For reference, the beginning of the immediate predecessor, the Military III discussion, is here.

A brief status report is in order, and seeing as there's no one in charge of the military model design at the moment, I can't stick anyone else with doing it...

The current model:

For an overview of what has gone before you should look at the Military Page at the Clash web site. For a brief idea of what we're doing, look at the introduction there. After that, the next important thing you should check out is the battle and units model worked out by Harli and Krenske. Here is a link to the Scouting Model of their design. Don't follow the links in it, more current links to the other modules (Manuver, Assault, and Units) are found in the Updated Model. Please go down to Krenske's post of February 2nd for brief discussion of the revised model.

Although we have a lot of the bare bones of the model, there is an Enormous amount of specification, and refinement, to be done. If you are a Military Guru and would like to apply for the position, please let me know in this thread, or e-mail me. We are also interested in getting whatever comments people have at any level on the basic models, or things that were set in the other discussions. But the most important part is that we will soon have code to test further parts of the model, which leads to the...

Coding Status:

Laurent D. is busy getting the new military code off the ground. I will leave it to him to update the status at a future date.

The problem happens when running the economy at an individual map square level like I'm doing now. If the govt order is "Build Legions everywhere using 35% of tax revenues" it is simple to do just that. But you won't get very satisfactory results, because squares with small economic capabilities will take Forever to build one legion.

Solution #1:

You could just build all the legions in cities, with their presumably much larger economies, and just take cash taxes from the little places. Over time this economic stimulus will grow the city economies even larger and stronger. This works fine where a few squares in a province are predominant economically. It doesn't work when the economic oomph is spread evenly.

Solution #2

I have a crude solution that I'm not quite happy with. I'll present it, and then we can see if anyone else has a better idea. You can have all the squares work on legions, but not require each square to build a whole legion itself. FE every time a square gets to, say, 10% of the size of a legion it marches off to the provincial capital to be unified with other bits into a whole 'standard' legion. Optionally these 'stub' units could just teleport there 'cause they'd be really annoying on the map IMO.

I think Richard's idea is clearly better than what I had. I am inclined to just accept his idea for the time being since its farily easy to implement, and yet fits with everything.

I don't really understand your piece LGJ. If you use solution 1 there Must be areas with high economic activity where you build the units. Otherwise it will take forever to build in the middle of nowhere. The resources won't get there by magic... If there are no artisans there, all the raw materials in the world won't do any good, etc. When I get Merchants working, your idea will be possible, but Very expensive, since you need to bring everything, including workers if not there already, to your military outpost. IMO its much better to build the units where the production capacity is, and then ship them off to the fortress or whatever.

All:

I am back from the wilds of Africa, Egypt and India, I now have a much better understanding of just what civilisation is. (No it is not the actual buildings but the underlying ideas, education and communication ability. Anyone can take over a civilised infrastructure but give it a generation or 2 and not much is left.)

I have been able to aply some thought to the 40% complete combat model we had in place and have decided to give it some strategic beatings until it reaches 45% or maybe more. It is apparent that the existing version is veryflexible but would also be very difficult to code an AI for.

I am attempting to simplify the model by removing some of the phase repetition (in the scouting and maneuver phases) replacing it with a single step. A victory in the scouting phase will modify the maneuver phase and a victory in the maneuver phase will modify the mass combat\assault phase.

Hopefully the result will be a faster resolution following a systematic approach not requiring a lot of AI intervention in the actual resolution of each battle.

Your ideas / observations sound good to me. Looking forward to more .

Although what you say about troop densities sounds right, modern battles will be much more complicated, because a single square won't contain the battle. (As you well know.) So there'll be interaction between lots of battles going on in individual squares. That's going to be more of a challenge for the AI than even the complexity of the current single-square battle model! But it sounds like your simplifications to the model won't really cost much in terms of the flavor of the system anyway. You might want to think in the background about how the model handles big modern battles that roll from square to square... is there always a full scouting phase when an existing battle just grows with addition of new troops etc.?

