Hi Milo.
That is a good point, though I confess this isn't someone I've heard of in
military terms.
however I'm not sure about the replication of the mechanic as a simple
cumulative chance, sinse it's equally possible for an army unit to be sat
around with nobody to fight and no new orders for so long that their drill
becomes stale and they become less! effective, ven if they aren't foraging
on the land. Plus, from a game balance point of view if a unit can become
better and better by doing nothing, this isn't much insentive to the player
to use that unit.
I'd probably suggest that rest be replicated as it in in a mud, where for a
certain amount of actions the unit will be fine, however after a given point
of moving, fighting, deploying or other actions the effectiveness of the
unit decreases until it spends a turn doing nothing, ie, the prolonged
forced activity has tired out the soldiers.
Beware the grue!
Dark.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Milos Przic" <milos.pr...@gmail.com>
To: "Gamers Discussion list" <gamers@audyssey.org>
Sent: Wednesday, June 20, 2012 8:48 PM
Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Realism in military stratogy games
Hi Dark,
Good point. I would add one more thing to make things ever more realistic.
In the military academies all over the World a strategy of vojvojda
Zivojin Misic is being studied. The duke (vojvoda) was the leader of the
first army during the World War I, and the army faught the austro
hungarians at the river of Kolubara near valjevo, Serbia. Without going
into many details, he simply let the soldiers to rest enough, and the
trupes of the Austro Hungarians were defeeted. So,in the terms of gaming,
and let's take TOC as an example again, the more soldiers march, the less
possible is for them to win in a turn of the battle. The more turns they
rest, the bigger possibility to win a turn...
Your thaughts?
Milos Przic
msn: milos.pr...@gmail.com
skype: Milosh-hs
----- Original Message -----
From: "dark" <d...@xgam.org>
To: <Gamers@audyssey.org>
Sent: Wednesday, June 20, 2012 11:32 AM
Subject: [Audyssey] Realism in military stratogy games
Hi.
At the moment I've just started reading the sharpe series of books by
Bernard cornwell, a set of books about a British rifleman set before and
during the early 1800's, who starts off as a private and rises to become
an officer, fighting first in the battles in India then in the napoleonic
wars in flanders, spain and france, (I've read some of these before and
seen the tv series with sean been, but I'd not read the ones set early in
Sharpe's life in India).
Cornwell is very historically accurate with the events, tactics and
technology of the time, and indeed even when he takes poetic license he
explains exactly what license he has taken in historical notes, so as
well as being pretty good stories in their own right, the sharpe books
give a real idea of how battles were fought at that time in history,
(cornwell has also written similar books set in other historical periods,
but the sharpe series are his most famous).
The one thing however that really strikes me reading these books from a
gaming perspective, is just how inadequate so many games are in
portraying the situation, supplies, and tactics required by a miliary
force.
Even in time of conflict for instance, you don't have even an
approximation of the sort of situations and decisions that make up a
ilitary campaigne.
To illustrate in the book I'm reading now, Sharpe's Triump
(chronologicaly second in the series), two, a battle is taking place
betwene a very large army formed of a confederation of the Mahrata indian
princes, and two much smaller forces under the joint command of Sir
arthur wellsley, later known as the duke of wellington.
The indian force is ten times the size of the british force, and has a
far greater load of artiliary behind them. Thus, in any purely numeric
situation such as that in Toc, they should pretty much automatically win.
however, there are several factors working against them.
The bulk of the indian force are not carrying their own supplies, meaning
that they are foraging the countryside for provisions, (including taking
it from the local population), thus meaning that sinse resources in any
given area are limited when it comes to supporting such a huge
encampment, they are on a severe time limit.
The british forces however carry their own food supplies with them. While
this does give them advantages in terms of maneuverability and time, it
also dictates their movements quite severely, sinse the food and other
supplies are carried by bullock carts, which require roads on which to
move, and also which obviously can't move too fast.
Then, there is the matter of formation. One of the advantages the british
army at that time had against a larger force was that british army fought
in just two ranks. The front rank would fire, then kneel and reload their
weapons while the rank behind them fired. This two rank formation also
let them more easily surround a larger enemy force. The distadvantage
however, is that this formation was useless at stopping cavalry, sinse
horses were fast enough to close quickly, break through the ranks and do
huge amounts of damage, thus forcing the british soldiers to break their
formation and form defensive squares whenever they came upon cavalry
units (and didn't have any of their own cavalry to protect against them).
On the other hand, the large columns the french fought in, while less
affective in terms of volume of fire or ability to encircle an opponent,
were far more defensible against cavalry attacks.
However, both of these elements, supply lines and formations are things I
think could be quite easily added to a military stratogy game such as
time of conflict, by basically setting the properties of each unit.
For instance, changing the formation of a unit could alter it's attack or
defense value against both other types of unit and other formations, ----
which would also make (as in reality), information about the enemy far
more necessary. Obviously formation could be changed reactively, but not
during actual battle without a severe loss of time and attack.
Then, supplies! in time of conflict supplies weren't an issue, and in
sound rts supplies were pretty static, simply build farms and farm them,
with no suggestion of how the food got from those farms to your troops.
of course, castaways had a much more detailed supply chain, but castaways
was a far more individualized game with a different, none military
setting.
once again, supplies could be dictated upon unit creation or orders. For
instance, having a property such that the more food a unit took them, the
longer they could spend out on the map before returning to a staging
point, however, the disadvantage being that the more it carried, the
slower it's speed. Alternatively, units could be set to forage, but at a
cost of their attack (hungry soldiers don't fight as well, and foraging
is far less efficient at feeding troops than carrying their own rations),
and also the fact that once one area of the map was foraged, it couldn't
be foraged again for several turns.
this would make supply lines, depots and staging areas far more of a
concern, and mean that units such as cart trains would also have a place
in the game as well.
What are people's thoughts?
Beware the Grue!
Dark.
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