Forced March

well, I think starting with 10% less hitpoints(strength), and 25% less fatigue/endurance, would work out rather fine.

Of course, those with less than 10 hitpoints would only be effected by fatigue (perhaps 30%?)

I'd say that any sudden boost of movement that catapults you the last 1-2 squares into an enemy city is fairly broken.  You should be able to manage your move well enough that you don't need a fall back (and it wouldn't even solve the problem, it would just change your frustration from "need 1 or 2 spaces to reach the town" to "need 1 or 2 spaces to force march into the  town"   and it would destroy  any chances of moving your own troops around  inside  your nation to  defend against  troops you can see advancing.  

I'd say a better solution is to have  an "undo-move button" so if you discover you can't reach where you want to go, you can undo the move for that turn and re: think your movement.

If you want virtually  all attacks to be mad-rushes into enemy territory with little warning, then just turn up the movement  points of all  troops.    Don't  give a "forced march"  ability that is going to be used anyway.

I mean, even with health damage and raised fatigue you're looking something that is going to be over-used.   With the exception of making the units exhausted so they are now useless in combat.   At which point it would be never used because  it sucked.   Then the only reason you'd ever use it is to  escape back  into your own towns for defense, and only providing the city gives enough of a bonus  to out weigh the loss  (which I can see as reasonable, since fontification should provide a lot of cover, not to  mention the bonus of possibly not loosing the city  thanks to spells  you're  casting anyway)

right ... well that 25% fatigue (or more) is not lost the next turn, it needs a full turn of rest to disappear, and I don't think a second forced march should be able to be used until the first one wears off.

Also, it should only increase movement by 50%. Wether this "makes it to the castle" or "back into the city" or not isn't as important as how much movement is to be effected.

I don't mind an extra 50% of distance on one turn, but if they could use it (more than once) to cover large distances, I begin to dissaprove of it. The only time I can see multiple forced marches possible is if your in your own nation (a King Harold? marched north to defeat the Viking invasion and then force-marched nearly the length of the kingdom to attempt to fight of William the Conqueror (which failed due to a lucky Arrow shot into Harolds's eye). But if invading? force-march shouldn't be possible without rest in-between, which means +50%, rest a turn, +50%, which is just as good as moving each turn. If you lowered the movement bonus to +40% then doing such a strategy would be even worse than moving normally.

In any event, I do not mind the idea, although (I think) it should be imperative that fatigue lost through battle still be recovered, while fatigue lost from forced march requires a full turn of non-movement to re-generate. I actually think it should require a full move of non-movement AND non-battle, so that its particularly dangerous force-marching in enemy territory, because you could be stuck with a -25% endurance for many, many turns.

I really like that idea, it'd feel .. realistic, logical? If an enemy army really was pushing through your territory as quickly as they could, stretching out supply lines and wearying their troops, harassing them lightly (i.e. starting minor battles you don't have the forces to win) every turn just to keep them fatigued is something you'd actually do. Edit: In fact, I'd like to take this one step further. What if any army moving or fighting in enemy territory gains a fatigue penalty of some sort, and forced march simply adds more onto that? Make this a stacking penalty, say 5% per turn, so minor at first but it adds up the longer you're marching around enemy territory. If you stopped to rest for a turn, without being attacked, the penalty would disappear - if you left enemy territory, presumably it's easier to supply and safer to rest there, so no penalty - if you capture an enemy city, this pushes back their territory and secures your hypothetical supply lines, so no penalty - but marching around in the field in enemy territory, getting attacked every turn, you'd steadily lose combat effectiveness until you leave enemy territory or capture a city, just like poor Napoleon in Russia. This basically takes all the "fatigue" and "supply" and "attrition" problems that affect real armies, and wraps them up into one simple penalty to encourage you not to tramp around enemy territory too long without finding a safe place to camp or a city to plunder - a penalty that would, of course, be much more serious if you're force marching these guys at the same time. This also makes things much more interesting from the defender's perspective; harassing an enemy to fatigue them, razing your own cities so an unstoppable enemy army has nowhere to resupply, these real-life tactics (again, see Napoleon in Russia) become viable in the game, which would be awesome.

To respond to Landisaurus, I think if an army can hop into your territory and hit a city in a single turn - with or without a forced march - the game has some serious problems. If movement speeds are properly balanced, you should have several turns' warning (at least 2-3) to move defenders into place before that army you just spotted reaches a city, in which case the possibility of them gaining +50% speed for a single turn at the expense of battle effectiveness won't upset the balance. If any army can appear out of nowhere and get 2/3rds of the way to your city in a single turn, allowing them to reach it in one turn using forced march, then the problem is not forced march I think, that's just poor game balance - you should have more time than that to react to an approaching enemy, forced march or no.

Also, keep in mind that cavalry should not be able to "force march," their movement is pretty consistent (and much greater than foot soldiers) - so if a forced marching army can surprise attack an undefended city, then a cavalry group can do the same without forced march, again forced march would not be the problem in that case. It would just let naturally slow foot soldiers temporarily 'catch up' to more mobile units, if giving an army that much mobility upsets game balance then we have some problems, because cavalry units will be that fast all the time.

firstly, I expect Mounted units are 2x or 3x as mobile as melee troops. Perhaps units that are some-how especially light on their feet can be trained to move significantly faster ... but even then the slowest mounted units should be at least 30% faster than that. Say ... normal melee units 1 move, speedy melee units 2 move, mounted units 3 move, speedy mounted units 4 move. Eh, this is all up to speculation, but yea.