One comment about armies only requiring money for supply... its true and yet it isn't. At the risk of telling you something you already know, here's a bit from the mil model intro.

quote: The necessity to supply military units with provisions and ammunition plays a very large part in their capabilities. I think we can actually handle supply in Clash without significantly hassling the player. The basic idea is to use dedicated merchants (already need to be coded anyway) to supply the troops. All the player need do is say how much money they're willing to spend to supply x front. The merchant/supply manager does the rest. You would build essentially a special class of merchant that would try to purchase goods from the surrounding area (or home, if transportation is good enough). This supply unit would travel with large armies and provide feedback to the army commander about whether (and at what price) it would be able to supply the army if it went to spot X. Units that were not fully supplied would fight at reduced effectiveness, or have the need to forrage for supplies, reducing movement. Mongol Horsemen could probably forrage fairly effectively, modern armored divisions hardly at all. Using a merchant that goes out and buys supplies for you has the advantage that the player doesn't have to orchestrate the supply itself, but only decide if the price of supply is worth it. A bonus of this supply system is that supply lines can be attacked. This allows proper modeling of a modern envelopment battle, one of the coolest martial activities known to man ;-). In addition the supply system would give a lot of correct flavor in terms of Where large armies could go historically, with little loss in smoothness of gameplay.

So it does only require money for supply, but the money needed won't be the same, even for a given army. It depends on where the army Is. And some places will be prohibitively expensive. Also if there are no paths for the supply line to follow the best merchant quartermaster in the world won't do you any good .

Here is my take on your questions. Hopefully Krenske will get his comments in soon too.

Should the fight be allowed to end without a victor (both armies still alive, no one fled yet, ready to fight for the next turn)?

Yes, I think this is essential in a final model.

To put it another way, how many armies are allowed to die before you break off or stop fighting in order to let reinforcements come in?

I think periodically the odds should be re-assessed and the general/AI should make the decision based on available knowledge. I did this in demo 4 and it seemed to work sensibly.

Any ideas of how to use deployment? Does right wing, left wing, center front, rearguard and center/HQ make sense?

For deployment orders, does 'left wing' or 'right wing', or anything so specifically tactical, really work on this strategic scale?

Should orders given represent more of a 'strategic' scale than actual location of individual units? More like:

• 'Refuse battle'
  
• 'Attack ignoring losses'
  
• 'Attack until x% losses received'
  
• 'Defend at all costs'
  
• 'Fighting withdrawl'
  
• 'Recon in force'?
  

In other words, don't give the Task Force 'deployment orders', but give them 'mission orders' on how to react to an enemy presence?

I think both types of orders have a place in the game. At least left flank will have meaning if the battle model isn't greatly simplified from what it is now. (Though for front-level modern battles such things don't mean as much.)

But I think since Krenske is just working over the battle model that its much more practical to work on the more generic type of orders first. We could go a long way just with the more strategic sorts of orders and a very simple battle model like my old demo 4 one.

Agincourt's deployment worked *only* because of the specific terrain and weather. On a flat, open plain with no rain, the tactical choice that Henry made would have been suicide. I just don't see playing this game on that level of detail.

Terrain is taken into account as a modifier to the defence values and as a limiter on opening engagement ranges. The effects of terrain can be reduced/enhanced through scouting and successful maneuvering. The more mobile force, with better scouts and a good general will normally make much better use of terrain.

Please note that with many weapons unit dispersal is minimal and thus they have a very low maximum benefit from terrain. In the days of legions and phalanx's both sides strove to maintain dense formations and as such they have almost no benefit from terrain due to the commanders of each side looking for suitable battle terrain. In fact trying to fight with low dispersal in high terrain values will incurr major penalties to firepower due to disruption of formations.

It occurs to me though that maybe we should divert some effort at this point to specing out some units at least approaching the final stats we're going for. The reason is that building of units ties into econ and population (and maybe even ethnic group) areas. So I think it would be beneficial to at least sketch out this area in more detail so we find any inconsistencies quicker. We certainly should be able to build units / TFs in the demos fairly soon.

I have started a new combat model draft, it is available at http://www.usq.edu.au/users/krenske/game/g/combat.htm .

I will gladly update the pages with any alterations desired and decided upon.

As to the unit based discussion, I am all in favour. Unfortunately I will have be away for 3 days just now but I will be back.

A couple of notes though regarding the model as it currently stands. Each strength point of the unit (read as elements) equates to approximately 500 men. The elements would make a suitable unit building block for a square. Just about any square would be able to free up 500 men to form a element.

Thanks for putting the new model up, although I could have used to guide to what was old and what was new, since a lot of things looked really familiar . I wrote down some comments to pass on to you, but I left them at work... oops. The one thing I remember from the list is that you have a lot of things like training levels and experience levels that you imply are integers. I really want to stay away from things that change in big jumps. If you just meant that they are reported to the player as "green", "seasoned", "veteran" etc. I got no problem with that. But behind the scenes a unit that is most of the way from seasoned to veteran should fight almost like a veteran, so I think floating point values are the way to go for these things.

