Handling the "Spoils of War" after victory

Anti-logistics. Picking up a sword and bringing it home works just like bringing a sword from home to a fight.

Ya, I think it would be cool If after a fight there was a "battle zone" that you could send a caravan to and get some of the salvagable reasorces...I dought we will see this in the game though.

I agree with Tamren that logistics should be involved with collecting the spoils of war, but the level of logistics involved should depend on what the spoils are. For example if you strip your dead opponents of weapons for whatever reason (maybe they have better materials to make weapons out of or some special technique was used in their making) then it should require a caravan to gather them up and bring them back to your nearest city. I figure this would work just like requisitioning a unit; you pay X amount of gold to have them brought back to your nearest store house and then the "production" time would represent the amount of time it takes to send the caravan there and back.

However, if you manage to slay an opponent's hero, then I don't see why your own hero couldn't just swap out whatever weapons/items they had with their dead counterpart's. After all, it shouldn't take a whole caravan to transport a single weapon, no matter how magical it may be.

Wow, yea I could definitely see this, artifact of ancient power scattered across the land and heroes are attempting to find and collect them all. I like this idea a lot!

Just think about it for a second. What is the path of logistics needed to arm a single soldier with a longsword? Well first of course you need the metal, then you need to forge it into a sword, then put it in a sheath so the soldier doesn't have to carry it all day, and only then can you give it to the soldier who marches off to battle.

In reverse you must gather up fallen weapons and bring them home, this requires some sort of transport. Each soldier in your army can carry a small extra burden. If you army uses wagons to transport food then you can fill the extra space with junk. When you get this home you have to do something with it. You need a warehouse to store the weapons else they will rust in a pile. You need a smelter to melt the weapons back into bars so that they can be used again.

And so on. Battlefield spoils are just like every other resource and can be gathered and stored like any other, subject to your whim.

Right Tamren, like I said, I agree with you.

Thats great! But its still in question whether or not I agree with myself.

How far would you guys take this concept? There has to be a limit to what gets tracked after a battle. If there are 200 swords left on the ground they can't stay there forever. Either they will rust away or local people will gather them up and either use or sell them. Its probably not possible to keep track of every single battle site indefinitely.

That said the bigger the battle is the longer its detritus will last. If you kill a dragon its not like its corpse is going to dissapear overnight. It could actually turn into a resource node all on its own. Dragon scales must be useful for something, with armour the first to come to mind.

Well, with general weapons and such I'd say it would be a 'now or never' type set up. Either you pack it up and take it back to your city or it's a lost resource. For 'sweet lewt' drops like Hero items or Dragons bits, then I'd say it should be up for grabs for an alloted amount of turns. Eventually it'll go away, but if the conquerer should choose not to take advantage of what's been dropped then other players should be given a chance to do so.

Assuming there's even a system like this planned that is.

Normally weren't weapons and armor seized and either used by the taker (if they were of a proper size and better than what the taker had) or sold?  Given the way that the aftermath of most battles went the only piece of the pie that the ruler gets is his allotted share of the ransoms for prisoners.  Gear just tends to be walked off with.

I think it would be interesting if a percentage of the materials used to build the defeated army could be used after the battle to upgrade your own forces.  For example, the enemy has several units armed with "enchanted blades".  After the battle you immediately access the unit editor and swap out one of your unit's regular swords for "enchanted blades".

Depending on how much modification is available on the graphics end then this unit would actually be equipped with the enemies "enchanted blade" model.

As for whether or not it should sit there, I think looters would get after whatever was left very quickly. On a side note, I'd like to see the ability to construct a monument after a battle.

If the loot isn't taken instantly, I think it should deteriorate over time, due to looting and/or rust, based on location.  If the site is closer to a city, then looting could be an issue and it the amount of weapons/items available would decrease pretty quickly.  On the otherhand, it is was way out in the countryside, rust would be more of an issue than looting, and deterioration would happen a lot slower. 

I also think it would be cool if there was looting by neutral creatures.  So say there was a battle fought in the vicinity of a dragon's lair, and the dragon decided to add the gold armor you left sitting at the battlesite to his pile of loot.  Then you could only get access to the armor if you defeat the dragon or win its allegiance (but that could be a risky thing, asking a dragon for part of its treasure pile).  It'd be pretty sweet to see him burn your land b/c he didn't take kindly of the idea of letting you borrow his treasure.

As others have said, it'd probably be pretty hard to implement, but definetely an interesting idea.

Battlefield spoils sounds interesting.  At the very least defeating enemy caravans should result in the attacker getting some of the cargo.

I don't think I like the idea of having to explicitly bring caravans to the battle to transport the spoil, though.  I also don't think it would be good to just let the stuff sit there, or you could wind up with the world map covered in uncollected loot.

