Thinking about supply - some proposals

[LintMan]

Thinking about the supply situation and all the silly endless wine bag forging/scout carrying micromanagement that goes with it...

In my current game, I have almost 30 scouts sneaking around with my assorted armies carrying endless wine bags, and before the game winds down, I'll probably end up with 5-6 more as my armies contimue to expand. Further, because I'm playing Marignon which has stealthy friars, I need to do CTRL-Move on the combat Groups to get my friars to fight, which means that I have to separate out my wine scouts and sneak them separately to the same province, else they show up in combat. To make tracking them all easier, I've now renamed them "Food 1" .. "Food 29". Be amazed by my impressive roleplaying immersion!

Even with all those walking wineries, I still end up ending up with some starving units because some provinces I attack have virtually no supplies, and to make all my armies use 0 supplies would probably require an *additional* 5-10 wine scouts.

For nations that rely on large numbers of eating troops, making wine scouts or some variant of that is an almost required step which just strikes me as silly and very micromanagement intensive for something that doesn't really add much fun/interest to the game. So I have some thoughts on improving things:

1) Most magic items don't "stack", so having more than one doesn't work for most items, which prevents scouts from carrying 2 wines each. But items that generate gems (ie: astral clams) *do* stack. I'd suggest that the endless wine bags are closer in effect to astral clams than to, say, +1 Nature Moonvine Bracelets, and allowing wine bags to stack would help things a little bit.

2) Forging Cauldrons of Endless Broth would also allow using less scouts to carry all the food, but the cauldrons are really a bad deal: you need a Nature-3 mage to make them, and they cost 20 gems while only giving twice the supply of the 5-gem wine bags. (Ie: they cost twice as much per nature gem, while also tying up a much more expensive mage to make them). My thought: reduce the cost to 10 gems, and make them const-6 (if it isn't there now).

3) Make forts/castles supply value not just affect the supplies during seige, but also the province's regular supply value, and the amount of supply the castle provides to units in neighboring provinces. (IIRC, that doesn't matter currently). So then, you could pick the high-supply Fortified City and have a lot less supply headaches.

4) Preferably to (just) fixing the magic supply methods, I'd like to see a non-magic-item solution that echoes how real armies would deal with supply:

Add some non-combat "mule train/supply wagon"-type supply units...

- Probably the simplest implementation would just be that these supply units would just have a +supply attribute. Perhaps +50 supply.

- A more interesting (but complex to do) implementation might make them able to carry certain quantity of supplies, which they would dispense (and maybe run out of) in provinces where food was short, and resupply in provinces where
there was surplus capacity. In this implementation, lets say that one mule train could carry 200 supplies. So if you had a 125-supply army with one mule train supply unit in a 75-suplly province, you could go 4 turns without
resupplying. But if you had a 200-supply eating army in a 0-supply province, it would only Last 1 turn before running out. (But maybe then your army eats the mules before it starts starving!) And of course, if you had two mule trains, it would double that time before you ran out, etc.

- A supply unit would be a commander-type unit (0 leadership) which would abstractly represent one whole team of mules/wagons/etc and their handlers. This unit would be purely non-combat, so it would never show up in a battle screen.

- You move supply units into enemy territories along with the rest of your army, but conceptually, they hang a bit behind, in a camp, waiting for the battle to end. If the attack fails, there is a chance the supply units will be
overrun and destroyed before they can (automatically) route to a neighboring province. (Imagine this as there was no time for them to load up the mules/wagons and flee their camp before getting overrun by the victorious defenders). Perhaps this destruction chance would depend on the relative speeds of the mule team unit and the pursuing army. Similarly, if any supply units are in a province that is attacked and defeated, there is a chance the they will be automatically destroyed instead of routed. (And of course like all other units, if there is no where to route to, they'd be lost.) Finally, if supply units are moved into an enemy province without any actual attackers to go with them, they would again be either automatically destroyed
or routed.

- Given their no-combat-capability, vulnerability to getting over-run if combat goes poorly, upkeep cost, and my desire to make supply units a viable/preferable alternative to wine scouts, I wouldn't make them too expensive. I'm thinking 40-50 gold, 20 resources, but that would also depend on how much supply they provide (and whether it's the unlimited +supply implementation, or the limited supply quantity implementation).

- I'm thinking that these mule trains/supply wagons/etc could have race dependent variations and be recruitable at all castles/forts. (Maybe an independent Version available also?) Aside from the unit picture, the variation could be things like map move speed, amount of supplies provided, and likelihood of getting overrun instead of routed.

- Another possible capabilty for supply units: allow the supply units to have some number "blank" magic item slots which would let it carry any type item in them (but not use those items), and also maybe carry more than 30 gems. So it could transport 2 magic swords and 2 helms to the front, but would be incapable of using any of them.