Just remembered another thing... in the units writeup it says that elements are 100 men, I take it that 500 is the new definition? That sounds better to me anyway... I look forward to getting you into the unit build discussions.

Laurent:

Yes, I think we should definitely start with ancient units. However, since the technology system really isn't there I'm not sure we gain much by thinking about tech requirements. I think will scratch that I think we will be there in maybe a month or so... The way I would go about development now is for us to pick two or three kinds of units we think would be interesting. (Perhaps the ones we already have graphics for would be best) We could also define some classes of Weapons, and figure out how to build either elements or whole units as defined by Krenske. Not that we should have every value that in his table yet, just a few would probably be sufficient. At that point we could then build units, train them, and also fight very simplified battles just using the units hand-to-hand range and firepower. Having different weapons types could be interesting, especially if you do a "rise of the Hittites" scenario where the player is the only one that has iron weapons. I guess iron weapons would have something like twice the "firepower" of the bronze equivalent.

Paul, I currently have TaskForce/Unit subdivision in the code. It seems you also have Unit/Element. I think you unit is a small task force. Currently, TFs are made of Aries which can be either TFs or Units. I'd tend to map my (code) Unit to your Element and the (code)TaskForce to both your Unit and TaskForce. I may be missing something, though. What do you think? Note a side effect of TFs being made of TFs is that you can break down whatever level of detail you'd like to (but I don't think any player would do that).

There are sevral infos about what a unit description should have in the model, but it is very elaborate given the current state of military code.
In order to define our units, we should know what will define them: I write it as a pseudo-xml format because it could be put in text files somewhere and I saw code which looked like paring xml so here it goes:
(I call unit types "archetypes", actual units referring to their archetype - the f's at the end of figures are for 'float', never mind if you do not program)
The phalanx figures ARE SILLY. I just want to show what data we could use (probably I won't code support for much of what I write here within the next weeks but well...)
I put with a ? those that I haven't begun coding at all.

Archetype name = "Phalanx"
Attack value = "1.0f"/
Defense value = "1.0f"/
DistanceAttack value = "0.0f"/
Move value = "2.5f"/
AllowedOrders value ="Attack,Garrison,Fortify"/
!-- note Fortify mayn't be allowed for an elephant unit special abilities like: Spying, Scouting, Skirmishing, can go here --/
RequiredTech name = "BronzeWorking" level = "0.5f"/
!-- power increases when bronzeworking increases beyond that point. --/
?Morale value = "1.0f"/
?Type name = "Man-based"/
?Mobility value = "1.0f"/
?ProductionCost value = "1.0f"/
?Armor value = "0.0f"/
?UpkeepCost value = "1.0f"/
?UseableWeapons list = "clubs,bronze weapons"/
/Archetype

On building units... as far as I know in the OO design F. Smith had thought we should have units (perhaps elements in this case) assembled from Weapons and manpower with Training. Let's leave the manpower aside for now, since we will just arbitrarily grab a chunk of men from the populace until the population model gets further along. The cost to build the unit is simply then the cost for the weapons plus the cost for minimal training. I've already talked about that a little bit in the infrastructure thread, so I will just quote it here. Note that when I give the cost for unit I am lumping together the cost of weapons (pretty much solely manufactured goods abbreviated by P for production) and training which is almost purely services (S). I refer to the cost below in triples of the fundamental goods (F, P, S). If we want to have a system for specifying arbitrary units from pieces then we probably need to add a doctrine like "shock" for guys that charge at you and try to hack you to bits .

quote: Originally posted by Mark_Everson on 01-22-2001 07:30 PM I am now coding building of military units. The approach I'm taking is that when there are orders to build a military unit a temporary infra class is created to build that unit. The cost of that infra class will be the raw materials (food, manufactured goods, and services) amounts needed to complete the unit. So ancient warriors with clubs might cost (0, 3, 2) in the same order as above. The services need is mostly initial training. Additionally the people would also be needed. A legion might cost (0, 70, 50), and a modern armored division (0, 90,000, 120,000). When the cost is reached the temp infra class disappears, and out pops a shiny new unit.

Will an 'element' be 'supported' by the province that creates it, every turn?

Here's the thing that I forgot that troubled me in the unit/element model. The description ascribes defence to dispersion and armor. For close-combat during much of the ancient period, dispersion is of no benefit. I think mixing dispersion with shields/armor is a bit weird. Did I misunderstand, can you comment?

