Supply lines

[Dom Pedro II]

Do you think it'll be possible to mod the game to include supply lines? Basically, I want to make units require supplies of resources in order to maintain their full functionality. So, for example, if you venture too deep into enemy territory, and the enemy gets into your rear, your units within a turn or two take a hitpoint hit without even firing a shot. Thus the supply lines must be defended at all costs.

It could also be good because if you capture a city that is acting as the base of supplies (or maybe it could be a tile improvement) you could get a big supply bonus.

It also works so that if you cut off a country's supply of oil, even if their supply lines to the front are maintained, without oil their tanks and planes will grind to a hault.

Of course, even if it IS possible, will the AI know how to use it? Can the AI be made to be forced to establishing a supply base prior to invasion?

 

[_bloodninja_]

I'm not sure if you can do that, or mod it to be capable of doing that, but i hope to hell that you can. Maintaining supply lines is a major part of ruling a country. You should be able to check off or on the level of micromanagement, I figure anyways.

 

[Dom Pedro II]

Not to mention, certain military weapons have long functioned better as a means of economic warfare. The submarine, for example, while it can be used against warships, is much better for preying on an enemy's merchant fleet.

What would be really ideal is if you could do like in CtP2 (not that much should be taken from CtP2) and have shipping lanes by which resources to travel. So if you're the Americans and you set up a trade route with the Romans and it's going from your port in Boston to the Romans port in Ravenna, privateers (and then eventually submarines) can target that supply line and cut off the resources. And you would get some gold or something from the captured bounty... or maybe some of the resource?

Either way, I think supply lines can be implemented without turning it into a micromanagement nightmare... perhaps simply sending your troops out of your border causes the nearest city to be declared a default supply center. And you can change it if you want. But then you'd have to be able set multiple as well since you may be fighting on multiple fronts... using allied cities would also be ideal.

 

[s3d]

Even if it is possible to make AI handle it in any sane time would be hellishly difficalt.
More easy way would be consider cultural ground as supply area, and giving penalty while fighting on the neutral/enemy ground for modern units. For ancient/medieval units it should be opposite. If it is possible to mod of cause...

 

[I_batman]

Do you think it'll be possible to mod the game to include supply lines? Basically, I want to make units require supplies of resources in order to maintain their full functionality. So, for example, if you venture too deep into enemy territory, and the enemy gets into your rear, your units within a turn or two take a hitpoint hit without even firing a shot. Thus the supply lines must be defended at all costs.

It could also be good because if you capture a city that is acting as the base of supplies (or maybe it could be a tile improvement) you could get a big supply bonus.

It also works so that if you cut off a country's supply of oil, even if their supply lines to the front are maintained, without oil their tanks and planes will grind to a hault.

Of course, even if it IS possible, will the AI know how to use it? Can the AI be made to be forced to establishing a supply base prior to invasion?

I think that the way the game designers envision this concept is shown in one of the previews. where it is stated that it in Civ IV it will be very expensive to maintain a standing army on foreign soil, probably in gold costs and citizen happiness.
I personally like your ideas, but doubt the game engine will allow for that complexity. Keep in mind, they have tried to make this game simpler, as opposed to more complex. Whether that this was a good or bad idea will be known in a few days when the game reports start filtering in.

 

[Dom Pedro II]

I think that the way the game designers envision this concept is shown in one of the previews. where it is stated that it in Civ IV it will be very expensive to maintain a standing army on foreign soil, probably in gold costs and citizen happiness.
I personally like your ideas, but doubt the game engine will allow for that complexity. Keep in mind, they have tried to make this game simpler, as opposed to more complex. Whether that this was a good or bad idea will be known in a few days when the game reports start filtering in.

Personally, I don't really like the idea of having foreign soil vs. home soil as being the distinction for supply lines... For one reason, the COST of maintaining an army on foreign soil is only one attribute... If you cut an enemy off from his base, his army will will on the vine regardless of how much money the government back at home might be pumping into the war. If they don't have a force to come and punch through the defenses, they won't eat, they won't have ammunition, and they will die. Case in point, the German armies outside of Stalingrad that were eventually completely surrounded and forced to surrender.

