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Question on features - 4/4/2005 6:07:06 PM   
sol_invictus


Posts: 1961
Joined: 10/2/2001
From: Kentucky
Status: offline 		1. What is the limiting factor in preventing a country from building an inordinate amount of elite units?

2. Could you give a few details on the penalties for breaking treaties and for warmongering?

3. What are the advantages of declaring Total War against a country?

4. Can the quality of Rumor Reports be improved through Diplomatic/Spying efforts?

Thank you in advance.
Post #: 1
RE: Question on features - 4/5/2005 4:27:58 AM   
ericbabe


Posts: 11927
Joined: 3/23/2005
Status: offline 		Hi Arinvald,

Excellent questions.

The biggest limiting factor when building guard units -- the most important elite unit -- is that every guard unit built decreases the morale of every other non-guard infantry. So that it becomes counter-productive to build too many guard divisions. As for the other elite units, such as horse-artillery, many of these require infrastructure developments that most nations won't have until later in the game. Finally, there are simply economic factors that prevent a player from building too many elite type units. I originally wondered if we'd need some sort of absolute limit on advanced units, but in the long games that we've played this hasn't yet been a problem. In my last big game my 400,000 or so Russians met about 500,000 French in a major battle in Flanders. Of my 40 divisions I only had a few guard, heavy and horse artillery, with similar numbers for the AI-controlled French units (who caught me in a miserable starting location on the detailed battle -- straddling two sides of a river -- and soundly thrashed me, I might add.) The proportion of light infantry to regular infantry and light and heavy cavalry to regular cavalry also seems to work out to reasonable ratios in the games we've played.

Breaking a treaty involves both a Glory (score) penalty and a national morale penalty. The tangible penalty for warmongering is an attitude penalty among the minor countries. We are considering a penalty for the efficacy of diplomats based on the number of provinces a nation has conquered.

The chief benefit of total war is that the nation you are invading cannot surrender -- if your total war is successful you may end owning every province once held by that nation. Regular wars are fought until a limited surrender is accepted, or until a full surrender is offered, at which point the victor is awarded "victory points" which he may use to spend on a treaty that he may force the loser to accept. Typically this treaty cannot be used to gain permanent control of more than two or three of a nation's provinces. We tried to design the game to encourage players to emulate Napoleon's grandiose ambitions -- to get the big Glory scores you've got to try to pull off total war in Spain while simultaneously invading Russia.

The quality of the rumor report is related to court developments. There's a book called "The Eagle in Splendour" by Mansel that describes Napoleon's building and use of courts and palaces in his attempt to cement his political hegemony over Europe, from which I derived inspiration for many of the rules of court improvements -- though courts may be considered a sort of "catch all" category of things related to diplomatic and political operations.





(in reply to sol_invictus)
Post #: 2
RE: Question on features - 4/5/2005 8:30:54 AM   
sol_invictus


Posts: 1961
Joined: 10/2/2001
From: Kentucky
Status: offline 		Sounds very impressive, thanks for the detailed reply.

(in reply to ericbabe)
Post #: 3
RE: Question on features - 4/5/2005 9:26:39 PM   
CushVA

 

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From: Virginia, USA
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quote:

ORIGINAL: ericbabe

In my last big game my 400,000 or so Russians met about 500,000 French in a major battle in Flanders. Of my 40 divisions I only had a few guard, heavy and horse artillery, with similar numbers for the AI-controlled French units (who caught me in a miserable starting location on the detailed battle -- straddling two sides of a river -- and soundly thrashed me, I might add.) The proportion of light infantry to regular infantry and light and heavy cavalry to regular cavalry also seems to work out to reasonable ratios in the games we've played.


Wow, that's quite a battle! What's the maximun number of troops allowed in a battle?

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Post #: 4
RE: Question on features - 4/6/2005 5:54:44 AM   
ericbabe


Posts: 11927
Joined: 3/23/2005
Status: offline 		I don't believe there is an absolute limit.

I experimented with a command and control rule to make large numbers of units on one battlefield more difficult to command -- basically the rule was that if you have too many units then they have to make a C&C check at the beginning of their turn or they lose a portion of their movement points. The testers at the time didn't like it, so I took it out.


(in reply to CushVA)
Post #: 5
RE: Question on features - 4/6/2005 6:30:18 AM   
sol_invictus


Posts: 1961
Joined: 10/2/2001
From: Kentucky
Status: offline 		A C&C rule sounds good and reasonable; of course implementation could be problematic. There should be some simple way to reflect certain nation/leaders ability to effectively control large numbers of soldiers in battle. It could even be something as simple as a national modifier depending on the maneuver tech that the nation has achieved. Is there even such a thing in the game as maneuver tech? France would start with a greater ability, but Austria after 1808 would start to catch up a bit and Prussia after 1813 and so forth. Such a large army should also suffer serious attrition; depending on what area of Europe it is operating in ,I would think. Can't wait to get my hands on this game.