- Someone is probably thinking: "All you've done is replace wine scouts with some new supply unit to manage!". Well, yes, but with several benefits: With a "mule train", you don't need to both forge the wine bags, recruit the scouts to carry them, get the scouts to a lab to give them the wine bags, and also no need to sneak the wine scouts around while you CTRL-move the rest of your army. Further, there is the added strategic risk/interest of potentially having some of your supply units suddenly destroyed if things take
a bad turn. In contrast, wine scouts have very little risk of getting killed. Also, if the "limited supply" implementation was done, it would require more varied strategic concerns than wine scouts do.

So, the benefits of dedicated supply units as I see them:
- No nature gems required
- No nature mages required to forge large quantities of endless wine bags.
- less micromanagement: just buy the unit and move it with your army
- The potential to lose your supply units if your army is routed adds some fun strategic considerations
- adds some level of "realism" (Though I'm not a big stickler for realism in a fantasy-based game)
- The AI will have a better chance of keeping its large armies from constantly starving, because it would be far more capable of recruiting "mule trains" from castles and indep provinces than it is now for forging wine bags to give to large batches of scouts (or even just to give to regular army commanders).

And the downsides vs. wine scouts:
- Initial and upkeep gold costs for the supply unit are likely higher
- Much greater vulnerability to being destroyed when battles are lost.
- Unable to use the dedicated supply unit as a scout or for combat

[Wauthan]

It's a good idea. Atleast a few factions could have a supply type noncombatant unit. But wouldn't it be easier if it just appeared on the battlefield, right in the back? That way they would also be valid targets for the enemy that could make a quick harrasement attack just to take out your supplies.

Also the effects of starvation are not as harsh as one could imagine. Diseased units can Last for quite some time and are usually competent enough to fight even after a full year (4 turns) of starvation. If starving units actually died or had massive penalties then supply units would be much more important.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by LintMan:
My thought: reduce the cost to 10 gems, and make them const-6 (if it isn't there now).

I'm pretty sure that they are supposed to be less effective, since they are construction 2, while wineskins are construction 6.

4) Preferably to (just) fixing the magic supply methods, I'd like to see a non-magic-item solution that echoes how real armies would deal with supply:

In this particular time period, most of that involved living off the supplies you could find directly around you.

- No nature gems required
- No nature mages required to forge large quantities of endless wine bags.

This is one of the major advantages of nature magic, so you'd be seriously weakening it by providing other avenues for supply generation.

[Chris Byler]

At least one faction *does* have a supply unit: the Fay Boar. Nature mages provide supply, as do some Gods (the Great White Bull and Lord of Fertility are the only ones I can think of).

And you already know some of the nature items - the Enormous Cauldron of Broth (Cons 2, 20 Nature, 50 supply) and Endless Bag of Wine (Cons 4, 5 Nature, 25 supply). There's also the Summer Sword (Cons 4, 10 Nature 5 Earth, 50 supply). But that one's a little harder to forge - the other two can be forged by a Druid (possibly with a Thistle Mace, but he can forge that himself and you only need one). The same commander (or scout) can carry one of each for 125 supply - not counting any nature mages or fertility gods you may have with you.

Supply caravans are already represented by fortresses providing supply to distant provinces. IIRC this is based on the fort's admin values, so a Fortified City will indeed give you fewer supply headaches - until the front moves and you have to build another one. Then the tremendous gold cost of the FC will keep you from buying too many troops.

I don't think the game needs any more ways to supply armies. It's already hard to starve out forts because the defenders usually have nature mages or supply items, and even large armies can be fed by items and/or nature mages. Bags of wine are one of the most gem efficient ways - there's no reason they couldn't be carried by your army commanders instead of scouts, unless you routinely fill every item slot on run-of-the-mill commanders.

[Gateway103]

Originally posted by Wauthan:
...Diseased units can Last for quite some time and are usually competent enough to fight even after a full year (4 turns) of starvation...

Just a clarification, In Dom2 a full year is 12 turns, unlike the way it was in Dom1. Minor difference most of time though.

-Gateway103

[HotNifeThruButr]

Dice, in this time period and scenario, most of the food your armies come by are usually what they take/buy from the local infidel/friendly farmers. A cheer for commandeer!

"We'll be taking this wheat, that cow, and your blood virgin daughter... oh, and we also have to salt your farm now"

I like your supplier idea, this way, nature magic isn't essential because no magic should be absolutely vital, in my opinion, at least.

What if the enemies steal your suppliers instead? I mean, don't let it just go to waste!

[ April 16, 2004, 05:26: Message edited by: HotNifeThruButr ]

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by HotNifeThruButr:
Dice, in this time period and scenario, most of the food your armies come by are usually what they take/buy from the local infidel/friendly farmers. A cheer for commandeer!

That's what I said.

[HotNifeThruButr]

My bad, I thought you meant foraging and hunting.

[Tuna-Fish]

Remember, pillaging gives supplies!

Not much good vs dead ermor though...

[LintMan]

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?