[Submod] [WIP] Ancient Warfare: Supply and Movement

[~Seleukos.I.Nikator~]

LAYING DOWN THE CONCEPT

Hey guys,

I’ve recently started working on a new modding project focused on the aspects of armies’ supply and movement. Starting with the movement; currently the way it works is quite linear. One starts with an army stack where the movement range is identical for all the units with the exception of the cavalry having slightly longer movement range and the artillery and elephants having the shorter one. Given this lack of variety, the player never really needs to consider the selection of his units from the perspective of the movement range and instead the focus is put on pumping it up with the arcade bonuses from skills, agents, ancillaries, etc. The goal of this mod is to offer you an alternative to this aspect of the game, making the campaign movement of your armies more dynamic and more historically accurate. To fully accomplish this, I will also touch upon the DeI supply system.

The first milestone in this process is to give some variety to how far each unit can move on the campaign map. Instead of the three aforementioned categories I propose to introduce the following five categories (beginning with the slowest);

1. Artillery
2. Elephants and chariots

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Given the often rough terrain and the lack of good quality roads, I presume that the chariots had actually limited mobility while travelling on the campaign and in some areas they might even had to be mounted on the carts and transported to the place of their destination to avoid significant damage to their construction. That said, I haven’t found any firm evidence on how this process was carried out.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The elephants would normally significantly slow down the army. It’s estimated that their daily march rate could barely reach 10 miles per day, while the average for the Macedonian army is assumed to be around 15 miles per day.

3. Slow-moving infantry
4. Fast-moving infantry
5. Cavalry

The purpose of this modification is thus to give the player some tactical flexibility in regard to the composition of his armies and enable him to form smaller, lighter detachments on the side of the main army corps that can be utilized to carry out tasks requiring greater speed and mobility.

Historical note on the movement rate of the ancient armies;

A host of various factors played their role in affecting the movement rate of an ancient army, the most important of which were its size, the number of pack animals the soldiers would bring along and the means of transporting the supplies that the army was practising. The success of the Macedonian army of Phillip and Alexander was in large part due to the reduction of non-combatant followers and the ban by Phillip on the usage of carts which would always significantly slow down the army and impair its mobility. Instead, the Macedonian soldiers were carrying on their own all their equipment and at least a part of their daily rations. That led to the situation when they would always be quite encumbered while on the march, though their movement speed was still much improved thanks to their light baggage train and a limited number of followers. In that respect they had a significant advantage over their Greek and Persian peers and the similar system was later adapted and further improved by the Romans.

Once on the march, the army’s movement rate was dependent on its size and the length of its marching column. This subject was thoroughly researched by Donald W. Engels in his book, “Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army”. Without going into details of his dissertation, what is the most important fact for the purpose of this mod is the march rates the Alexandrian army is known to have achieved and the significant difference between the speed of the entire army and its light detachments. Basically, the average daily march rate for the entire army is estimated to be around 14-15 miles per day with the fastest rate ever recorded being 19.5 miles per day at which the army marched between Gaza and Pelusium at the start of Alexander’s expedition into Egypt. On the other hand, we have multiple records of smaller, lighter detachments composed of troops such as cavalry, archers, peltasts, hypaspists, Agrianian light infantry and sometimes even the phalangites who were able to cover up to 40-45, or at times even more than 50 miles per day. Such system I aim to replicate in this mod by modifying the campaign movement range for a selected group of light infantry units so as to allow the player to combine them into smaller army detachments with greater speed and mobility.

Once this is accomplished, I will focus my attention on redoing the supply script. The supply script is frankly my favourite one in DeI, even ahead of the population script. I think, however, that the version of it that we currently have, is quite softcore and my goal will thus be to make it more hardcore, to reflect to an even greater extent the importance of supply and logistics in the ancient warfare. What exactly I intend to change will be decided in detail once I dive more deeply into that script, but I’ve, in particular, been mulling over increasing the supply consumption of the armies and making it more difficult for the armies to live off foraging, thus putting more emphasis on the supply lines, supply carts and the role of fleets in supplying the land forces. I’d also love to enable fleets to resupply near the allied ports. That will, however, put my scripting skills to a real test and only time will show whether I will succeed, or not.

On top of that, I’d also like the supply system to play a more important role in defining the movement speed of an army with well-supplied armies passing swiftly through the enemy territory while the shortage of supplies will significantly hinder their movement speed. The seasons will also have more impact on the army movement range as well as the general’s personal skills and traits. Those, however, will have a lesser impact than now and other similar effects associated with the extended movement speed from agents, ancillaries, etc., will either be significantly nerfed or entirely removed. I want thus the campaign movement to be defined by the combination of army composition + supply status + season + terrain (non-moddable) and, to a lesser extent, the general’s skill. That should make for a more dynamic and historically accurate approach, I believe.

