I have to break shortly for lunch. I'll pick up the conversation as soon as I return.

Harli... seeing as one of my issues hogged most of the limelight so far, do you want to raise one of yours?

See you shortly,

mark only units that aren't involved with another action could support a unit...it is impossible with ticks for one unit to finish it's actions before another unit does

The division of labor sounds perfect to me... And once we got something firm we can discuss it... Besides I need to get going... Anywy I shall work out the Mil model some more and hopefully have a V.next.0 ready sometime this week.

on your second point about if another unit enters the square and it joins the first TF

seeya soon mark

ok here is an example of support

2 opposing TFs are moving into the same square

there is another TF 2 squares away from the TF on its side

all TFs take 3 ticks to move and a battle will take 4 ticks

here's how it's set up

1st TF moving this way ----->
empty space #1
2nd TF moving this way ----->
empty space #2
enemy 3rd TF moving this way <-----

on the first tick the 2nd TF and the 3rd TF will move into empty space #2

the 1st TF will move into empty space #1

for the next 2 ticks all of the units can do nothing, they are considered moving

on the fourth tick a battle begins between the 2nd and 3rd TF for the next 3 ticks they can do nothing (except break, die, surrender, or retreat but for simplicity sake they only fight in this example)

ok we could make battles just take one tick, and have factors like commitment/agression level have when a unit tries to retreat out of the hex, however a tick is the smallest amount of time and is indivisable, all actions should take at least one tick if not more

when u say multiple battles per tick do u mean that

A) more than one TF should be fighting during that tick

or do you mean that

B) 10 little battles should be fought in a tick?

How about we think of a tick is a few days? I don't really think that you very frequently have more than one battle in a week. There is inevitably a reorganization. Gettysburg itself took two or three days. This means in a few ticks with combat movement rates, you can move one square.

I think we just need to take one scale and stick with it. Now as I said above, the military scale is simply not going to match the economic scale, otherwise we will have way too many turns.

Korn469:

The I think your example has the general idea about what I think to. My only quibbles are that the first two TF's shouldn't actually move into the square until the end of the third tick. I completely agree that support can't be provided until the TF gets there! On this scale I don't know whether a battle should take two ticks or four, that's my only other reservation about your model. 60 miles away seems a bit far to reach it in time. I would say clearly would be there by the start of any second battle that occurred.

If you're interested in proposing a strategic orders system to go along with the tick example, I think they go hand-in-hand and the presentation would be a lot smoother with both presented at the same time... whatcha think?

mark

ok how about this

an action like movement or whatever happens after the appropriate amount of ticks goes by...

so with movement the TF moves on the thurd tick if it takes three ticks for a unit to move

and combat is just 1 tick long, but th amount of ticks a unit spends consecutively spends engaed in battle depends on it's commitment level and whatever

ok i agree with that and think that it is the better system

One "military turn" is divied into X tics. Each unit can move fight etc.

My point. SCALE
This military turn is going to be at leas something like 1 year, probably longer, therefore each tic represents at least a few months of time. Therefore, I do not see any battle regardless of anything else commitment etc. NOTHING (battlewise anyway) taking more than one tic. In fact in the space of one tic you could easily have several battles in the same square, due to the scale of battles being pretty short affairs. In the civil war forces manouvered for weeks or months, before something like a 1 or two day battle.

Correct me if I'm wrong on the tic thing, I'm not sure I still get it.

1. for a full battle to take place units have to be in the same square...supporting actions could happen but to fully engage in battle the TFs must be in the same square

2. to reinforce a TF you have to have the reinforcements move into the square the battle is taking place in, and this will cost movement (take ticks) even if they are in the adjacent square

3. there will be 10 ticks per turn (there may be 2 reserved ticks that units don't use except under special circumstances to represent a valiant action)

4. for a unit to support another in combat it must be in an adjacent square and not be involved in anyother actions

5. combat between TFs takes one tick

6. an action does not occur until the last tick (instead of an action occuring on the first tick)

7. the smallest unit of time is one tick and it can't be divided into smaller units, and each action should cost at least one tick

8. actions can be multi-turn actions...if an action takes 5 ticks and it starts on the 8th tick of one turn, it would spill over into the next turn until the action is complete

9. when a unit is involved in one action it cannot participate in another action (of course there maybe a few exceptions)

ok are we all agreed on that? if not please state why

i have to go for now and won't be back until later tonight

I think the scales need to be different between economic and military actions. If you can just focus on the military, and take a turn to equal one month approximately, and a tick to equal three days approximately. If you stick to this scale for everything military, all the game effects should come out in a roughly sensible way. The only disconnect is between the economic timescale and the military timescale, which I am only just have to fudge. By fudge I mean picks something that results in decent game play.

This requires different timescales for military and economic turns. But so long as all the military stuff works to the same timescale, everything will, out approximately correct. By approximately correct, I mean the same civs will win the same wars they will lead if we fought out the whole game on a realistic timescale. It's just that military things will happen significantly more slowly than they otherwise would. But as we agreed above (I thought), we can just not say what exactly a turn is, and leave it at that.

If you stick to your idea that one tick equals a month, then we will have the ridiculous result that reserves 60 miles away can never help friendly forces as they go through battle after battle after battle! For the system to work, there Has to be one disconnect. I think the place to disconnect with reality is to keep the military timescale of everything the same, and just have it not match correctly the economic and diplomatic timescale.

It might also be useful for you to read over the following posts in which I discussed my take on this issue. M2 near the bottom; M3, virtually the entire thing; M 4 Middle two paragraphs.

Korn469: those sound basically Ok with me. On 4 I think if a battle in square A is over by tick 2 (FE) those TFs should be able to attempt to support adjacent square B later (say getting there by tick 6)even though they were technically in an action this turn.

All: