Climber

of course, I think we would want supply lines available to let armies go further.  Armies may have to setup camp to wait for supplies.  Supplies would work similar to the way they do between cities.    I think it would fit pretty well, and it would make it difficult to "steam-roll" the map as supplies would begin to grow thin.

It would make large scale tactics very interesting as well.   Since you could suffer great risk if your suppy lines were cut by a rear or flank attack. 

The only true PROBLEM I can see with this is that if a unit exhausts its supplies and can no longer move, it remains a sitting duck for the rest of the game. aka. Running out of distance = no longer active at all = dead, but still on the map.

landisaurus, I like steamroll only when the game has no challenge left, like when I have best tech, most troop etc.  Steamroll is necessary when all game is like kill all opponents.  However, if EWOM has the victory condition feature, steamrolling will not be needed.

GW Swicord, I don't want 'complex' supply line for this game, as usually it'll need a lot of micromanagement.  I'll want supply line implementation without much mico.

Scoutdog & Kitkun I agree with you once I've reviewed what I've written. Let's see if my following idea will work well?

Kitkun, yeah, a Kraken should has unlimited range in ocean & Walk 2 turns.  So Kraken will stay forever in ocean, and has limited ability to attack coastal area.  Natural habital is something I want, when there are more variety of races later.

Natural Habitat should also include "Road" (and/or Fort).  Most humanoid races will not need to worry about supply as long as there is road.  Most humanoid races should be able to build road/bridge.

Changes to OP
When X reaches 0, the unit will be "Exhausted".  Exhausted units will have Att, Def greatly reduced & movement speed halved.

These units can still keep pressing forward, but the risk of defeat is huge.  Generally speaking, exhausted units should retreat, but it is a choice up to the AI/Gamer.  The fun thing about Exhaustion is, since it is a status, it can be removed by spell/item/heroes' skill when appropriate.

A way to simulate supply line
At the end of each turn, all units' counter X equals to any unit that has a higher X, as long as it does not exceed its maximum possible value.

For example, assume unit B has X=2 now, while the maximum possible is 5.  A new reinforcement Unit A with X=8 joins the stack.  On the next turn, Unit A has X=7, unit B has X=5.  Unit A acts as ‘supply’ in this case, allowing all other units in the stack move further.

This means at most of the time, gamer need not worry about supplies.  They need to, only when the battlefield is so far away from their road/border/natural habitat /settlement.  They'll need to find that Unit A creatively if they want to prolong the war.  For opponent, trying to destroy unit A will be very profitable.

What you think about this change, do you like it?

Hm, I think it's necessary that certain units be "adventuring" units or are specially trained to move without being concerned with supplies.  After all, Heroes and their ancilliaries need to be able to trek across great distances on a grand adventure

I just have one gripe with this, but I think you're definitely headed along a good track! Basically, I don't like that in order to supply your army, you have to reinforce it with fresh troops. One possible concern is, what if you can't add any more forces to an army (as it seems like army size will be limited by hero/general leadership)? And it just doesn't feel right. Not to mention, what would be preventing me from sending in one single unit of Light Cavalry to refresh an army of 10,000? It'd be a little silly.

A better way of doing things might be to have specifically trainable Supply units, which function more or less exactly as you mentioned. Such a unit could have decent movement and a very high exhaustion meter. These supply units could cost mostly food, thus representing the fact that you have to actually produce enough food for a marching army to eat. Supply units could be capable of resupplying Y 'exhaustion units', which would be divided amongst all the troops in an army; you could even specify how large the Supply unit will be by spending more food on it.

I see a couple advantages to something like this: it's more intuitive, it achieves the aim of making it more difficult to field large forces away from home, but it maintains the simplicity of your method. One downside to it is that, unlike your example, it requires production of additional units instead of utilizing those you already have - but I suspect that people would field specific groups of fast units with high exhaustion counters for the specific purpose of resupply under your method anyways.

I don't like that - it makes it too much a game of luck. I'd rather implementing something sure, like a recently captured settlement will only recharge 20% of a unit's maximum exhaustion meter per turn (or maybe more than 20%). I do like that, as it would definitely make it harder to just march from one enemy city to the next.

Pigeonpigeon,  I think your post  have lead me to solution to the supply issue.  Your suggestion is definitely sound! 

After eating appropriate amount of food, the “Exhausted” status is cured & the Counter X is recharged proportional to how much food is consumed.  Supply simply means supply of food!

Food is automatically ‘ordered’ to reach the adventuring stack whenever X drop below 50%.   Caravans of food will march toward the said stack. 

[For any town in the game, each town consume A food per turn.  Its farms produce Y food per turn.  Usually  Y >A.  A equals to its population times Z, where Z is how many units is consumed by its race per turn.  For example, if your race is the hobbit race, your Z is huge because they overeat a lot! ]
Anyway above is not that important. 

When your Stack of Doom captures a new town, the gamer can choose to consume/rob the food in the warehouse.  It probably allows the SOD to march forward, but the local population will probably do a Civil Revolt (which local fighters emerge to fight the occupation).  Because a town (with farms intact) usually produces more food than it consumes, the SOD need to wait a few turns to recharge its Counter X.  If your SoD is not really that big/need too much food (e.g. Undead), it will easily continue your assualt.

psychoak, I don't really know what your post meant.  I don't know what Denryu's foraging capacity is.

