Attrition

[King Henry V]

In a game called Legion they had an interesting idea where if an army was spending a large amount of time in enemy territory, they begin to suffer (minimal) losses. This makes sense since because every army has men who are sick or injured or killed by locals when looking for food. The deeper you go into enemy land, the more casualties you have. The rate of Death is accelerated in winter, when food is scarce. This might be an interesting twist in RTW. Say you're playing Carthage and you want to recreate Hannibal's feat of crossing the Alps and attacking Rome. In the present version, going through the pass that leads to Mediolanum does not have you suffer any losses, even in winter, as does crossing the dessert in the height of Summer.

[Craterus]

That's a nice idea, I know it would **** me off though. If you're in barbarian territory, you could be raided at night by the barbarians or attacked in a forest by men you can't see (hiding) ..

[marcusbrutus]

That would be good, as long as my elite troops didn't suffer, it would get really hard to upgrade troops experience if they died on the campaign march - after all they'd be used to harsh conditions anyway.

[Colovion]

Elite troops would also be incorporated into this idea. This would also affect the enemy territory with loss of life in the General population through starvation as well as obviously consuming any trade wandering through the area - if the country is a sparsly laden one; the soldiers would begin to run out of food stocks after a certain amount of time and begin to starve - reducing the moral of the army in general.

There's a lot to this certain idea:

scroll down to screwtype and my reply especially
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=46424

[The Stranger]

yeah and what about deserters, how further from home, soldiers (esspecially those with low morale) would lose heart. and if the general is losing battles it speeds up the progress and visa versa

[marcusbrutus]

You could have a new range of traits and ancillaries such as

'ex-boy scout' - This man learned to light fires and put up tents at an early age - -10% to attrition.

Ray Meirs - This man follows your general helping the army build shelter from trees and teaches the men to eat grubs and tree bark. -20% to attrition, +20% to desertion.

[Kraxis]

You could have a new range of traits and ancillaries such as

'ex-boy scout' - This man learned to light fires and put up tents at an early age - -10% to attrition.

Ray Meirs - This man follows your general helping the army build shelter from trees and teaches the men to eat grubs and tree bark. -20% to attrition, +20% to desertion.

Oh Ray is great...
"Oh no its Ray! I'm fed up with pine needles and whatnot! Lets go Publius."

A nice trait would be:
City Dweller: Living in cities doesn't exactly make you a superb campaigner. - +5% to attrition.

[The Stranger]

and supply lines, can enemies step on a supply line and thus cutting the armies supply and making them starve.

[MajorFreak]

mmmmm...yeah, i'll bet you dollars to donuts that was what that "unimplemented" feature called 'food' was probably supposed to simulate.

[Kraxis]

mmmmm...yeah, i'll bet you dollars to donuts that was what that "unimplemented" feature called 'food' was probably supposed to simulate.

Indeed, I seem to remember a few comments by devs on this early on. There are also leftovers from carts on the battlefield. Could they have been a sort of baggagetrain?
Well there was the same thing in MTW where it was found that the game had been intended to have that and you could capture the baggagetrain and gain money directly from your enemy (from his coffers to yours). But it never made it, perhaps because there weren't really lines of communication.

[The Stranger]

yeah you know what i think, RTW was released to early with some months more they could finish the ships sim and the "baggage train" and many many more

[Colovion]

yeah you know what i think, RTW was released to early with some months more they could finish the ships sim and the "baggage train" and many many more

I get nightmares thinking about what the game would have been a year before release - when it was actually scheduled to be finished... and Activision said "ok we'll give you another year"

[The Stranger]

hmm never thought about that, dude no i'm going to have nightmares Activision should have given them some xtra months

[King Henry V]

What you could bring in connection with supply lines, is the Zone of Control. Each army would have an area that it controlled. If an enemy army moved it's ZOC onto your supply lines, unless you had your own army to keep the lines open, the supplies would be cut and attrition would rise, morale would lower and so on. There would be factors which influence ZOC such as if your army has subtantial amount of cavalry, the area under your control would increase, and if the province you're invading has a low loyalty to its ruler, there wouldn't be so many people who resit the army so that attrition would be a lot lower. Of course, these options could be turned off, but it would add more realism to the game.

[The Stranger]

yeah good idea

[marcusbrutus]

It's features like these that made lots of old strategy games really fun to play, unfortunately it seems it's just to much time and money to get them implemented into today's games. However, things are progressing, perhaps to the point that videogames might get addiction warnings like cigarettes.

[Colovion]

Then again, in RTK9 there are 36 turns in a year, and the game is so vastly superior in some ways that one has to wonder why more mainstream strategy developers haven't caught on yet.

diminishing returns

it's cheaper to serve crap and get gold in payment than serve saphron laden foods to get whatever the going rate of the market is

but then there's creative talent and things like time constraints to deal with as well - they end up cancelling eachother out and some quality is lost when time constraints are put on creating something. Also, when repairs are hindered by said limits on the repairs - quality suffers by artificial means.

so far Valve is the only company I've encountered who can release what they want, when they want - and continue to have incredible support - patches whenever needed and a forum dedicated to answer customer tech issues and other problems the games have.

Rome does some things well, at a cost of other parts not.

Rome: Total War is a Pyrrhic Victory

[Vlad Tzepes]

and supply lines, can enemies step on a supply line and thus cutting the armies supply and making them starve.

I'm not sure about supply lines in Antiquity - not even in Medieval Era, weren't the invading armies then self-sufficient? Like raiding and plundering for extra supplies - and carrying hurds of cattle with them for food?

[The Stranger]

you are probably right about armies on the move, but not for armies in forts or cities.

[mfberg]

The baggage train (followers/hangers on, cattle, food, armourers, etc) that followed and supplied the army on the move was often the target of attacks. A roman army on the march built temporary forts every night for their army and baggage train, they carried stakes and shovels to do this.

mfberg

[Craterus]

In my first ambush, when my army was completely unprepared, I expected the general to say "Get the women and children out of here!" and so on.

[mfberg]

I would like to see the fleeing civilians/animals in the game. A nice effect, I know they made skeletons for deer and such, but I haven't seen them up close. The only civilians I have seen were those few walking around when I viewd a city up close, never in a battle.

mfberg

[The Stranger]

yeah, i think it would be nice to implement that you can never take a town without a fight.

you can
-siege
-assault
-ask them to surrender

this way if there are no trained troops around, the villagers will defend and a peasant unit will spawn, and more if the city is bigger. after the siege/assault they'll leeve again
but they will not contribute to the happiness in the city, cuz they are the city