[~Seleukos.I.Nikator~]

UNIT MOVEMENT

To have a sample of what this mod will feature you may download the pack from the link below.

LINK

The pack contains modifications to the unit movement range for the Hellenistic roster (incl. Carthaginian), AOR roster and Mercenary roster. It is thus fully playable for the Carthaginian and all the Hellenic factions.

As mentioned in the post above, the units are divided into five different categories with regard to their campaign map movement range according to the following pattern;

1. Artillery – slightly slower than now
2. Elephants and chariots – slightly faster than the elephants now
3. Slow-moving infantry – same as now

a. All sword infantry apart from trained medium sword infantry

b. All pikes apart from short pikes

c. All hoplites and spear infantry apart from trained light hoplites and trained light

spears

4. Fast-moving infantry - close to how far the cavalry moves now

a. All ranged infantry

b. All trained medium sword infantry

c. Short pikes

d. Trained light hoplites and trained light spears

5. Cavalry - a bit more than the cavalry moves now

Please, bear in mind that these values were selected for testing purposes and they are subject to further balancing as the mod develops.

Given the fact that selection criteria for the fast-moving infantry are not clearly visible in the unit’s tooltip, I realize that it might be at times be quite difficult to tell them apart from the slow-moving infantry. For that reason, I’ve created a dummy special ability called ‘extended campaign movement’ that helps you readily identify those units that can move further on the campaign map.

As you can see on the picture below, the special ability is easily distinguishable in the unit's tooltip in the lower left-hand corner;

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

or in the unit card on top of the list of the special abilities;

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

--- Important!; note that the stack must consist of ONLY those units with the extended campaign movement. If you put in it even one unit with the regular movement range it will slow down the whole stack

CREDITS

KAM for his guidance that allowed me to kick-start the project and put some of my ideas into practice

Donald W. Engels for his book Alexander the Great and the Logistics of the Macedonian Army that is a fundamental work to understand the problem of supply and movement of the ancient Hellenistic armies

[~Seleukos.I.Nikator~]

reserved2

[Basilius]

This looks great. In practice, this is primarily relevant for raiding and scouting armies? Most normal army stacks have balanced rosters.

My concern is for factions who have limited general recruitment options. Given how rarely light troops are generals, this means cavalry (versus heavy infantry) would have to be chosen as a general, to ensure a faster-than-average campaign map speed. Correct?

[Jake Armitage]

Great!
Think it will be really cool!

Talking about strat movement this could be done also via script (so not to intefere with db tables which are often edited)
- make different libraries for different units
- apply effect (this could be not very good, since for player you could trigger on selecting character while AI would have 1 turn delay, actually)
- remove better effects

but since you're already editing battle movement maybe this is just useless...

[~Seleukos.I.Nikator~]

@Basilius, the goal is to have some tactical flexibility in your armies where a number of fast-moving troops can be detached from the main army corps in order to perform a certain task requiring more speed and mobility. Given that the selection of those units is wide enough to allow you to create a tactically comprehensive army compositions, there is a whole variety of roles these fast-moving detachements can be assigned to. Raiding or scouting, like you said, but also quickly reinforcing other armies and settlements, figtning smaller enemy armies, taking minor settlements in the province where the main army is engaged in laying siege to the main settlement, quickly moving between regions in order to avoid using up the supplies in one region, etc.

Yes, you will basically have to choose a cavalry general for the detachement that is meant to move at the faster speed.

@Jake, I see you are growing increasingly more and more addicted to the scipts and that makes me worried...

In this case, however, that can be neatly done via db-tables so I guess I will just stick with it.

What greatly annoys me, though, is the fact that ground_types table is not moddable. Or is there any walkaround for this problem that I'm not aware of?

[Jake Armitage]

yeah, mine are just speculations... I spend most of my time this way

ground_types: you should contact scipio in discord, he said he modded the values recently and noticed changes, I've tried back in summer but noticed nothing, never tried then

[~Seleukos.I.Nikator~]

ground_types: you should contact scipio in discord, he said he modded the values recently and noticed changes, I've tried back in summer but noticed nothing, never tried then

I see. I've recently tried modding the ground types with regard to the sea movement, but noticed no changes. I will make sure to contact Scipio once I get to that part, thanks!

---------

What I forgot to mention is that now I will cary on redoing the rosters for the Roman, all the Barbarian and all the Eastern factions. I would most preferably have some variety when it comes to the camapign movement range for different cultural groups, but I haven't decided yet exactly how this variety can be achieved. One of the things I've been mulling over is, for example, to give all the Roman legionarries from the Marian reform onward the extended movement ability, exluding perhaps the more heavily-armed auxillaries, while the Eastern and Barbaric factions should be, I believe, somewhat at the disadvantage here.

