Legions

[lordmoore]

Dang...someone removed RA's comments. Now I sound like a nut in my last comment.

Oh...maybe someone can start a General forum to the board. As irrating as some of the comments have been here recently...they did bring some life to the board. Maybe junk like that can be put under a general comments topic...that way people can blow as much hot air as they like...in english of course!

[lordmoore]

More thoughts:

Mercs:
Various Mercs should be hireable from the guild. In fact, from what I know about the Fading Suns universe, mercs shoulds take part in practically every major battle. This should also include the military arm of the Church the 'Brother Battle' <very elite troops...gives combat bonus simliar to nobles with an addition bonus to attack and defense>

[cy387_lk]

Ah! Much better ...

[Grimly]

One overriding characteristic of a feudal society is its rurality: 95% of people will live in the country, including virtually all the nobles. Only the merchants, church officials, and laborers drawn to the city will live there. Villages are too small to include in EFS, but we should certainly assume they are there, and maybe they could be modeled somehow. Certainly the 2-hex radius around a harvesting city suggests that outlying farms/mines/wells are there but unseen.

Cities were always opposed by the lords, largely because they made money but also because they demanded rights. The exception to this was the Emperor of the HRE, who granted certain rights to the Hanseatic League of cities. He needed a counterweight to the barons. He also favored the building and expansion of universities.

So Lordmoore is right that it is odd for House rulers to build cities, and for cities to produce food. Whether we're talking about a clone or just hacking, "cities" should be thought of as facilities or merely as symbols of investment. They will attract a population, but these workers wouldn't necessarily live in the facilities and maybe that's why EFS calls them all "peasants." The problem of urban rights is solved because there is no urban culture. There would still be a class of people, though, who run the facilities and who therefore are not nobles (because nobles don't work). Because they have money, they would be taxed. Peasants are also taxed, but not in cash, so that could be considered "background" taxation. The real money is in the cities. Maybe rather than introduce farms, real cities need to be introduced, or maybe the agora should be taxable. Maybe that's what Lordmoore is getting at with the mega-city complex idea?

I like your ideas, Lordmoore! I wonder if the YEAR can be hacked. It's always bothered me---turns should be in half-years at most. These people live for only a couple of centuries at most!

And I agree that mercs are important---but expensive. Original EFS ignored them, mysteriously. In my version I have them become available with a anti-necrosis tech (I forget which one), so that they will come to you IF you can guarantee them a plague-free planet and a starport to land in. So you can't just buy them on turn 1.

[lordmoore]

While I agree that the VAST majority of the population was rural cities had there importance. Very early rulers recognized the importance of trade to the bottom line. In addition, while I'm too lazy to check...I was of the impression that cities tended to grow around the power centers (ie...forts, castles & large ports). In otherwords, cities tended to grow around an area where there would be some measure of safety enforced by armed men. Babylon, Jerusalem, Venice, Rome, London, Paris, Tokyo, (mind blank...can't remember where the royal family in Russia was...it will come back to me), Bejing, Istanbul, Athens, etc....
Now my idea involves doing away with the current hex lay out or at least refining it. Planets are too small the way they are now. To easy to defend...don't require hardly any investment to map. No search teams needed for mapping. Maybe the hexes should be much smaller. A village might take 1-3 hexes depending on the size of the village. A resource collectors (mines, well, etc...) mine might take 1-2 dependng on the size. A city might take 6 or more depending on the size of the city and the nobles forts. It should be scalable...Someone sells you a map and you can get a general idea of how large a city is (real life), how big a mine, how many farms a village has (hexes next to it have farming tiles). Hit and runs are more viable.
The mega-city is just a really..really large city. Because of it's size, every major group will have some type of residence there. My thought is that it would be around the palace...think Saudi Arabia. Huge billion dollar palaces surround by government facilities, but with vast amounts of poverty. The country is rich but the wealth is mostly in the royal family..there really is no need to tax the people to support the governemt. The oil supports the government (which is the royal family). Few economy or education reforms have happened in the last decade.

