Could Caesar Fly?

[Foot]

Because RTW is a turn-based game it is impossible to have realistic movement speeds. An army could march about 15 miles a day, though there are cases of much longer marches in a day, but speeds above 15miles could not be maintained for long. 15 miles a day is 105 miles a week is 420 miles a lunar month is 5475 miles a calender year is 1370 miles an EB turn. You can understand why we cannot have realistic movement for EB characters, in one turn a character could travel from northern France to Rome quite easily. That game wouldn't work.

Foot

[oudysseos]

Oh I understand completely, and as I said the movement in EB always seems fine to me. But Caesar's speed really jumps out as exceptional, so I guess I was just going 'Wow!'. Perhaps it's the case that my assumptions about how quickly and easily one could actually travel in the past are wrong. As Foot said, 15 miles a day is not unrealistic (and didn't Stonewall Jackson regularly cover 30 miles a day or more?), so as long as you keep going, day after day, long distances do get covered quicker than you think. But, have any 'Caesar Speed' traits been considered? Or does it exist already?

[Foot]

If you continually use up all your movement points in a turn you'll begin to get bad traits about over-working your troops. Just because you can move 100 movement points a turn doesn't mean that that is the normal amount. I think you need to leave 10% of your movement points to not qualify for over-working of the troops. Over-working your troops but getting away with it are the caesar traits. Caesar's movements are not overly impressive, nots a 100% markup. As for 30miles a day, if you intend for soldiers to fortify their camp and the end of the day, 30 miles is not realistic. At a even 3 mile pace (which isn't unreasonable for a fully kitted out soldier plue baggage train) it would take 10 hours to march the full 30, add into that the necessity of foraging for food for several thousand and you can quickly see that 30 miles is pretty doable in friendly territory or in europe where there are lots of youth hostels, but when you have pitch camp and up sticks every day it gets kinda impossible.

Foot

[konny]

As Foot said, 15 miles a day is not unrealistic (and didn't Stonewall Jackson regularly cover 30 miles a day or more?)

Jackson was notorious for having mercylessly forced marched his troops: Shenandoah Valley is still today one of the best examples for outmanouvering far superior forces by squeezing the last out of one's men.

Usuall speed of pre-industrial armies on avarge to good roads can be estimated with about 20 kms a day , when allowing for a day of rest every third or fourth day. So Xenophon's 1,000 Kms could be done in some 60 to 70 days (in known territory, on roads and not intercepted by hostile activities!).

[Connacht]

Perhaps movement points bonuses given by paved and highway roads could be increased, so that normal armies don't get from Finland to Sicily in one or two turns across hostile and wild lands but highly developed factions can see their armies move quickly through their advanced provinces. Or not...?

[Foot]

Unfortunately I believe that is hardcoded. Certainly in RTW, but it may be possible in MTW2.

Foot

[Ravenic]

In the chance that M2TW allows you to modify bonuses from Paved Roads and such then that seems like it'd be a very good solution indeed, that way you don't feel like your character will be an old man by the time he gets to the other side of the Seleucid Empire, for example, playing as the Grey Death.

[Foot]

If we can I would certainly make roads give a much higher bonus and furthermore reduce the base movement rate of characters. This would make control of the roads paramount for the player both in defence and in attack.

Foot