If you, guys, have any ideas regarding this, please, feel free to share them!

[♔Greek Strategos♔]

Excellent idea buddy. I'd very much like to see how it'll affect the game's role-playing aspects

[~Seleukos.I.Nikator~]

Thanks, GS!

It's gonna be good, that's for sure!

[Maetharin]

Great idea, though IMO it would be better if army size played a role in this.
Smaller detachments would need less concentration of foodstuff and water,
therefore reducing the need for pack animals, thus reducing the time to get them ready each day.


Greater armies on the other hand needed to keep up supplies constantly, both by local requisition and supply chains/trains, or their men would go hungry.
Concentrating food and other supplies, of which there were a great many, to such a degree necessitates great administrative care and cost a lot of time,
whilst making movement in winter nigh impossible in snowy regions due to carts getting stuck easily in slush and mud.

[~Seleukos.I.Nikator~]

Hey Maetharin,

Thanks for the heads-up!

Frankly, that was also something I had in mind regarding the army size, but as you certainly know yourself, the game engine does not allow for any adjustments to the army movement range based on the number of units in the stack.

And, on the second thought, I'm actually fine with this as limiting the movement range this way would probably not work in the long run gameplay-wise. Smaller half-stacks would be all right in the early campaign, but in the mid and late campaign they would be rather useless.

What I belive is the best approach is to basically assure that only a certain portion of the army will be composed of the units with the longer movement range and that should be the natural outcome for the player given the possible selection of such units available for recruitment. At the start of the game, that may amount to 1/3, 1/2 of the stack tops given the player's capability to maintain up to one, one and a half stack at that stage, while later on when the player sets out on the campaign with let's say 3 stacks, the detachment of the fast-moving units can then comprise the whole stack, which I think is fine.

If you have any thoughts regarding the possible approach to the Roman roster, or other rosters as well, then feel free to share them.

[Jake Armitage]

you can do that, but you'll need, well, scripts.
check testudo stance script, I've divided stance effects (movement too) depending on unit number.
As you said, I don't think it would be much useful for non slower paced campaigns.

if context:character():military_force():unit_list():num_items() >= 1 and context:character():military_force():unit_list():num_items() <= 2
        then
        scripting.game_interface:apply_effect_bundle_to_characters_force("TESTUDO_stan_1", army,1);      
        scripting.game_interface:remove_effect_bundle_to_characters_force("TESTUDO_stan_3", army);
        scripting.game_interface:remove_effect_bundle_to_characters_force("TESTUDO_stan_5", army);
        scripting.game_interface:remove_effect_bundle_to_characters_force("TESTUDO_stan_7", army);
        scripting.game_interface:remove_effect_bundle_to_characters_force("TESTUDO_stan_10", army);
        scripting.game_interface:remove_effect_bundle_to_characters_force("TESTUDO_stan_14", army);
        scripting.game_interface:remove_effect_bundle_to_characters_force("TESTUDO_stan_18", army);
        scripting.game_interface:remove_effect_bundle_to_characters_force("TESTUDO_stan_20", army);

[Maetharin]

IMO one of the biggest issues with the supply script in DeI is that it‘s basically toothless in a 4tpy setting.
Yes, not having supply lines and having completely foraged a region is punishing,
but not to the degree that it would have been in reality.
3 months without food? That‘s a death sentence for any army.

So, if it is impossible to have a soft system automatically reducing movement distance,
maybe it would be an idea to have a hard, multi-tiered hunger punishment system to reduce effective movement instead.
As in that the supply system is balanced in such a way that a full stack army basically needs a supply train unit and supply lines. If the stack is without one of the two, it suffers the same attrition as currently with neither of the two.
If it has neither of the two it becomes unsustainable and suffers heavy attrition unless it conquers a city in the same turn.

The main problem with something like this is that the AI simply can‘t do this, so it would be limited to the player.
Is it an established fact that it‘s impossible to reduce movement distance of armies in accordance with their size?

Maybe it would be possible by making armies over a certain size unable to move unless equipped with a supply train unit?
Or maybe it can be done through regions, such as “x units/armies in region/province reduces movement distance by y amount“

Or maybe a combination of all of the above?

[Jake Armitage]

"Is it an established fact that it‘s impossible to reduce movement distance of armies in accordance with their size?"

no, check my post above

[Maetharin]

"Is it an established fact that it‘s impossible to reduce movement distance of armies in accordance with their size?"

no, check my post above

How much would such a script burden the game’s loading times and stability on top of the already script heavy DeI??
Could it also influence the AI?

