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.