Is this a modern example, yep...but EFS is a blending of both. The improtant part is the mercs will readily be available in a city that large. Remember the extended timeline create a unit? If you get caught with your pants down and someone drops a legion in and asaults your city...resources...etc. You'll need a force that can be esssembled quickly. City's will have mercs looking for work...a really large city will have many more. Plus...the more you tend to us mercs...the more you'll find sniffing around looking for employement. Might take a turn or two (depending on how long the turns represent - my suggestion, a month. 360 turns and that's 30 years!) The church will be present....Brother Battle units might be available for hire or they might be checking your books to make sure you aren't skimming the tithes!!

[Macroz]

Now my idea involves doing away with the current hex lay out or at least refining it. Planets are too small the way they are now. To easy to defend...don't require hardly any investment to map. No search teams needed for mapping. Maybe the hexes should be much smaller.

Interesting. I don't see how you can make that scale to 100 systems, 1000 planets. I was thinking more of reducing the number of "areas" into 100 per planet (depend a bit on the planet size) and making those count more. And combat definitely not Civ style but armies could coexist in same location, have some special forces working behind enemy lines etc. battling for a few months or more.

[lordmoore]

| Interesting. I don't see how you can make that scale to 100 systems, 1000 planets. I was thinking more of reducing the number of "areas" into 100 per planet (depend a bit on the planet size) and making those count more. And combat definitely not Civ style but armies could coexist in same location, have some special forces working behind enemy lines etc. battling for a few months or more.|

Well, I'm suggesting making the game more..interesting from the beginning. Yes...the planets will be larger and harder to cover, but in the Fading Suns universe the nobles aren't confined to just one planet. They are spread out over several planets with several houses occuping the same planet. This includes the church, guild, Brothers Battle, etc... each with fiefs spread across the known universe. Planets are shared with other small kingdoms....nobles can rebel against there leige, etc... Yes, it will be a much larger map...but with alot more interaction from the very start of the game.

[Macroz]

You are suggesting we play on more detailed worlds than Civilization? Imagine a hundred Civ games at the same time! Playing a whole house simply becomes an impossible amount of work. Sometimes less is more and I think it applies here. Less areas, more abstraction in location but not necessarily less depth.

I already find the endgame of Alpha Centauri, any Civilization or EFS far too much work to be fun. The beginning with limited amount of options and more consequential choices feels much more interesting. I intend to fill the world with detail so it is fun to observe but increasing the amount of locations per planet? I don't see that feasible.

So that's what I think. I've never seen any decent army level combat systems and that part I also consider fundamental to the idea.

[lordmoore]

Hummm...perhap's that is a little too much detail. But I still like each house starting in several planets...with multiples on each planet. Even the idea of smaller kingdoms on planets (that you can conquer or negotiate with)...especially planets without the guiding boot of house already on it.
And still like decreasing the time frame a turn takes.
Actually....I like all my ideas!
Not all of them are practical, but heck, I did say brainstorm.
The smaller hexes would work...just because the hexes are smaller doesn't mean the distance a unit moves will decrease. Things just tend to take more space (several hexes). Villages could be treated as a resource giving a bonus to something or another. Making the maps bigger won't work without making it more complex. You could do it without making it complex but that would be more complicated...unless you do it like Crusader Kings does...hummmmmm! I actually like that idea, not saying that it would work. :confused:

[Grimly]

I do think that EFS maps are a bit too large-scale. But not THAT much. What you need to be careful of is keeping the balance between planet and space. Just like in any war, the planets are what you hold and everything else is maneuver---but Macroz is right about a multiplication of dense wars. Unless, of course, the AI were designed to favor fewer expensive units over many cheaper ones. That's the challenge of hacking EFS for me now, getting the AI to go along with the idea that fewer is better. (You may wish me luck with that.) You need a unit system that will allow cannon fodder units, but will also encourage replacing them with knights, assault troops, grav tanks, etc. Then the game has chance of remaining "nimble" in all senses (memory, time, length, etc.).

The test, for me, of a good scale is one just small enough to allow a proper map of Earth. The default one has WAY too much land---but the continents are barely recognizable. Allowing for global warming (even LESS land!), you should be able to have good landforms and still get the right balance of land and sea. No more than 1.5x or 2x the current number of hexes.

As for noble's love of commerce: sure, they love luxury goods, and they love taxes and monopolies. But through 99% of history nobles have been very suspicious of trade and of rich city folk (one might say today's Blue and Red Americas are no different). See the original "bad" traits (which I have rewritten to make "better" sense): you'll see a lot of "hates trade" traits. These were common among preRenaissance/Reformation/Enlightenment governments---the imperial order especially didn't allow much room for social challengers. Too bad you can't research a tech to get over your bad traits and embrace trade, but then this ain't Civ, where the goal seems to be to become just-like-us . . .

