Campaign Morale/Supply

[Mangudai]

This is an idea for a new feature. It would take a lot of effort to implement, but it might be worth it. What do you think?

On the campaign map each stack has a morale indicator. This depends on where the unit is, how far it is moved each turn, recent battles, food supply, general + ancillaries, and quality of troops. Holding the cursor over a unit would also tell you the main factors for their morale, just like on the battle maps of previous total war games.

Low morale on the campaign map leads to desertions. On the battle map armies start with lower morale and break faster.

Movement: moving an army as far as possible every turn is hard on morale and leads to desertion, especially among low quality troops.

Position: Home cities and castles refresh morale. Home territory is relatively stable. Neighboring territory has a small morale penalty every turn. If the neighboring territory is not conquered quickly enough troops become discouraged and want to go home. Distant lands especially ones with a foreign culture and religion provide a morale boost every turn. Troops do not feel they can escape, the only way home is through the objectives.

Generals + ancillaries, troop quality, and recent battles. These are all self explanatory.

Food supply: Now here is the fun part. There are three ways to resupply your men.
1) Home cities and castles provide automatic resupply when you are near them (say within one turns movement). Possibly city size matters, so a village doesn't provide enough supplies for a full stack. A small town might provide enough for 4 units, so if you have 16 units you get 3/4 of the penalty (some desertion).
2) Foraging. An army that ends its turn on with some movement points remaining can forage. The square it stands on and the squares it has ZOC over will be foraged. This is 9 squares. If these are farmland they might produce enough supply for 9 units. A full stack would have to split up to forage. Other types of terrain have lower forage potential. Grassland, forest, rough, and desert each offer their own amount of forage.
3) Baggage train. This is the really fun part! Baggage train units are like military units. You handle them the same way on the map and in battles. They can even be hired like mercs. They have a forage bonus, so they refill by standing on farmland. Players will not want to take their baggage into offensive battles, so to reduce micromanagement a baggage stack should support nearby stacks on the campaign map.
-units: wagon, handcart, cattle, mule or camel train, and horse train.
Wagons are like siege equipment in speed and battle characteristics. Handcarts walk the same speed as infantry but can't run, they require more manpower so more upkeep. Cattle are as fast as infantry but in battle they run amok then flee (like flaming pigs in RTW). Cattle would be the most common baggage unit to hire in the field. Mule and camel trains carry pack frames on their backs, only cav can catch them, but they are expensive. Horse trains are rare only the mongols have an easy time getting them. They are as fast as cav.

Ships will also have to serve the resupply role.

I think this would be a lot of fun. I know it would be hard to implement, and the hardest part would be getting the AI to handle it. But imagine the joy of stampeding the other guy's cattle!

[Ramses II CP]

I've had thoughts along similar lines; for example it shouldn't be too hard to modify the settlement loyalty percentage indicator so that armies have one too. Then you just have to set the factors that reduce (Distance from capital, in enemy lands, outnumbered, captain led, etc.) or improve (General, on crusade, fighting on homelands) loyalty and set desertion to a level appropriate to the loyalty level. This would improve the usefulness of navies as well, since desertion is (ahem) a little more difficult in that case.

Historical accuracy needs to take something of a backseat to gameplay here, in that it would be extremely annoying to have constant leakage of troops from an army sitting next door to your capital, even if that's realistic. Perhaps a 'homelands' assumption so that you're presumed to be recruiting and replacing at the same rate as desertion when you're within the borders of your nation.

[Maelstrom]

Sounds like a micromanagement nightmare.....

[gardibolt]

The baggage train part in particular sounds like it would really slow up game play, and not in a good way, especially as the empire starts to grow and you have multiple armies in the field. I do like the morale/desertion component for troops far from home though. I'd just prefer that the computer handle that element and it's not something I'd want to be involved with (though I suppose something like the automanage settings for cities could work).

[joe4iz]

I get annoyed just by desertion because the pathfinding turns you away from the Crusade target. This would make me pull what little hair I have out!

[Bob the Insane]

Check this out:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=108335

It is used in a couple of mods like Stainless Steel (it is definately in SS) and The Long Road I think...

I have not decided whether it adds to the game it is simply annoying IMO...

[Zenicetus]

I hate to be another naysayer, but I don't like the added micromanagement with the baggage train idea either. I want to focus on the larger strategic view, and just assume my armies have supply trains off in the background somewhere, or they're raiding and pillaging on their way through the countryside. I don't need to actually see that, or manage it. The game already represents this by reduced production or outright devastation in the squares around your army, when it stands in one place for a while. That's enough for me.

