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Mark_Everson
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Canton, MI
Jan 1970
time: 00:16
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From the thread Demo 8.1 Goals and Plan I've got the following objectives for Demo 8.2:
-real military supply system, food for troops comes from somewhere identifiable, supplying troops outside of civ becomes expensive.
Here is an overview from the mil model intro on the web page (http://clash.apolyton.net/models/Model-Military.shtml)
The necessity to supply military units with provisions and ammunition
plays a very large part in their capabilities. I think we can actually
handle supply in Clash without significantly hassling the player.
The basic idea is to use dedicated merchants (already need to be coded
anyway) to supply the troops. All the player need do is say how much
money they're willing to spend to supply x front. The merchant/supply
manager does the rest. You would build essentially a special class
of merchant that would try to purchase goods from the surrounding area
(or home, if transportation is good enough). This supply unit would travel
with large armies and provide feedback to the army commander about whether
(and at what price) it would be able to supply the army if it went to spot
X. Units that were not fully supplied would fight at reduced effectiveness,
or have the need to forage for supplies, reducing movement. Mongol
Horsemen could probably forage fairly effectively, modern armored divisions
hardly at all. Using a merchant that goes out and buys supplies for you
has the advantage that the player doesn't have to orchestrate the supply
itself, but only decide if the price of supply is worth it. A bonus
of this supply system is that supply lines can be attacked. This
allows proper modeling of a modern envelopment battle, one of the coolest
martial activities known to man ;-). In addition the supply system
would give a lot of correct flavor in terms of Where large armies could
go historically, with little loss in smoothness of gameplay.
Some further discussion is in :
http://apolyton.net/forums/showthre...tary#post176534
And here is an additional contribution from Diodorus Sicilus:
No army can be supplied at any distance over land before railroads. The only way to ship bulk goods like fodder and food is by (river)boat, ship, or to gather it from the countryside as you pass through: a Strategic/Move Order of Loot (which slow down movement).
Roads extend slightly the distance you can haul supplies by pack animal/wagon, but not much. Read van Crefeld’s “Supply in War” for details, but a wagon on a good road can supply for about 150-200 miles Maximum.
One way around the problem, used in the 18th century, was Depots: stock the supplies during peacetime at Strategic Locations (fortresses) and keep maneuvering within 200 miles of those locations. An army that (largely) lives off the land (Loots) can move faster than one waiting on supply, but it also takes casualties - French revolutionary and US Confederate armies were both notoriously good at pillaging the countryside, but both also suffered large losses of troops to straggling - effectively losing combat strength while keeping themselves supplied.
Above From:
http://apolyton.net/forums/showthre...tary#post170870
Other thoughts:
Doing supply in a correct manner should help in Fixing the enemy units behind-the-lines problem. Recent modifications in terms of militia aiding in fights, and elimination of severely wounded units, have helped somewhat in solving this problem. However, having proper supply lines helps that issue from two different directions. First, it will be harder for small enemy units to work their way significantly behind the lines in the first place. Secondly, if units that are not in good supply move more slowly, and stragglers units will be much more easy to engage in combat and destroy. (This is in conflict with the statement above that sometimes foraging armies can move faster than supplied armies. But for now as a gain balance issue I would prefer to do it this way.) I would like to hear people's opinion on the two main issues cited this paragraph.
Draft Proposal for Army Supply and Supply Lines
1. Each TF has a quartermaster that is a merchant who looks to the available markets (province capitals) of friendly and neutral civilizations to buy provisions.
2. The quartermaster's transport capabilities have movement cost for both land and water travel, and also a transport capacity. For now we will ignore the need for ports etc., and simply consider the transport as having amphibious capability.
3. The cost of supply depends on two components: the cost of the goods at their origin, and a transport cost. The transport cost will consider movement distance, and also likely shrinkage of transported materials depending on the technology used. As noted above sea transport will be much more effective than land transport, although I don't expect we will be as difficult as it is realistic for the first shot at this. I don't know yet how to work out constraints for what the government is willing to pay to supply troops under various conditions. Suggestions are very welcome.
4. TFs that do not have full supply fight and move with diminished capacity. Supply deficiencies can be made up for by foraging. Foraging has movement and strength minuses of its own, however they are not as severe as being out of supply. Foraging also damages the local economy, and makes the people more likely to form militias against the foraging army (even if it is from the same civilization).
Obviously there are details needed for each level of this proposal. I wanted to first post the broad outlines to see if people agree or disagree, and want to propose modifications. One thing that comes to mind is that because water transportation is much more efficient than land transportation, we might want to accelerate placing rivers and canals on the map. However, we can just kluge around this if needed.
What does everyone think?
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26-12-2004 21:34
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