Irregular warfare?

[ray243]

In previous total war games, the idea of irregular warfare has never ever been talked about, nor did CA even try and develop a irregular warfare model for the game.

Just like how WW2 consist of troops skirmishing with each other over a wide area, Napoleon encountered this form of attack from time to time, where his troops was constantly being harassed after he move his army away from Moscow.

It is going to be stupid if CA didn't think that including this sort of irregular warfare, where the attacks by the enemy forces can last for days and weeks in the Napoleonic age is important to the game.

From history till now, there have been many battles that isn't like an setpiece battle, such as the "battle" of Teutoburg forest and the battle of Carrhae.

How CA finally add in irregular warfare to the NTW game engine?

[johncage]

this can be simulated by having the ai launch small armies consisting of inferior troops at you, and during the battle, when they inevitably fail to defeat you, they'll all rout before being wiped out. the ai will continue this until a condition is met.

[ray243]

this can be simulated by having the ai launch small armies consisting of inferior troops at you, and during the battle, when they inevitably fail to defeat you, they'll all rout before being wiped out. the ai will continue this until a condition is met.

Which is defeated by the fact that your army is always travelling in one extremely large contingent.

It becomes impossible, if not hard to isolate your troops then attack them. Additionally, given the speed which you are allowed to rebuild units in one or two turns to full strength, regardless of how many men the unit has lost, it is not worth the cost of the AI to conduct hit and run attack.

So no, your idea does not resolve the problem at all. All you are doing is creating an illusion of irregular warfare, when in actual fact, it's not.

[Lysimachus]

Well, if you spawn the troops rather than forcing the AI to build them itself, you're not really missing out on much. Then over time the player gets lazy, starts auto-resolving and rather than before when you'd unleash all of your firepower on the guerillas, the l33t auto-resolve will allow your army to get an undeserved arse-kicking

[parts]

Which is defeated by the fact that your army is always travelling in one extremely large contingent.

It becomes impossible, if not hard to isolate your troops then attack them. Additionally, given the speed which you are allowed to rebuild units in one or two turns to full strength, regardless of how many men the unit has lost, it is not worth the cost of the AI to conduct hit and run attack.

So no, your idea does not resolve the problem at all. All you are doing is creating an illusion of irregular warfare, when in actual fact, it's not.

On that note, I really hope replenishment is overhauled. Surprise me, CA.

[killerchinchilla]

Maybe they should have ambushes were certain randomly selected units are attacked, with the rest of your army being reinforcements. It could be a special campaign ability of certain irregular units.

[René Artois]

It is annoying when most of the time, the Spanish armies consist 90% of guerillas.

[Theoo]

thaire are irreguler units in the empire total war they are invisable in the grass if they walking

[ray243]

thaire are irreguler units in the empire total war they are invisable in the grass if they walking

But those units are not limited to fighting pitched battles! If anything, they are not meant to fight pitched battles.

It's like saying the only use a SAS unit can have in a world war 2 game is to use them to storm the beaches of Normandy as part of the first wave.

When you have no choice but to use irregular in "regular" or pitched battles most of the time, then something is wrong with your game engine.

[johncage]

Which is defeated by the fact that your army is always travelling in one extremely large contingent.

It becomes impossible, if not hard to isolate your troops then attack them.. Additionally, given the speed which you are allowed to rebuild units in one or two turns to full strength, regardless of how many men the unit has lost, it is not worth the cost of the AI to conduct hit and run attack.

So no, your idea does not resolve the problem at all. All you are doing is creating an illusion of irregular warfare, when in actual fact, it's not.

escort your larger unit with smaller expendable ones. when the enemy ambushes or attacks you, you now have a separate smaller unit to deal with them.

also, contrary to your claim that ai doesn't do hit and run, attacking the player with tiny little units has been the calling card of ai battle tactics since etw. so it's actually already in the game.

[Thorn]

In previous total war games, the idea of irregular warfare has never ever been talked about, nor did CA even try and develop a irregular warfare model for the game.

Just like how WW2 consist of troops skirmishing with each other over a wide area, Napoleon encountered this form of attack from time to time, where his troops was constantly being harassed after he move his army away from Moscow.

It is going to be stupid if CA didn't think that including this sort of irregular warfare, where the attacks by the enemy forces can last for days and weeks in the Napoleonic age is important to the game.

From history till now, there have been many battles that isn't like an setpiece battle, such as the "battle" of Teutoburg forest and the battle of Carrhae.

How CA finally add in irregular warfare to the NTW game engine?

Unless NTW will use new development ideas i dont think you could find anything related to real 18th warfare, we will see the same we have been seeing since rome, a bunch of stacks fighting "conventional" and mainly meaningless battles...

[Godless Pickle]

Werent there militia, skirmishers, and irregulars in Empire TW? Or do you mean a different type of irregulars?

[nameless]

Which is defeated by the fact that your army is always travelling in one extremely large contingent.

