The issues of re-training, reinforcements and surrender!

[Aetius the Last Roman]

Does anybody wonder why CA has not done anything about retraining, reinforcements and surrender?

Firstly, insta-retraining results in:
- Reduces the difficulty of offensive attacks.
- It makes supply lines non-existent.
- Makes those unrealistic, cross-world dashes possible.
- Allows experienced soldiers to just 'appear'.
- Armies can just 'reappear' even after a terrible defeat.
- This reduces the strategic element of the game.

The RTR mod helps a little with addressing the supply line issue to some extent and deals away with the 'dash' principle. However, the one-second return on armies and the experience has still not been solved and continues to dumb down the strategic aspect of the game, what is the point of continually winning against someone like Egypt if they just retrain every turn.

Secondly, Delayed reinforcements?
After I got the 1.2 patch I thought that my idiot AI help problem was solved and it was but ever since day 1 I have been bothered by the concept of delayed reinforcements.
They reason I hate this concept is that is once again dumbs down the strategic part of the game. There is no point is carefully co-ordinating army movements if you cannot put the army in a numerically favourable position. This works to the AI's disadvantage as well. I can challenge two armies at the same time with a 1 in 10 chance that if the combined forces are greater than mine, I still win. It allows you to just steamroll in, park on a mountain and even though completely surrounded, still beat the AI backwards.

When after MTW's prisoners, I expected a similar situation in RTW with one improvement, surrender!. If armies are easily outclassed (either numerically or technologically) or have been repeatedly beaten, why would they not surrender? Maybe if outnumbered five to one, we would have an insta-surrender and all of the enemy turn into prisoners (or maybe they can even defect). Would this rule not make sense?

I know we should all follow CA's new market of trigger-happy RTSists who cannot really grasp strategic complexity above the build button ,
But I think that maybe if they could put a little more skill back into the game iit would actually help.

I was wondering if maybe CA or even some brilliant modder could take the time to figure out how to address my issues.
Maybe delayed reinforcements can be turned off.

[The Stranger]

yeah, i was really dissapointed about the prisenors, and RTW just sucked compared to MTW, i thought they would put in all good things of MTW in it.

BTW look at my STW, MTW, RTW combined thread

[Divinus Arma]

Secondly, Delayed reinforcements?
After I got the 1.2 patch I thought that my idiot AI help problem was solved and it was but ever since day 1 I have been bothered by the concept of delayed reinforcements.

This is an understable point and I found it troublesome at first as well. That stated, let me present an understanding I have achieved regarding the concept. In ancient warfare, the coordination of vast armies against enemies was not guarnateed. There were numerous impediments to successful coordination where the implications were strategic and tactical.

Allow me to provide you with an example of this. In the Pelopenisian war following the expulsion of Persia prior to Phillip pand Alexander dominance of Greece, two city-states represented contrasting hegemonys that were bound for conflict: Athens and Sparta. In the ensuing war that lasted decades upon decades, Sparta and Athens led varying types of campaigns against each other, both ground and naval. During this time, alliances with lesser states and the balance of power repeatedly shifted back and forth between Sparta and Athens. (here is where I get to the point) One battle where reinforcement coordination made all the difference is as follows:

Agis, a young King of Sparta, eager to overcome a reputation of perceived cowardice (it was actually prudence. Agis sought peace.) found his opportunity in the region of Arcadia. He was to face the Argives, allies of Athens who were expecting reinforcements for the very same battle. Agis was also expecting reinforcements for the same battle, but Agis found himself in an akward position. The Argives had placed themseles on a steep hillside while awaiting their reinforcements. As it was at that exact time, Agis of Sparta had superior numbers while the Argives held superior ground. If both war parties were to receive their reinforcements at the same time, the Argives would hold superior numbers AND superior ground. Agis made an impetous decision to lead his army in phalanx against the enemy army's superior position. Just as the armies were about to engage, Agis called them off and the army went back down the hill. History tells us that Agis's retinue declared it suicide (which it was, despite superior numbers) and prevented the assault.

