Supply Issues...

[barbarossa2]

Supply Issues:

I do like some aspects of this supply system, but more and more one point is bothering me--the ability to run the entire Grand Army off of any single depot I have in a "home territory", "protectorate", or "conquered enemy territory." It really seems that all you need to do is make sure you control one region on your advance and you are always "in supply".

For instance, in one game as Prussia, I declared war on Poland. As each provence fell to me, I simply moved my suppy depots up one space towards the front. As each region was conquered, it became eligible to house my entire supply effort. There really wasn't much of a supply line for anyone to cut off. I basically needed one supply depot close to me at anymoment. Certainly no "chain".

One example occurred in a PBEM game I am involved in now. A sizeable French army has advanced down the leg of Italy and was cut off in back by a Russian army. The French army, however, will be doing just fine because they just took control 3-4 regions in the south of Italy (Naples). This is fine with me actually, but what would happen if 200,000 French men were locked into a single provence they owned?

It seems that maybe a good way to do it would be to perhaps require every 40,000 soldiers to be supplied by one region. 80,000 soldiers would need 2 regions with supply depots. 120,000 soldiers would need 3 regions. Now, this may be an oversimplification of what a really good system might look like. Perhaps soldiers in one army don't need as much supply as soldiers from another army. Perhaps regions aren't equal in their ability to provide supplies.

Or perhaps the depot which is being drawn from needs "access" to one region (including the one it is in) for every 30 or 40 thousand men drawing supply from it (again, a massive over simplification--but let's just say for example).

Another way to take care of this, would be to set a sort of timer in each region. Once it has fallen, it isn't eligible to be a "home provence" of yours (i.e. somewhere that a supply chain can originate from) for 6 turns. Or perhaps 12 turns.

[Hard Sarge]

the ideas sound good, but I don't think you would want to do the background work to make it happen like that, you would go broke very soon (of course, later in the game, you will have lots of money to spare, maybe, but even then, supplying a large army in a war, will burn you out, I was losing 1000 bucks a month, keeping my Armees in supply in my Path of Nappy AAR)

plus with the Protectorates working as they were intended now, it will be much HARDer to set up your supply lines the way you state (provinces in Poland or Naples won't be yours (if enemy controlled) just by taking it, you need the Cap first)

[IronWarrior]

Not sure, but it would seem to me like armies would have their best supply levels after conquering a province. Supply was a problem in Italy, but i was under the impression that it was just a lack of materials and not necessarily because of the Austrians raiding or breaking supply lines. It's pretty expensive to keep armies supplied, so I think I'm good with the way it is.

[ptan54]

Alternatively, make depots less expensive, but have the rule that an army in province A can ONLY be supplied by a depot in province A or a province directly adjacent to province A. Either depot (prov A or adj to prov A) must be connected to a line of depots going back to an OWNED province (including protectorates), not just a controlled province. So a supply line to Moscow would have to commence in the French protectorate of Poland, not, for example, Russian owned Smolensk, there actually has to be a line of communications. And a campaign in Austrian Italy has to have a supply line that starts in Provence.

[IronWarrior]

So are you saying that it actually was common that Austria would successfully raid or break supply lines in the Italian campaign? I thought there was simply just a lack of supply. If anything I would think the opposite, a slight increase in depot upkeep. Although I admit that I'm not certain as to how common it was for Napoleon to allow his supply lines to be raided or broken.

[Gresbeck]

ORIGINAL: barbarossa2

Supply Issues:

I do like some aspects of this supply system, but more and more one point is bothering me--the ability to run the entire Grand Army off of any single depot I have in a "home territory", "protectorate", or "conquered enemy territory." It really seems that all you need to do is make sure you control one region on your advance and you are always "in supply".

New game, old issues [:)]. I've found two old threads dealing with supply issues in COG I:

tm.asp?m=975212&mpage=1&key=
tm.asp?m=968346&mpage=1&key=

Some interesting suggestions were made there (f. e. by uncle joe). In principle, I think an army should be penalized if it has no line of communication with its home country or with an allied / protectorate country. But probably the idea is not so easily implementable in the game engine.
I've played AGEOD Napoleon's Campaigns, and in that game system a line of communication with the home country is essential, but that system has different values for food and ammunition, and considers the level of military control of each province, where you can keep your line of communication opened with a relative low military control of the province (25%, IIRC).

