An army marches on its stomach...new feature for M2TW?

**tallstark** · January 30, 2008, 12:03 PM

Random thought of the day: It would be interesting to cross two current features of the game and at the same time address the single largest challenge to all historical armies.

The first would the be the line of trade feature. The game already recognizes when there is not an uninterrupted line from a city to a port for instance, or in other words goods aren't making it from your cities to somewhere else.

The second would be the Crusades feature where units desert if they don't like whats going on. Now combine the two.

Historically, almost every army has had as great a challenge staying supplied as they have winning battles. Imagine now a little line of carts with a shield on them denoting military supplies to armies connecting your army stack to your nearest cities. Supplies get blocked, morale goes down and army can't move. Supplies stay blocked, units desert.

It would also make trade rights very interesting for military purposes as well. If you don't have rights, your carts have to go the long way around.

Get over extended and watch your enemies attack your supply lines, or watch a neutral party get bribed to cut off trade rights.

It would make the logistics of the campaign more complicated, and would be 100% realistic. Even today, this feature in wars is tremendously important. Look at all the negotiations that took place with Turkey just to be able to use Turkish airspace to supply Northern Iraq for instance...

**Pyrebound** · January 30, 2008, 01:33 PM

There is a supplies mod in tw already, used in mods such as SS and DLV. Being without supplies makes troop morale and movement points go down, and the general has a risk of going sick (lower hitpoints and less movement points). If an army has been without supplies for a long period of time, it is likely to rebel.

**tallstark** · January 30, 2008, 01:36 PM

yeah, I play SS and have noticed that. I guess the difference is I am talking more about the supply chain and lines of support, whereas from what I can understand of the supplies feature in SS its more about how much you have with you until you run out + foraging ability, but I might be wrong on that?

**pwijnands** · January 30, 2008, 02:18 PM

In Stainless Steel a fully supplied army can spend 16 turns in a friendly region and 8 turns in other regions. I think an army can also forage for two turns and can get extra supplies by defeating another army or going into a town of which 50% or more are of the same religion (so you can't use newly conquered towns of different faiths).
At times even this generous system really annoys me.

**Lord Snow** · January 30, 2008, 08:02 PM

Gameplay vs Realism... how much micromanagement do you really want to do? I take long enough to finish a turn as it is without even more micromanagement options!

Maybe these are things CA can consider through a checkbox type option in further games? Player would at least be able to scale how realistic an experience they would like then.

**tallstark** · January 30, 2008, 09:52 PM

yeah, thats a fair point. I get bored with micromanaging in the grand campaign as well, but in a short campaign on VH/VH the more realism the more interesting it would be.

**homefry** · January 30, 2008, 11:57 PM

Explain more of this SS feature...

I have 5.1 (the one that requires Kingdoms) and haven't played yet, but I want to learn more about this feature.

**Tyre** · January 31, 2008, 01:57 AM

I think it's Byg's Grim Reality they use in SS but I haven't tried it yet, it looks like it could make for some interesting campaigns.

**pwijnands** · January 31, 2008, 02:05 AM

Yep, they use the Supply System part. But I don't think they use the zeal levels for your empire. Homefry, everything you need to know is in the link provided by Tyre.