Agis found a way to bring the army down from the hill ( I won't go into detail, but it involves flooding the Argive's allies city) and fight the battle below. Agis won. The point is this, had Argive's reinforcements arrived when expeted, the battle would have been fought differently and it is entirely possible the outcome would have been different.

So you see, delayed reinforcements is an aspect of the game adding to its strategic complexity, depth, and realism. If you cannot rely on brute force and attrition warfare, you must then turn to tactics and manuever warfare.

When after MTW's prisoners, I expected a similar situation in RTW with one improvement, surrender!. If armies are easily outclassed (either numerically or technologically) or have been repeatedly beaten, why would they not surrender? Maybe if outnumbered five to one, we would have an insta-surrender and all of the enemy turn into prisoners (or maybe they can even defect). Would this rule not make sense?

Regarding prisoners, classical armies commonly routed. And the aggressor commonly pursued and destroyed the routers. Typically, once the leader of personality fell (for example, the king of Persia to Alexander) or fled, the army broke apart and routed piece by piece. It mattered not who was actually winning the day. In fact, Armies sometimes routed so ferociously that they trampled many of their fellow soldiers to death while in flight. The concept of rational thought escapes the man who is filled with terror and panic. And panic breeds panic. It is known to be contagious on the battlefield in real life as it is in TW.

And if you are refering to the "my huge army versus your tiny army" aspect of the game... They usually flee first. When you face them a second time, they have no more options to flee. In this case surrender is death. I'd rather fight.

Regards.

[Oaty]

Nice post Divinus Arma, unfortanately every little tidbit of warfare could not be implemented into game and thus as the game is is where we got our cutoff.

Well quite often small armies would evacuate under the circumstanses of a huge oncoming army, or get caught offguard and slaughtered. So for gameplays sake it would be better that a heavily outcassed army has a good chance to retreat to the nearest fort/city. Whereas when they are equal in size the army has very little chance to retreat to a fortification.

So when the battle page comes up there should be 4 options

Fight on battlemap
autoresolve
withdraw
Retreat to nearest fortification (wich is not a guarantee you'll evade the army but at least a chance for evasion)

As far as rebels being outclassed it would be nice if they occasionaly just dispersed instead of face the might of your army especially when you have a big army nearby to dispose of them.

At least if armies had the option of retreating to a nearby fortification, I would'nt be making piecemeal of the enemy as often.

[Wicked]

It would help recruitment issues massively if they had retained the food cost for units and the baggage train as a trainable unit.



Within reasonable limits of course, here's my idea, henceforth changing "Food" to "Supply":



If a unit was in a Fort or Settlement it would be considered "Supplied" disregarding all variables, this makes sense as even a lowly fort would be connected to the nearest population center with rudimentary lines of communication, and after a short while it's own village/town.



3 variables which would affect Supply:



1: Distance from nearest friendly settlement in terms of tiles (to include allied as well as own settlements), the farther you are from one the worse the supply situation is, each tile away from one would result in 1 or more soldiers lost due to starvation/desertion each turn.



2: Level of province farming improvements + base farm level, provided the army is in a friendly province, the two would be combined using the same formula as population +/-, disregarding taxation level, although not governor traits related to farming output, thus the number of soldiers not in a fort or settlement would be subtracted from the total population number the province can support.



3: Level of road improvements, provided the army is in a friendly province, each level affects one or more soldiers lost due to starvation/desertion each turn, the higher the level the corresponding smaller number of soldiers lost.



Now, only factions which used logistics (provided by the state/general, not individual soldier) could build the "Baggage Train" unit, which would make the army to which it was attached immune to all supply variables, automatically dismissing the Barbarians from having one, as they had no organized logistical system.



For those armies without a Baggage Train unit accompanying them, and not in a fort or settlement, each would cause devastation no matter the ownership of the province they were located in, scaleable to the supply variables, thus if the number of soldiers in said army exceeded the provincial support ability dependant on their position it would cause devastation.

