Starving is quite harsh. Do you think it is OK?
 

I know that many people are under the impression that units do not start
getting diseased until the second month of low supplies. This is simply
no true. It had happened to me before, but I had never been 100% sure.

This time I am. In my last game, I have been fighting a player with a deadly
dominion who started completely ruining his provinces once he realized he could
not stop me. I never had an army starve more than one turn, but I was getting
tons of diseased troops. But on the last turn, I had a reinforcing army, fresh
from being recruited, reconquer a province that fell to a barbarian horde. I
have the previous turn, so I am sure that none of my troops were diseased. The
barbarians were shot to pieces before they made it to my ranks. The army started
from a recruiting province, where troops stay for a while - I doubt there is a
disease site there. The reconquered province has four sites, and none of them is
disease generating.

Still, the army had only 95 out of 156 supplies. Out of 136 troops and 5
leaders, 101 were hungry, and 5 got a disease. It is not the end of the world,
but the community knowledge says that troops do not get diseases the first month,
and the number of starving troops is somehow related to number of lacking
supplies. This does not seem to be the case to me.

Is this working as intended? Personally, I do not like it. I abandoned a game
when 75% of a 600 strong army got diseased because it lacked about 20 units of
supplies. I was fighting LA Ermor, I got a bloody 'lucky' event from his lucky
domain, ended up with 0 out of the 20 supplies required, and bang, game over.
At the time, I let myself be convinced that I had left my army rest on top of a
disease site. Now I believe that it was a result of starving for one turn in a
strong death dominion.

So, do you guys think that troopers should get diseases the first month? From a
realism point of view, it's fine. But I think it is really annoying, because
there is no way to check supply before attacking, and unless your army carries
enough wine to have heavily negative supply requirements, you always risk losing
troops to disease and starvation.

Re: Starving is quite harsh. Do you think it is OK?
 

What I would like is for scouts to be able to report on the supplies avaible in a province, before an army gets there.

Re: Starving is quite harsh. Do you think it is OK?
 

I have also seen units get diseased after starving for a single month. Never been quite sure though if it was due do extreme starvation or due to some undiscovered disease spreading site. Perhaps death scales increase the severity of extreme starvation?

While it would complicate things a bit, I do think that starvation should be relative. If a squad with a supply requirement of 20 enters a prov with only 5 supplies, they are operating on 25% rations and should be considered to be in a state of extreme starvation; diseases should be rampant in short order. Conversely, if a squad with a supply requirement of 1000 enters a prov with 980 supplies, they are operating on 98% rations. They may be considered hungry, but hardly starved to the point that diseases would start afflicting large numbers of units.

Severity of starvation
 

I would agree with Saint Dude about starvation being relative. Care must be
taken to use the actual food requirements, as opposed to the displayed ones.
For exactly, if an army needs N supplies, has an effective requirement of E after
applying mage bonuses and items, and the province has A supplies available, the
severity of the starvation should be (E-A)/N as opposed to (E-A)/E

Re: Severity of starvation
 

I wondered about this. Good news for LA Ermor.

Re: Severity of starvation
 

I think starvation is fine as it. There are advantages to playing a nature race. And there are disadvantages to bring large armies into foreign lands without nature items to feed them.

Sometimes you have no choice. But ideally an invading army consists of some of you r better human troops, with a mixture of mechanical men, undead, trolls etc that need not eat.

Obviously this may slow down your advance to assemble such an army. But that is a tactical decision. Do you march in quickly and take starvation losses-or move in at a slower pace, but well prepared and not having starvation as an issue?

These issues arise in other contexts. In the Big Game, do I hire tons of tough independents for a short term gain(before disease make them useless), or do i move slower and use only cold blooded troops/undead etc that are immune to MA Ctis' deadly dominion?

Re: Severity of starvation
 

Vicious and apparently not relative starvation being justified by being a handicap on national troops? Yeah because they need more handicaps.

Re: Severity of starvation
 

How does the game determine the amount of starvation?

It seems to me the most sensible way would be to randomly allocate the food shortages. So if you have 300 size-2 troops (eats 600) in a province with 500 supply, the 100 points of food deficit should be randomly allocated... anyone who gets one will show "starving"...

Mmmm, that might explain the high disease rates. 300 troops in a 300 supply province will all be on 1/2 rations -- and they'll all be diseased in a turn. Ouch!

Re: Severity of starvation
 

The worst part of starvation is the AI is unaware troops need food supplies. This results in the AI opponents sending hundreds of troops across small wasteland provinces causing serious starvation and disease for what normally would have been a good army.

Ideally the AI opponents should be immune to starving since human opponents have so many other game advantages.
Watching the AI blindly starve it's own armies is as painful as watching an american football team not protect its own quarterback.

Re: Severity of starvation
 

Size two units consume only 1 supply unit, not two.


I'm not in favour of arbitrary bonuses to AIs, inluding design points, supply immunities, gem bonuses, or starting units. (Some implemented, others suggested elsewhere). I prefer AI programming improvements (Yes, I know that is unlikely, and that Dom has decent AI already, and that there is an issue with complexity and P=NP?).

Re: Severity of starvation
 

It seems like only the troops over the supply level in a province get the starving debuff, I've never seen an entire army starving. If this is in fact the way it works I think its fine, though I agree that scouts should be able to report on the supply in a province.

Re: Severity of starvation
 

I find the severity of starvation fine, but the standard supplies variable at 100 is too low IMO. Thankfully that can be changed at game start. Starvation makes micromanagement worse for the fans of big armies and yet another reason to favor SCs and undead in the long run. Increasing the supplies variable before the game starts lets you focus on more war strategy and less like playing restaurant.

IIRC, you already have that with "Normal AI". Everyone wants AI programming improvements which is why when those are made it is applied to all difficulty levels, but that usually takes much much longer than giving x bonus/penalty. Even big companies with good funding, like Civ series, make other difficulty levels with a bonus/penalty to offer better challenge. However, it shouldn't be too hard to prevent the Dom3 AI from casting spells that hurt it (like AI Arcos casting Utterdark).

I for one am glad most games have more than just a "Normal AI" level. Nevertheless, in the long run SPers will be always be reminded if you want a smarter opponent play MP.

Re: Severity of starvation
 

Of course. I usually play games on impossible, and actually do some of the AI-boosting stuff suggested on the forums. I'm merely suggesting that in an ideal world, the AI would be subjected to the same mechanics as everyone else.

As regards to starvation, is there any way, other than nature magic and fay boars, to reduce supply costs?

Re: Severity of starvation
 

Unfortunately configuring the AI programming to be aware and adjust its strategy in regards to provinces with low supply would be a major programming project.
Since the AI are unaware of supply/starvation variables the AI opponents shouldn't suffer the penalties of starvation and its disease side effect. This programming change would be much easier, but unlikely to be seen within a patch.

locate magic sites such as farm of plenty and forge items such as the bag of wine. The scales of your nation can also effect supplies.

Re: Starving is quite harsh. Do you think it is O
 

You can also build forts to generate supplies.

Starvation effects are relative, but also randomized.

I would like options to change the way disease works for some games, either only happening to units who were starving the turn before, or having chances for people to recover naturally if left to rest in supply. And of course ideally, the AI would take some care to avoid starving its armies.