It becomes impossible, if not hard to isolate your troops then attack them. Additionally, given the speed which you are allowed to rebuild units in one or two turns to full strength, regardless of how many men the unit has lost, it is not worth the cost of the AI to conduct hit and run attack.

Actually in the game it takes at least 2 turns to replenish the unit.

However, if the unit is attacked or engaged in another battle the next turn it won't be fully replenished 100%. You'd have to do it again or wait another 2 turns.

So if you were to keep hit and run every turn the unit will eventually be depleted or wiped out.

Though exactly what are you proposing? I have no idea of what you are complaining about. In fact can YOU describe how CA should go through with this warfare because I am curious.

Werent there militia, skirmishers, and irregulars in Empire TW? Or do you mean a different type of irregulars?

I think he's talking about skirmishes that occur compared to an actual pitched battle but I don't see the engine being capable of that.

[Theoo]

But those units are not limited to fighting pitched battles! If anything, they are not meant to fight pitched battles.

It's like saying the only use a SAS unit can have in a world war 2 game is to use them to storm the beaches of Normandy as part of the first wave.

When you have no choice but to use irregular in "regular" or pitched battles most of the time, then something is wrong with your game engine.

sorry but i dont understand whate your saying =S

[Shaio]

I cant even imagine how one would work irregular warfare into a turn based game, one could sortof do it in knights of honor, with characters what would run away, hit fort button, and you watch as ai advances towards you taking a hail of arrows on campaign map... Then repeat, but that only worked because it was a real time campaign map..

In turn based i don't see how it can work.. they should change the game so all movement orders are given to armys.. and they move when you hit end turn, clash into other armies etc. because atm its "you stand still while i have my turn kicking your ass into the ground, and i will only need one turn to do it, you could do the same to me, but because I'm a player and can think more then 1 turn ahead you have no hope in hell.

Irregular warfare would be very easy to work into a game with real-time campaign map, but as is i cant see a way to make it work well.. Or atall.

I mean what could one possibly do? Add ability to take any irregular unit or skirmishing cav, and order it to attach itself to an enemy stack, at which point it would slow them down, and give them a variant number of losses/supply loss for so many turns, or until unit was annihilated?
Maybe add different types of action ie. raiding, harassment, slowing action.
Maybe with a percentage chance each turn of ambushing a few lone units with main army as reinforcement as someone mentioned above.
All of these actions would be greatly amplified by having a rake/spy in enemy army as-well.

Cuz that's about the only way i can think of adding irregular warfare... and i admit that's a fairly bad way to simulate it.
Better then nothing thou.

[meidaniarya]

i think it was written in "pc gamer" that you could send a small force of cavalry(in our case irregulars) out to attack the approaching army's supply depots every turn and by the time the enemy army reaches your city it will be only a ghost of what it was. they might die out, start without munition or...
this is probably done on a strategic scale and not on the tactical battle map but it does in a way represent irregular warfare
source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkQBWzR5Wc8 ,i liked the video but if the kid making the vedio annoys you too much you can just skip to 3:22 of the video where he talks about what i said

[Randall Turner]

This probably should be implemented as an abstraction, ie, as an increased attrition modifier in regions where irregular activity (ie, guerrilla warfare) is ongoing.

[Shaio]

My proposal.
Add for irregualr nits, light units, and light cav the ability to engage in scouting/gureilla actions

Basically just walk up, and attach themselves to enemy stacks.

Scouting ability, ie designate units as scout, the more you have the bigger your view radius/intercept radius, the more likely you are to pickup nearby units/detect ambushes, but at cost of moving slower, and making your own army easier to detect. (also effecting supplies via forage maybe?)
While also making one move slower, and exposing units you send out scouting to raiding, and harassment.
ie one gets chances to ambush them, they slowly take losses etc. but they also get chance to ambush harassing units, and forward elements of an enemy army if not under harassment themselves.
This would depends on generals command stars, quality of troops, terrain weather type stamina advantages etc should also be an important role in calculating it.

So harassment with irregular units would serve 2 main purposes.
There be harassing which will lower there view radius, and intercept radius, also make there scout slowly take losses.
Second would be raiding in which they would cut supplies and attempt to ambush incoming reinforcements.

A third could be attrition mode, where they just bleed the enemy as much as possible.

[Invictus XII]

OK, the best way I can think of for the battlefield skirmishes, is you know how in Empire, you send and right click on a wall and they line up and fire and take cover behind it. Well it would be the same thing for skirmishing, You select a light unit (say riflemen) then when you put your mouse over a forested area, it comes up with a skirmishing symbol and you click, they will move into the forest and start hiding behind trees and trenches. This is the best way I can think of. What do you think?

Or you could just have a button on the panel for lights that makes them hide in long grass, lie down flat and take cover using anything withing a radius. What else?

[Shaio]

The easiest way to fix this would be increasing battle map size, 2-3 times, and then adding fog of war....