[Shadar]

Theres one major problem with the baggage train unit presence. The weakness of the AI to deal with such a problem. The Baggage train was a vital part of the army (and in analysing ancient battles, almost all armies had a baggage train with them, holding camp followers, supplies, etc during campaigning.). In some ancient battles (one of Alexander the Great's battles comes to mind), troops would often rush to the baggage camp in order to loot while the battle was still raging (In Alexander's battle, his line had been broken by mounted enemy soldiers at one point, but instead of attacking the rear of his army (which probably would have won the battle for them), they rushed to attack his baggage camp...)


The problem with the AI would be this:

In battles, the AI usually seeks to gain an advantage by attempting to use the lay of the land, unit weaknesses etc. However, if the baggage train existed, wouldn't that give an advantage to the player since they would know how many baggage train units to keep with each army, how to split their force to defend the baggage train, etc. The AI would be hamstrung in that they get NOT ENOUGH or TOO MANY baggage trains for the armies which they have (the AI seems to have this tendency to split its armies into very small sizes, whereas a human player would go about invading with half-full stack armies). Also, once in battle, how can you guarantee that the AI will be able to defend their baggage trains effectively while also being able to conduct a decent offence against the human player?

Plus, an exploitation of this would the human attacking an army with a stack of mercenary suiciders in the entire goal of rushing the enemy's baggage train and destroying it. That would give an overwhelming advantage to a human player since they can tactically adjust to take out the army's baggage while defending theirs viciously.

[Wicked]

You have a point...still a nice fantasy if the AI is ever up to snuff...which it *could* have been...

[Darius]

Another problem with this is that in the beginning, very many factions that start out in poor economical situations would be hard pressed to ever really expand, as the cost of forts alone would be a nasty hit, and the requirement of a baggage train would only add to their woes. To be honest though it would have been awesome to have supply lines that could be raided or defended, but the fact of the matter is that the AI simply would have too much trouble with it. Either they would spread themselves dangerously thin to protect it, ignore it outright, or it's mere use would send them into irrepairable debt.

[A.Saturnus]

Secondly, Delayed reinforcements?
After I got the 1.2 patch I thought that my idiot AI help problem was solved and it was but ever since day 1 I have been bothered by the concept of delayed reinforcements.
They reason I hate this concept is that is once again dumbs down the strategic part of the game. There is no point is carefully co-ordinating army movements if you cannot put the army in a numerically favourable position. This works to the AI's disadvantage as well. I can challenge two armies at the same time with a 1 in 10 chance that if the combined forces are greater than mine, I still win. It allows you to just steamroll in, park on a mountain and even though completely surrounded, still beat the AI backwards.

This seems to be a performance issue. You may want to set set UNLIMITED_MEN_ON_BATTLEFIELD in preferences on true. Your system has to bear it though.

[BeeSting]

Another problem with this is that in the beginning, very many factions that start out in poor economical situations would be hard pressed to ever really expand, as the cost of forts alone would be a nasty hit, and the requirement of a baggage train would only add to their woes. To be honest though it would have been awesome to have supply lines that could be raided or defended, but the fact of the matter is that the AI simply would have too much trouble with it. Either they would spread themselves dangerously thin to protect it, ignore it outright, or it's mere use would send them into irrepairable debt.

Why would it be so difficult to program the logics for it?

Wouldn't it just take a lot of testing time for someone experienced in strategy games to come up with the doctrine for managing baggage trains and supply lines?

I mean how hard is it for the AI to keep its units in formation and instead of letting them all go in whichever direction at the last minute?

[HarunTaiwan]

1. Prisoners: In ancient times there was a pratice of captured soldiers being put "under the yoke" and becoming slaves.

2. AI reinforcements. If you do it right (by having be a specific kind of stack without a general) you can let the AI handle those forces (yes, I know, but in reality some captains would be pretty lame too.) I use this sometimes to good effect.

3. UNLIMITED MEN ON BATTLEFIED. Is that really possible?

[Darius]

I for one would love if it was possible for units to surrender. Then the enemy has the option to either kill them en masse, sell them into slavery for money, use them as slaves among their own communities for a small pop. boost, or ransom them back to their nation of origin.

