My 1b and beta in general thoughts
regading combat, skirmishers, city managment and misc....
Elemental Forums
First I would like to thank Nathikal for hist post that made me start to really think about this stuff.
Not sure if this was already recommended, but I didn't see it on the comprehensible suggestion list, so I'm going to assume 'no'.
The Glade Runner, a start-level Elven unit in Age of Wonders II, was designed for skirmish combat. Due to the game mechanics, he failed horribly and was little more than a decent scout.
I've been thinking...why is it that the only battles that seem important involve 10,000 vs. 10,000? Guerilla warfare and brief skirmishes, to harass enemies, have been forms of tactics for a long, long time. One nation gets taken over by a vastle superior one (militarily speaking) and, although they have lost a number of cities and their own grand army has been scattered, they fight back with small groups, harassing key points and making it so the enemy never rests.
If nothing else, the ability to concoct these sort of strategies ought be an option. Skirmishes would impact the morale of both sides - you can never rest, as you're constantly on the lookout for attacks - and guerilla warfare would use small numbers in a strike team to try and optimize damage. Not only a subtle way to fight, but a brutally effective one, especially if spells of invisibility and concealment become an option. It will require thought to properly initiate, but could be even a sort of game or a unique combat mode. Say, give an overland army a 'skirmish' mode button. When in such a mode, they move slower and have concealment in rough terrain - heavily forested areas, deserts, mountain ranges, etc. Such a mode can be used only be very small armies.
When attacking, then, you don't just initiate tactical or automatic combat. Instead, you are given the option to engage in a brief skirmish (a timed tactical) or guerilla warfare. For guerilla warfare, your small band of soldiers appears on a battlefield at, say, night, with the enemy camped out ahead. What happens then is up to you...but begin with the soldiers caught unawares, have some sentry soldiers patrolling, etc. To be caught ends up having the alarm raised, and an angry army facing your small band.
Skirmish and guerrilla warfare might sound cool in books and movies but it's not something that would be fun in a 4X game like elemental.
My Idea
I think that it can be implemented by giving an harass ability, basically you pick an army and order it to harass a certain area, the AI will use the army to hit and run attacks on caravans, outposts, resource centers etc etc etc, each time your soldiers encounter resistance you will have the ability to command them in the tactical battle or let the AI do it.
In this way, designing fast moving, lightly armed, stealthy, elite units will have more impact in the game. Offcaurse, the defending player will have the option to assign troops to guard an area and chase intruders, so designing garrison units will also have impact (not to mention that they will be a resource drain on the defender economy)
So in this system, lets say that you want to build a skirmisher, you enter the design unit screen and you equip your man with equipment that will enhance their move rate, stealth, endurance and some attack rates to hurt the enemy so I give him some very light armor, ranger backpack to enhance sight and slightly stealth, cloak of camouflage to make him more stealthy, ranger boots to farther enhance strategic movement (only usable with light armor) a long bow and a sword (equipping 2 weapons should double the training time for a unit and maybe ecquire a minor penalty to attacks that only better training would nullify) and a healing potion (for kicks and giggles).
Managing armies stacks
This leads me to another point, managing armies, I think that there should be an army management screen to allow us to change the layout of our army and make subgroups with different characteristics.
For example in the above case of a skirmisher (Rangers™) army; I've built and gathered a 100 strong group of man with different equipment loads and I want to organize them to several raiding groups, so using the army organizer screen I can, with a simple click and drag, make 5 sub-groups of about 20 rangers each ( with a different mix and match of weapon loads for each ranger) and mark each group as skirmishers.
Same thing could be done to organize cavalry and infantry units in your normal armies.
The AI role:
The AI in here should play a critical role in order to lessen the micromanagement aspect of managing several stacks of of skirmishers on the strategic map (at end game you might find yourself with several tens of those)
Lets take for example our Rangers army from the above example, we move the army (swiftly he he) toward our enemy borders, upon reaching them we hit the harass command and designate the area we want them to harass, a pop up window will appear asking us what the priorities to attack, defend and flee from, after doing so, the AI will disband the army to it's pre-designed subgroups and each subgroup will independently conduct raiding ops in the designated area.
The player will be able to take command of specific groups if they wish to and once he is done the AI will automatically retake command of it.
There should also be a command to regroup the army at a certain point.
Same thing should be for the defender, you pick an army and you assign it an area to defend a priorities window will pop up and the AI will than divide and use the available troops to escort caravans/ garrison cities and villages or chase raiders according to the player instructions.
Skirmishers in your big army
The same system can also be adapted to the big army, if your army movement speed is 3 and you got some Ranger companies in it with lets say movement rating of 7, than by designating them as scouts in the army management screen they will automatically move in front of the army and around it effectively expanding your LoS and allowing you to search for enemy stealth units and scouts, in effect adding the skirmishers and scouting battle that every one calls for and giving a reason to deploy lightly armed troops in your main armies.
City development
Regarding walls
Right now each city comes with a ready made wooden wall, I think that this shouldn't be the case and that each wall segment in your city should be built by the player for 2 main reasons:
1. I find it an immersion killer to see mines and farms inside the city walls.
2. It make resources raiding on the strategic map really hard since you will need to siege each town in order to hit it;s resources.
3. a minor point, it will add a sense of "living" city to the cities since when you progress farther and farther into the game you will have to build another wall and another one and the city will look like those fantasy city maps with several rings of walls and rural building outside.
regarding farming
I really like the idea of a large city supported buy a lot of rural and mining communities, just like in all the fantasy books and D&D campaigns that I read and played over the years, I think that there should be an option to build "Farmsteads" next to farms, in essence, a Farmstead will only add 5 people, 2 food, 0 prestige to the city and could only be built next to a farm (could be farther than the farm with more farming research).
So in mid-game when I have my bug bustling 10,000 people city most of it food will come from 3-5 farming villages.
Regarding Caravans
I would really like to have more info on caravan routes in game and the ability to influence general resource distribution in my kingdom (like having one village ship mainly food to city x etc etc)
I'm sorry for the messy post it's actually started as a small reply and grew up to this.
I'll clean it up tomorrow after uni.
Best regards
Warder
