COMBAT : new healing mechanism with supply lines, introducing Morale value for units
CITY : Social Stratification and new growth mechanism
Those who have played with R.E.D. WWII are familiar with the healing mechanism using supply lines, but it has been slightly modified.
Any fighting units will require multiple components (Personnel, Horses, Vehicles, Materiel) affected at different positions in the unit:
- Front Line : combat ready, units HP are restored only if there is enough reserve to move to front line for all required components
- Reserve : ready to reinforce front line, that's where reinforcements from cities, healed personnel and repaired Vehicles are affected first
- Rear : that's where the food (and other resources, except Materiel which is either used in front line or available for reinforcement in reserve) are stocked, it's also the position for the wounded personnel and damaged vehicles
Here you can see a Warrior composition, it requires 2000 personnel and 30 materiel in front line to be at full "combat" health, the reserve values are the unit's base value, they have not been drained yet.
You can note that this unit is linked to Cairo at 28% efficiency (this is based on distance)
If the reserve were not at full capacity, the unit would ask for reinforcement, for example if it had 500 personnel left in reserve, it would ask Cairo to send 1000 to refill it, but with that efficiency it would receive at max 280 (if Cairo have this quantity of personnel available)
You may have noted that the warrior's food stock was going down, units feed on the terrain, using the food yield of the tile they are on, and a fraction of the adjacent tiles yield (shared with other units in the area, a large army may have food problem, as limited stacking is possible between ranged and melee units)
In a desert they don't find enough food, and will require stock from the city they are linked too.
The scout have less personnel than most units and can survive almost anywhere even when they are too far to be linked to a city.
City have "real" population and also use social stratification. The ratio between classes will depend on buildings, civics, techs, government, etc...
Growth is calculated from Birth and Death Rate, with a base variation between class and further variation relative to each class from external events.
The only one coded ATM is food rationing (which happens when the stock goes below a threshold), it will raise the death rate of all classes, but much more the DR of the lower class than the upper class.
OTOH, for game play reasons, the lower class has the highest birth rate.
The cities always keep 50% of the stock for themselves, the food stock in Cairo is not raising because anything collected above the 50% is currently send to the warrior in the desert.
Don't mind the "3031" for turns before growth, it's not linked to the new mechanism yet.
At the beginning of your turn, there will be a floating text above your units to show the food collected from the terrain and eaten from the stock each turn, here you can see the Warrior restoring some of its stock after leaving the desert area...
Here you can see for the first time a negative effect on an unit's morale: it's now too far from Cairo to receive any reinforcement or supply, and if it's staying in the area, it's going to have food rationing problems (which also affect morale)
The Morale value only affect a desertion rate (personnel deserting from reserve then front line) when it goes down ATM, but there are a lot of potential use (retreating or forcing another unit to retreat for example), and I also plan to combine it with a "loyalty" value when implementing the Revolutions mechanisms.
Each combat will generate multiple lines of floating text expanding the result, that particular line shows the loss in personnel from the front line of this warrior after a ranged attack by the slinger: 93 deads, 0 prisonners (not possible for a ranged attack) and 279 wounded (send to the "rear")
On a side note, I hope that custom font icons will be possible soon.
At the beginning of a player turn, his units will "heal", which in the cas of our Warrior require transfer from a bit of materiel and a lot of personnel from the reserve to the front line.
The transfer amount is limited, an unit will not completely heal in one turn from an attack of an equivalent unit.
Still the combats are longer because of this and the base values that I have tweaked: I do want them to be longer, as in R.E.D. WWII, one shoot should not be possible.
Which means you can still have some reserve but a very low "combat" health, and when that health reach 0 (no more components in front line), the unit is destroyed (and the reserve and wounded may be captured)
"Strategical retreat" is an option to consider.
A quick note about the AI, this will of course not help it, but from the R.E.D. WWII experience (I did tell you it was made to test those mechanisms, didn't I ?) it's not that bad compared to vanilla AI, we may just have to scale the difficulty. And I'd like alliance mechanisms (military or economic) to be a good balance for runaway civ/player.
So on that picture above we can see 228 personnel and 2 materiel transferred from reserve to front line. A Modern Armor would require very different ratio, including vehicles (but stick to the very first eras if you want to play test the mod, I've not coded vehicles yet)
As you can see, during a melee attack some of the front line personnel may be captured, the Warrior has lost 77 personnel this way here.
Prisoners are sorted by nationality, they'll be converted to slave in cities (adding to the total population and so the city size) and may also be used diplomatically (nothing coded on that part yet)
You can see all possible negative effect on the morale of an unit on the above picture.
Note the Arabian prisoners in the "rear" section (but do not note the typo please
), if the Warrior kill that Slinger they will be transferred back to the Warrior's reserve as personnel.
Each turn, during the healing phase, some of the wounded will die and some will be healed and reintegrated in the unit's reserve. As everything else, the ratio will change by era, depending on tech, promotions, etc...
In the future, wounded will also be send back to a city if a link exist, the dead/healed ratio will be better there (also depending on era, buildings, etc...)
Small note while we're speaking of that, health will be a value used in city growth, and bad health could lead to spreading diseases.
What is interesting to note here is the difference between the dead/captured/wounded ratio with the previous melee combat against the Slinger.
Units may have (and some already have, hence the difference) lower or higher antipersonnel values.
The Slinger has a low value, the personnel lost from front line is mostly wounded, while the Warrior and Spearmen have a normal value and the personnel lost is mostly killed.
In future updates Era difference may influence that (less dead when fighting a lower era unit, more dead when fighting a higher era unit)
In that city the death rates of the lower class is now more important than the birth rate, but after applying the social stratification ratio, the other classes are also affected more than just because of the change in their own DR ratio.
While under heavy rationing the food consumption is much lower, and that state is locked for a few turns, which allow the stock to be restored a bit.
The stock is higher, the city is now under medium rationing, population is raising again... and will of course trigger another heavy rationing phase
Don't worry, I'll add new buildings to control housing (most of the actual ones are going to control health) very early in the game.
Low housing will limit the birth rate, allowing you to control better when to allow a city to growth if there is not enough food in the area.
Also note that there will be buildings to convert resources (wheat, sheep, ..) to food
Transfer are automatically made between cities of the same civilization if there is a river route (as in the above picture), a road, a sea route, or a trader linking them.
The routes have different efficiency, limiting the amount that can be transferred, using a trader will allow 100% efficiency.
International transfer will not be automatic, unless a specific trade agreement is made, or simply when using a trader unit.
As when transferring to units, cities keep a percentage of their stock to themselves (more important for city transfer : 75%), and will transfer only to a city that as less quantity of a resource.
In the above case 45 is the reserve value of the stock of sheep in Cairo, the surplus (6 sheeps) has been send to Damietta.
There is no migration of population coded yet, but it's planned, at least for later eras.
