Does the AI use the Supply System?

[DasTactic]

I was playing Russia in the 1796 scenario and Austria declares war. Actually, I never got a pop-up about the declaration so when I saw the troops massing I thought Turkey was going to be in for it.

Anyhow, they establish a depot in one of their territories and cross the border into Russia. My troops where preparing to invade Turkey so they are all hanging around Odessa. Austria quickly takes the border provinces and keeps moving its enormously large army deeper into Russia.

I know I can't match them man for man so I decide to starve them out by attacking their supply lines.

So while they converge on Moscow I'm a few provinces behind killing the supply chain. Cossacks are spread right across the landscape to kill depots and there really is no chain of supply that gets to the Austrian army. I notice at one point they no longer build their supply chain from their own provinces, but instead they start the chain from one of my conquered provinces. I didn't think supply worked this way.

The Austrians eventually take Moscow with a large massed army.

I'm assuming they must have been losing about 20k of troops per month to attrition so I attack with my main army.

In the detailed battle screen I'm expecting to see starving troops with low morale and heavily depleted regiments. But oh no. Not these lads. All the Austrians are boasting full regiments and very high morale.

Hence the question, does the AI have a different set of rules regarding supply (they did always have a depot in the province they were in - just no valid chain to it), or have I completely mis-interpreted how supply works? [:)]

[Franck]

I know that even for human players, if you have a supply depot in a province, and it isn't destroyed at the end of the movement phase, it will provide supply just as a normal depot. It most likely possible that this ''depot'' will be destroyed in the movement phase if it doesn't have a line of supply to your home province.

That being said, I have often seen depot in conquered provinces stay up for the AI... I'll have to try to know if it works for me

[PDiFolco]

I've dived straight up to the "depot" part of the manual after seeing French armies still in deep and unvanquished Russia by end of 1813, months after the former Grand Armee get back. As I played Prussia I wondered how they just survived ..
And the manual clearly states that a chain of depots must comes from national territory, not just any conquered province. OTOH in game I did see some heavy losses planned for big enemy armies unsupplied in my provinces (only occupied, city/fort not taken), so supply rules seem to apply to IA as well, but I wonder if there's not something not working with conquered foreign provinces, that the game may consider as valid supply sources, which they should not be...
Need a CoGMan confirmation [:)]

[Russian Guard]

The issue (apparently) is that when the check is made to remove depots without a legit link to home/conquered provinces, occupied Provinces don't flag for depot removal.

Its my understanding that this will be changed. In the interim, destroy any depot that lingers on in your territory. A single Cossack Cav will do nicely

As to foraging, I can assure you that the foraging rules work, and are decimating in Russia if you get caught out of supply, especially in winter. I mean utterly destructive to your Army, especially a large Army, which can lose close to half its strength in a single month. I've seen it personally

[PDiFolco]

Thx Russian Guards, this explains everything.
Problem is that player can't intervene to destroy "illegit" depots when 2 IA countries are at war ! Is the bug planned for fixing in the 1st patch ?

[ericbabe]

In COG1, one could start a supply chain from any conquered city.  We then had a consensus of requests to make it so that conquered cities could *support* supply chains but not initialize them, and that is how the game should work now (and it sounds as though it does in this case).  The idea then was that conquered cities should have a limited supply ability.

I do agree that this is a bit confusing, and contrary to the spirit of simplification we wanted to make for EE.  I did float the idea to the beta testers that we might change the rule to require an owned province to both initiate and sustain a supply chain because it's simpler to understand this way, and we may do this still.

[DasTactic]

I still don't fully understand the difference between 'supporting' and 'initialising' supply chains. Could you please explain that a little more?

And if it is simplified to allow any owned province to initialise the supply chain then won't that make playing Russia very difficult if your neighbours are larger and more advanced?

[Joram]

An 'initializing' city is any city that you can start the depot chain which is any owned or protectorate city.
 
If you conquer an enemies owned territory, you get that double border showing it's conquered status, that city could then become a supporting city, thus it can maintain the supply line for you if the supply line gets cut between your initial city and that conquered city.  Thus it 'supports' the supply chain.
 
 
 
 

[CeltiCid]

ORIGINAL: ericbabe

In COG1, one could start a supply chain from any conquered city.  We then had a consensus of requests to make it so that conquered cities could *support* supply chains but not initialize them, and that is how the game should work now (and it sounds as though it does in this case).  The idea then was that conquered cities should have a limited supply ability.

