Training for Units and the Ability to Command Them

I agree, and already discussed it, many months ago

https://forums.elementalgame.com/332690

See reply 6

https://forums.elementalgame.com/333849

Successfully updated karma reason!

Not quite what I meant. What I mean is this: let's assume Commander A has 1000 "command points". Unruly Peasants use up 5 command points each, so Commander A can only have 200 of them in his/her army. Spartan Veterans use only 1 command point each, so Commander A could have up to 1000 of them in his/her army.

Does this make more sense?

Successfully updated karma reason!

Syntactically yes, but if supply is in, why not directly effect supply rather than have some arbitrary "command points" and hard limits system?

Artificial limits are less immersive.

I'm all for commanders who have no training or experience with large armies receiving penalties while commanding them though, and/or for commanders to have a wider radius and higher strength of +morale effect on the battle field as their experience goes up etc.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Hmm I see where you are going with it, that could be an interesting twist - you can either have 200 crap soldiers or 1000 elite ones. It would definitely push higher training. It almost seems that from a balancing perspective it should go the other way, seing as how 200 trained elites are going to most likely go thru 1000 peasants with pitchforks like a hot knife thru butter, it almost seems you would want to somehow present those two options to your leader unit...

Don;t get me wrong I see the point of your approach and lean more towards what you are proposing. for balance reasons, you would have to make training itself VERY expensive. I mean let's just say they are equally equipped - NO not that way you pervert! I mean sword shield and armor. Well an elite force that is just for arguments sake their 200 is equivalent in a fight to your 1,000 relatively untrained rabble. Well right from the get go, your rabble have 5 times the equipment invested so they cost 5 times as much in that regard (as well as consuming 5 times the amount of your population. So in combat you are going to have 5 times the burn rate of expended gear and dead soldiers. So to balance, the training that made those 200 elite has got to offset that cost.... and if they can be more efficiently led that makes the trained guys that much more valuable since per your example it will take 5 heroes to lead your 1000 raw recruits, but only 1 to lead 1,000 elites (if you expand it to a balanced force you would need 5000 recruits to "match" your 1000 elites meaning 25 hero units to manage an equivalent force.

I still like your idea, but it would have to be done right or would be incredible incredibly unbalancing.

Successfully updated karma reason!

I agree that it should definately work in reverse, otherwise the rabble/elite balance goes out the window. Perhaps with too many well-trained soldiers, there is risk of insubordination?

Successfully updated karma reason!

I've never been a hardcore wargame guy, but how's this for a twist: instead of leadership just providing flat combat bonuses to troops, put the troop skill levels in that math. Green troops under an expert commander can only gain so much from that commander's leadership skill, but elite troops can better understand and apply the skilled leader's orders. (Yes, I'm ducking the 'logistics' side of the question; those old threads Kuloth linked kinda hurt my brain.)

Successfully updated karma reason!

A wargame I own has a system like this:

Commanders have a leadership radius and troops in that radius get a bonus dependent on how good the leader is and dependent on how far the troops were from the leader. The radius is the same for all commanders to make it easier on the players to know what is going on, but better leaders give better bonuses. Leaders would have to have to have a certain "Leadership Rating" to command the troops in its radius. Each unit would have a leadership cost, thus you could simulate elite units being easier to command and peasants consuming a disproportional amount of command points. If a Leader didn't have enough command points, the troops in its command radius didn't receive any bonuses.

Supply is a fixed number of "spaces" from a city but can be extended by a Unit with a Leader. For exampler, you might get 150 supply points. Everything withing 150 points of a friendly city get supply (supply can be blocked by enemy units. To determine supply, each terrain type has a supply cost. Roads cost 1, mountains cost 30, forests cost 20, etc.. As long as a leadership unit is in supply, he counts as a source of supply with another 150 points. So if I have a city in the mountains with no roads, it could supply 5 spaces. If I had a commander on the fourth space, I would be able to get supply 5 additional spaces for a total of 4+5=9.

Each unit also has a supply consumption rate and a supply reserve. Once a unit is cut off from supply, it starts using its reserve. Once the reserves are gone, it is severly handicapped. This system is slightly abstracted but creates a ton of tactical challenges. I found this system flexible enough to simulate WW2 east front, but simple enough that supply didn't become too big of burden. There was a supply overlay so you can see what spaces were in supply by each city, or overall supply.

Skill of the troops was reflected by the units statistics.

With this system, the game had the following pros and cons:

+ The ability to model any type of troop. For example: Elites units could be represented with High cost, high power, low supply consumption, easy to lead and peasants could be represented with low cost, high supply consumption, low power, hard to lead.

+ Leadership made a big difference

+ Supply mattered by wasn't overly complicated

- Supply and leadership systems make the game more complicated and could act as a barrier to entry. there would need to be some good tutorials and in game tools to make the system easier to understand.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Quoting GW Swicord,

reply 6

I've never been a hardcore wargame guy, but how's this for a twist: instead of leadership just providing flat combat bonuses to troops, put the troop skill levels in that math. Green troops under an expert commander can only gain so much from that commander's leadership skill, but elite troops can better understand and apply the skilled leader's orders. (Yes, I'm ducking the 'logistics' side of the question; those old threads Kuloth linked kinda hurt my brain.)