[barbarossa2]

Gresbeck, I read through the posts you gave the links for.  Ericbabe of course mentions that he has a certain "pop" group to cater to.  He may be right. But it seems one could also have a "simple supply" and "advanced" supply selection on the game start up screen.

For those who complain that the current supply model is too restrictive as Eric mentioned in the above postings, they could click on "simple" and NEVER need supply...that is, all units would always be in supply (not much programming needed there).

For those who want a little more realism than the current model gives, they could click on "advanced supply" and perhaps one could do SOMETHING like the following (brainstorming here):

A nation like France might have 3 supply "centers" which are pieces that can be moved around the board like units with VERY low movement ratings. Every unit on the map would have to be able to trace a path to one of its supply center pieces through a chain of supply depots. These supply "centers" would only be active if they had at least 3-4 friendly and completely controlled regions which they were connected to (one could make it more advanced, like require the surrounding provences to have a certain amount of industrial output). Supply centers which were "active" would be green. Those which didn't have access to what they need would be red--so players could easily tell what the situation was. Then in addition to requiring a unit to be able to trace to one of these centers, one would have the current supply depot rules system. If a unit can't trace to a depot, then he can't draw from the supply centers. However, ideally I would say that the players always need to maintain a chain of depots to one of the supply centers. If a supply center gets cut off and becomes worthless in some far off land, a player could disband it and immediately create it anew in his capitol (or something like that). I think this would capture the need to supply armies/units from some significant source of homeland supply.

But again, this is pure brainstorming and I am sure the concept can be improved.

Thoughts?

Again, the important thing is that ericbabe DOES need customers who are not "elites".  I agree completely.  For them, he develops the "simple" supply system...the "All units are always in supply" system.  And for the "elites" he gives them what they want.  A more realistic supply system which prevents France from feeding a 300,000 man Grand Army from one captured provence in Poland--or the nation of Brunswick.

[IronWarrior]

I've always thought that most of the supply problems of the day were more internal or logistical rather than external. Maybe I'm wrong, but cutting supply lines seemed to be rare compared to the other problems. The best solution should also be realistic within the game itself. Long supply lines could open up many "gamey" exploits such as the lone militia breaking the Grand Army's supply, or Russia breaking up its armies into Divisions with the sole purpose of trying to break supply lines.
 
IMO the simplest and most realistic solution is to have depots cost incrementally more the further away from a nation's capital they are built. This would simulate the problems of keeping armies supplied over distance, and would put limits on far reaching conquests due to expense. There would be no Spain hanging around Moscow with no supply worries... or "finding Moroccans on the beaches of Malmo". [:D]
 
Anyway, I am definately for whatever is most realistic.
 

[barbarossa2]

Hmmmm...interesting idea Iron Warrior.  I kind of like it. 

[henri51]

Making supply lines more difficult to maintain would only make it more difficult for France to expand and easier for other nations to prevent France from expanding. Obviously countries like Prussia or Britain with their small radius of action would be heavily favored over countries like France or Russia (assuming the latter wants to expand).

IMHO the game is already difficult enough for France. I have never been able as France to see the Russian border, much less make my way to Moscow...Some of the changes for supply lines combined with the enforced peace treaties for a year and the two province limit on surrender treaties already places a severe handicap on expansionists, and trying to make the supply rules more difficult might have the effect of making the game less realistic instead of more...[:-]

Henri

[barbarossa2]

Henri, you might be right.  Of course it would have to be possible for France to reach Moscow.   I do like Iron Warrior's idea.

Henri, I am just curious, what are your thoughts about France being able to supply a 300,000 man army from a single provence in Poland? You may have an insight here I would like to know about.

Is anyone here an expert in Napoleonic logistics?  I have a good book on logistics in the Italian campaigns by 16th century France.  And another called, "Logistics" by van Creveld I believe.  What we really need is someone who knows Napoleonic logistics.

[Mr. Z]

Napoleon began the 1812 campaign with over a month's supply...he also set up several very large depots along the way, in the interior of Russia, once he'd made significant progress. He was even planning on wintering in Moscow, or at least finding some resupply there.