I'd prefer something where your caravan would "spawn" on the spot to pick up the loot and carry it back to your nearest city.  There are a few ways of handling the supply of caravans:

1) unlimited such spawns; this is more than a bit unrealistic, but it is easy on the user

2) have each player have a caravan "pool" that the caravans can spawn from; the pool increases by a certain amount each turn based on total population or something fairly simple; maybe could allow the player to devote production to making more caravans, but I'd prefer to not have to spend time building them

edit: if caravans are limited, and the victor doesn't have enough to grab all the loot, the existing capacity should be filled at random and the rest should go away instantly and not stay on the map for simplicity of implementation.  Any item important enough to *really* care about (magic item) shouldn't require actual cargo transport.

Thoughts?

Thanks,

Keith

Hey Keith,

Not a bad idea, but I'm not so sure I like it.  Based on the rethinking 4x economy journal, it seems production will have a good idea of emphasis placed on whether you have the materials needed and the time needed to either get them there or build it.  I don't really like the idea of the caravan spawn, because you take these out of the equation. 

For example, say you won a big battle, but the enemy has a huge army bearing down where your only option is to retreat or die.  If caravan time was in the mix, you wouldn't have time to capture most of the equipment (I also agree magic items and such should require transport, and so you could take them with you).  If we have a instant caravan spawn, you could grab the items and retreat quickly, but it wouldn't be the most realistic and would detract, IMO, from part of the fun and strategy of the game.

If you dislike the idea of having to wait for a cart from one of your towns, maybe you could have your men wait a turn or two and build one from the surrounding resources.  Or you could have it as a spell your channeler could cast, creating a magic cart, or teleport the items back to base or something similar.  Then there is a direct benefit and also a cost for getting the items back so quickly, cost being either time or magic lost.

Just my thoughts, anyone else?

Yea, the spawn thing is too artificial.

Perhaps the best solution is just to require that an army bring along caravans if they want to get the cargo-sized loot. 

I like that better than having the caravans come from a nearby city to pick up the loot because I don't think it would be good for the devs to have to implement "lootbags" that can be on any tile and have some kind of logic that reduces the amount of loot left in the bag for each turn, particularly if the degree of reduction were based on environmental factors.  That just gets complicated and clutters up things.

I don't mind having to wait for the caravans, per se, and I agree that it adds a strategic dimension because a rapid counterattack can prevent effective looting.

Any way to avoid having the stuff sit there?

Thanks,

Keith

Not to try to shoot down your idea, but what happens to the speed mechanic?  Will it slow down our troops if we have an all-mounted army built for speed?  Having an option to take a caravan or not when starting off would be interesting, but could be frustrating if you're exclusively using mounted units, but maybe that's the tradeoff - quicker army, but can't grab all the spoils with no caravan.  And if it doesn't affect speed, now you're affecting realism and I might have a problem with that.

Yeah, the more I think about it, the less I like the idea of having items or lootbags just sit there.  Definetely would get cluttered and complicated.

I really like the idea of having spoils of war though so I hope the devs are paying attention.

And why not adding supply has a resource? Each army has a limited amount of supply (food, water, weapons so you can switch them before fights). And when you have empty space.. you can take the loot

I like the idea of spoils of war a simple system could look like this imho:

- Part of the equipment of the losing side is salvagable after a battle

- You can pick it up with your army and equip your troops with it (if troop equipment change is possible after troop creation)

- Everything not used stays at that tile until a caravan (automatically generated from the nearest possible location) comes to pick it up (If units have inventories to store stuff, you could pick it up too of course)

- Loot vanishes after some turns and if not guarded(bandits are everywhere after all)

Personally I see no problem with loot staying on the map for some time. A bag graphic which when clicked upon shows it's contents would be enough to have.

A more simplified system when unit reequiping isn't possible and they don't have inventory space to store stuff:

- Part of the equipment of the losing side is salvagable after a battle

- You can chose if you want to keep the loot

- If yes, an automatically generated caravan brings it back to the nearest city

- If no the lood gets deleted (salvaged and stolen by the nearby populace, monsters, robbers, whatever, not game effect just flavour text)

Such a system doesn't need to be very complicated after all, just be something to reward one with something for winning a battle. (Also it could make my carreer as a robber baron possible. Instead of producing weapons, I'll just steal them from my neighbours. )

I would like a 3 phases loot screens.

Phase 1 :

Real items loots phase where the victor can chose to equip his unit with the item recuperated.

The discarted item are the broken into raw materials

Phase 2 :

Raw materials upgrade where the victor can upgrade his unit by paying with the raw materials he recuperate.

Phase 3 :

The remaining materials is sent to nearest player city with a caravan.

I like your idea, vieuxchat!  Realistically, large armies (like what Brad has mentioned) would *require* some sorts of support caravans and troups to come with them.  Why not also include caravans to transport spoils?

