Reducing military units brainstorm

We already have a built-in simulation of logistic, which is healing reduction away from friendly tiles. Not sure why we need to focus on it even more, given it is also one of the reasons why the frontline is bogged down (more down time to heal up for attackers, another player-centric issue, as the actual logistic simulation for AI is to build and send more units to the front)
 
nekokon said:
We already have a built-in simulation of logistic, which is healing reduction away from friendly tiles.
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The existing mechanism does very poor job of representing any kind of supply line, which irl is if course major consideration for armies. They say Napoleon was as successful as he was in large part due to his careful attention to logistics. Many throughout history have similarly lost or won their efforts based on how they were able to organise logistics -- would be nice to have some simplistic abstraction of all this that doesn't blur it altogether.

nekokon said:
another player-centric issue, as the actual logistic simulation for AI is to build and send more units to the front
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Mechanisms that apply equally but limit human playstyle more than AI tend to work well, given the general advantage human enjoys in warfare vs AI.

Anyway you have a point, this stuff may not help solve the problem of too many units. I theorize it will increase opportunities to destroy units thus freeing up some space on the map, but this remains to be seen
 
Tekamthi said:
I stayed up too late last night, inspired to see what is possible here. Very experimental as far as gameplay goes, and tbh not sure it'll really work for full game, especially for the AI who will be blind to all of this, but I've mocked up a modmod that I'm interested in playtesting. This is a database-only mod, if you're wondering why I did something one way and not another, it's probably cuz this is what database allows currently:

- All normal healing is disabled for land units. (-5 in enemy, -10 in neutral, -15 in friendly)
- there are 3 promos that re-enable healing: food supply, resource supply, materiel supply.
- each do 5 hp per turn healing for plot and adjacent (functionally identical to medic promo healing bonus), each is temporary duration (10 turns). To get the current +15 hp per turn in friendly, unit must heal in same plot as or adjacent to all 3 promos; 2 nearby promos will only do +10 per turn, etc. Enemy vs neutral vs friendly land doesn't matter, just these promos
- healing promos are gained from moving unit through a plot with an improvement -- food supply promo gained from farms/pastures, resource supply from mines/lumbermills, materiel supply from village/towns/manufactory.
- land military units AND some civilians (workers primarily) can gain the healing promos. ie send a force on foreign attack, it will have healing enabled for 10 turns after it leaves your territory - to continue healing after 10 turns away, at least some units will have to tag up in owned improved plots to restart 10 turn timer OR workers will have to be sent to the front line, carrying these same promos
- forts and citadels provide additional healing bonus per turn

I'll probably start a game with this today, if anyone interested in test-driving with me, let me know here.
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did you remove the medic promos? otherwise seems they would still work here.
 
Tekamthi said:
The existing mechanism does very poor job of representing any kind of supply line, which irl is if course major consideration for armies.
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Supply lines isn't civ....that's just a different game at that point. Civ is not a combat simulator, it doesn't ever get into the nitty gritties of war.

There are many many things that are very important in real warfare that civ doesn't care a lick about.
 
hokath said:
Your idea sounds fairly intuitive to use, but won't it make attack a lot weaker than defense? Is that desirable?
A question: Do you get these promos from moving through enemy tiles (and/or will they interact with pillage)?
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The temp healing promos can be carried anywhere you can get to in 10 turns, so to the player that does not plan, yes they will be weaker on attack. But to the player that does, they can now potentially get the previous friendly heal amount in enemy territory, so they will be stronger if the temp supply promos are tended to and maintained.

Also re attacker strength, or rather defender strength, the existing database features, of which I am pushing the limits here somewhat, does not allow for any easy mechanism for cities to confer supply promos to the units directly, and otherwise only allows for universal healing bonus (remember, naval untouched by any of this and still relies on the old mechanism underlying everything here) -- a city garrison that is unsupported by these promos will only heal 5 hp per turn, but if the promos are present nearby they can still do the usual 20.

Reality is current AI will have no idea how any of this works, and will stumble over much of it on defense but probably far less on attack -- so yes as deployed thus far I would expect a general vibe of weaker attacks, but if something like this ever got proper AI analysis then I'd argue it could be more of a neutral change, weaker distant attacks and stronger towards those nearby the attacker.

Re: enemy tiles, my 1st draft last night I did not enable this, primarily cuz I wanted to encourage the "supply line" idea of units or workers having to move back and forth to owned infrastructure to replenish. Access to enemy improvements could be toggled via database however, it's a very trivial change.

Re: pillage: no change. Database doesn't provide for anything here. Would be relatively trivial to do in Lua, and would thematically make sense that the food supply buff would be gained on pillage, but that will be a future addition, maybe -- for now scope is constrained to database-only changes, as this is a defacto prerequisite for most congress proposals

Stalker0 said:
did you remove the medic promos? otherwise seems they would still work here.
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I left the medic promotion and all other healing stuff intact. I'm guessing these would have to be adjusted if this idea is developed further, but for 1st draft seemed fine to leave as-is, it's only gonna result in a free 5 hp heal with medic 1, player will still be encouraged to use the other temp promos in addition. I think the belief that allows extra healing will be a big one that feels much more valuable now. Will need a read on general in-game vibe to determine how exactly they should be adjusted.

