really experienced at this kind of AI. What about modding for multiplayer as a start? What do people tend to play for multiplayer?

 

[AutomatedTeller]

I never really understood the issues with the SOD. People say it's ahistorical, but it's not - concentration of force is a primary tactical doctrine. You can fit 100K people into a modern sports stadium these days.

Civ is about strategic decisions - how do I build a civ strong enough to create that SoD. Not tactical ones, on how do I out-manuever an enemy.

 

[jj10]

I like stacking better than 1upt too. The main problem people have is your 100k army can sit in the middle of no where, forever. They can march anywhere on earth, and march forever. The stack becomes this inhuman uber death force.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

sure - if you have a strong enough economy to handle the costs and can hold off continuing sniping from collateral damage units.

That's the point.

Adding more complex tactical elements is fine... but it's no longer really a strategy game.

Actually, after railroads, the whole "need to have food to grow a city" is really no longer true - there's no chance that LA or NY could live on the food stocks near them.

 

[kernok]

Great idea indeed! But like one've said I think it would be a bit difficult to mod and especially it would be hard to make the IA able to understand and use it in a proper way.

In my point of view the SoD problem could be "reduced" in a more easy way:
1 - having a max number of units per tile (let say 4 units per tile)
2 - having a bigger max number of units per city-tile (6 units in a city tile)
3 - having siege units act like non-combat units (captured if attacked) with a bombard capacity that could reduce the health of enemy units in the same time it reduce city defense:
-> catapult could reduce the health of 2 units up to 20% & -5% city defence
-> tebuchet could reduce the health of 2 units up to 30% & -10% city defence
-> canon could reduce the health of 4 units up to 40% & -15% city defence
-> artillery could reduce the health of 4 units up to 50% & -20% city defence
-> modern arty could reduce the health of 6 units up to 60% & -25% city defence

This idea may be easier but as I've no idea of how to test I don't know if I'm right!
=)


Sorry for my bad english