I like this a lot. I guess I'm generally in favor of individual levers being fairly simple, but having a decent number of them. Naturally the cost of 1000 well-trained troops is likely to be higher if you equip them better. Even outside of that, though, it starts bringing up questions like "well, I only have time to arm and equip Peasant Rabble, but if I take a little bit of time to train them, I can put more of them into the field (plus I can take more time to recruit more). But every day I wait, my enemy burns my crops and steals my livestock....is the army big enough yet? The commander is so inexperienced..."

I agree re: arbitrary limits, and that's a good point. Maybe a better approach is as you suggest: better-trained troops benefit more from good leaders, in terms of morale bonuses, movement bonuses, formation bonuses, foraging bonuses, etc.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Quoting Silicor,

reply 7

A wargame I own has a system like this:

Commanders have a leadership radius and troops in that radius get a bonus dependent on how good the leader is and dependent on how far the troops were from the leader. The radius is the same for all commanders to make it easier on the players to know what is going on, but better leaders give better bonuses. Leaders would have to have to have a certain "Leadership Rating" to command the troops in its radius. Each unit would have a leadership cost, thus you could simulate elite units being easier to command and peasants consuming a disproportional amount of command points. If a Leader didn't have enough command points, the troops in its command radius didn't receive any bonuses.

Supply is a fixed number of "spaces" from a city but can be extended by a Unit with a Leader. For exampler, you might get 150 supply points. Everything withing 150 points of a friendly city get supply (supply can be blocked by enemy units. To determine supply, each terrain type has a supply cost. Roads cost 1, mountains cost 30, forests cost 20, etc.. As long as a leadership unit is in supply, he counts as a source of supply with another 150 points. So if I have a city in the mountains with no roads, it could supply 5 spaces. If I had a commander on the fourth space, I would be able to get supply 5 additional spaces for a total of 4+5=9.

Each unit also has a supply consumption rate and a supply reserve. Once a unit is cut off from supply, it starts using its reserve. Once the reserves are gone, it is severly handicapped. This system is slightly abstracted but creates a ton of tactical challenges. I found this system flexible enough to simulate WW2 east front, but simple enough that supply didn't become too big of burden. There was a supply overlay so you can see what spaces were in supply by each city, or overall supply.

Skill of the troops was reflected by the units statistics.

With this system, the game had the following pros and cons:

+ The ability to model any type of troop. For example: Elites units could be represented with High cost, high power, low supply consumption, easy to lead and peasants could be represented with low cost, high supply consumption, low power, hard to lead.

+ Leadership made a big difference

+ Supply mattered by wasn't overly complicated

- Supply and leadership systems make the game more complicated and could act as a barrier to entry. there would need to be some good tutorials and in game tools to make the system easier to understand.

What game(s) is this? It's post-Pangergruppe Guderian days I think, but pre-Operation Barbarossa and that whole slew of games on that system.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Quoting Ynglaur,

reply 8

Quoting GW Swicord,
reply 6
I've never been a hardcore wargame guy, but how's this for a twist: instead of leadership just providing flat combat bonuses to troops, put the troop skill levels in that math. Green troops under an expert commander can only gain so much from that commander's leadership skill, but elite troops can better understand and apply the skilled leader's orders. (Yes, I'm ducking the 'logistics' side of the question; those old threads Kuloth linked kinda hurt my brain.)

I like this a lot. I guess I'm generally in favor of individual levers being fairly simple, but having a decent number of them. Naturally the cost of 1000 well-trained troops is likely to be higher if you equip them better. Even outside of that, though, it starts bringing up questions like "well, I only have time to arm and equip Peasant Rabble, but if I take a little bit of time to train them, I can put more of them into the field (plus I can take more time to recruit more). But every day I wait, my enemy burns my crops and steals my livestock....is the army big enough yet? The commander is so inexperienced..."

I agree re: arbitrary limits, and that's a good point. Maybe a better approach is as you suggest: better-trained troops benefit more from good leaders, in terms of morale bonuses, movement bonuses, formation bonuses, foraging bonuses, etc.

This seems like a great approach to me as well. And I have no problem with the leader having a skill ability that limits the number of units he can "lead" (give his bonuses to) and that goes up as he gains levels. But while it also makes LOGICAL sense that the skill of the troops would also increase this number, I think it might throw a game breaking monkey wrench for the reasons outlined in my previous post.

Successfully updated karma reason!

I'm preferential to morale systems. Result based in combat modification combined with static levels achieved through unit quality and leadership attributes. Green troops that get the shit kicked out of them contribute little, and even the best commander will just give them a lot more morale to burn through in a rapid fashion. Elite troops will have substantial morale, and perform excellently in combat, needing to be severely outclassed to be in danger of routing rapidly. It doesn't get much better than the systems used in games like Total War.

Successfully updated karma reason!