Crown of Glory: Europe in the Age of Napoleon, the player controls one of the crowned potentates of Europe in the Napoleonic Era, wielding authority over his nation's military strategy, economic development, diplomatic relations, and social organization. It is a very thorough simulation of the entire Napoleonic Era - spanning from 1799 to 1820, from the dockyards in Lisbon to the frozen wastes of Holy Mother Russia.
ORIGINAL: Ralegh
WRT you comment about speed:
I certainly agree that a typical Spanish army early in the game can move further and faster than a Russian army - especially if the Spanish are foraging (which gives a bonus to initiative).
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When I play Russia (in v1.2, where garrisoned militia dont consume food) I fill the cities with Militia - if the enemy can take a city - and hence get a supply course - I am in trouble. As long as they can't, I kick em out eventually.
I would like to understand better these points. First of all I probably miss the "rationale" of the rule that gives foraging units a bonus to initiative. I thought that in real life foraging units lose time and organization to forage, lowering their initiative.
Historically, units pulling supply wagons and lining up for food, etc etc made it harder to move far/fast, b=particularly over difficult terrain, and this is what the initiaive effect is implementing. I suppose it would have made more sense to make the foraging the 'default' and apply a negative to those using supply, but it works out the same.
On the other hand I don't understand if it's better to forage or to supply, assuming a unit is located in a province with high forage value and the nation has enough cash to settle a supply chain. The first part of Ralegh's post lets me think it's better to forage, cause of the initiative bonus. The second part of the post assumes you have (always? in low forage provinces?) trouble if you can't trace a supply path.
The ideal situation is to have depots present, so you get caissons in battle (ie. 'are supplied' in quick combat), and to use supply so you receive reinforcements, and dont take any forage losses. If you need to save cash, have the depots present, but usually forage.
As far as it concerns my (very) limited experience (I've just completed my first 1805 scenario, playing as France and always resolving battles in quick mode), units seem to fight more effectivley when they draw supply, but maybe it's just a wrong impression.
Last but not least, all the posters seem to admit that units travelling long distances can be easily defeated. That's my experience too. In this case, the game system seems to work rather realistically, and probably the problem is with the AI tending to act too aggressively.
Ah, good point.
This got me thinking on a possible solution. Lets say foragevalues are halved, if the city in the region is still enemy-occupied.
This is a great idea - ERIC!
Depotsupply:
As it is now, you can basically ignore fortresses, as their job historically would be, to cut supply. suggestion: A depot must be guarded by more strengthfactors then the local garrison or risk overrunning.
This is already a game feature in v1.2. Depots in a province you control (ie. where you control the city/forts) cannot be disrupted by the enemy. Depots in a province contolled by the enemy are much easier to disrupt. This also gives the person being invaded some advantages, which I think is very cool.
Ah, good point.
This got me thinking on a possible solution. Lets say foragevalues are halved, if the city in the region is still enemy-occupied.
This is a great idea - ERIC!
Eric [X(] ?
Well, the Idea is easily implemented at the very least.
Depotsupply:
As it is now, you can basically ignore fortresses, as their job historically would be, to cut supply. suggestion: A depot must be guarded by more strengthfactors then the local garrison or risk overrunning.
This is already a game feature in v1.2. Depots in a province you control (ie. where you control the city/forts) cannot be disrupted by the enemy. Depots in a province contolled by the enemy are much easier to disrupt. This also gives the person being invaded some advantages, which I think is very cool.
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Oh, great!
Norden
Norden
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Hexagonally challenged
Maybe what's really missing here is chance. When you forage you dont know, how much your troops will be able to gather. You cannot plan for it, certainly not across half of Europe! Foraging is taking a chance compared to regular supply. The french were very good at foraging historically (at least the revolutionary armies were, as they didnt have much choice), and so were cavalryunits and light troops. But this would imply a bonus to their abilities compared to other nations.
One comment on foraging giving initiative. When you give the order to forage in an area, your troops will disperse, send out details, things like that. Were talking about gathering food for tens of thousands of men (for a monthly turn!), from locals, who have a nasty habit of hiding their stuff. This will certainly deviate from regular marching time, how could it be any other way? Forcemarching should be totally impossible this way. These two things are contradictions.
I guess, the optimum marching conditions (A) should be in homeregions, supplied. No scouting, no searching for food, just marching. This could be simulated by using the regions full foragevalue (though they wouldnt really forage).
The next level would be marching into enemyregions (B). Here, you have to build depots along the way, limiting your advance speed greatly. Creating a chain of depots behind you will limit your advance speed. You have to reduce fortresses, to secure your lines, garrison depots along the way etc...
So the option is to forage (C). This will, especially the french revolutionary armies and cavalries/cossacks, get you forward a lot faster than B, but still slower then A. Also, you are taking a chance. All this might be easily simulated by halving uncontrolled enemyregions foragevalues and adding a chance element. Finally, Napoleons advance into Russia was countered by burning everything useable in front of them. This could be an option for fast units like light troops and cavalry: to hinder enemy advance while trying to avoid contact. If they send forageparties, these will be attacked, crops burned etc...
The historically easiest way to supply an advancing army is along rivers. Riverbarges are the optimal transports of their time. Wagons have a very limited range, as their own requirements are steadily reducing their effective load over distance. Look at the campaigns of Frederik the Great. He raced his army around northern Germany, having interior lines and lots of rivers. And he was a radical in his own way by seeking decisive battles, while the typical way those days was to march and countermarch, not risking your army and trying to cut the enemies supplylines. Frederik certainly didnt forage, as foraging was not an acceptable form of waging war in those days (especially not your own people!), the shadows of the worst war on german soil still looming... The revolutionary wars changed that, at least for the french, who didnt have the ressources to feed their army properly. This is why they seemed to be so fast, because everybody was so damned slow and dependent on their lines.
