The issues of re-training, reinforcements and surrender!

[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