F_Smith:

"Will an 'element' be 'supported' by the province that creates it, every turn?"

Generally not. Read the paragraph on supply in the intro to the mil model on the web page. (you need to scroll down a bit on the mil page to see it)

"Like the game Diplomacy, since the time frame we're dealing with doesn't really fit with raising a specific group of soldiers (you'd have to re-raise the legion every turn), can an element be tied to the province that produces it, and that province (or mapsquare, I don't really know the specifics) provide replacements?"

Mark
First up, Indeed we have no reason to use integers, I have only done so to make the math examples easy. I would suggest a 5 step breakdown for reporting or possibly a cute % bar on a right click info screen etc. Green, experienced, seasoned, veteran and hardened or any other descriptives that are desired. Similarily with training we could range from raw, trained, competant, expert and elite etc.

As to element size I thought we were always going to use ~500 with each hit equivalent to 100 men. A quick overview is as follows. A element is given a basic firepower dependant on it's primary weapon, Other weapons can be attached as additions or replacements. For example a Swedish musketeer battalion has a raw firepower of 120 in contact and 80 at short range. Their king decides that he would like the battalions too now include some light artillery (battalion guns) to assist with ranged fire. The king has 2 choices either - add the guns, leaving the base firepower untouched, adding an additional hit and also the manpower cost. - Or include the guns with the battalion not growing in size but losing 1/5th of its base firepower.

I can see the elements as being capped in the number of attachments allowed to probably 3. Allowing for a heavy weapons attachment, a Anti tank attachment and even an Anti aircraft attachment in a modern battalion. The specialties are definetly a whole element training method and most specialties would also not have many attachments. (Very few engineering battalions with attached artillery as standard.)

Laurent
The unit is what we order around the element is the definable subparts of that unit. A TF can include many units. The reason for the definable elements at this stage is to allow for the player to make their own unit structures, not just accept some raw unit definitions.
For example Your legion may contain 10 legionary elements and cost X amount of production. My legion may have 8 legionary elements a cav atachment and a engineer attachment and cost Y (probably about 20% more). Your legion and mine would be nearly equal in some situations but mine has additional scouting and engineering support and will probably beat yours if I get to build some field fortifications or need to cross a river or need to build some siege equipment vs a walled city etc. Both legions have a similar number of men but one is structured to be more flexible and more expensive.

The definition of unit structure I would like to see left up to the player so that they can do some basic experimentation. In most situations players will probably follow a fairly historical approach but If we were to map the availability of resources etc the n maybe a continent has no horses (eg america) and so the civilisations there may make up for the lack of horsecavalry in their units by including more Skirmishing infantry. (I am unsure if we plan on mapping the availability of resources at this level, but I think it would be a good thing.)

The reason I do not support a TF is made up of a mass of elements approach is that it adds too much to the players management. The control of the elements within each unit is basically a administrative function and the player can only alter the structures to a limited and possibly costly degree. Example, At the start of WW1 England had a 2 brigade, 2 regiment, 3 battalion structure too its infantry divisons(12 battalions). In late 1915 they decided to remodel the whole army in a triangular 9 battalion structure. This increased the number of divisions and each division had a higher proportion of support equipment backing a reduced manpower compliment. The divisions could still hold the same frontage due to the support but did lose some of their assault ability. Mind you the 1914-15 divisions rarely survived in good enough order to make their additional assault power count.

F. Smith
Support methods could change dependant on government types and administrative methods. Feudal governments would probably raise a unit from a region and the region would support it. Later on republics with improved centralisation had units raised regionally but supported nationally (Napoleon-WW1 era). Finally we have nations raise units and support them (WW2 on). I am unsure how this should be modelled at present. I am certain though that we will not modell element support but instead model unit support. The element is just a building block, probably the smallest distinct buildable part of a unit but it is not actually a unit.

Mark again -
Dispersion/defence, I do agree to some extent but I currently have Assault Firepower existing as a seperate value that I expect to be effected by the dispersion of the element. We will also have a very restricted range of dispersal values usable by the archaic forces as the dispersal values are limited by communications and organisational tech advances. So the values we will be playing with will be very low. Between a legion and a Phalanx formation we will have a trade off between higher assault power for the phalanx and the slightly higher defence and mobility of the legion. They effectively give a wash in engagements between similar tech forces.

As well the defence value will probably not be used (or will be limited) in any assault where the one side is definetely holding a static position.(defending fortifications etc) A unit can only use its defence if it can still maneuver and remain dispersed. Mind you the static force could then get different benefits.

