Welcome to Road to War: Blitzkrieg

^^ But imagine the mircomanagement needed to maintain your armies

 

I don't think that 'supplies' should be something which has to be built by production, that doesn't seem very realistic to me. Perhaps 'supplies' are something which a goods factory simply generates each turn, and this amount is stockpiled in the city (and can also be 'moved' to an external supply dump somehow). Additionally, if engineer specialists are assigned then additional supplies are generated, and a smaller amount if worker specialists are assigned, and a tiny baseline amount is generated by each city (representing the amount generated by the forges/factories/etc which we do not see). Thus most cities would be capable of creating minimal amounts of supplies for basic use by the populace while some few cities could generate large amounts to drive the war machine, without affecting normal production needs nor (hopefully) confusing the AI.

Otherwise, I think the supply-accumulation feature should mostly only apply to oil (and also ammo, if something like that is added separately from supplies). If it were expanded to all of the health/happy resources, it would indeed get out of hand in terms of micromanagement, and for very little gain for how such resources are handled currently. E.g., who really cares exactly how much ivory has been stockpiled since it has only a very-minor role in this scenario? Stockpiling resources such as aluminum (for building, but not maintaining, air units?), coal (allows rail movement?), copper (???), iron (??? building armor units?) would also have nice strategic implications.

However, operationalizing the movement of various food resources could be useful in terms of running blockades (as I've mentioned elsewhere) or for alleviating starvation in an encircled city. Obviously the food would have to be airlifted in to alleviate the siege, and this would have to somehow add food to the food-bin (currently it only adds health/happiness, which wouldn't be quite as useful in such a situation).


Summarization/Suggestion:

OIL - affects air/armor/naval builds, air/armor/naval/motorized-infantry movement [1 unit of oil used for each movement of air/armor/naval units per turn, and each movement of an infantry unit beyond 1-space (which represents marching without motorized assistance), cavalry do not require oil for movement], airlifting and paradropping (1 oil-unit for each airlift operation). Armor/naval units without oil supply cannot move (-33%/-25% movement cumulative, or immobile at 1.5-2.0 months) and lose battle effectiveness -10% each turn (max -50% at 2.5 months). Air units without fuel cannot conserve fuel and still do full missions (e.g. bombing, air strikes) but could conceiveably still do interception missions perhaps at reduced distance and slightly-reduced effectiveness. Anti-air require oil for movement, but not operation.

COAL - affects production capacity/efficiency (coal plants?), rail movement [1 unit of coal for each rail-movement by each unit per turn]

SUPPLIES -- affects city production capacity/efficiency at a rate much lower than coal, affects 'readiness' of all military units (e.g., lack of supplies could be -10% attack/defense and could accumulate per turn like fortified defense bonus, possible max = -50% at 2.5 months), cavalry require double supplies of infantry (food for horses), air/armor/navy require triple supplies of infantry, anti-air same as infantry. Perhaps unsupplied units in a city (even encircled/besieged) should lose effectiveness at a reduced rate due to scavanging in the city (-5% instead of -10%, but can still max out at -50% it just takes longer)?

So, example based on the above, in a besieged city with one infantry and one armor unit, and no stockpile of oil or supplies, after 3 months the infantry would be at -50% and the armor would be at -100% (i.e., useless). Not sure game-conceptwise if 'supplies' and 'ammo' should be separate from each other, it would make it additionally complex and it is not clear to me operationally how they would differ very much (e.g., if you have supplies but no ammo, you're still very-screwed; but if you have ammo but no supplies, you can shoot but maybe you are starving/freezing/sick-with-malaria/etc and are still ineffective -- so what is the difference if you are -0% for supplies and -50% for lack of ammo, or -50% for lack of supplies and -0% for ammo?)

Stockpiling: must be a way to do this within a city and also out in the countryside. Oil depot and supply depot should probably be separate buildings. It could work something like a granary -- oil/supply depot allows expanded capacity of stockpile, but can still accumulate oil/supplies without one up to a certain low-maximum amount. Oil/supply dump could be built by workers like a fort in the countryside (less time to build, and doesn't destroy improvements already on the square). Also, forts should have the ability to stockpile oil and supplies. Forts/dumps should have smaller capacity than city stockpiles. Forts/dumps can be bombed or sabotaged, if successful they lose some amount of the stockpiled amount ('damaged' means facility must be repaired by workers before lost capacity can be restored, '100% damage' means facility must be rebuilt from scratch and entire stockpile is lost). Probably should make it harder to sabotage a dump/depot (compared to say a theatre or a farm) due to strategic importance and hence obvious emphasis on security, which could be increased in the usual ways by stationing counter-spies/military-units there.