It provides a way for smaller armies, or larger but less technologically advanced armies to fend off the big guys... I mean, getting rid of the stack of doom does little if all it does is replace one stack with several stacks... it's still smash, smash capture... smash, smash capture... this at least would give some kind of tactical and strategic consideration.

The other thing is that the home field advantage is useless if your access to resources has been destroyed. Many historians agree that during the Civil War, the South could continue to field an army so long as the Shenandoah Valley remained intact. If the North captured or burned the Valley, the Southern army would wither and die... Sheridan torched it, and therefore, there was no hope for another advance down the Valley again for the Confederates. Similarly, again... with Nazi Germany, they were fighting the war in their own lands by late 1944 and early 1945, but they didn't have the gasoline to get what few tanks they had left in motion...

In Civ3, tanks, planes and everything else required resources to be built but nothing to be maintained. Oil is not crucial in the construction of a tank, but try invading a country without any gasoline... those tanks are going no where. To effective attack the enemy means you have to be able to wage economic warfare, and that economic warfare has to not only keep him from producing more but also affect what he already has.

 

[MarineCorps]

I;d love to see this idea implemented. Would add a whole new angle to the game.

 

[I_batman]

Personally, I don't really like the idea of having foreign soil vs. home soil as being the distinction for supply lines... For one reason, the COST of maintaining an army on foreign soil is only one attribute... If you cut an enemy off from his base, his army will will on the vine regardless of how much money the government back at home might be pumping into the war. If they don't have a force to come and punch through the defenses, they won't eat, they won't have ammunition, and they will die. Case in point, the German armies outside of Stalingrad that were eventually completely surrounded and forced to surrender.

It provides a way for smaller armies, or larger but less technologically advanced armies to fend off the big guys... I mean, getting rid of the stack of doom does little if all it does is replace one stack with several stacks... it's still smash, smash capture... smash, smash capture... this at least would give some kind of tactical and strategic consideration.

The other thing is that the home field advantage is useless if your access to resources has been destroyed. Many historians agree that during the Civil War, the South could continue to field an army so long as the Shenandoah Valley remained intact. If the North captured or burned the Valley, the Southern army would wither and die... Sheridan torched it, and therefore, there was no hope for another advance down the Valley again for the Confederates. Similarly, again... with Nazi Germany, they were fighting the war in their own lands by late 1944 and early 1945, but they didn't have the gasoline to get what few tanks they had left in motion...

In Civ3, tanks, planes and everything else required resources to be built but nothing to be maintained. Oil is not crucial in the construction of a tank, but try invading a country without any gasoline... those tanks are going no where. To effective attack the enemy means you have to be able to wage economic warfare, and that economic warfare has to not only keep him from producing more but also affect what he already has.

Don't get me wrong, I completely agree with you. In reality, any army that has no supplies, dies. End of story. But the game designers chose to simplify this concept, in fact oversimplify it in my opinion.
Civ has never got supply lines right and if they are serious about simplifying the game, they won't get it right now.
That is what I was talking about armies on foreign soil costing money and happiness only.
Hopefully, this can be modified within the code, but I am betting that the earliest that can happen is when they finally release the SDK editor in 2006.
I hope I am wrong, hence my comment about game reports fitering out.

But I doubt I am wrong.

 

[Dom Pedro II]

Well, if it takes until early 2006, then sobeit. We were working on Civ3 for years after its initial release.

If even after the SDK it can't be done.. well, that'd be unfortunate.

 

[apatheist]

An implementation that I like is as follows... your units in or within x turns of your territory or allied territory are green. When they're between x turns and y turns away from your territory or allied territory, they are yellow. Beyond y turns away, they are red. Units in the green zone are fine. Units in the yellow zone have a chance of losing 1 HP per turn, but cannot lose the last. Units in the red zone definitely lose 1 HP per turn and can lose the last. x and y are TBD, but will likely be map-dependent.