The issue with this concept, though, would be in subsequent battles.  Let's say you fought a massive war and won.  You then re-fit the equipment you can use with your existing army and send the excess back to your city/warehouse for later use/re-cycling.  Then:

1.  I assume if you can't transport it all, the remaining loot would stay where it is, open for whomever transports it later, possibly with some deterioration over time due to rusting, pillaging.  NPCs and other computer opponsents could take this.

2.  If you win the next battle, the caravan would return empty to the new loot location and transport back from there.

Another idea: why couldn't the caravans act like asteroid miners in Gal Civ 2?  You would just send them to a loot location, they would "mine" that over time and then move on to the next location to "mine".  Seems reasonable to me, although if Elemental is really going to be heavily driven by a transportation system, this might be too micro-managing oriented.  Hmmm....

I SO agree with this idea, it would be awesome ransack an emenies city and take their good, also looting the dead from their armies is awesome as well! I hope this gets implemented.

Logistics in the field would actually let us loot stuff with easy. Every army away from home will need regular shipments of food and other supplies. In this case that means full carts arriving and empty carts leaving. After every fight some portion of the enemy equipment will be salvageable. On the same note, part of your armies equipment will have been broken, which requires replacement.

So you could do multiple things after every battle, some examples:

1. Gather up the junk and send it home on empty carts, that or store the stuff on any empty space your carts currently have.
2. Each of your soldiers and horses and the like can carry a small share. This share increases in size if someone else is carrying all the food.
3. Gather up all the junk in a pile and leave a small unit to guard the cache while caravans from home cart it away.
4. If the battle happens on or near a city, the city workers would gather it up. But this would take away workers from other tasks, which is not a problem if you have a surplus available.
5. Leave them on the ground in which case they rust away or locals will gather them up. If neutral you could purchase this junk as a resource from them.

And so on.

I think really creating cart units or caravans for those things will becomae a nightmare in game. It needs a level of abstraction.

Each army (like the fleet in sins) has a limited amount of supply. When you run out of them soldeirs have disease, and will soon begin to starve. And why not being able to choose the rations? Double and you have a morale boost .. but you won't be able to raid really far away from home .. unless you have some kind of magical supply or whatever.

Anyway a "supply" stat and something like an inventory for your amy should be enough. You can have at most as many itaems in your supply as you supply limit (which would be different for certain units, if your men learn to eat less then you need less supply. Or a magical enhancement.) And why not some things like .. you know those pretty girls that would follow armies.. hum? Morale boost? Or some wagon in your supply that would raise your max supply. Or remedy that would prevent diseases.

Ok, compared to some of the stuff here loot bags sound easy

Armies needing food brought to them, or needing to replace weapons, or changing weapons in the field... I think that's getting too complex.  A unit should be fine until destroyed or until you can't pay gold/food upkeep.  Maybe Stardock intends to have that upkeep "paid" by being delivered by a caravan, but I'm thinking they only intended caravans to be city-to-city.

I'm thinking that if we're gonna have battlefield loot it needs to fall in two categories:

1) that which doesn't require cargo transport and can automatically be picked up (magic items, etc), this is automatically transferred to the possession of the army itself, and the army can carry an unlimited amount of it.

2) that which does require cargo transport and becomes an object on the map like a GC2 "anomaly" that doesn't change at all until picked up by a caravan or 5-10 turns (tune for balance) later when it disappears all at once, poof, gone, no trace.

Lootbags could be clutter, but I guess they're the best solution since it's too cheesy to have caravans materialize out of nowhere, and I don't think they'd be any worse than modifying the "tile" game state data type to be like:

<tile x="10" y="14" plane="PLANE02">
    (...other tile stuff...)
    <LootCollection>
        <ResourceStock resourceID="RES02" amount="200" />
        <ResourceStock resourceID="RES05" amount="52" />
        (... etc, one line per distinct type of item ...)
    </LootCollection>
</tile>

and just create the necessary ResourceStock objects on the tile where the battle took place (or pick a random or central-ish tile if a battle can span multiple tiles), the types and amounts being computed by some percentage of the materials used to construct the defeated units (and cargo of any enemy caravans destroyed).  The unit design data types would need to store the amount of said materials, but I imagine it has to any way for the game to know what to "charge" you at unit construction; you might have problems if someone managed to produce units at 30% of normal costs and were looting 50% of the design costs because the game doesn't remember the actual production costs... but that could be worked out.

Thoughts?
Keith

Yep, that's the good way of thinking.

About switching weapons : that would be before the fight (unless you've been ambushed ). And after choosing your weapons, spells, prepartion before fight then it launches. Maybe some kind of "initiative" traits for heroes would allow you to place units before battle. So you see you have lots of archers in front of you. You take grand shields.You have cavalry as opponents? You take pikes.

Soldiers would need training in the aformentionned weapons. But wouldn't that be usefull?