A phalanx has a very large assault value with a low defence due to concentration of manpower. A US Civil War Regiment would be dispersed over 4 times the frontage but would have a massive medium and short range firepower advantage. If the phalanx was able to actually close to assault, the CW troops would probably lose as they will have a lower ( but certainly not insignificant ) assault value. The problem is that unless the CW troops stand and take it like a good pincushion they will fall back and use their dispersal defence, allowing only part of themselves to be engaged at each round of assault combat.

I have not presented a formula for this decrease in assault power due to increase in dispersion yet but a direct correlation could potentially be used. This would certainly mirror the historical concerns that increased ranged firepower caused vs the need for shock (assault) power. If desired a player could have their Assault rifle armed troops attack in an assault column vs troops without such weapons to add to his assault value but heavan forbid the enemy deceitfully manage to purchase a machine gun or two from an ally.

As a set of examples I would roughly compare the following.
Phalanx - No ranged firepower, assault rating of 75, Defence of 1 (2 vs assault), armour of 2, mobility of 2.
Napoleonic Line infantry - Short ranged FP of 50, Assault rating of 30, Defence of 3, Armour of 1, mobility of 4.
British WW1 Infantry Battalion- Long range Fp of 25, Medium range Fp of 100, Short range FP of 225, Assault rating of 25 (decrease due to dispersion off set by improvement in weapons like grenades and pistols etc.), Defence of 8, armour 1, mobility of 6
Israeli modern Para battalion- Long range Fp of 40, Medium range Fp of 120, Short range FP of 350, Assault rating of 60 (decrease due to dispersion off set by increase in assault weapons like Assault rifles and Sub machine guns.), Defence of 12, Armour of 2, Mobility of 8.

The old high density phalanx has an advantage assuming they could start the battle at very short ranges. The problem for them is that this rarely happens with terrain being the main range restrictor on direct fire, and open terrain is also a major factor in the power of dense formations.

Some people would like to use a example like Isandlawhana as a example of archaic beating modern. It is still possible under the system especially when you consider that the odds are 10/15-1 and the british had some supply difficulties and were outscouted. If the Zulu assault went in at night as originally planned then the battle would have been much more one sided in the zulu's favour. The battle does though represent almost the last time a "modern" force has lost to essentially archaic forces at that scale. It is also doubtful if it could be considered a win for the zulu's as their losses have been stated at upto 4 times that of the british. 10000 to 2500. Yes they destroyed one of 3 invading british forces, but they lost a massive chunk of not only their military but also of their population in one afternoon.

Thanks, that is what I was wondering about. So military units will require manpower support every turn, in the final product.

Cool.

Manpower support would be a factor that could only really be taken into account as long as yearly turns are used with standing armies. Obviously in many Ancient societies there were no standing armies and instead they relied on militia call out to form armies. Later permanent forces were established and they would require a constant flow of personnel out of the domestic sector dependant on the rate of conscription/signup/blah blah. One thing to take into account though is that there will be a lesser flow of people out of the army (retirees) back into the domestic sector. The overall manpower cost would be in the order of 10% of inductees assuming a fairly hiegenic basing regieme (maybe units in peacetime not in barracks have a doubling of rate or something).

So that means temporary armies, early, then? Until a certain level of govt is reached, or some such?

Neat. Hadn't thought of that.

I like that very much. Since your warriors are also your manpower for agriculture/industry, you'd have to be very careful with them or you could win a Pyhhric victory.

A discussion on a proposal for how time scales work with respect to the military model can be found in the mil III thread at ../../Forum21/HTML/000227.html starting with the second post in the thread. But I don't think we have a good answer to the manpower question yet in terms of aging.

So suppose I have a Legion with 8 legionary elements a cav atachment and a engineer attachment as Krenske said above. The costs of these in (F, P, S) might be:

F, P, S
0, 7, 5 per legionary element (8 of them)
5,10, 7 per cav element (F being used for horses )
0,10, 5 per engineer element
-------
5,76,52 is the final cost per legion. You could build any fraction of this in any square (they will share the 'unit build' infrastructure class). However everywhere you build, you use the same ratio of ingredients, 5F:76P:52S. And when the total is reached, you've got your legion.

Now building by element does help add flavor, since you can 'build' the cavalry in a place where food is cheap FE, but its Certainly IMO not worth the trouble coding at this early stage. We can reappraise later whether its worth doing in the long run. My guess is not, though...