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Post #: 6
RE: Question on features - 4/6/2005 6:42:25 AM   
Windfire


Posts: 135
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From: Colorado Springs, CO
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: ericbabe

In my last big game my 400,000 or so Russians met about 500,000 French in a major battle in Flanders.



What is the attrition like in the game? Does it tend to capture the fact that large masses of troops attrited away as it was hard to supply them and it was hard for them to live off of the land when massed.

Along those same lines, do you include march attrition, force march and unit quality in both.

An example would be Napoleon's Grand Armee of 1813 that was enormous, but which melted away as it marched as the Marie Louises were not trained or hardened for war.

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Post #: 7
RE: Question on features - 4/6/2005 1:37:07 PM   
Iñaki Harrizabalagatar


Posts: 825
Joined: 12/11/2001
Status: offline 		Certainly 900.000 men in a single battle seems excessive, at Leipzig there were about 400.000 men, being by far the largest Napoleonic battle. I see your divisions have about 10.000 men, there could lie the problem, as the average strength of divisions in the period was close to 4.000 rather than 10.000, that would yield a more reasonable total number in battle.

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Post #: 8
RE: Question on features - 4/6/2005 7:22:03 PM   
ericbabe


Posts: 11927
Joined: 3/23/2005
Status: offline 		I've got a post on the supply and foraging rules elsewhere in the forum -- there are attrition rules for units out of supply, and there are increased supply costs for large stacks of units in a single province. There are force-march rules that affect performance in battles and similar. There are military "upgrades"; players qualify for a certain level of upgrades in proportion to the total levels of barracks they control. Many of the upgrades have to do with mobility, and there are some for foraging and supply.

One rule I considered for large battles was to put a proportion of units above a certain number into the reinforcement schedule immediately at the start of battle, rather than have them all placed at that time. This would help even the odds for the underdog; however, it would make battles much longer to resolve. We could simply limit the number of units that may participate in the battle -- perhaps as a game option ("limit large battles").

Our provinces represent fairly large areas and so having 400,000 men operating in all of Flanders is not so unreasonable as it would be if our provinces were only 1/10 the size of Flanders. Napoleon marched on Russia with many more men than that over a 100 mile front.

Divisions may operate at diminished capacity.

In balancing between flexible rules that offer a wide range of outcomes and offer the player interesting choices, vs rules that attempt to force the game to follow historical patterns, I've tended to err on the side of the former. So, for instance, players are allowed to choose their military upgrades rather than receiving their upgrades according to an historical schedule.


Eric



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Post #: 9
RE: Question on features - 4/6/2005 10:17:57 PM   
Mr. Z


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quote:

One rule I considered for large battles was to put a proportion of units above a certain number into the reinforcement schedule immediately at the start of battle, rather than have them all placed at that time.

I like it. Battles that large will take a long time, no matter what.

quote:

We could simply limit the number of units that may participate in the battle -- perhaps as a game option ("limit large battles").

No limit! It could be an option, though.

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Post #: 10
RE: Question on features - 4/7/2005 2:44:45 AM   
sol_invictus


Posts: 1961
Joined: 10/2/2001
From: Kentucky
Status: offline 		I don't think a hard limit is necessary, as long as there are historicly reasonable penalties to pay for trying to march huge numbers of Russians into Central and Western Europe. Maybe once an army rises above some amount, taking into consideration length of supply lines and maybe a national modifer etc., it starts to suffer from ever increasing amounts of attrition. However it's done, as long as there are serious consequences to consider before attempting certain actions, all will be well.

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Post #: 11
RE: Question on features - 4/7/2005 6:57:04 AM   
Suvoroff

 

Posts: 13
Joined: 2/21/2005
From: In Bremerton, WA
Status: offline 		I've just started looking over this forum for this game, and it looks interesting.

However, the numbers quoted...400,000 Russians to 500,000 Frenchmen in a single battle...that's nearly twice the size of the largest Napoleonic battle (Leipzig) and even in that case both sides included multiple armies from different countries. I am dubious about the ability to even command successfully such large forces given the command technoligies of the time, much less feed them all in one place.

Yours,
James D.Gray

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Post #: 12
RE: Question on features - 4/7/2005 2:00:47 PM   
Iñaki Harrizabalagatar


Posts: 825
Joined: 12/11/2001
Status: offline
quote:

ORIGINAL: ericbabe


Our provinces represent fairly large areas and so having 400,000 men operating in all of Flanders is not so unreasonable as it would be if our provinces were only 1/10 the size of Flanders. Napoleon marched on Russia with many more men than that over a 100 mile front.