I do agree that this is a bit confusing, and contrary to the spirit of simplification we wanted to make for EE.  I did float the idea to the beta testers that we might change the rule to require an owned province to both initiate and sustain a supply chain because it's simpler to understand this way, and we may do this still.

Im sorry, but im not sure. Is this rule of "supporting" cities in game or not?

[PDiFolco]

ORIGINAL: ericbabe

In COG1, one could start a supply chain from any conquered city.  We then had a consensus of requests to make it so that conquered cities could *support* supply chains but not initialize them, and that is how the game should work now (and it sounds as though it does in this case).  The idea then was that conquered cities should have a limited supply ability.

I do agree that this is a bit confusing, and contrary to the spirit of simplification we wanted to make for EE.  I did float the idea to the beta testers that we might change the rule to require an owned province to both initiate and sustain a supply chain because it's simpler to understand this way, and we may do this still.

Well, it looks a bit broken to me and think it could be reconsidered : because it means that if let's say France takes over any backwater Pripet Marshes province in Russia, it will still be able to supply all the Grande Armée from here indefinitely, as long as the province is not taken back... That is quite unhistorical and not realistic !
I understand the idea of not "killing" outright the armies as soon as the supply chain is broken, so maybe the "support" feature should be either possible only from *some* provinces- biggest ones, capitals, most populated.., or last only a couple of turns, preventing the mentioned "supply principality" syndrome .
And the manual doesn't mention this "support" btw.

[Ron]

ORIGINAL: Das123

I know I can't match them man for man so I decide to starve them out by attacking their supply lines.

So while they converge on Moscow I'm a few provinces behind killing the supply chain. Cossacks are spread right across the landscape to kill depots and there really is no chain of supply that gets to the Austrian army. I notice at one point they no longer build their supply chain from their own provinces, but instead they start the chain from one of my conquered provinces. I didn't think supply worked this way.

In the detailed battle screen I'm expecting to see starving troops with low morale and heavily depleted regiments. But oh no. Not these lads. All the Austrians are boasting full regiments and very high morale.

Hence the question, does the AI have a different set of rules regarding supply (they did always have a depot in the province they were in - just no valid chain to it), or have I completely mis-interpreted how supply works? [:)]

From what the OP describes, it sounds like something isn't working properly.

[ericbabe]

I've tested it, and it doesn't seem that chains can be built from merely conquered cities.  I've also never seen a case of the AI actually building a new chain from a conquered city -- it may be building it from an existing depot supported by a conquered city, that would be valid.

Well, it looks a bit broken to me and think it could be reconsidered : because it means that if let's say France takes over any backwater Pripet Marshes province in Russia, it will still be able to supply all the Grande Armée from here indefinitely, as long as the province is not taken back... That is quite unhistorical and not realistic !

I think most of the provinces on the map can arguably support supply chains, at least to some extent.  I believe that no matter what the rules are, there will be some ahistorical situations allowed by the rules.  The goal is to find rules in which a large majority of the situations which arise under them are historical and realistic.  With only a few simple game-type rules, I really don't think you can model logistics realistically in every situation; if we were going to make it realistic enough to model supply historically, then we'd need different depot sizes for different levels of support, and we'd need different types of depots for supply related to replacements, food, horses, weapons, and so forth, and we'd need an array of costs associated with each.  Our design goal has to be to pick a few simple rules that can be *as realistic and historical as possible*; I really don't think we can design around every single exception that every player can think of.

Under our current rules, we should perhaps make the Pripyet Marshes a "high attrition" area; this means that supply cannot start there, nor can supply extend into that region.

Furthermore, we have to balance the complexity of the rules with the need to make the game accessible to players.  To give an example:  I thought the supply system in "Forge of Freedom" was about as simple as we could make it and still account for things like railroads, naval supply, supply through hostile territory, and supply priority, but complaints about the complexity of the supply rules in FOF was one of the biggest areas of complaints we received, and perhaps the #1 area of the game which caused people to e-mail me directly with questions.  In the original redesign for COG:EE I had considered making it so that only certain areas of the map could function as supply sources, but after receiving all the feedback from people who didn't understand the supply rules in FOF, I decided against making supply in COG:EE even more complicated (and less forgiving) than it already is.  I'm reading threads over on Wargamer and other sites in which players and reviewers are opining that they find COG completely unplayable because the rules are so overwhelming as they are now.

And the manual doesn't mention this "support" btw.

