Limiting SoD

[Jorgen_CAB]

Ok, my take on this issue… there are the realistic side and there are game mechanics. They don’t necessarily work to good together since the timeframe in the game is abstracted contrary to war in the game and in the real world.

In the ancient and up until late medieval times armies mostly relied with foraging the region they were located in. So many armies had to be scattered in several places before entering battle, in real life an army would be scattered in at least several squares trying to scavenge for food. 99% of the time the army would spend with no combat, 75% would be finding supplies and resting the other for marching and combat.

An army would almost never stay in formation for much longer than a few years, if even that. Some empires had even the luxury of advanced logistics and could sustain an army even in regions where the army could not sustain themselves but not for long.

So the main focus for supplies in ancient and medieval times would be food and water, the amount of wood, metal and support personnel was not that important as it is in more modern armies.

A small army could more or less operate any ware as long as there is food to feed them.

By the time gunpowder is developed the operational strategy of warfare is changed drastically. Static defenses will become much less powerful, and cities will not be so easy to defend anymore, cities are larger and can not effectively be defended with walls. Powerful artillery will easily obliterate any static defenses given a relatively short amount of time, with small losses to the attacking force. Though, the static defenses are still pretty invulnerable to standard infantry attacks.
This change in organization did make a difference in how a war was fought.

As time went on, powerful weapons made the concentration of force even more dangerous, and the speed mobility of forces was greater, though supping them became more and more important when food was not the primary source for supplies.

Incorporating all this in a single game is really hard, as time goes by supply and organization changes a lot, not so much in the first half of the game, but at the end there is a very big difference.

In ancient times there could be a stack limitation based on food scavenged from all tiles around the army(stack), also some technologies would make you able to supply them for a turn or to outside this scope. This would simulate that the stack is dispersed in the local area finding food most if the time, and uniting when there is a battle to be fought.

More advanced units must work differently since they require different support. Units such as canons, artillery, mechanized, amour, air etc should only be able to operate at a certain distance from a supply source, such as a city, colony, airfield or fortress. With technology they might be able to operate a turn or two without support.
Though you should be able to put as many units in one place as you wish, though it should take time, a square should be limited how many units that could pass it in a turn instead. And modern units should do some collateral damage to units in the same place since modern weaponry is so much more powerful.

The exact way to portray this in an easy way is hard, but sometimes it is better to make it simle for the sake of playability, but it should feel somewhat realistic.

 

[sir_schwick]

Your solution is logistics, but that could probably be manipulated to easily. Just attach several workers to a SoD, problem solved. That is only one half of the solution to making war about strategy rather than numbers.

Actually the logistics and tile limit progression you described above would be cool. It would change how you thought about these things over time. That would lead you to think of technology creating better things rather than upgrades. It is not too complicated, since time is advancing as you say.

Either way stack limits would make group combat more interesting since you would need the right troops in the right place.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

In my mind, a fixed number of units in a stack would only fit in a modern setting.

During most of our history, battles were fought by large armies, not in a broad front spanning several hundreds or thousands of miles. That just doesn’t feel historically accurate before the twentieth century.

In a WW1, WW2 or later scenario we could cap the size of the army at a certain number of units, representing the logistically sound number.

When Rome sent an expeditionary army to deal with a threat that army most certainly met their enemy in battle in full force, not divided in an 800 mile long front. Though, perhaps only a few months or weeks before the battle, parts of the same army was scattered in several parts of a province.

If there were to be caps, it must be large enough or the number of units reduced to simulate this, otherwise early historic war will only feel like WW2 in Roman clothes with no Airplanes.

The communication during the ancient eras was so slow that multi taskforce armies were practically impossible. A general needed his troops to be close to being able to command them effectively.

Don’t get me wrong, but I find multi taskforces very realistic and fun to play with, just not during ages with no radios to communicate with.

 

[sir_schwick]

But in ancient times the limiting factor would be logistics and supplies. Also, concentration of troops can be very bad thing in battle. Remember Gagaumela. You might have large armies in two to three adjacent tiles.

 

[dh_epic]

An alternative to stacks of doom -- particularly since people would just spread their 10 troops into two stacks of 5 anyway -- is armies for *everything*.

Except armies wouldn't work by mere addition. There would be multipliers and bonuses based on each unit. (E.g.: Cavalry, strong against sprear units) Putting them in an army together would multiply these factors together. An army of 3 or 4 units would essentially be a unique unit, with nuances based on the assembly of units.

Since armies would be widely available, great leaders would work slightly differently. They'd allow you to create some kind of field captain who would give a bonus to all other units in the army, giving that army an advantage over all other armies.

The key question, then, is how the bonus system works. Tripling the number of unit types (essentially three different types of spearmen who are strong against three different types of swordmen) would work, but would have a huge cost in micromanagement. Maybe the whole experience system will have something to do with it -- so bonuses are added automatically and naturally, based on what you do?

 

[sir_schwick]

I know from the Civ 4 preview thread that group battle and the things your talking about will be in Civ 4.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

Alexanders battle at Gaugamella is a perfect example of ancient warfare. Both commanders manoeuvred their forces for several months before the battle begun.