Note that the above is measured in turns. That means a ship can range further than a cavalry unit which can range further than an infantry unit. It also means that your units can range further over roads than ordinary terrain, and further over flat land as compared to jungles or hills. For overseas expeditions, the total distance in turn is a sum of the number of turns the ship is from friendly territory plus the number of turns a land-based unit is from the ship. If the ship moves away from the coast, the land unit's distance to friendly territory is infinite, and so it is thus immediately in the red zone and starts losing HP.

The supply line should follow the best path of the unit to friendly territory. If the best path goes through enemy territory or an enemy unit, then it's obviously not the best path, as the unit itself could not travel that route, so the supply line must route around, and will thus be longer.

 

[HourlyDaily]

I like the supply lines - but I am content for now that it be replicated with the high cost of units being outside your borders.

Some of the early write-ups have commented about it being difficult to warmonger for extended periods of time. I don't do it often in Civ 3 myself, but if supply lines are further complicated, it'll make conquest nigh on impossible.

 

[_bloodninja_]

Not only should there be supply line, you should be able to stockpile supplies as well. They should be able to be created like units and all that etc. Different city improvements, such as Pharmaceautical Company could allow the production of medical supplies, Weapons Factories for ammunition, etc. Medical supplies would heal troops, and give an extra blip of health, ammunition would result in a higher rate of fire, or something to those effects. But they should be tradeable, sellable, etc. Look at WW2 as one example, America's main role in the entire war was supplies arms. I also think the bigger cities get, the more production cues they should have. By this i mean, after a city gets a manufacturing plant, they should be able to build two of the same units at once, or have two different units being built at the same time. It adds to a more realistic and enjoyable experience i think. On these notes anyways, I think civ should start reaching into the realms of a more personalized simulation, where one could be an evil dictator, or a benevolent ruler. Where there are more choices of good and bad to make. Thats just my opinion though

 

[LouLong]

One good way of not losing too much money when on foreign soil is to pillage.
In Civ4 pillaging gets you money !

Edit : glad you are back for Civ4, DPII !

 

[Dom Pedro II]

I would rather turn off the added expense of maintaining units outside of your borders since that added expense would be put towards the resources to maintain them which would already be represented with supply lines if we can manage to mod them in.

I agree that I would like to be able to stockpile supplies.

That was one of the things I'd been hoping for but was disappointed with in Civ3. If you had one source of oil, you could produce an infinite number of units that required it. That almost renders resources as a irrelevant.

I would rather once you build a facility to... let's say... mine copper and connect it with a road, that the copper produced would begin to build up and could be expended on various items. Of course, there should probably be a certain amount (depending on the resource) that is consumed by the population. So each city, essentially would have it's own personal stockpile of resources. So a city with a massive stockpile would survive reasonably well in the middle of a long siege, whereas one with a small stockpile would not.

Not only that, but the amount of copper that could be added per turn would be limited by several factors:

1) the productivity of the mine which would go up with later technologies

2) but also by the means of transportation... so roads and railroads would have an added feature. A road would be able to transport, say, 5 units per turn. A railroad would be able to transport 25 units per turn, an ocean trade route 30 units, a river 25 units, a canal 20 units... etc. and these would also be increased with technologies. A road could increase to 20 units upon the discovery of the automobile for example.

This would also affect supplies too in much the same way.

 

[apatheist]

Not only should there be supply line, you should be able to stockpile supplies as well.
...

That's an ambitious idea. It's ambitious enough that maybe it should count as a whole other feature from supply lines. Consider that most parts of it don't require supply lines, and supply lines don't require it. It adds artificial resources, quantifies them, adds to the trading possibilities in the game, and adds new special units. That's a lot. I suggest with supply lines that any potential modders start small and add pieces only after testing the most basic implementation. That way, you reduce the chance of making something more complicated than it needs to be, as well as increasing the likelihood of success.