I think an absolute 5% extra fatigue per turn is pretty extreme, especially if it maxes at 100% fatigue, where units can be cut through like paper.

Instead, I think a turn with battles (in enemy territory) could reduce over-all fatigue by 5%, and any other turn fatigue is increased only by 1%. Cavalry units would be immune to this effect (or at least resistant, perhaps 2% per battle in enemy territory).

However I fear about this system because it could make Monolithic Armies (all elite) more favorable. I think just sticking with a balancing factor for a limited force-march is viable. In addition, I think that an army in Friendly/Owned territory should be able to force march for an unlimited amount of turns, the first turn increasing fatigue by 25%, and each successive turn increasing by 1%, but not being able to forcemarch into neutral territory. In this way you could have "King Harold" march off to fight off the northland, and then forcemarch back to fight off the southland, but troops would still be tired .... just not rediculously tired, only straining their effectiveness.

I think force marching would be a very good idea.  There are many examples in real life where force marching was used and had a huge impact.  I have always wondered by most PC games like Civilization didn't have this actually.  You just need to add negitive effects that are ongoing to prevent abuse.  I used to play a PBM game in the past that had this.  Armies had morale and you can force march but the morale of the troops went down.  Morale could be brought up to 100% by resting and could get above 100% through battle.  I don't think Elemental will have morale but so some other mechanism would need to apply is all (fatigue, hp loss, etc).  The important thing is that force marching needs have an impact beyond just the turn you use it.

I like the idea a lot, actually.  It should be an ability, though probably trainable, and should be a nudge to movement.  Using "Forced March" repeatedly should slowly whittle away your forces from fatigue and desertion (lessened by training, experience, discipline, etc.).  In other words, if players are constantly using it, it's probably too generous.  If they're using it to occasionally sieze key terrain from enemies, it's probably better-balanced.

The "seizing cities" thing sounds more like the concept of surprise attacks to me: another good idea, but probably best left for a separate thread.

Im pretty sure, or rather hope hope hope, that there WILL be morale for all soldiers. (or at least each group- able to see the stat/as well as fatigue, by hovering over the tabard) although this morale, imo, would recharge in-between battles, and be used for holding the line/ routing.

Endurance, however (if need be) could be seen as a global stat (in-battle also) with several modifiers including a line of supply, a forced march, ect. My recommendation was 1% fatigue for every turn in enemy territory, and 25% for a force march, while 1 turn of non-movement and non-battle would recharge your fatigue to 100%

Nope. Want more movement? Caste a haste spell.

Or quicken to attack multiple times in a turn, or slow to make the opponent attack fewer times per turn

But seriously ... just because "magic can do it" doesn't mean we shouldn't have non-magical alternatives. (for things like force-march anyways) ... haste could do something like "allow force march every turn, with only 10% fatigue usage" (or for free)

Here's the argument in a bit more detail:

(1) It adds unnecessary complexity to the game. Fantasy TBS's get along fine without it. (Play any one of MoM/AoW/HoMM/Dominions/Battle for Wesnoth, if you don't believe me.)

(2) It creates a non-magical alternative, cheapening the value of that magic.

Look like opinions are divided on this one...

So your argument is,if its something used just by few games or unused so far,its not good ?

You dont want any new idea to be implemented ?

You basicly want all games to be copies or mix of those games you named ?

Bad argument,imho.

I will agree with this.But you always need few more swords to finish build those soldiers right now,you need few more magic games to be able to cast that spell and so on.

You can get swords and magic stones from trade,for example,why not add option to increase movement,with the cost,of course ?

It will be overused ? Sure, if its not balanced properly.

I like the idea of exhausted units need full day/turn rest to become normal again...

My original idea was that for 1/4 movement bonus units receive 25% stats reduction,but we can expand that idea.Lets say next day all those units will have 50% stats reduction(they are exhausted from forced march + battle) and can move only 50% of its original movement,if they rest(no moving,no fighting) they will have 25% penalties next day,but if they move just half of their movement they will be on normal next day,if they use all movement,they keep penalties...so you have 25% first day you used force march,next day your units have 50% stats reduction and next day 25% again if they dont move or fight,so you need like two days rest to recover full stranght back,and your army is very vulnerable next day after using forced march.

Linking forced march to moral also sound great,for example,only units with high moral can be allowed to use this option,if you try to force low moral units to do it,they will refuse or even rebel.Also lowering of the moral for exhausted troops make sense.

Yes. No new changes. Maximum four players and clunky interfaces.   

But seriously, these examples demonstrate only it's not absolutely necessary (although it still might be a good idea). Obviously your characterization of my argument -- 'well, x doesn't have it, so it shouldn't be in the game' -- wouldn't be persuasive on its own. Hence the argument about cheapening the value of magic. 

point taken that forced march is not an absolute requirement. Still, some sort of Supplies/Fatigue system might prove interesting, Forced March or No.

Ok,will agree its not the most important option to have,but its still better to have it then not,especially since its used in many real life battle,as somebody already mentioned.With those 50% all stats down on the second day after the march as i suggested ,its not someting anybody will use all the time.Dont see how does it cheapen the magic,since its something you can use right from the start.Anyway,since magic sistem is not in the beta,how can we be sure haste spell will work on the global map(AoW way) and not only in battle(like in HoMM) ?

It would probably take ALOT of mana to haste an entire army (I know we are terraforming mountains, but with haste you would have to mentally focus on each individual ... taking alot more work imo)

I could see you having to research haste->mass haste -> gargantuan haste ... and only gargantuan haste can work on the world map, and effects all friendly units on the battlefield regardless (even if they are considered magically immune)