I'm not crazy about the desertion idea either. As it is, the AI has trouble fielding big, well-organized armies. I see too many battles where the AI is sending half stacks, or stacks with weird composition (like all siege engines). Anything that would make it even harder to maintain big armies would have to ensure the AI knew how to deal with it, and I guess I don't have much faith in that, especially when it already has trouble fielding a decent army. Let's fix that first, before tacking on features that work against it.

[Didz]

There are simpler ways to simulate lines of communication and supply. Its obviously a key component of any serious wargame campaign and so wargamers have come up with a number of ideas to handle it.

The one I prefer simply involved drawing a line from the nominated main depot/Army HQ to each army in the field. The line was divided along its length with a small marker (I used the counters from Risk) one standard days march apart (about 14 miles in my game). Whenever the line passed through a small town two extra markers were added and a large town added three.

So, what you ended up with was a line dotted with markers.

The way this worked was that if the enemy army managed to sever the line at any point between the field army and its Main Depot the Game Master would begin to remove the markers from the line between the cut and the army in the field. Once all the markers had been removed the army in the field was put of supply and began to suffer penalities.

However, I don't think this system is appropraite for MTW2 as lines of communication and baggage trains did not feature heavily in this period. The one exception to this I would like to see are wagons loaded with replacement sheaths of arrows crossbow bolts and cannon balls. Something, simple like the Crown of Glory system where the wagon is consumed in order to replenish a units ammunition would be good.

Other than that, I would be quite happy just to assume that any army operating in friendly territory will be able to feed itself normally, whilst armies operating in enemy territory will suffer attrition on a daily basis until they manage to take an enemy town. This seems to be a reasonable abstraction of the logistical problems faced by a Medieval Prince. He needs a steady stream of victories to keep his army happy and long periods of inactivity with no loot, dimishing food and boredom would lead to men wandering off or going home.

[ForgotMyOldNick]

Yeah, that mod looks interesting but possibly a nightmare for Crusadingarmies.

I think a Line of supply is a good idea it would definitely make army movement more tactical and realistic etc but too much micro managing could be frustrating.

Here's my idea:
Line of site from an army back to home territory is the supply line via roads etc. If an enemy army is blocking any roads, direct lines to nearby friendly forts (Yes, Forts could have a realistic need as well!), or a path from any of your own or allied nearby port(s) then your army is effectively cut off from line of supply.

You can only have a line of supply through another factions territory if it has trade rights or is allied to you also. Then their armies do not impede the Supply Line. Which could be another factor in diplomacy strat as well.

If your army is cut off from Supply you can then decide whether to forage or pillage the surrounds. Pillage gives you more supply than foraging but foraging is what should be done in friendly territory in order to not invite reputation drop or changed diplomatic state. In fact you could do it (Pillaging I mean) in your own territory at the risk of losing the army to going rebel or suffer some serious negative loyalty traits etc whatever.

Foraging stationary: Army is still and supplies itself from the land, no offensive actions to other faction. (well nothing diplomatic wise that either party would care to talk about anyway) Can do it for 3 turns then must move to another '9 cell' area in order to do it again.
Baggage/supply acquired will be limited as they didn't have refridgerators in those days... for a start...With this baggage/supply gained you can move a little further for the subsequent turns or it improves the moral of the army, increases ability to recover casualties etc ...or whatever and gets expended in regard to these things.


Foraging on the move: simply cuts down the movement or just leaves the distance currently as it is ( Armies do this all the time anyway in that time period), So effectively the same as being supplied as such but maybe with a few minor negative implications such as 10% less movement or something.


Pillaging: costs one turn of movement and gives an extra movement bonus for the next 3 turns say( Or a whole heap of points to be used at diplomatic cost being war if not already that), plus florins and some sort of 'baggage' indicator/factor to be expended in forced movement ( To the limit of the slowest unit in the army as well). Used once per 9 square area. Only renewed when the main settlement in the region upgrades or something.


If an Army is cut off totally for 3 turns however and no supply, even if it can forage (The area it is foraging is expended say) then desertions and/or disease/attrition (In a particularly full stacked army) ensue.

So... just formulating this idea so ... These Baggage points either default to extra movement (Player just moves his army and that's that; In the case of moving and foraging points are gained and expended for this activity so start= 0,move and forage:+1 Moved :-1; back to zero/0 at end of movement, alas the game as it is at the moment)) or are selected to be used for purposes such as a moral bonus for next battle, extra casualty recovery, or can be exchanged for florins if the leader really needs it,( but nothing like the value of a sacked city, no matter the amount of times pillaging is done; In fact pillaging would have to be factored in as a part of the local settlements wealth/trade and some sort of relevant portion of it based on the 9 cell areas)).
In fact pillaged points can only be done once per area obviously and it also has other implications diplomatically.