We should also keep in mind that wishing for greater complexity will doom this project.

What if you could become real pals with the League by signing a pact equivalent to the pact you can sign with the Patriarch? Such a deal could signify embracing trade and trade culture,and maybe bring with it discounts and tech-sharing, at the cost of lower loyalty.

[Grimly]

I forgot one suggestion: if you double the number of hexes in a planet map and want to limit the number of units, just cut the stacking limit to 10.

Also, if you believe like I do that units should be conceived as small (company or battalion level), then it makes more sense to have 1 unit cover less territory.

[Macroz]

Grim, do you propose more detailed planets for aesthetical reasons only or is there something besides that? I ask because the planet can be made to look good regardless of the "resolution" of the hexes. See for example the game Korsun Pocket where the background is hand-drawn and the game still uses hexes. Also my old approach was Planettest.

The most significant problem of the increased number of positions for units is that there is a need to accurately maneuver the units. For example, in maintaining a front-line, exploring the terrain and in positioning production facilities. If the number of units is also reduced this means their correct positioning becomes even more important. Depending on turn length and movement speed it may be impossible to predict where the enemy can move and to prevent them from going around you or through holes in the lines. Raising the abstraction level a bit helps to make this more enjoyable and real.

I can't stress this enough, I want a believable game. No artificial limits and plausible tactics adapted from real-life should work. Of course this is science fiction, that's why I say believable in the game setting, not realistic as real-life. Also to the spirit of the Fading Suns. Cloning the EFS game experience as it is is unimportant to me. I want the best space strategy game ever.

I dug up a few old threads that you may want to read. This is an important issue so any discussion is useful. Here's some food for thought:
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• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Stacks - the great Debate</font></li>
• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Game Scale</font></li>
• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Planet and terrain types</font></li>
• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">About units, divisions and armies</font></li>
• <font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Preliminary unit data</font></li>

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[Grimly]

Thanks for the threads, Macroz, but to answer your question: I'm not sure how to separate aesthetics from a great game experience. I think the EFS maps look great even if they are low-tech---it's very easy to make maps look good, but harder to make them look good and stay readable in play. My objection to the EFS maps comes when I look at their Earth, and I think of all the maneuvering that the player is missing out on because the scale is so big. And it's not just the resolution---it's that the map is WRONG. it's a tough job modeling Earth! To maintain recognition, continents need to bulge where they should not bulge. The map also presents a version of the Mercator projection, which exaggerates the northern areas at the expense of the equatorial areas, in addition to the small-ocean problem. the map is simply unrealistic. I have tried to fix this and find that it is impossible---you get an unrecognizable Earth.

That, and, as I have suggested, I don't see EFS as a WW2-style war of production and attrition. I'm not even sure vast planet-spanning battle lines are even appropriate---notice that HDI could have put ZOCs in the game but did not (maybe because of the scale?). I see EFS battle as war of maneuver and strikes and bravery and duels balanced with sieges and assaults and bombardments. Battle lines might not always make much sense on a planet that is mostly uninhabited, except where there are objectives (cities, resources). Pickets and skirmishers are one thing, but lines of shock troops doesn't compute.

if you want lines, bring in the zone-of-control concept. EFS battles are slugfests.

Note to Lordmoore; Serfs belong to the early Middle Ages except in backward areas like Russia. Peasants are a step above. No doubt EFS has both.

[Grimly]

planettest looks amazing! A bit fuzzy, as you note. You need to be able to see resources and cities, and to tell desert from jungle. But the 3D is really, really cool. Looks like what HDI could have done with Noble Armada but didn't even try.

[Grimly]

Note: hexes currently are over 500 miles across, 300 miles per side. (Somewhere I said 1 hex = the size of France. Oops! I meant 1 2x2x2 group of 7 hexes = France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and The Netherlands. And that's given the exaggeration of Europe in Holy Terra---France should really be smaller.) This is where EFS fudges A LOT. Really large units don't make a whole lot of sense, even if you acknowledge that industry and conscription are techniques Houses may already possess. Whole armies could fit in that space, but at the other end of the density scale, small supermobile units in a desert/steppe region could cover it easily. It depends entirely on how many enemies there are to fight.

