Wauthan - That might be cool to have the supply units in battle, but I'd made them non-combat because it would likely be too easy for opponents to kill them that way, and also because I was thinking that while a supply unit would be a single commander, conceptually it would represent a dozen or more mules and laborers, etc. At the map level, the single-unit representation feels fine, but in a battle, having just a single on-field unit represent a wagon train or mule team doesn't feel right.
As for starving/diseases - keeping myself well-fed is a priority for me, so I perhaps I'm too concerned about doing the same for my troops.
Graeme - Ahh. I didn't realize that about the cauldrons being low-end research and the wineskins being high-end. Even so, the cauldrons seem such a bad deal, I'd just wait to get the wineskins.
About armies getting their food purely locally - surely they must have brought at least *some* food with them. What if they were traveling through areas that had no/few locals to take food from to feed their armies?
As for +supply being a major nature magic advantage, the endless wine skins only require 1 Nature, and 5 gems, so it would hardly be a reason someone would concentrate on nature magic over some other path. There's plenty of other good item uses for those nature gems, like horns of valor or boots of reinvigoration, so I wouldn't think of it as a "serious weakening" of nature magic by providing some alternative way to increase supply.
Chris - Yeah, I probably could put the wine bags on my regular commander units. It would ease the micromanagement. I tend not to because I hate losing magic items in combat when their owners die. (I know, it's ironic that I then concocted a supply unit that is far more vulnerable). I guess I still have the lingering mindset from countless other games that while units are expendable, magic items are a precious/rare/expensive commodity, even though in dom 2, items are actually comparatively cheap and easily produced.
About starving out forts: if my "limited quantity of supply" supply unit implementation was done, it would be *easier* to starve out a fort containing an army using those supply units than it would to be starve out an army loaded with wine bags!
One Last question for everyone - no one commented on my point that this would help the AI. Is AI starvation not seen as a problem? Or do you think this wouldn't help the AI?