 

[_bloodninja_]

I feel it would add a new twist to the game though. First I'm going to get into about the quantifying of each resource. Doing this will make certain land areas more valuable. Right now, there is no difference in one oil resource in the middle east compared to one oil resource in Russia for example (speaking in a world map sense of course), but with quanitifying resources, you could make the oil resource in the middle east a higher amount than the Russia one persay, thereby making the Middle East a more desirable location. This would make you more inclined if you were a war monger, to take over the middle east. It gives new military strategies. If youre not a war monger, it makes you want to be friends with whosever controling the midde eastern oil. It can give more specific military goals. There should be maintanence costs for keeping an oil rig up too, making it a more valuable tile, because so much money is going into maintaining it. Making an oil rig, as opposed to calling it an oil colony a la civ3, should take a few turns from an engineer. All of this makes the protecting and getting the resource a task, but a highly rewarding one. Not only should you be able to stockpile resources, you should be able to produce and stockpile weapons, ammo and the like. They should be transported exactly like ground units move, but can be protected by other units naturally, but this allows for supply lines to be destroyed/interrupted, for these items and what not to be captured as well. This itself puts a new unique twist on the game. Lets say, for example, that you're an evil dictator, or whatever right, and you want to build nuclear missiles, but no one will trade you uranium. One of the spy missions could be 'discovering trade routes' or something to that effect, then a choice of random (higher chance of success), uranium, oil, weapons, etc trade routes (lower chance of success), but anyways, so you pick uranium, and you discover its being transported from... say moscow to new york. Then you could capture the transport and BAM, now you have enough uranium for lets say, 3 missiles. It's add alot to the game, to quantify resources, and the ability to stockpile them.

Another note, I loved how in CivII sometimes when you took over the enemies capital, the country would split in two, with one side teaming with you. I didn't like how america would split into america and egpyt for example, but to split into america and American Revolutinaries. Or something to that effect. I loved how that could happen. I wish it could be implemented again.

 

[Dom Pedro II]

Another note, I loved how in CivII sometimes when you took over the enemies capital, the country would split in two, with one side teaming with you. I didn't like how america would split into america and egpyt for example, but to split into america and American Revolutinaries. Or something to that effect. I loved how that could happen. I wish it could be implemented again.

That would be good.

It's going to be quite some time (maybe even until after the SDK) to really understand what can and cannot be done. If it can be done, rest assured, I will make a mod that will do it

 

[apatheist]

I feel it would add a new twist to the game though.

I'm not disagreeing with that. All I'm saying is:
1) It's not necessary for supply lines
2) Supply lines are not necessary for it
3) It's really big, probably 2 or 3 substantial features
That has nothing to do with the worth of the ideas, and everything to do with breaking things up into discrete and manageable chunks.

First I'm going to get into about the quantifying of each resource.

This is a common desire, but neither requires nor is required by supply lines.

There should be maintanence costs for keeping an oil rig up too, making it a more valuable tile, because so much money is going into maintaining it.

Tile improvement maintenance costs are another distinct features that neither require nor are required by supply lines.

Not only should you be able to stockpile resources, you should be able to produce and stockpile weapons, ammo and the like.

Stockpiling resources, again, neither requires nor is required by supply lines. Nor does it require finite resources, as you can just consider a stockpile to hold n turns of a particular resource.

Another note, I loved how in CivII sometimes when you took over the enemies capital, the country would split in two, with one side teaming with you.

This is also a feature that is quite distinct from supply lines. There have been many discussions as to how it should be implemented, with a clear consensus that the Civ2 mechanism was terrible. Search the archives and you'll find plenty of discussion.

 

[_bloodninja_]

Only at the way you quoted it does it seem like it doesnt tie in.

 

[Dom Pedro II]

I think that while it might seem like bloodninja is going off topic, the stuff that he brings up is going to be important for how exactly supply lines materialize.

If we go with an in-depth economic system like what bloodninja is suggesting, which for people like me is very desirable, then supply lines becomes a component of this economic system rather than a separate entity.

Some people might feel that such a system is too cumbersome and has too much micromanagement, but there's a very simple solution to that: don't play a mod like that then.

In short, I appreciate bloodninja's expansion of his thoughts because it works with what form supply lines could or would take.