How to 'use' the stockpiles out in the country? Dunno... here is the brainstorm. This could get very complicated. Each unit has a current 'source' of supplies/oil, which it draws down each time it does something. You can change the current source so as to control which stockpiles are being used at which time. Perhaps there should be an 'allocation' screen to control which sources are feeding which stockpiles (should highlight stockpiles which are already full, and have some way of indicating lost capacity due to nowhere to store it). But how does a unit not in a city and not stationed at a supply dump actually 'use' the supplies/oil? Air units are at a base, so that shouldn't be a problem (unless of course the stockpile at the base has run out). However, how to supply armor/infantry/navy outside one's borders? Perhaps this is the place for the supply-unit mentioned above? In any case, units will have to be able to trace an open path to some source. If such a unit is destroyed, what happens then? Unrealistic that all units would be immobile immediately, but would likely be at reduced movement and then run out after rationing of remainder runs out. Perhaps if trace-a-route-to-a-supply-unit is unworkable maybe allow units to 'resupply' simply by being in the same square as the supply unit, allowing the supply unit to visit several squares each turn to supply the units there.

Gosh that's a lot, I better stop babbling now...

 

Woah...if we can get that sort of stuff to work, that'd be awesome. Hope we can get it to work tho...

Sidenote, Sangeli, how does your special culture system work? It's different from what Dale used in RTW, right? I wanna try it out. Can you post your most recent version, at least just post what I need to paste into my xml or python or wherever?

 

OK, I won't even pretend that I understand any of this, but here are some links talking about resource accumulation and also zone of control:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=276983&highlight=fuel+usage

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=5243134&postcount=10


As an aside, have any of you seen the "World Of Civilization" modders thread about creating an interface so that mods can be easily combined by users? I've not tried it yet, but I kinda like the idea of pick-and-choose.

 

I don't think the AI will be capable of doing that. How about 1 year with no supplies = dead unit?

 

Obviously, whether the AI can handle any of this is another issue entirely.

Certainly the reduced-effectiveness rate/amount is open for debate. A year (24 turns) sounds a little long, when one considers how rough things got for unsupplied/cut-off units in North Africa, at Stalingrad, or in the Battle of the Bulge in much less time. Maybe it should include a component where the unit must be 'under duress' at least at some minimal level for the effectiveness to decay. This came to mind after skimming that other thread about the zone of control mod which worked like actively-blockading a port -- units decay as long as opposing units are in the ZoC, are being bombed, etc. If the unit isn't under siege, then it can conserve resources without using them and even forage freely more widely for supplies.

The trickiest part will be figuring out how to handle supply/fuel for ground units in enemy territory. One could simplify the operationalization of naval units as including (unseen) support ships whenever one builds a ship (i.e., it isn't just "one battleship" it is "one battleship battlegroup"), and extend that definition as these units are under supply if they can trace a route to an open port which has access to oil. Yes, simplified; but would save some micromanagement if a supply-ship/unit cannot be easily defined.

 

Naval blocades would then become more usefull.

 

Hey Guys. I have been keeping track of this thread since I've made some changes to my own RTW since the release (I've done WWII mods for all the prior civs when they came out) and have been trying to get the fuel mod to work with it... but I can't get the damned SDK to compile into something that runs.

Anywho, I like the idea of limited resources since it was a main component in WWII strategy (or any conquest really). I think limiting it to fuel and maybe supplies would be best and in turn utilize the corporation's ability to grant production bonuses per strategic resource, eg. 3 coal + 1 Iron = 4x 5% = +20% production in all cities linked to it. It makes it easier for the AI to understand plus simplifies resource management.

As for Supply Attrition, it could be similar to the fuel storage where a shortage would trigger a negative penalty (Lurker's suggestion). Supply production would be similar to gold production except be tied in with food (or production) so that a besieged city would start dying if all tiles were occupied and cannot support units.

