Ancient Wars, SEIV style

[Singollo]

I think the engines would be represented as horses, wagons or whatever transportation you're using.

I dunno...I'm probably being needlessly nitpicky here, but this just doesn't capture the idea well. If adding engines is like adding, say, wagons, then the only way that this would speed the army is if all of the army rode in these wagons, or on the horses, which is obviously unrealistic and kind of silly. Just throwing some wagons into the army doesn't speed up poor Joe Legionnaire, who still has to walk and determines the speed of the entire army. Obviously, there could be specialized armies consisting only of cavalry and the like, in which adding better engines could be like adding higher-quality horses, but these would be the exception.

I guess the engines = wagons/horses would work for terrain (non-combat) movement, in a limited way. If you have 1000 soldiers and 333 wagons, then a third of the soldiers could be cycled in and out of the wagons, resting while the army moved, in order to retain overall stamina and freshness. Even this is of limited effectiveness, though, and it's still pretty unrealistic, historically speaking. Regardless, combat speed would have to be handled separately, using this concept.

I like the idea of each component having its own movement rate much better. That solves things right there. I would do away with engines altogether, and give each component a movement speed, with the lowest speed determing the overall speed of the army.

[Suicide Junkie]

Well I was thinking of something the equivalent of a train. Shove the army in, and row the boat.

But the bonus movement for every troop would work very well to make your army go at the speed of the slowest men.

You even get to go faster if the slow guys are killed!

[geoschmo]

Actually I think you guys have worked it out nicely. You give the army unit(ship) a base movement of 1. Then each sub unit(component) gets a move bonus. The movement of the army unit is then equal to 1+the loswest surviving units bonus.

Cavalry would have a higher bonus of course. And if you have only cavalry units in the army unit then that army unit could move faster than anybody else on the battle field. So you wouldn't put cavalry units in with foot soldiers. You could, but you wouldn't cause they could only move as fast as the slowest guy.

In fast most army units would be stritcly one type of component and a commander(bridge). The Exception might be you might want some infantry mixed in with your archers as protection from roaming cavalry. That would lessen the offensive impact of the archer company, but it would increase there posibility of survival. Even if they are damaged you want your your companies to survive cause that's how they accquire experience.

Geoschmo

[geoschmo]

And as you get more advanced you could field larger army units. This would be done by adding lieutenants(life support) along with the commander(bridge).

Geoschmo

[Singollo]

How about these for "racial techs":

--Religious (Religious)
--Gemworking (Crystalline)
--Sanitation (Organic)
--Construction/transportation (Temporal)
--Shamanism (Psychic)

These would obviously have far different effects than their counterparts, and they need not be modeled after the counterparts at all. (I do so only because it's easy, and for reference purposes.) This would do well to account for the various cultures that might be around in a Roman Empire type game. The Romans would be religious, obviously, while the various Germanic tribes might have Shamanism. (Perhaps "Druidic" for Pictish/Celtic cultures?) The Romans would also have Construction/Transportation, while Middle-eastern cultures would have mercantile technologies such as Gemworking. Indic civilizations, renowned for their sanitation and mathematical city plans, would have Sanitation, which would bestow population and happiness modifiers for various buildings (facilities).

There are many other ways to go with this, that need not have any parallel to the SE4 tech fields. Any ideas?

[geoschmo]

Well my view of this mod would be it would have no racial traits at all, but since I am not doing the mod anyway feel free to suggest it.

I think those things you mentioned would be neat to have as tech areas. General empire advancment stuff that would allow beter cities, and thus better production and reproduction. But since they are all one race, humans, it wouldn't be something someone else couldn't also develop themselves given the time and research.

Geoschmo

[geoschmo]

Originally posted by Suicide Junkie:
Well I was thinking of something the equivalent of a train. Shove the army in, and row the boat.

I am coming back to this cause doesn't there need to be some way to increase the speed of an army unit in the strategic map, getting to the battle, that doesn't affect his movement on the combat map, during the battle.

Is there a way to do this?

And can you have negative movement bonuses? If all Army units have a base movement of 3, call that the speed of a guy walking in formation, can we then have armored troops move at a speed of 1, since they have to carry more they can't move as fast right? And could you include a "wagon train" as a component that would give more movement (standard, not bonus this time) on the strategic map without giving more movement in combat?

Geoschmo