City Defenses and Supply Lines

My fundamental issue with Elemental is that there are no battle fronts!

Firstly, right off the bat, it is painfully obvious that neither my nor enemy cities are in any way unfortified...Ermmm...after some research I've produced a hedge. That's supposed to be a form of fortification!? I can raise and lower mountains, but my cities rely on a hyper gardener for protection. And let's face it, a 10% bonus tells me this gardener and his hedge both suck.

I've finished entire campaigns relying on nothing but my soldiers within cities and heroes running amok like road thugs. Once I got any sort of a drop on my adversaries I just ran like an idiot sweeping towns after towns...which leads me to the second issue.

There needs to be a penalty of sorts (movement, battle readiness, etc.) for encounters more distant from your own lands. How are the armies getting supplies? What is stopping me from romping across the entire map and falling upon some random city?

At this point, I feel like a button clicker without any sense of ownership towards my own empire.

P.S. Is there any way to leave sentinels out to alert me when some threat approaches my cities? So far, I've had to rely on carefully examining the map around each one of my cities and haven't seen a sentinel option for my armies...

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Supplies, or a lack there of could reduce maximum defense and/or health. I am not sure I'd affect attack, unless they were missile troops. How you would track supplies lines I am not sure. You could create a unit, similar to the caravan, but call it a supply train or some thing, and move it to the unit. The supply train creates a small, "stock," or materials the army uses when it travels. Unless the army is equipped with Pioneer gear, or maybe some thing like Ranger Gear, its maintenance cost in materials goes against this small, accumulated resource, for that particular army. Only reduce the stock pile if the army is out of your ZOC. This would also put most of the exploration to adventurers and the sovereign since they would need the supply train. You could even create of mod present Traits to support this idea.

As for defenses, I've been wondering if they couldn't do more of a AoW thing. Don't draw the whole town for the map. Instead, I'd do piece-meal maps. Create wall sections for each type of defense. One for palisades, one for basic stone, with square towers, and one for thick walls, with round towers. Just use elevated terrain with the walls that can't be passed through. More like a cliff maybe, with the wall as the cliff. Make all walls a square wide so troops can move along them. and just use a ramp to access them or wide stairs simulating a ramp. The tricky part would be the gate. I don't know if there are any spells present that could simulate a gate, but maybe use that to make a pretend gate. Maybe even as a summoned, "creature," that can't move or attack. It just as HP's and armor. As long as it looks and acts like a gate, you should be good to go.

As for wall simulated defense, use the terrain modifieres, except add a dodge bonus instead of armor. If an arrow can hit you, it should hit you for full effect. Dump the extra HP's that the supposed defenses give now. Also, as I think of it, if it's possible. treat the wall part of the terrain as a critter or destructable object. If it's destroyed, it collapses into a, "ramp of rubble." Can they deform terrain in battles? Catapults could actually have a use besides acting as an archer unit that fires sabot rounds. Some things off the top of my head.

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