If I understand correctly the problem is that the strategic game is divided in provinces, and it is not unreasonable to have 400.000 men all over Flanders, but then if the enemy invades Flanders and battle follows, you will have all the 400.000 men available in the battlefield, right? that is what looks wrong. Maybe a supply limit for battlefield could be implemented, related to the province foraging level, the army supply tech level, whatever, so that if you have a very large army not the whole army is available to fight in the battlefield, that will also discourage massing too large armies in single provinces as you could not make full use of all your units in battle

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Post #: 13
RE: Question on features - 4/7/2005 6:26:05 PM   
ericbabe


Posts: 11927
Joined: 3/23/2005
Status: offline 		There actually already is a unit limit implemented in the quick combat.

Our armies have an absolute size limit of about 18 divisions, if I remember correctly. A rule such as one army -- or if no armies, one corps -- is chosen at random for each player in the province. Additional army/corps in the province are available via reinforcement rules (which allow player to call one corps on each day of the battle from an adjacent province, whose divisions enter battle over several turns.) This would make coalitions much more powerful. If we do it this way then several battles might be fought in one province in a strategic turn, which would be pleasing.




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Post #: 14
RE: Question on features - 4/7/2005 6:28:45 PM   
sol_invictus


Posts: 1961
Joined: 10/2/2001
From: Kentucky
Status: offline 		The more I think about this the more it bothers me. When I go to bed at night and think about something until I fall asleep that is the indication that I'm bothered. I guess there are several ways to keep army sizes at a somewhat realistic amount. I will throw out two that I think might work and should be easy to implement.

1. Global approach- Until the advent of the industrial age, there was a fairly constant limit on the amount of soldiers that a nation could support in an agrarian society without there being serious social and economic frictions generated. After more than 2% of the population was changed from productive citizens in the fields and turned into non-productive consumers of food and resources; soldiers; things started to become tenuous. Without putting a hard cap in the game, each nation could have a cap of military manpower based on total male population; age appropriate. Once this soft cap was breached, national morale and economic output should begin to decline.

Also there could be a national modifier to reflect differing national charchteristics. Prussia and Austria could be the norm with a soft cap at 2% of population under arms with Russia and France falling in at 2.5% and Britain at 1.5%. These numbers are off the top of my head and I'm sure the developer would need to change them after testing but it just an example. This would allow the player to really go all out for a military solution but he would face the wrath of a restive population and a declining economy. If the war became extended with no quick victory, watch out!

2. Provincial approach- Based on the location and fertility of each province, there could be a supportable limit for that province. Taking into consideration a nations foraging/supply ability, once an army in a province goes over that province's supportable limit, attrition would start to relentlessly melt the army away. Again, the player would be faced with a decision; raise a large army for a quick knockout punch but risk having the army die on the march if things become extended. Napoleon in Russia anyone.

I know nothing about game design or coding so I am not aware of the possible difficulties inherent in ideas that are easily thrown out. If these ideas are not feasible, I'm sure there are several others that would be. Bottom line is that to remain in a somewhat historical parameter, there should be a price to pay for a player's actions. There were very good reasons why the Russians were not able to move several hundred thousand soldiers into Western Europe. I'm sure the Czar would have done so if it were possible.

< Message edited by Arinvald -- 4/7/2005 6:36:06 PM >

(in reply to Iñaki Harrizabalagatar)
Post #: 15
RE: Question on features - 4/7/2005 6:34:59 PM   
sol_invictus


Posts: 1961
Joined: 10/2/2001
From: Kentucky
Status: offline 		ericbabe, from reading your post, it seems like there are already some limiting factors in the engine, they may just need to be tightened up a bit.

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Post #: 16
RE: Question on features - 4/8/2005 4:27:30 AM   
ericbabe


Posts: 11927
Joined: 3/23/2005
Status: offline 		The intent is that food and money resources are the hard limiting factor. I'm still tinkering with these values, but I don't think France's having 500,000 men in arms is unrealistic. The Russians had approx. 900,000 in the field in 1812. Napoleon invaded Russia with over 600,000 men.

The basics of the food economy are:
Population factors in the provinces produce food. Food is used to supply military units and to feed the population factors. If there is not enough food for the population factors, these decrease; if there is excess food, more population factors become available. If there is not enough food for military divisions, they suffer attrition. Producing a new military unit decreases available population factors.

The critical parameter in the above economic model is food eaten per population growth. Typically I run an all-AI game and then check the economies after 10 years. If they grow too fast, or are supporting too many troops, I can increase this food/free-population factor and slow down the economy.

Anyway, my hope is that I can use this model to achieve the sort of caps you suggest without the need to introduce any hard limit.


Eric

(in reply to sol_invictus)
Post #: 17
RE: Question on features - 4/8/2005 6:07:56 AM   
sol_invictus


Posts: 1961
Joined: 10/2/2001
From: Kentucky
Status: offline 		That all sounds sensible.