Please accept my sincere apology if the manual does not thoroughly explicate this rule.  Part of the difficulty of changing the rules so much in response to every post in the Matrix forum is that some of the changes slip through the cracks of the final documentation.

I do think we might change the rules so that one needs a conquered province both to initialize and sustain a depot chain.  This would tighten up the criteria for supply chains and (it seems, I haven't checked the manual) make the rules conform to the manual as written.

[Hard Sarge]

LOL

manual does not thoroughly explicate this rule

are you sure this is not a HARD_Sargeism ?

[Hard Sarge]

on a side note, I know when I go into Russia I place a lot of supply chains, some last, some don't, it may be the same with the AI, but you only see the ones that stick

the ones that don't last, still did there job for that turn

I know I have seen the AI go spastic with it's supply chains

[DasTactic]

I agree 100% that the rules should be simple at the expense of realism if that keeps the game more accessible for casual play. That is what I love about this version.

Perhaps all that is needed is a small icon next to the depot check box that shows the status of supply through this province. For example:

• Skull -> High attrition - No supply through this province (with a greyed back depot check box so players can't select it)
• Wagon Wheel -> Supply allowed but can only be part of a chain.
• Tent -> Supporting depot. Will continue to supply rest of chain even if supply has been cut to this depot.
• Barrels -> Initialising depot.

And then perhaps the supply triggers could be tweaked based on forage rates when attacking other countries. For example:

• Base forage support 70k+ -> Can become a supporting depot 1 turn after taking control of the province.
• Base forage support 50k to 69k -> Can become a supporting depot after 2 turns.
• Base forage support 30k to 49k -> Can become a supporting depot after 3 turns.
• Base forage support 10k to 29k -> Can never become a supporting depot but can be part of supply chain.
• Base forage support under 10k -> No supply through this province

This way players don't have to really understand the rules if they don't want to because the icons tell them what is going on. And by staggering the amount of time different provinces can become supporting depots it means that large armies that just roll along conquering provinces in the same turn they arrive need to protect their supply lines a little more until they get their supporting depots.

[PDiFolco]

No, the game has to be realistic, and the challenge is to make it accessible [:'(]
Then eventually I mostly agree to your proposals, Das123 [:)]. Having a visual indicator of province capacity to supply is useful. Yet I don't agree to the "No supply province" idea, the problem is that supply *sources* should be limited, not supply *chains*.
Else let's get a "simple supply" and "Advanced Supply" options [:D] !

[DasTactic]

ORIGINAL: PDiFolco

...Yet I don't agree to the "No supply province" idea, the problem is that supply *sources* should be limited, not supply *chains*...

Yes. I'd agree with that as well as it complicates things. Perhaps if there was to be a penalty associated with certain provinces like the Marshes, the supply chain just costs more to go through these provinces.

[ericbabe]

I like the idea too.  As written it's a bit ambitious for a patch.  However, maybe we can make a list of provinces that are the only locations that can serve as a supply source when owned by a player.  Identifying other provinces that have increased supply cost might be doable as well.  We'll consider this.  Any volunteers to help with the data table changes if we decide to do this?

[Russian Guard]

ORIGINAL: ericbabe

I like the idea too.  As written it's a bit ambitious for a patch.  However, maybe we can make a list of provinces that are the only locations that can serve as a supply source when owned by a player.  Identifying other provinces that have increased supply cost might be doable as well.  We'll consider this.  Any volunteers to help with the data table changes if we decide to do this?

I'll help with that.

[Mraah]

ericbade,

If you change the supply rules may I suggest looking at the how the AI understands the current supply system first.

I've had this game for a few days and I've been running through the ropes using Russia and when I'm at war, the opposing side enjoys running directly to Moscow (after it's initial breakthought at the front line) and it seems to attack the provinces where it happened to land on that month, only to continue it's push towards Moscow the follwing month. So, with this, I'm able to use my army to follow the enemy and clean up the provinces in their wake.

Basically, the AI seems to not understand that it has to maintain a guarded, continguous supply line towards Moscow because each time it does this it finally sits at Moscow with no supply line whilst attempting to seige the city.

In other words .... there is no pre-planning. I've been able to let this happen without concern and send half my army into their territory without a fight ... it prefers to run for the capitol instead of establishing a front line.

Anyway ... I think it would be interesting to change the supply rules but if the AI doesn't understand them it won't make a difference ... IMO.

Great game though!! I'm having a blast.

Thanks for great work and support.

Rob