For any of them to divide their force would have spelled certain doom, no commander of that age could control and coordinate several large forces in a timely manner. If Memnon had divided the army they would never arrive at the battle at the same, it would take several days for a message to arrive and to late to react to a change of plan. That was the reason why a commander had to keep his army in one piece.

Guerrilla warfare was a part of the strategy even in ancient times, but mostly as a prelude for a decisive battle.

When playing a game like CIV you have an omnipotent view of the battlefield and may react to any movement within a turn, the commanders of the ancient time did not have that luxury Moving around a lot of small stacks and coordinating them with sharp precision is just not something that could be done with the technology available.
As a player you should be encouraged to make war as they did in ancient time, in modern times the incentive should lean more on decentralized forces.

 

[Tantor]

Define the exact difference between paratroopers and airborne infantry.

Sorry for nitpicking...

Sorry for not answering earlier, but I`ve been away for X-mas.

Paratroopers are soldiers delivered by parachutes.

Airborne Infantry are delivered by helicopters, V/STOL Planes etc. They are also known as Air Cav.

 

[Lennon]

But aren't those Airborne Infantry guys trained paratroopers too?

 

[dh_epic]

And where are those paratroopers jumping from? Not planes?

 

[danegeld]

I do not like SoD's regardless if its realistic or not I feel the amount of units per square should be limited in some manner

wither this is how many units can be on that square on a given turn or if its a non city square.

 

[rhialto]

Personally, I feel having an in-game distinction between paratroopers and airbourne infantry to be a useful distinction. I envision a game where paras can airdrop out of a city, and airbourne infantry can can 'airdrop' both in and out of a friendly city. This reflects the fact that parachutes aren't so useful for recalling the men back to base.

I'd also liek to maintain a distinction between air cavalry and airbourne infantry. The fundamental distinction between infantry and cavalry is that cavalry fight while mounted. In the case of air cavalry, mounted on helicopter. As such, it woule be more interresting to represent that as a gunship helicopter rather than as highly mobile infantry.

 

[Tantor]

Sorry I can`t keep up with the debate, but my in-laws computer is not having its best x-mas.

In game therms separating airborne inf and paratroopers is easy, as a paratrooper is a specific unit, while airborne inf is any unit delievered by a chopper.

In real life there is a specific distinction. In the largest airborne capable force in the world, US Airborne , only one division is jump capable. I.E. the whole division may be delivered by chute. The rest of US Airborne is delivered by plane on a (captured?) runway or by chopper. But all its gear is designed to be delivered ASAP by air. Check out Tom Clancy`s book "Airborne" for more info.

I guess all of you have seen the movie "Platoon" about Vietnam. In the movie we clearly sees how a regular infantry unit are being used as airborne infantry, but they were known as Air Cavalry, delivered by chopper, fought on foot.
Air Cav are not gunships, but gunships often function as airsupport.

Sorry about the essay

Ps Are we slightly off topic now?

 

[rhialto]

Yes, I know the USA uses the term air cavalry to refer to infantry transported by helicopter. But when you look at the meaning of the words, it makes no sense at all. But in fairness it is probbaly a bad idea to call any actual helicopter unit by air cavalry, to avoid confusion.

 

[Trev]

I have not read all posts, but if there is a desire to limit stacking of units, then all that needs to be done is when a defensive unit is attacked in a stack, there is maybe a 5% chance that any other individual unit on the square will suffer a hitpoint loss. This is realistic and also means the larger the stack, the greater likelihood of hitpoint losses. In this situation 5 stacks of 10 getting attacked 10 times in total will suffer on average 5 hit points of damage while 1 large stack of 50 units would suffer 25 hitpoints of damage, a realistic and also very playable scenario

 

[Gogf]

Yes, I agree. Furthermore, different terrain should have different maximums.

 

[Figaro]

One great thing about the civ games are the way that scale is not determined (hence the various sized maps of the world etc. etc.). Stacking limits would imply a scale restriction of some sort, which wouldn't be a good thing.

 

[Trev]

Which is why my suggestion of potential for greater damage to larger stacks is a better idea than maximum stacking limits. Players are not limited in tha amount of stacking they do, but must be prepared to wear greater hitpoint damage as a result. Another option is to allow bombard units to weaken multiple units when attaking very large stacks, ie 40% on strongest defender of success, plus 3% odds of weakening each other individual defender, this again would discourage very large stacks without preventing their use

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Well as was suggested by myself, and others, in previous posts is that stack limits isn't about JUST terrain. Instead its about the NATURE of the underlying terrain and how effectively large groups of units can fight together. That is to say it is simply harder to fight, with larger numbers of units, on forest, marsh and mountain terrain than it is to fight on the open grasslands, plains-or even deserts or tundras. Of course, like Trev and others, I have never supported HARD stack limits. Just that the larger the stacks, the less ably the stacks can fight!
Like Trev has said, I also wouldn't mind a form of collateral damage for overstacked units!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[dh_epic]

Collateral damage and other disadvantages for stacks doesn't seem like such a bad idea to me.

But rather than penalizing the stack concept, I realize more and more that the key is rewarding less stack-like behavior. Making a game where someone can take 3 troops and beat 10 troops using intelligence, and not luck. Making a game where numbers are an advantage, but not the be all and end all to winning a war.