Because such a script would make the supply train unit redundant and change the game completely in one stroke!
Still, IMO attrition because of supplies should be more prominent, with current DeI and even more so with your Script.

[Jake Armitage]

How much would such a script burden the game’s loading times and stability on top of the already script heavy DeI??:
nothing, you'll have to add tons of scripted lines to actually notice a delay
best thing to limit lags is to have few characters (so don't recruit useless ones)

Could it also influence the AI?
yes

and change the game completely in one stroke!
well, don't think so, it's a micromanagement feature I did more than a year ago for a slower paced submod, i'm doing/did quite a lot to add depth for the strategical part of the game

[Fluke]

Seleukos, impressive addition to the game, well thought out. Perhaps DEI could even adopt these ideas one day as a permanent addition in a future patch.

[~Seleukos.I.Nikator~]

Fluke,

Thanks! Glad you like the concept! Though, even if I managed to get a good outcome here I guess this kind of system would be a bit too much for an average player for the submod to be included in the main mod. But that's always up to Dresden and the rest of the team. If they want to take anything and adopt it into the main mod they are always more than welcome to do so.

Jake and Maetharin,

Thank you very much, guys, for your ideas and your input!

Regarding the movement script, it's good to know that this can be done via scripting. I'm not sure whether this can actually be applicable in this mod, but I'll keep it in mind, nonetheless.

Maetharin, I totally agree with you on the way the foraging works at the moment. It's a wayyyy too easy for the player to live off foraging for many a turn without the necessity to even move his armies around and without taking any serious consequences of such actions. That will be one of the first things I would like to look into in the supply script, making it much more tougher for the player, not for the AI, though. The way I see it now is like following;

1. Supply by foraging; limited, inefficient and having a negative impact on the movement from the start. I'm not sure whether the ability to forage can be also tied to the seasons. If yes, I see it the following way:

a. winter - very limited ability to forage
b. spring - foraging not possible at all (supply stores empty prior to the harvest)
c. summer - foraging possible for a limited number of time in the region
d. autumn - foraging possible for a limited number of time in the region

2. Supply by carts; slightly more efficient way of supplying the armies, in some regions away from the friendly territory the only viable way of obtaining steady supplies; negative impact on the campaign movement

3. Supply by fleet; much more efficient way of supplying the armies having a positive impact on their movement; if possible the player should be encouraged to take the route where the supplies can be delivered by the fleet

4. Supply by the supply line; by far the most efficient way of supplying the armies having a positive impact on their movement; the player should be encouraged to build the supply depots in the border regions prior to launching the campaign into the enemy territory

On top of that I also want the seasons to be even more impactful than now with regard to movement. Needless to say, the most rewarding experience will be to play this on 12 TPY.

The AI will of course have to be excluded from all these complexities of such system as that can only have a negative effect on it. For the player that will be much tougher, but more fun at the same time. Besides, as a form of compensation the player will also have the opportunity to adjust the movement of his armies through the army compositions. Something that I can't imagine the AI to be able to benefit from, either.

[Maetharin]

While I completely agree with your ideas and concept, IMO a script sounds like the option with the most potential concerning movement range, as it would completely make supply cart units redundant.
Armies above a certain size could only move with supply carts, therefore such a simple and elegant solution would be awesome.

IMO such a script should work with the amount of units in an army and the amount of either units or armies in a region or maybe inside supporting distance.
Maybe something along the lines of this:

For armies, a tier system:

• Tier 1: 0 - ≤4: no movement penalty
• Tier 2: ≥5 - ≤10: 20% movement pentalty
• Tier 3: ≥11 - 20: 30% movement penalty

For several armies in region or maybe inside supporting distance I´d apply multiplicators per army in accordance with the highest army tier present on top of the original penalty afterwards:

• Tier 1: *1,2
• Tier 2: *1,5
• Tier 3: *2,0

To elaborate, if a Tier 3 and Tier 1 army were in short distance from each other, the Tier 1 army suffers no movement penalty, whilst the Tier 3 army suffers a movement penalty of 36%.
In a several army scenario, say 2 Tier 3 armies with one supporting Tier 2 army, the Tier 2 army suffers a movement penalty of 40%, since there´s a Tier 3 army present, whilst the tier 3 armies suffer a penalty of 60%.
This enables smaller detachments to move quickly in daring operations, since they can draw on the supplies of the bigger army group to move on, whilst bigger armies need to make sure their supplies are in order to move.

I´d rather have the second part only apply when armies are in supporting distance, as such short seperations almost inevitably necessitate a shared supply infrastructure, whilst regions can be vast in area.
But I have no idea how much work a script like this would entail and how far something like I have imagined is even possible, maybe Jake could enlighten us?