Unit Supply & Sieges

[Luthor_Saxburg]

One item that could improve (IMO) the realism and fun of the game would be to implement a Unit Supply.

Historically, I think there is no question that logistics (supply) had an essential role in the wars. Even though not a focus due to it's low glory, logistics has played a giant role in anchient and modern warfares.

Also, from a playing point of view (much more important IMO), this would make wars more difficult and fun. Not only you'd need to think better your wars as it would likely limit the "Stacks of Doom", because the more the units, the bigger supply needed.


One Possible way to implement Supply Support
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I don't know how hard is to technically implement this, but units should have a supply level, which would affect their effectiveness to fight. They could last a few turns without supply but then their movement and their fighting should start to be hindered.

A simple way could be the city supply formula: if in contact with a city (which is in supply itself) would make them 100% supplied, but if they started to be a reasonable time without contact (3 turns?), they would start suffering the effects of lack of supply.

The more modern the unit, the higher impact of lack of supply should have.

When with low supply they would fight worst or even surrender!


Related Ideas
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- I like the resource idea very much, but if one resource would only allow an x number of units this would make the game more more realistic and fun (less units).

- Stack of Units with little supply that would plunder cities or irrigated fields could improve their supply status (this way they could stay in enemy territory for a while).

 

[Luthor_Saxburg]

One thing that doesn't happen in Civ are Sieges! Mounting a siege on a city will help a little (if the pop reduces enough to reduce the city defense value) and preventing higher level of unit building, but it's very seldom used (at least by me).

One way of making sieges possible, would be to implement a unit supply system and allowing the possibility of surrendering. This way a besieged city could surrender if all the units insided surrendered (or just remain empty and you just walked through it).

In order to incentivate sieges, there should be allowed the possibility of turning a few cities into huge fortresses. This should be possible but limitated in a way that very few cities could do this.
One way would be to simply to have a VERY expensive city improvement (that had to be built and could not be purchased like Small Wonders), with a high maintenance fee. This improvement (let's call it "huge walls") would allow a very big defense factor (not cancelled by city growth like walls). After all, who would dare to assault Constantinopla?

 

[Pentium]

Like a Castle. But i think it should have a different effect that walls. Like +2 (or more) defence for every unit in it. So it will lose importance in the later ages.

 

[flamescreen]

A siege would be useful in case the player can't capture a city if it's empty(of units), but has to invest 1-3 turns to that if he doesn't wan't to sack. The sieger could use supply lines that can be intercepted. Of course the defender must have a special type of gov/wonder/tech for this to happen.

It might add too much mm though.

 

[sir_schwick]

Wow have I never seen a single suggestion for Logistics or Sieges on these forums. While new takes on old ideas are good, please try to put them in existing threads. I believe we do have a search feature on this forum. A moderator can probably add this thread to the existing ones.

 

[sealman]

Wow have I never seen a single suggestion for Logistics or Sieges on these forums. ...

For a brief second, I thought you were being serious.

__

I proposed at once a brief idea on supply. Here are some highlights. I never fully developed the idea since I got sidetracked.

-Unlimited supply in your controlled territory.
-In someone else territory, must be X tiles away from a friendly city.
-A new "supply unit" that extends the range of your units.
-As your unit runs out of supplies, it loses its a/d/m values until they are all at 1/1/1.
-Gain some supplies when your unit plunders or pillages.