His wagons, however, found Russian roads inadequate, and of course the Russians took care of Moscow for him. One could argue that Russia was simply too unwieldy for him--he didn't realize how hard it would be.

So the system as it currently operates is arguably historical in principle. It may just be a matter of how easy it is to keep your lines open as long as you want. From a homeland province, sure, it makes sense. From an occupied province...perhaps less so.

We'll be instituting some changes in the patch that we think will remedy the excesses of the current system. Yes, it may result in longer supply lines--but I don't think that's so terrible. Access to secure supply sources is important. If that access is under threat...you shouldn't be able to rely on that line of supply. Remember that turns are a month long--keeping a supply depot opertating in the interior of Russia longer than that shouldn't be easy or cheap. (We also may add a simple terrain rule.)

[IronWarrior]

Interesting, that's pretty much my take on it as well. It seemed more to me to be internal and logistical problems rather than Cossacks chewing up lines of supply.
 
My concern with longer supply lines is that it will become the whole game, at least in pbem. Hell I've barely taken two steps out of France and everyones like.. oh there's Napoleon... forget that there's a depot! get it! get it! [:D]
 
Longer supply lines seem like it would simulate external supply problems rather than internal or logistical. Just my opinion of course, I don't want to pretend to know the game better than the devs obviously. [:)]

[barbarossa2]

Has anyone here played Campaigns On the Danube?  In my opinion this is one of the best supply systems I have ever played in.  It was my dream supply system actually (well, almost).  In CotD, you actually shipped points of supply from one location to another and these depots were then drawn on by your corps operating in the area.  What I loved about it was the fact that you had to pre-plan where your areas of action would be.  You had to  spend time building up your depots.  So if you had decided your operations were going to be in the south, and suddenly a threat appeared in the north, it was not nearly as simple as force marching your troops north. It was not a minor undertaking to move your supplies north again as well (as they moved slower, being on carts and on bad roads).  It may sound complicated to some, but actually it was easier. And in my opinion more fun. Because the brain didn't have to wrap itsself around countless abstractions. It was all there. On paper. You could look around the map and see that one wagon train with 100 supply points was headed from Ulm to Munich and another with 300 points was headed from Heilbronn to Ingolstadt. It was very simple.

It was an amazing system which, in my humble opinion, wasn't too taxing on the player.  I also believe that there was a "simple" supply system for people who didn't want to deal with this level of detail.  I for one, would be THRILLED to have this kind of a system in CoG:EE. 

Implemented in CoG:EE, I could see each region producing "supply points" much like they produce luxuries, or textiles now. These supply points would then be shipped to a handful of collection centers automatically.  You could then look at your collection centers and begin shipping your supplies forward to depots where they were needed.  Each packet of supplies would basically become a wagon train unit when it departed its current depot.  This could be captured or destroyed depending on the types of problems it ran into if you sent it on a risky route. 

In my opinion, this would be an INCREDIBLE system to use.  Isn't overly complicated and makes sense from a lot of perspectives.  There is no more abstraction needed (you need X regions to support Y troops/you need a "chain of supply depots").  It just all makes sense.  It is actually the easiest and most straight forward supply system I have ever encountered with the least need for wondering why things don't make sense.  I would HIGHLY recommend that WCS and EricBabe look at Campaigns on the Danube and consider this.

Of course, I am not saying this should be the ONLY system.  I still belive that EricBabe is right when he says he also needs a game which he can sell to lots of people, so I recommend having an option to play with "Simple Supply", which would have all units in supply all of the time, a "Medium Supply" system much like the one now, and finally, a "Napoleon Supply" system which functions like the one from Campaigns on the Danube.

[anarchyintheuk]

CotD has a great system. Don't know how compatible it is w/ one-month turns.

[henri51]

ORIGINAL: barbarossa2

Henri, I am just curious, what are your thoughts about France being able to supply a 300,000 man army from a single provence in Poland? You may have an insight here I would like to know about.