Some things I have implemented in my own are Stack attack bonuses for U-boats, Civ specific techs (Russian and Nazi's), a greater tank technology tree with more realistic strengths/costs (because the war was NEVER balanced), merchant ships that give gold to the Allies when coming to port (still working on this to work properly) and pretty a major unit/building overhauls to reflect more realistically (eg. Finland owned the Russians intitially, also Russia was much more centralized so taking their capital results in a serious blow to the rest of the economy) and more. I'm working on Event triggers to be realistic and to help the AI out.

I would like to help since I've already merged the fuel mod SDK files with RTW ones and done a lot of art/stats changes already and it's a shame to duplicate work. Let me know.

 

Does your merged SDK work? You said it didn't before, but does it now? I like the sound of the stuff you've done. Can you give any more details?

 

There should be some representation of organization and morale. Perhaps some sort of "morale meter?" The meter would exist for your entire army. The higher the morale meter the greater the chance that your units will strike with greater power than usual. If the meter is lower your units have an increased chance of striking with lower than usual power. Things like government type and propaganda can also influence morale. The propaganda units that already exist could be consumed to increase morale, similar to Great People causing Golden Ages.

The facing and supply functions are an excellent idea, as is the "military control" concept.

I was also thinking there should be some sort of communication/organization function. Perhaps there could be units called "officers," and units not within a certain radius of an officer lose both movement points and strength. This emulates the fact that blitzkrieg fundamentally works by disrupting the communications and organization of the defending force, not by physically destroying it.

Also, I would like to see motorized infantry units added to the game, or at the very least a "truck" or "halftrack" unit, or both, that could transport infantry to keep up with tanks--an integral aspect of the success of the Panzer divisions.

 

Great ideas, however I believe work on this mini-mod has stalled.

You may wish to check out my mod, which is at least under development.

 

Your modmod needs a subforum, maybe... it's the only really active topic in the RtW forums. Far more active then Blitzkrieg.

 

Thanks for your support TC01.

I am looking forward to releasing my bugfix 0.31. I ask for a sub-forum when I have 3 main mini-mods (Europe / Pacific / Global ).

While there were a lot of great ideas in this Blitzkreig, my one aims to use the strengths of Civ IV (Cities and Civilization management) as opposed to trying to create a unit vs unit style of game.

At least mine is a sticky.

 

Is there any progress on this or is it abandoned?

 

Blitzkrieg Mod? I think it's abandoned.

 

Well it maybe abandoned but I still feel compelled to post just in case Kiwitt adopts it.

I think simplification is the key to Civ, resources work because its easy to understand.

1.Units control territory
I like this but it slighly changes the dynamics of healing since you get 3x the healing in your own territory. Also could be cool to create blockades on land.

2.Unit Supply lines
Okay so a unit needs a connection to his capitol (how about any city) or else bad stuff happens. Rather than create a new system, why not just deal damage? Like 1 damage the first turn then 2 and then go all the way up to 5?
Ex. Stalingrad, The German supply lines are created by early infantry making a short line to the assault spot on the city. Cossacks swoop in and wipe out one of the tiles. All units who no longer connect to German territory take 1HP damage the first turn, nothing to worry about. But it gets worse, and the planes become less able to deal with the russian bombers. Probably want to cancel out the healing bonus provided by sitting in your own territory but hey.

3.Directional fortification
Why not just flanking? If you have units on multiple sides of the enemy you get some bonus? Simpler and doesn't require any UI changes.

 

Umm... yes, I think Kiwitt's gone on to Kiwitt's RtW. (Hasn't posted here in a while anyway.)

 

All my effort is going into my own version ... This "Blitzkreig" version is "abandoned" ... I'd like to have my own sub-forum, but I don't think my "mod " is polished enough for that yet.

Good ideas are in here, but I have to consider whether it fits in with my "flavor" (being reading some of the modding tutorials)

I have to consider a new name for my Mod-Mod ... considering "Road to War (Revised)" as opposed to the current development name - "Road to War - KiwiTT"

 

Rooting for yer mod kiwitt! I like so much of your work so far

 

I am starting research in to 0.4x - Road to War - Historical. Probably be next year before it is released though.