Supplies

[despot_of_rhodes]

Supplies

I was thinking about, how to slow down the ability of empires to conquer, in order to
create a more realistic speed of expansion, primiry concerning the "superpowers".

We´ve got a culture penalty and the distance penalty from capital, but this things do not seem
to affect the big empires, to expand ( like Macedonians keep moving towards balticum, though the
civilized colonies there were firstly made by germans in mediaval times ).

That kind of historically misbehavior of AI ( and also human players ) in mind, an idea came
to my mind. I´ll try to explain it, step by stepy:

1. One could grant barbarians a significant advantage, while there are moving though a territory,
where no roads have been built.

- the ability could be restricted to barbarian factions in common ( similar to their "winter warrior"
ability )

- or one could crant it to units as kind of attribute ( i have no idea, if this is possible at all ).

2. I suggest removing road building ability from several regions on the map, because even today it is
simply not possible, to cover a huge territories in i.e. Russia, with roads, despite the paved roads!

3. To slow down the civilized factions like Romands or Macedonians, which tend to overrun the barbarians
with ease, one could create a new Unit, wich still could be available to all factions, and to replace
the "super velites"" ( so there is no need for a new slot to waste for it ).

a. This unit would symbolize the supplies of any army, wich is on the move.

b. Like the siege equipment, this supply unit will be very slow, wich means a quite short reach for the troops.

c. While any army moving inside their own territory wouldn´t need this unit by all means, the farther an army
gets from it´s homeland, the more it´s goint to neet their supplies ( just like in RL ) - but not taking
the supply unit on the journey would simply cause a massive desertion amoung the troops ( i thought about similar,
but stronger effect on an army during a siege situation or caused by plage).

d. How many will desert per turn will depend on the quality of the troops - Elite will be affectet too, but rather
inconsiderably, but the lower a status of the warriors, the higher the rate of desertion. I was especially thinking
about mercenaries - in their case whole units could desert.

c. The only countermessure would be a new general trait, of the ammount of at least 7? command stars.

d. The supply unit would be quite expensive, i´d say like an elephant ( but thats a detail and balancing question ).

e. If it is possible, to make this unit capturable ( i doubt it is, but it´s never wrong to ask ), it could be quite
a fun, nerfing the enemy by taking his supplies.

f. The supply unit should take at least 2 turns to be built.

Well, the only problem i see is, how to tell AI, that it needs this unit? And if the AI would not use this unit at all, then it armies will never be able to travel very far. And it will at least slow down a "human expansion".

I know, that loyality in BI supposed have a similar effect on troops, by my intentions is to affect almoust every nation, and i´m not qute sure, but the loyality thing needs an equal number of mirror factions ( right? ), so this seems to ne a bit fantastic.


Ok, i´m finished for now, just hope, if my idea is completly foolish, so at least it coul serve as food for thought in general.

[Tiberius Tosi]

I some of your ideas. Desertion is probably not possible with RTW (from my best guess which is usually completely off), now if this was a mod for MTW2 that may be different.

To me making the proposed "baggage train" unit slow the army down seems ok if you want to play by house rules but does the AI no good. The AI would probably not invest in a unit that is 30,000 denarii, and if you make them a normal price, there is no guarantee that the AI will put them in all, if not most, of their armies.

[TheSavage]

If you have played EB you will know that they have used the script to produce a truly effective solution to this problem.

What they do is setup certain regions as rebel-controlled chokepoints. They provide huge initial garrisons in these settlements, and then they also use the script to spawn huge rebel armies anytime a faction army gets too close. While these regions are not impossible to take, they are more-or-less impossible to conquer for the AI (which isn't good at planning huge staged invasions and reacting to a rebel script spawn). Even for the player, these regions can be very difficult to conquer, requiring multiple full stacks.

The result is that the AI armies never advance beyond this boundary (or at least have to go around which significantly slows them down).

Specifically, I am thinking of alpine province to the northeast of northern Italy. It keeps the Germans from expanding too far south, and keeps the Illyrians and Macedonians from pushing up into Germany.

The ExRM script does contain a few spawned armies for factions designed to product vulnerable factions from early elimination (the Greek cities for instance, if a Macedonian army approaches their capital). The problem is that this script only protects a single city and only for the first 100 turns. If you protected multiple internal Thracian cities, say, from Sarmaritan, Macedonian, and Illyrian aggression, for the first 400 turns, then it would do a lot to stop these three factions from expanding.

It also seems like Egypt, because it's protected on the other fronts, always takes over half the world. One solution that I implemented in my game that seems to work well is to give a bonus of 2 exp levels to all units EXCEPT the Egyptians (and the faction I was playing). I put the bonus in the government building so it applied to all factions. The Egyptians still held their own but didn't run over all the Asian factions.

[Zekal]

Well I don’t know why you all want to slow down “AI quickly expansion”. I like to be confronted against super-power nation, and beside if we, player, can expend like we want is only justice that the Ai evolved to be more powerful. The idea of “rebel choke point” is a really good one and can do some “political strategic territory” whiteout weaken the AI nation.

[Quinn Inuit]

I think T. Tosi's probably right about the AI being incapable of handling supply trains. It's just not very bright.

I respect EB's solution to channeling AI expansion, but in order to avoid breaking the AI's brain I'd rather not go down that road. It might just throw armies endlessly at the province. PatricianS is making good progress with the new map and controlling AI expansion, and between that and what we've already done I think we're in good shape.

Egypt is a definite problem, but I have a few ideas for them. I think their recruitment system needs an overhaul.

[HouseOfHam]

I don't know why everyone is complaining about Egypt so much. Playing a campaign as Parthia, early on, they haven't pushed north at all, even though I've kept Seleucia busy. Then, after I took over Bactria, Armenia, Pontus, and most of Seleucia, and was going to keep expanding west, Ptolemies tried to steal Babylon from me. So, I turned south instead and rolled over Ptolemies all the way down to Gaza, with hardly any resistance.

ps: Parthian and Armenian generals are waaay overpowered. They're freaking tanks! Nearly immune to arrow fire and can take out any other faction's general easily.

[Jamey]

ps: Parthian and Armenian generals are waaay overpowered. They're freaking tanks! Nearly immune to arrow fire and can take out any other faction's general easily.

We may want to pull some of the armor off of the Cataphract generals and turn it into skill. :hmmm:

[Pat89]

Tbh... I agree with HoH regarding the Ptolemies... In my experience they almost never explode... And yes... Sometimes they do explode, but that's just fun.

[Quinn Inuit]

You know, I've noticed that, too. Ok, I'll reduce them a bit.

I have some comments about the Ptolies, but I'll put them in the other thread.

[despot_of_rhodes]

I resently started some new games with Armenians, trying to solve my save-bug, and i can confirm the fact, that my Cataphract generals appeared almoust invincible to the range weapons, only suffering a frew causalities, when getting some volleys of javelines in their back, when turned around.
I have allways annihilated pontic and selukeid generalls, suffering quite few causalities too.

Actually, i really enjoyed my Tank-Generals, but i´m not quite sure, if their superiority towards the others really ment to be

[Quinn Inuit]

Yeah, I think I overdid it when I took away their second hp. Any suggestions on what their stats should be?