Limit unit's walking, flying, swimming range and simulating Supply Line

Climber

Join Date 03/2006

+17

Limit unit's walking, flying, swimming range and simulating Supply Line

The following is the 2nd version to limit unit’s walking, flying, swimming range AND simulating supply lines. I’ll be very glad if SD will implement the same (or improved) mechanism in EWOM.
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Units can carry a maximum of M units of food, currently hold Y units of food, consume X units of food per turn, and is able to forage Z units of food per turn.
Each turn, Y unit of food is consumed. The turn after Y=0, they gain the status of “Exhausted”.

Exhausted units will have ATT, DEF greatly reduced & movement speed halved. These units can still keep pressing forward, but the risk of defeat is huge. Generally speaking, exhausted units should retreat, but it is a choice up to the AI/Gamer. The fun thing about Exhaustion is, since it is a status, it can be removed by spell/item/heroes' skill when appropriate.

Exhaustion applies to any modes of transport, including walking, swimming, flying, seafaring and etc.   Swimming unit is drowned when it is exhausted.

A land tile carries a maximum of W units of food. Any unit that does not involve in any combat nor damaged previous turn will automatically forage a % of Z food units. This % is terrain dependent. If it is a dessert/ocean tile, this % equals to 0. If it is a city tile, this % can be well over 100%.   For most if not all land tiles, food will be replenished automatically to W units many turns later.

50% * M food units is automatically ‘ordered’ to reach the adventuring stack whenever Y drops below 50% (for example) of M.    Caravan of food travels from its closest city, & the amount of food ordered equals to any excess over the city's emergency food surplus. If one city does not have the food to cover the 50% * M amount, another food caravan is ordered from the next closest city.

When the caravan arrives, food is equally distributed amongst all units automatically. But there will be UI for distributing food (or transfer items) btw units of the same stack or adjacent stacks.
[Credit to all posters in this thread]

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NTJedi

One thing: foraging (in reality) is not so much based in how much the unit can forage, but in how much food is left around after the peasants and everyone take their normal share. If you need to forage more then bad things are going to happen soon

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It would be great to see a foraging system as has already been discused. I'd love to see it being weather dependant - making it harder to stage invasions during the winter for example (as it's harder to feed your armies).

As to the actual implementation - it might be easier to give each army a store of food dependant upon its size - so don't bother with stores for individual units. Then every turn the army forages the general store is replenished at X per turn. Then when the store reaches 0 implement exhaustion mechanics as neccessary.

Another idea is that if the army is near a road then supply trains can supply food from your cities - i.e. if you're army is on a road your city will add Y food to it's store per turn. If it is 1 tile away your city will provide Y/2 units of food - 2 squares away Y/3 or something like that. Maybe additional penalties could be applied for being a long way from your cities.

I'd definately like to see a good supply mechanic in the game - it would add a whole new layer of strategic depth - and you can't have too much of that

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Or perhaps Undead usage without significant cost could be a benefit for using a weaker religion..... say a religion that gives less bonuses to economy, is a death worshipping evil religion.

If you want to have a better happiness/ gold/science input religion, you will need to be acceptable with weaker undead.

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Quoting landisaurus,

reply 1

of course, I think we would want supply lines available to let armies go further. Armies may have to setup camp to wait for supplies. Supplies would work similar to the way they do between cities. I think it would fit pretty well, and it would make it difficult to "steam-roll" the map as supplies would begin to grow thin.

It would make large scale tactics very interesting as well. Since you could suffer great risk if your suppy lines were cut by a rear or flank attack.

Indeed as you said cut off supply lines would be very bad. Even if your not in a battle, for example in GalCiv2 You are able to bypass enemy planets and hit there most important cities, this makes sense in GalCiv because a fleet of spaceships probably won't have real supply lines. However in Elemental an army approachin the economic powerhouse of a nation should run the risk of the enemy cutting off his presumably large supply line at any one (or more just to be sure) points. Thus forcing an enemy to either not strike at the heart of a kingdom or to leave auxilary forces behind every now and then to guard your supply lines.

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