Yeah I like where this is going! The combination of an 'exhaustion meter' with food supply seems like it'll work quite nicely. Food cost could actually be a significant portion of military upkeep; obviously you'd have to pay your soldiers, but you also have to feed them. Like psychoak I think that a combination of foraging capacity and supply caravans would make this rather painless and achieve exactly the desired goals: make it harder to field massive armies, make it difficult to fight far from home as well as doing things like making a bee-line for an enemy capital, while still allowing relatively small forces to travel self-sufficiently (foraging).

And regarding foraging - maybe to represent the fact that it's much easier to forage within your own territory, an army can draw from all neighboring tiles as well as the one they're on? Or maybe just receive a foraging bonus within your own territory, the base value in neutral territory and a penalty in enemy territory? Ooo, what about adding foraging functionality to forts? If you station an army out in the open, they can forage in their tile, but if you station them within a fort, they can utilize the foraging capacity of all tiles within some radius. If SD implements something like Zone of Control (which I think they should), the foraging radius and ZoC radius could be the same.

I am really liking this idea overall. It naturally and intuitively creates so many of the effects people have been clamoring for, and I think can be done such that it would require hardly any micromanagement. It would definitely add more things to do, as you'd have to protect your supply caravans and keep a path open for the, but that's strategy, not micromanagement.

Seems to me that if someone wants to create undead units that don't need to be supplied, the best way to achieve balance would be to make them significantly weaker than their living counterparts. I think it's actually a good thing as it would provide a real distinction between undead vs. living creatures - undead could march indefinitely, and thus use strategies more or less unavailable to living troops at the cost of being weaker.

My first attempt to enable the Foraging mechanics

Units carry Y unit of food.  Different unit has different maximum value of Y.   Each turn, the unit consumes 1/X of the food it carries.  Therefore when X reaches 0, Y also reaches 0, no food is left, thus the unit is then Exhausted.  Exhausted units will have Att, Def greatly reduced & movement speed halved.

When a unit ends its turn at its Natural Habitat tile, both counter X & Y is recharged completely.  Unit will not share its food amongst its peer in the same stack (?? This can be the tricky point…)

Each global map tile has a different Foraging time Z.  For example, when unit rests on a Z=2 tile for 2 consecutive turns, its X counter is replenished by 1.  The amount of food it carries Y, increases proportionally.

As illustration, Plain tile has Z=5, Grassland tiles has Z=3.  Farmland has Z=2.  For other places like dessert, foraging is almost impossible so Z=50.

When you defeat your enemy stack, a large % of their food is robbed.  Of course, the maximum amount of food you can carry is still Y.  Any excess is wasted.

When your troop first captures an enemy city, you can distribute btw the food warehouse & your troop.   If there aren’t enough food left for the city, Civilian Revolt is likely occur.   If the city population begins to starve, some population dies.  I believe there should be some kind of starvation mechanics, both for the troop & for the population.

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Recent Frogboy posts mentioned Food -> Population, I wish Food -> Troop is also included!
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PigeonX2, I like your Fort idea.  And I am a strong supporter Zone of Control (ZOC).  Maybe a fort can reduces the value of Z under its ZOC.

I like this idea very much too.  An idea that is easy to grasp, almost no micro, allows different strategies… etc

PigeonX2, the X in my Reply #15 is the same as the Counter X in my OP.  So your first part is essentially the same as my Reply #15.

Or give the undead other penalties, slow movement or whatever. Should be pretty easy to find ways to balance out the advantage of not needing to eat.

And I am with Psychoak from the previous post - I want a lot of micro capability, but this is one area that automation would be just fine.

Looks good to me! I would love to see this make it into the game. Obviously some tweaking would probably be necessary whenever explicit numbers or percentages are given but that's par for the course.

Really tough question. I'm a little bit wary of troop starvation, to be honest. For one I think it could result in situations which would force horrible micromanagement onto the player. For example, if, either by poor management, an event or enemy action a nation becomes very short on food. If there is no excess food beyond what's needed to feed the civilian population, I doubt the AI would be able to make the appropriate decisions. Do you starve your army or your civilians, the other way around? Do you split it? Do you provide the bare minimum for your troops to survive but remain perpetually exhausted (ie: 1 unit of food per unit, so every turn it eats enough to not die but remain exhausted)? It's a toughy, and what to do would depend heavily on situation and player strategy, neither of which the AI would be particularly good at picking up on.

I'd be satisfied if units just remain exhausted and never starve, and I think that would provide a big enough incentive to cut off enemy supplies. But, if we, they or someone can come up with a way of handing troop starvation without thrusting a burdensome amount of micro onto the player I'd bite.

The right rule for starvation is tricky.   I want just one rule for both living in town & the adventuring.   Using this same rule, city populatoin decreases quickly after it runs out of food.  You can imagine the area around the city run out of food for citizen to forage, or they just return to rural area to forage, or some just dies of starvation. 

I like a simple zone of control (ZOC) system.  If there is ZOC this starvation mechanism should make siege work too.  Siege should then cut off citizen's foraging around the city, causing starvation happens quicker.

If there is no Empirewise morale mechanism (& a way to decommission troop to civilian), I'll say AI always decide to starve Civilian when food is limited as troops are more expensive to produce/valuable.

I've updated OP to reflect our current thoughts. The old OP is kept below.