In fact it should be made default that when a city is "starved out" that the units inside dont all simply die off, but instead surrender due to intense hunger. Another good idea would be the option to order your men to surrender. Naturally it would be an act of desperation, but if there is no way your men could survive or make any dent in the enemy that would be worth the fight, then you could take the chance that the enemy will ransom them back to you.

[Dutch_guy]

for the matter of suply lines, in the downloadable movies for this game you can actually see the trade caravans being attacked ( just like seeing them in screenshots even on this site ) so maybe the whole supply lines was a big consept at one point in the game, but they decided to drop that and work on making the AI dumber and dumber so that they now actually attack over bridges when defending

also what would make the game harder/more interresting is the further you expand the more money it would have to cost to support your troops, which wil ressult in less blitzing and actually making tactical decissions on were you want to go, and vice versa you should also reward factions ( who start poor /Numidia as an example ) who DO conquer terrritories with extra looting money or less support cost for their troops

[The Stranger]

i would like to see that every city already has a levy unit in it (but it can't leeve or count for the 20 unit limit) that defends the city if attacked without a garrison.

[Aetius the Last Roman]

Firstly I would like to thank the many replies this post got, as a new member I expect this to get shot down pretty fast.

To Divinius Arma,

So you see, delayed reinforcements is an aspect of the game adding to its strategic complexity, depth, and realism. If you cannot rely on brute force and attrition warfare, you must then turn to tactics and manuever warfare.

You missed my point. I did not mean to say that delayed reinforcements were something that should be stopped altogether. The problem I have is that it dumbs down got strategic maneuvers by ensuring that big battles are more or less symetrical.
For example, when I march two armies on the front and back of an opposing army, with quality of all troops being the same. If I had 800 men on the front and 600 at the back and was facing a 1,100 man army. The game would just delay re-inforcements and make me fight a somewhat symetrical battle even though my perfect trap would crush the enemy.

Regarding prisoners, classical armies commonly routed. And the aggressor commonly pursued and destroyed the routers. Typically, once the leader of personality fell (for example, the king of Persia to Alexander) or fled, the army broke apart and routed piece by piece. It mattered not who was actually winning the day. In fact, Armies sometimes routed so ferociously that they trampled many of their fellow soldiers to death while in flight. The concept of rational thought escapes the man who is filled with terror and panic. And panic breeds panic. It is known to be contagious on the battlefield in real life as it is in TW.

Regarding this, you missed my point again. You are talking about routs, I am talking about surrender, i.e. before the battle is fought. This means that if you have totally outmanouvered or outclassed the enemy, he will concede in fear of losing his troops. I think surrender should not be made by the player but by the actual army which if it has bad morale (by its faction losing lots of battles or it can't escape, heavily outnumbered, etc...) will concede to the other faction.

An extra thought on this, maybe the probability of surrender for a decently inferior force, i.e worst for a captain whilst very unlikely if under a 5-star general. I think this is because the lowly captain have less understanding of the total strategic need of not conceding and have less vested interest in maintaining the faction than say, a family member.

To wicked,
Great idea. I don't know if it can be programmed in but I think it would increase the complexity of the game immensely. Another good-run off would be that it would limit immense army stacking at one point.
One more note, supply caravans should not be present at the actual battles unless it is an ambush. Looting by the victorious side should take place.

To A.Saturnas,

This seems to be a performance issue. You may want to set set UNLIMITED_MEN_ON_BATTLEFIELD in preferences on true. Your system has to bear it though.

How do you do this?

Darius, i think that you got the right idea with what should you do to captured soldiers. One problem emerged, how do you tak'em back to your city, maybe if should be automatic like MTW.

Sorry if my reply post was soo long but I felt the need to address everybody's comments and include qoutes.
Again, thanx for the participation.

[A.Saturnus]

How do you do this?

Open preferences.txt in the ROME folder with an text editor and do what the picture says:




edit: whether it really works has not been confirmed yet, but neither is there a refutation. Your system must be able to handle it of course.

[Aetius the Last Roman]

Thanks A.Saturnas, will try