To sum up: Maps say, surely DIVISIONS and ARMIES are needed (20 X 10000 = 200,000 per hex)
Economics says, you can't possibly have more than REGIMENTS of advanced units (20 X 2000? = 40,000 per hex)
Semifeudal sociopolitical system dictates COMPANIES to LEGIONS (20 X 100 = 200 to 20,000 to 100,000 per hex, depending on how various limitations interact)

I don't think it matters. What I think we should avoid is what you see in Alpha Centauri: "squads" out there on patrol on their own, with whole continents to themselves. This is not realistic.

So many things in this project depend on other things. I like the "unit size" idea someone posted. We need not worry about 20 assault legions appearing at once if they cost so much that a House can only field 4 plus 16 auxiliaries and other units. But size would allow us to distinguish between "core" and "support." In fact, I just worked up a chart of unit sizes for my own purposes---one use is to determine if a unit "eats"---and was wishing for a "size" parameter. Let's keep it simple, but it should give us flexibility. Modders should be able to change each unit's size as desired.

Proposal:

A stacking limit of 10 to 20 seems reasonable. Sizes could then be measured in stack points, 1 to 10. (My interpretation: Militia = 5 [500], Foot Knights = 1 [100], Peasant Levy = 10 [1000], some units = 0 [less than 100 and non-eating]) Tech could allow an increase in the total of stack points, say from 10 to 15 to 20. There would be a hard limit of 20 zero-sized units.

So you could field a force using a dozen levies (slow, ineffective, easy to break but hard to kill) as skirmishers and a few mobile and foot companies backed by a couple of batteries and an officer. You couldn't fit this force into a space smaller than 13 hexes under a limit of 10, 7 under a limit of 20.

more . . .
Maybe assign 20 points for a division-sized 10,000-man unit (or appropriate # of tanks). This unit would need some kind of Organization tech. These units would not be cheap.

In some other post I suggested growing manpower as a resource. If, like the Soviets in the 50's, you have a lot of manpower, then by all means build infantry divisions. (Of Macroz's 400 wartime divisions, all but 10 infantry and 10 tank front-line divisions would be crap; maybe 1 infantry and 1 tank division would be elite. The numbers are wrong for EFS, but the ratio is right.) But if manpower isn't a resource, why build so many divisions?

(They aren't cheap---they are enormously expensive. They just happen to be cheaper than tank divisions, and cheaper than American divisions---not because of tech but because of materials and manpower. In fact they broke the USSR, and one could argue that the only reason they had so many soldiers was to extend their control over the people, not to defend themselves or even to control them directly---the army WAS the state, and by conscripting, not fielding, troops the state remained in power.)

So that's a plug for treating manpower as a resource. NOT having easy manpower means you must research weapons. EFS just says, if you can feed'em, build'em---and that's not the same thing.

Of course reserve divisions are instantaneous to "build" and don't require research. But the houses aren't capable of that kind of "mobilization." So I remain dubious about any assumption that the STANDARD unit size is the division.

Also, another reason for a stacking limit is to model supply, or rather the lack of it. I think the consensus is that supply CAN be modeled, but should not be directly or complexly. Well, one way to limit the size of stacks is to apply supply assumptions, or vice versa. In EFS, you simply can't feed 20 divisions in one hex. Where would you put the waste? if a "city" is present (I'm talking old-style EFS here), then you may assume that such support is possible. So you could have your core cities under your thumb with 20+ divisions per city, but out in the sticks your stacking limits would kick in. THAT is why small units are better . . . plus they eat less. Too bad EFS allows only "eat" and "no eat"---it's so frustrating! Another plug for a size point system.

Edited again:
With this size point system,
---Stacking limts can be flexible
---Units must be sized, which helps determine other factors (food, armor, agility)
---Unit sizes can be flexible; no more debating what size unit should be standard
---The AI's tendency in EFS to buy militia and other cheap units by the boatload can be controlled; it can only put so many large units in a stack, so can't build a wall around itself
---Supply in civilized/uncivilized/enemy territory could be partly modeled (other part would be movement)

<small>[ 06.09.2004, 04:44: Message edited by: Grimly Fiendish ]</small>