I don't think anyone has a problem with the numbers that you mentioned, just the fact that it was in one enormous battle. Napoleon did indeed invade Russia with over 500,000 soldiers but these were spread over a vast area. I would imagine that in game terms it would cover several provinces; and I'm sure you are aware; in the largest battle of the campaign, Napoleon could only muster around 120,00 soldiers for the titanic battle of Borodino. When the Russians began the advance into central Europe, their vast numbers quickly melted to attrition.

I just think the vast number you gave for the battle in Flanders seemed overwhelming. Taking Leipzig as an approximate limit, I would hope to not see more than a few battles approaching a combined total of more than 500,000, and this only late in the war and with some grand coalitions involved.

With the vast amount of detail that it sounds like you have included in the game, I am not very concerned that you will arrive at an appropriate mechanism for military strength. This game just sounds fantastic!

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Post #: 18
RE: Question on features - 4/8/2005 3:32:47 PM   
ericbabe


Posts: 11927
Joined: 3/23/2005
Status: offline 		From what I've read, Napoleon's invasion of Russia was over an approximate 100 mile front, which easily fits inside almost all our provinces (only a few exceptions, such as Malta).

Our base attrition rate is an 8% loss for unsupplied units above the foraging limit. In a low forage province (say, 20k) this makes 420,000 men foraging suffer an attrition of 32,000/mo. Attrition is doubled in enemy territory, and doubled again in winter: a loss of 128,000 in a month when foraging in enemy territory during winter. Based on Charles Minard's graph of Napoleon's troop strength vs time on his march toward Moscow this seems about right. As divisions are eliminated when reduced below 2,000 the attrition penalty is even more severe than the 8% first seems.




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Post #: 19
RE: Question on features - 4/8/2005 6:29:52 PM   
sol_invictus


Posts: 1961
Joined: 10/2/2001
From: Kentucky
Status: offline 		From your example above, God help the poor French player who finds himself deep in Russia during winter with Cossacks swarming around his line of supply. This of course is as it should be.

I would think with this attrition formula that the huge Russian army that you described in the Flanders example would not be able to survive long at all so far from home. In fact, I would think for the Russian to get an army approximating 500,000 men in Flanders, he would have to begin with one approximating 750,000 in order to soak up all the attrition he would surely suffer from in his march across eastern and central Europe. As long as there is a huge price to pay in trying to create and maintain such large froces, thereby making them the exception, I think it will all be fine. Sounds like you have really put alot of thought into your model and I am confident that during testing you will arrive at a reasonable formula.

(in reply to ericbabe)
Post #: 20
RE: Question on features - 4/9/2005 12:58:21 AM   
Iñaki Harrizabalagatar


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Joined: 12/11/2001
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quote:

ORIGINAL: ericbabe

From what I've read, Napoleon's invasion of Russia was over an approximate 100 mile front, which easily fits inside almost all our provinces (only a few exceptions, such as Malta).


The 500.000 strong army Napoleon commanded for the invasion of Russia was divided in 3 armies, The 1st, commanded by Napoleon directly, was concentrated at Danzig, the 2nd, under Eugène, was at Plotsk, and the 3rd, under Jerôme, at Warsaw, from what I can distinguish in the general map presented in the overview at the CoG site it looks like every one of this 3 armies would be in a different province

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Post #: 21
RE: Question on features - 4/11/2005 7:07:50 PM   
tolbox

 

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quote:

ORIGINAL: ericbabe

From what I've read, Napoleon's invasion of Russia was over an approximate 100 mile front, which easily fits inside almost all our provinces (only a few exceptions, such as Malta).



I agree.
But it has a consequence: if your army is spead over a 100 miles, it can't gather in time to fight the enemy. And this is historically true IMO, most of the time, only a part of the army engaged the enemy and the others elements were coming at forced speed, and mostly too late.
How is it featured in the game?

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Post #: 22
RE: Question on features - 4/11/2005 11:44:28 PM   
ericbabe


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There will be limits on the number of units that can actually enter a battle in the province (both quick and detailed) -- the exact limit will depend on local terrain, command capabilities, weather, and a bit of luck. A province with many troops may require multiple battles to resolve.

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Post #: 23
RE: Question on features - 5/28/2005 6:10:44 PM   
Reiryc

 

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Joined: 1/5/2001
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quote:

ORIGINAL: ericbabe


There will be limits on the number of units that can actually enter a battle in the province (both quick and detailed) -- the exact limit will depend on local terrain, command capabilities, weather, and a bit of luck. A province with many troops may require multiple battles to resolve.



Does the player get to choose which units are going to be involved in that combat? Or does the ai randomly pick the necessary troops from your total forces?

In other words, say you have an 18 division limit in a province for a tactical battle. You, the player have 30 divisions in that province. Battle is engaged, how do we choose the 18 divisions that go to battle?

_____________________________


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