Stalker0 said:
Supply lines isn't civ....that's just a different game at that point. Civ is not a combat simulator, it doesn't ever get into the nitty gritties of war.
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Yes fair point, however I think there might be some satisfying abstraction here. For example, units could be left to fight in enemy territory as they do now, but with a handful of workers transiting back and forth to keep up the availability of heals in the combat zone. Or a small number of the units themselves could tag back to home territory to collect supplies. No new supply line system, just moving our existing workers and/or our existing units back and forth intermittently.

Forgot to mention recon is excluded in my ruleset, still heal same as before.

Anyway will post here in a few hours, for anyone that wants to test drive, tweak values etc.
 
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There're probably gonna be a lot more micromanagement getting "newly supplied units" to the front, which doesn't really consist of any tactical decision making (unless you count playing traffic police as one). I don't endorse this approach, but if you're to test this idea out it's better gameplay-wise to create (or use) civilian unit with great admiral healing ability (2 charges) to represent supply replenishment, as they don't get caught by heavy traffic at the frontline, and their limited but stronger healing makes better decision making tools tactically.
 
nekokon said:
civilian unit with great admiral healing ability (2 charges) to represent supply replenishment
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I am interested in this as well, but am unfamiliar with how it works currently. There is a NumRepairCharges field in the promotions table -- maybe it's as simple as slapping this on another unit and everything else just works, that would be nice. But I wonder if the button will even show up, if it will only repair naval and not land. Will test later

edit: Tested the fleet repair ability, it can be added to other units, but doesn't work on land units unless they are embarked. We'll need either a new ability that does similar for land, or the existing functionality tweaked to include unembarked land units.

edit 2: attached draft of healing supply mod in this thread in the modmods sub
 
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nekokon said:
I don't endorse this approach, but if you're to test this idea out it's better gameplay-wise to create (or use) civilian unit with great admiral healing ability (2 charges) to represent supply replenishment, as they don't get caught by heavy traffic at the frontline, and their limited but stronger healing makes better decision making tools tactically.
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agreed, this seems like the most elegant way to represent "supply lines".
'
It also would create a more gambler mindset. Instead of a steady heal every round, do you blow your charge and "waste" some to heal the person up, or hold for max efficiency but risk losing the unit.

I also think it would encourage melee "diving" a lot...which actually could be pretty interesting. Right now one of the reasons passivity is so encouraged is that melee units often can't attack and survive the counterattack (which is why ranged units in the long run take up so much of the actual damage done even though melee units hit harder on each hit). But if I can move in a melee unit AND immediately heal them with a charge.....well suddenly I can push the lines a lot faster.

That's....actually pretty cool sounding tbh. I think the issue is going to be scaling costs (might have to take a page out of the diplomacy unit book). Otherwise late game, supply units will be so cheap you'll just infinitely heal your front line and they will just mow through everything. Now that I say that, the diplomacy unit cost is probably a pretty solid starting point, though I think they would have to start out cheaper (emissaries are very very expensive for a civ that early in the game)
 
Has anyone thought to increase unit maintenance exponentially instead of linearly? Is that even possible?
 
For me the most elegant solution to unit clutter and end game fatigue is the "several battle rows within a turn" in humankind. Like when at war 3 turns of only military actions are solved within a single global turn. Just for the sake of brainstorming of course, it's probably impossible to code or to balance in civ... but if we had this system combined with the amazing AI of VP it would be incredible.
 
Thibix Magnus said:
For me the most elegant solution to unit clutter and end game fatigue is the "several battle rows within a turn" in humankind. Like when at war 3 turns of only military actions are solved within a single global turn. Just for the sake of brainstorming of course, it's probably impossible to code or to balance in civ... but if we had this system combined with the amazing AI of VP it would be incredible.
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Doesn't this result in faster movement only during war?
 
azum4roll said:
Doesn't this result in faster movement only during war?
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it depends, but yes it would be one of the challenges, assuming it is even implementable. Basically all units involved in a "battle", a single front or area, have like 3 rounds of tactical movement and combat. But units outside the area should not move faster just because they are at war. In the humankind game, armies are stacked when they move, but are unstacked when such battles happen, and single units get to deploy on the real map. The game had issues but this was the most brilliant part.

In civ, such a system should be either combined with stacking too, or otherwise the "rounds" should only happen between units involved in a "front", basically when a unit attacks another, all units in a radius or connected through adjacency get involved in the battle. How this is defined might have weird threshold effects. In any case the goal would be that in a single historical turn, there are many rounds that deplete armies much faster than in the current system where wars last for millenia.
 
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I think the best way is just increasing early game supply and reducing late game supply.
Another opinion : allow to stack units like civ4 after completing military science(Industrial era). Start at 3 stacks and to 10 stacks. Stack is increased after completing some research about army.(Specific technique is not decided yet)
 
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