Norden
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Hexagonally challenged
Thanks to Ralegh, Norden and tristandracul for the interesting posts. I have two other points.
1. Point.
ORIGINAL: tristandracul
But there's another overlooked aspect why it's easier to find Turkish armies in the Netherlands for example. Contrary to other games, in CoG you can move into foreign territory without a war. Regardless of the problems described I'm very happy about that.
But I've seen some strange situations. Playing as France, I've an alliance with Turkey and Spain but ... Spain is in war with Turkey and .... they fight battles over my soil (or at least in Switzerland, that is a protectorate of mine and where I rallied Spanish troops fearing an invasion by Austria). Now: a war between my allies is rather strange (during a time when I was in war with Prussia and England, Austria could declare a war on me in any time, exploiting my undefended south front, and Turkey an Spain have no good relations with my actual or potential enemies), but maybe possible. It seems anyway weird that they fight on my soil and that I can't say anything about it (except declaring war on Spain and / or Turkey, that would mean suicide; I've tried also to propose a peace treaty between Spain and Turkey, but it doesn't seem to work).
2. Point
The problem with units travelling long distances had been raised in an old thread about naval units, where some posters complained about Tunisian privateer sailing along Frecnh and English coasts (or something like that). I think that is also a strange feature and that the devs should probably think about moral / initiative / strenghth losses for such units.
The AI does get additional resources according to the difficulty setting of the game, but there's no AI cheat for army movement.
Difficulty level also gives some bonus to the AI in detailed battle (damage bonus, morale check bonuses.)
I'd love to add the AI has even a higher ceiling of gold reserves - 3000-plus gold ducats at Bonaparte. And, in a battle in Batavia, Russo-Swedish combined forces amounted to nearly 40 divisions - of which the Russians served as reinforcements. Now, we may need more than the 27 spaces for a side's routed divisions, otherwise they will never be entirely defeated. Fortunately, it was an one-off incident. [:o]
I agree: the penalty should apply after the capitcal is OCCUPIED, not just BESEIGED.
I disagree [:D]
The penalty should remain as is. If changed, for one, wars would never end. Most capital cities are heavily fortified, and managing to actually get inside one that has a full garrison can take much longer than marching a relief army from Sevastapol back to Paris. Thus no morale hit and the war goes on (and on).
Two, the fact that you have a 150 thousand man army sitting in your capital province, regardless of how well fortified and garrisoned the city itself is, represents a monumental strategic failure and the owning player should be heavily penalized. What does it profit a man who sits in Versailles while the province is lost, and all the roads blocked, and the thunder of cannons rings the city?
WE/I WANT 1:1 or something even 1:2 death animations in the KOIOS PANZER COMMAND SERIES don't forget Erik! and Floating Paratroopers We grew up with Minor, Marginal and Decisive victories why rock the boat with Marginal, Decisive and Legendary?
Carnifex makes a good argument, based on game play reasons.
As I recall, the reason it is as it is is because most of the cities were actually declared open cities if they got surrounded - armies of the period usually beseiged fortresses in the province, not cities, and didn't make war on the civilian population. [well, except for foraging and plundering].
In my recent game, the allies got into Paris, and held it for more than a year - but it was beseiged by the French only one month after it fell, so they only lost one lot of morale. Capital occupied for 12 months, and NML 687. That doesn't seem right either.
Maybe it should be more granular:
- beseiged - NML loss
- occupied - financial or economy impacts in addition to NML loss
- occupied but we have beseiged - financial or economy ipact with (or small) NML loss
What about the size of the besieging army compared to the garrisons size? Should there be a minimum size for besiegers? If your force is too small, it raids the area or whatever, but no siege occurs. This would force proper armies to lay siege in an area, where supply is halved (new rule for foraging), which will be a problem without a supplyline.
Norden
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Hexagonally challenged
I have never thought out how big, or small, a besieging force, I should muster for such a task, although the manuel has instructions as to the number thing. I like to send as many divisions - cavalry excluded - as possible so the target city can be breached in the shortest time. Will it be better for leaders to be able to influence siege effectiveness?
I believe you need a minimum of 50,000 to siege. That's too high, IMO. Perhaps a required 2-1 ratio of besiegers/besieged make sense. That way you'd need 50,000 (or even more) against a huge garrison, but could siege with smaller forces against those pesky 1 division garrisons.
But it's a small thing; it certainly doesn't affect the game negatively in any serious way, having to siege with large forces, In my experience anyway.
The length of time sieges take, even if the garrison is just one division, is a bigger issue for me. It's one thing if a long siege occurs at historically known heavily fortified fortress-cities, but Moscow? But again, the game works fine as is, in that regard.
Russian Guard, regarding 2-1 ratio, I am not this opinion. Take for example the program google earth and take a look at Toledo, Spain, and imagine surrounding it. If you dont have enough troops, it would mean that you could not stop a sudden escape of a group of soldiers of the sieged city that look for suplies or that just want to punish you a bit. The besieging troops of the one part of Toledo would take half a day to help the other part if beeing attacked. They would play cat and mouse with you all the time, attacking, retreating in the city again and attackin the other part. I think a 3-1 ratio is OK.
So, if I had a small size of troops, I would have to warn them against entering or passing provinces with big garrisions in order not to be harassed by these escaping mice. The prevailing mechanism is such that any force being in a non-friendly province is automatically attracted to the siege of the sole city there.