A simple system that doesn't introduce too much checking this and that or can be ignored all together by simply moving as normal anyway is the best bet I think. Introducing a few conditions would make the tactical play a lot more interesting though. i.e. In order to have supply must have some form of path that is unblocked by enemy army, and can move do whatever. But when the supply is cut off then foraging /pillaging can be used.

Primarily, any Army is either in LOS (Line of sight + supply) or is foraging on the move. And if the player chooses to they can engage in the more subtle factors at diplomatic cost or desertion etc.


Could be a simple pre - campaign option for added realism..

[Temujin]

-units: wagon, handcart, cattle, mule or camel train, and horse train.

This is what gets too fiddly, I think. Realisticly, any baggage train should have all of these. In battle, they would not be commanded like individual units, but deployed somewhere as a camp. The camp is not useful to the defending army, but might be an objective for the attacker. Lots of medieval campaigns ended when an army lost its baggage.

However, I don't think this system is appropraite for MTW2 as lines of communication and baggage trains did not feature heavily in this period.

Lines of communication weren't all that important in the medieval period, but baggage trains were. The supply system that you describe were only used by the really well-organized armies. Most others carried everything they needed for the campaign with the camp-followers, pages etc.

This is why having different movement speeds for armies with only cavalry and armies containing artillery, as we do now, is silly. All armies moved at the speed of their slowest component, and that component was always the baggage. Civvi's don't march well.

[Ramses II CP]

As with crusades, the AI would simply have to be exempt from desertion penalties. Perhaps a simpler implementation would maintain some balance, i.e. the bribe cost goes down for AI armies far afield from their home. The goal though, for me, is a tougher AI, not a handicapped AI.

[Didz]

As with crusades, the AI would simply have to be exempt from desertion penalties.

Funnily enough crusades are the one type of army which currently isn't exempt from desertion and I see no reason why it should be. The only real difference is that a crusading army would treat all Christian territory as friendly simply because it is on a holy mission.

Likewise I see no reason why the AI should be exempt from attrition either, in fact its the obvious answer to the 'camping in the back yard' bug that it currently gets obsessed with using.

Lines of communication weren't all that important in the medieval period, but baggage trains were. The supply system that you describe were only used by the really well-organized armies. Most others carried everything they needed for the campaign with the camp-followers, pages etc.

Baggage trains aren't usually represented in wargame campaigns simply because they are a permanent feature and therefore don't need to be managed. The current variations in movement rate are proabably quite enough to simulate their presence or absence from the army. I certainly would not want to get involved in micro-managing the movement of baggage wagons.

The only things that really matter are food, forage and ammunition as these are expended on a daily basis and need to be replenished if the army is not to suffer attrition and loss of performance. In the interests of simplicity I am quite happy to assume that an army operating in friendly territiry will have no trouble obtaining food and forage but that it always becomes a problem once they cross into neutral or enemy territory. Unless they have a diplomatic agreement that allows them access, or are a crusade which automatically gives them diplomatic access to Christian lands.

That effectively ought to discourage abuse of the 'get off my land' expliot and make things harder for blitzer's who pertually want to keep their armies moving through hostile territory and starve settlements into submission.

[Ramses II CP]

AI crusades are exempt from desertion. I've had them sit in one place just hanging around for dozens of turns, where a player's crusading army would've melted away in 2-3 turns at most. The purpose, for me, of adding desertion would be to make the blitz, and extended campaigns on enemy soil in general, harder and more expensive (edit for clarity) for players.

As far as the camping bug, I actually think desertion would make it worse. It seems likely to me that the AI would not only camp one army there as it gradually depleted, but that it would send more armies in to replace it after it vanished, further exhausting it's funds and weakening it's defenses. As long as we're hoping, let's hope the AI gets a fix that takes away it's tents.

[Didz]

Sorry I misunderstood....naturally the AI should NOT be exempt from desertion penatlies at all, but should play to the same rules as the player. Any game which cheats by giving the AI artificial advantages is merely confirming that it has been badly designed and programmed.

[Ramses II CP]

Alas, we have to play with the game we've got, which does have an (IMHO) poorly designed campaign AI. I'd prefer it if the AI could play by the same rules as players, but I don't believe it can. It's all probably academic anyway, since I'm not capable of modding in the desertion bit and modders aren't leaping over each other to get the idea implemented either.