Terrain DOES matter

[ajli@home]

War should be much different. When an army ventures more than 2 tiles away from th enearest city it will be "uncapable" of receiving food from cities. Soldiers should require food and minerals. In addition, it should be the city the soldier is ADJACENT to, rather than where it was built. If it is not adjacent (2 square distance) then it will use up it's "supply". For example, after 5 moves without being adjacent, a unit will become routed because of famine or drought. Terrain like desert or mountains make it so that they require twice as many resources a turn. This will make invasions to remote dry or high places much harder. The 200% bonus in civ2 doesn't really change the battle much. While it can help, it doesn't really protect the civ.

[Henrik]

I dont think thats a good Idea, if it wont effect cities your at war with that is: During the middleages and the 17th century it was a well known fact that it is a disaster to keep an army whithin your own borders, therefor armies wasn't assmebled untill needed and when they where asembled they where sent to the enemy as quickly as posible, since an army would destroy, loot and plunder everything around itself even if it's the country they where defending. This was it's way of supporting itself, plus: the "owners" of the army would have to send them supplies like food and gunpowder.
Annyway a country does not benefit of having an army as near as possible to it's cities.
In fact it's rather the opposite (keep your army on the enemies territory).
[This message has been edited by Henrik (edited January 27, 2001).]

[bagdar]

I think what Henrik says is right, but I also like the idea about supporting your units. It's always too easy to take your units to the remote corners of the world. A new idea about supplying food to soldiers would be interesting. However, I think that takes too much away from Civ, and that's really not applicable.

Well one things for sure, if there was a supply limit of 2 hexes/squares from a supported city for a given unit, it would make expansionism difficult to say the least.

[Henrik]

Yes support should be more advanced but not in the way that ajli describes it.
You should somehow be able to use supply routes (like real armies). And food shouldn't be the only supply; gunpowder, horses, amunition and later fuel should be important to.
[This message has been edited by Henrik (edited January 27, 2001).]

[bagdar]

well, in one of my first Civ I sessions at a friend's house, I remember telling him not to take those chariots so far out, fearing that they might starve to death. It is logical indeed, but really not applicable to Civ, I guess.

However, since new military features have been introduced (like ranged weapons, leaders, etc.) we CAN expect to have changes like the one we've been discussing. Let's wait and see (not for long, I hope)

Any bets for the rumored August 2001 release date?

[Omada]

Hi

I just started reading the forums after a long period of (gasp!) not playing Civ.

Regarding the supply range discussion: I would like to see the game model the "power projection" capabilities of the different units, going something like this:

Every unit would have a "Range" value which limits the distance the unit can move from a friendly city or fortress. Units out of range might take some damage every round (like the Helicopter). Primitive units would have short range values with later units getting progressively better. Specialist units like Explorers and Marines would have very long or unlimited range. Naval units would have better range than land units but to truly rule the seas one would need an extended network of naval bases (fortresses) or colonies (cities) around the world.

Note that this idea would require some slight modification to the way the fortress works, namely that every fortress must have an owner (the civ that occupies/last occupied it).

The range value would depend on the units mobility and self-sufficiency, i.e. heavy units requires more maintenance which reduces their range.

A system like this would make expansion in faraway lands very dangerous and costly for primitive civs while making it possible to cripple a global superpower by capturing the bases that its carries and bombers rely on.

Exciting stuff, for me anyway.

Cheers

[Grumbold]

Civ is too abstract to cope well with supply. Turns are a year or more long so you could argue that the relatively tiny movement allowance alotted to all troops accounts for the difficulty of supply on the move.