[kasnavada]

I thought about this idea when I though of playing on a 400 / 2000 map... and thought about "real life" supply lanes, something completely missing from dominions, which I've found myself reproducing with commanders moving back and forth to reinforce my main(s) armies and commanders with a bag of vine just to bring supplies.

What I would like to see, to reduce micromanagement is another set of new instructions for commanders, based on real life supply lanes.

Gather army : order a commander to gather friendly troops from neighbouring lands.

Transfer army : order a commander to move a number of units from where he is to a point B.

Transfer supplies : same as above, but transfers supplies to an army, so they won't starve.

Transfer item : same as above.

What I can see with this idea, is your capitol-only unit and other units moving automatically, turn after turn, toward your frontiers, to join armies. I see failed assaults, armies routing and regrouping. I see real supply lanes from places to place that could be raided with scouts, stealthy of flying troops. And much less micromanagement.

What I think would be best is that you could choose what units to move (cavalry, infantry, archers). The best way I found to do that would be to implement a "transferable" category in the army screen (that would work just like the garnisonned category does now), and making a little change to the army creation screens that let you create units in the "transferable" or the "garnison" category.

The maximum number of units transfered would be dependant on 3 main factors : movement point of the commander, movement of troops, terrain, leadership... I've no idea what would make it balanced, my guess would be :
Units moved = (leadership / 4) * (movement / (distance of transfer)* terrain cost)

I feel that the maximum range for this action should be 3 or 4.

I would add a special case for astral magic, they should be allowed to transfer 1 man size unit / astral level to wherever they like (since teleportation is an astral spell, it would be logical on a RP sense), but maybe that feature should require research to be effective, for balance reasons.

Finally, scouts should, to balance that idea, have a small chance to find supply lanes, and some units should have the opportunity to raid them, in order to make the game more strategic.

I think this idea solves the problem of pathfinding for players, while offering another dimension to army-management in the game. I'm waiting for your replies should anything be explained or if you find a better way to use this idea, or even if you find it's a bad one.