Question for Bill about supply and major cities

[welk]

Actually, in my mod battles system, entire map is 100% covered like that : each hex does receive a major city (a kind of "major cities grid") and all hex are rails connected (only a kind of "rail grid, no any "roads grid") (major cities and rails are of course full invisible)

As consequence, player does see only a ground terrain, all units are permanently in full supply and AI works fine, very efficiently in battles on maps 75x75 hex (almost like an human player).

My question is that : What would exactly happend if I would suppress the invisible major "cities grid", and if I would keep only the invisible "rail grid" :

1/ concerning Supply of units ? (in other terms : are the rails connections suffisant to give full supply to units ? Or are major cities absolutly needed in addition ?)

2/ concerning Fighting (combats) ? (in other terms, is there something that is hard coded = not moddable for fighting in major cities, in addition of editor settings concerning combat effect of major cities ?)

To suppress major "cities grid" (and to keep only the invisible "rails grid") would be interessant for me in work, but I prefer to ask advices before to test because it's a long/hard work to change the entire map.

[BillRunacre]

1) Supply would be far more variable across the map, with units potentially being out of supply or in low supply.

2) No.

I'm not really sure why you're thinking of doing this, as having hidden resources in each hex giving full supply to their occupants was a great idea to make these battles work?

[welk]

Ok, thanks : I will keep the major cities on all hexagones

I planed to suppress them for this reason : each time I work on the map to place a visible ressource (village, fortification, little city, etc), I erase at the same time my invisible major city that is on the concerned hex, and if after that I change the visible ressources of the map, I have to retablish all invisible cities that were suppressed. It's not dramatic, but I wanted to avoid this work

[BillRunacre]

Do you mean that the new resource type, placed over the hidden one, is no longer hidden?

Or something else?

[welk]

It's not a great problemn, but it works like that

1/ First, I create my "vanilla mod map" (basic map) with invisible major cities graphs and invisible rails graphs. I do not use the "masked" function for major cities, because it's more faster to use invisible graphs

2/ When my "basic map " is reay, I have to construct on this map the relief, mountains, rivers, etc, and evidently some villages, fortifications, etc

3/ Each time I place (for example) a village on an hex, this village is visible but it replace the invisible major city graph

4/ If after placement of the village I decide to change the place of the village, I suppress the village to transfert it in other hex, but I have to replace on the empty hex an invisible major city

It's the little work I wanted to awoid
But it's not dramatic, I use now the Green life bar in editor i created for units and resources, to see hex where I have to add a major city (hex without any green life bar)

A thing that is very surprising is that : In napoleonic version, AI is more agressive than in Ancient battle version
In napoleonic version, each hex has only 1 invisible rail and 1 invisible major city
In Ancient version, there is on each hex 1 road, 1 rail and 1 major city (I will change that later, to give same situation likes napoleonic version, invisible roads are not needed)

I ask me if there is a relation between that and the difference of agressivity, or if it comes from units settings

[BillRunacre]

That is interesting, and the unit settings could definitely be the thing here. I think once you remove the roads you'll be able to contrast and compare and see for sure.

[welk]

Yes, I will do and say the result
May be also, the fact that in Ancient battle I use for each side 2 nations (a major + a minor), and one unic nation for each side in Napo mod