Gresbeck
Posts: 106
Joined: 7/13/2004
From: Ferrara - Florence
Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: nachinus
quote:
ORIGINAL: Gresbeck
Not sure. Probably we shouldn't think at supply depots as stuff produced in the occupied province. Probably they are the logistic infrastructure (magazines, men needed to transport stuff) needed to deliver stuff to the troops, where the stuff is produced in your home provinces. Put this way, it could have sense to imagine that conquering an enemy province lowers the cost of infrastructure needed to supply your troops (because it helps organizing a supply net near your troops). That's why I think occupied provinces should at least lower the cost of supply, but you may be right that the actual game system lowers it too much.
But the problem is not that, the problem is that in the example given by Naomi, a whole army was being perfectly supplied for ages and ages while it was in an occupied enemy city totally surrounded by the enemy! Without contact with its supply lines or friendly forces. Where the hell are the rifles, cannons, ammunition, etc coming from? 
I see your point, but in game terms things are rather different.
quote:
ORIGINAL: Ralegh
the reason it is as it is is because most of the cities were actually declared open cities if they got surrounded - armies of the period usually beseiged fortresses in the province, not cities, and didn't make war on the civilian population
That's why we shouldn't think at beseiged cities like "surrounded cities": cities are an abstraction for the infrastructure of the provinces. That means that an "occupied capital" represents a conquered province. Troops are not locked inside the "walls". Troops occupy and exploit the military / civil infrastructure, and they can use this infrastructure to stockpile resources, to supply troops and probably to produce rifles and ammo. I dont't know if this is realistic or not (i.e.: abstractions are never realistic, sometimes they can get realistic results) but that's how the game works, and explains the rule (manual, p. 60) allowing troops in besieged cities to get their upkeep even without supply depot (the "walls", i.e. the infrastructure, work themselves as a supply depot).
On the other hand, the problem
quote:
Where the hell are the rifles, cannons, ammunition, etc coming from
is a problem also when troops are foraging, because forage doesn't model rifles, cannons, ammunitions. Put this way, I agree 100% with Uncle Joe: the point is that the game doesn't model lines of supply. A supply depot is not properly a line of supply: it models stockpiled stuff, not the route from province of production to the battlefront. And the game system cannot be changed simply by a rule requiring a chain of supply depots from home province to the front (and btw, should such a rule apply also to enclaves like Gibraltar? Should Gibraltar be supplied from Britain? If not, why shouldn't the same rule apply to conquered provinces without land connection to home provinces of the conquering power?). Such a rule would make supply too expensive, would compel to rewrite the rule about foraging (because foraging units shouldn't be considered supplied with rifles and ammo), and the rules about upkeep costs (that should depend on number of battles fought). Last but not least: what about the chance to cut a line of supply in a game based on very large provinces, where the presence of enemy units doesn't assure that stuff could be intercepted?
That's why I think that a rule based on line of supply isn't easily implementable, and I continue to ask myself if the game system "abstraction" is so unrealistic, or is based on the realistic assumption that in 1800's feeded troops could be considered supplied with rifles and ammo. In the examples reported by Naomi (even assuming the situation was exactly as reported by nachinus) the problem is with Russian A.I. not defending its capital; a conquered capital means a huge loss of organization and infrastructure; Napoleon's army starving after conquering Moscow could correspond in game terms to a situation where the French army has not conquered the province of Moscow (the conquer of Moscow in game terms abstracts a situation where the French have conquered the whole infrastructure of the province, not only the city).
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Guess where the French went? - 
RE: Guess where the French went? - 
!
, vote for playability, I would like to swim the trend (in the hope MatrixGames won't otherwise turn to Chapter 11). I was just playing a game as France, where my armies were simply stationed in Madeburg and Linz after I had taken them and built depots there, and what I needed to do was only instructing my troops to stay there staving off endless (which, fortunately, they turned out not to be) waves of enemy offensives till their NMLs dived to nowhere further. Alas, I neglected to remember that such occupied-land depots would be automatically dismantled behind my evacuated soldiers after my enemies sued for peace. 
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