Barb, I'm afraid that I don't know much about Napoleonic logistics, and I don't know if your proposals would screw up the game or not, I was just pointing out that the devs should be careful about making changes to the supply system that might 1) Unbalance the game and/or 2) add to the micro-management 3) Cause other problems or unrealistic play.What I do know is that Napoleon DID reach Moscow, and that he was defeated because he had assumed that he could get supplies there and that the Russians would surrender, but the Russians burned Moscow down instead and he found himself without supplies in the middle of Winter. So if we want to be more realistic, the game should allow the French to reach Moscow (has anyone ever done it?), and with hindsight, perhaps avoid Napoleon's mistake (perhaps by arranging to reach Moscow in the Summer?...). It seems obvious that Napoleon's army in Moscow was still too strong for the Russians, since they avoided clashing with it head-on, but I don't remember exactly how much of it was left at that point before the debacle.[:)]

And Yes, I have played Campaigns on the Danube, but it was long ago and I remember very little about the game and even less about the supply rules.[&:]

Finally as we all know, every game is a tradeoff betwee "programming for effect" and "playability". And to state the obvious, a game is a "game" played for fun, and if it is programmed to follow too rigidly historical lines, I would rather read a book about the era (or perhaps watch a program about it on the History channel).[:'(]

But that is only me - if I were a realism guy, I wouldn't be playing World of Warcraft and winning WW2 with the Germans with Advanced Tactics.[X(]

Henri

[Hard Sarge]

yes, you can reach Moscow, my ARR, I took Moscow in a Blizzard battle (to be honest, the Blizzard let me win a easy victory, when it should of been a much more touch and go battle)

trying to keep all parts of the Army supplied were a royal pain, and I was spending over 1000 bucks a turn, just on supply dumps

[barbarossa2]

Anarchyintheuk,
 
I have a feeling that adjusting a COTD system to one month turns wouldn't take much of an adjustment.  What kinds of issues would you see?
 
-B

[Mr. Z]

Yes, supply in COG is something of an abstraction--a "supply depot" unit is not exactly the same thing as a historical supply depot.  Sometimes they are, and sometimes they aren't.  You should just think of it as a way to give an army access to an organized supply source, with baggage trains and adequate munitions and ample dry goods and reliable food and so on.  The "chain" is a way of showing that whether it's an actual depot (or depots) or a series of baggage trains, it ultimately depends on access to the cities and lands that you actually control.  If that chain is disrupted, then after a month you are on your own.  Enemy units should be able to disrupt them, representing raids on a actual depots, control of the populace and countryside at large, and threats to incoming baggage trains. And protecting them should matter; the French had to use vast numbers just to defend their depots in Spain.

The difference between CoG and CotD is largely at the abstraction level; we don't show actual trains and depots being set up or moving.  That instead is represented by "building" the chain of depots.  You still have to plan ahead in CoG, just not to the degree or level of detail that you do in CotD.

Again, the revisions we're planning will make things a bit more centralized, and again, we think one or two terrain rules might be enough to cut down on excessively long supply chains.  Even so, the supply chain is again mostly supposed to represent access to the most important supply source, whether an actual depot along the chain, or a guarded road carrying baggage trains from a reliably friendly province.

[Randomizer]

Curious as to how much logistical support would actually be drawn from the home country to a Napoleonic era army on campaign.  In the days before the railroad, all essential supply would have to come by sea or on horse-drawn carts with the former of only marginal use to continental armies and the latter severely limited as to payload and eating their own weight in forage every week or so.  So what constituted essential supplies?

Were there actual long-distance supply lines as they came to exist when armies became more sophisticated?

Any Army would consume vast quantities of food and fodder but most of that could be acquired within the occupied and adjacent provinces.  Battles were fairly infrequent affairs and other than sulfer, the materials for black powder were common throughout Europe.  Indeed it is difficult to see what supply requirements (as opposed to manpower and money) that the French Army in say, Poland, could only get from France itself.  Anecdotally, the Grand Army learned to eat Russian dishes in 1812 which implies that much of the food was of local origin.  The huge quantites of camp followers provided labour and skills and in the English army of the period (and perhaps others?), gunner's wives were paid to sew cartridges for the artillery in between battles.

Just thinking out loud here but I suspect that armies of the period were less dependant on a unbroken line of depots from home than they were to become later.  The idea of depot costs increasing with distance has merit but my (to date limited) experiance with foriegn entanglements in CoG-EE has not yet triggered to many "That's just Wrong" moments.

Best Regards.