Food and citizens

[Ulfilas]

Suppose each living unit had a 'food bar'.  Suppose that food bar, when full, was at '24' (or '48' for mounted units). Imagine that each moment that the citizen is within the effective radius of a friendly 1) home, 2)  drop-point or 3) caravan, that food bar would be maintained or raised (coming). Imagine that as that citizen leaves such a radius earlier mentioned, for each second the citizen is away from the food radius, the 'food' level drops by 1 point.

Imagine further, than once the food level drops to 0 points, the unit 'starves'. For each second starving, the unit loses 1 hitpoint. Imagine that when the unit reaches 1 hitpoint, and is starving, the unit either reverts to Gaia or dies.

 

Why is this significant? One of the main challenges in historic battles was feeding an army on the go. Battles could be won by attacking a supply chain. A castle could be defended largely by outlasting the stomachs of the attackers. I think it would bring a valuable and interesting twist to the game.

[Ulfilas]

Sorry, I had posted this topic in the wrong forum and just realized it.

Moderator edit: Merged the two topics, made sure was in the correct sub-forum, and removed duplicate post.

[sphyrth]

For a long time I considered suggesting this mechanic because of the "Infinite Food from Fields" would be made better use of. Well, that and the aforementioned realism and history.

However, the Gamer Instinct says "It's just another unnecessary headache." and didn't entertain it any further.

[Ulfilas]

That's true, when the living's food bar drops to 0, if they are carrying food units, then deplete a unit of food from their inventory each second (game clock) in lieu of starvation/hitpoint drop; with that in mind, you could prepare to make a raid by putting food in your citizen's inventory, then sending  them out on the raid;

Edited August 7, 2018 by Ulfilas

[Guest]

I’m no historian or anything, but I always assumed the concept of supply lines was rarely used in antiquity and armies lived off the land they were in. I’m probably wrong I guess.

[Ulfilas]

Any major army had to worry about supply lines. If you have an army of 1,000 people and you pass through a village with 30 people, chances are they do not have enough food to feed you, even if they stuck around and let you torture them into telling you where their food stores are

 

Here is a quick web search on the matter: http://www.almc.army.mil/alog/issues/novdec08/spplyline_war.html

Edited August 7, 2018 by Ulfilas
added link

[Loki1950]

The Romans armies travelled with a herd of cattle to feed the troops the drover dogs(huge mastiff types) where usually let lose with the skirmishers at the start of battle the origin of "lets loose the dogs of war"

Enjoy the Choice   

[elexis]

7 hours ago, Ulfilas said:

Any major army had to worry about supply lines. If you have an army of 1,000 people and you pass through a village with 30 people, chances are they do not have enough food to feed you

That. Celts employed scorched earth tactics to have romans starve. It's also a reason why the nomading mongols were so successful - their supply line moved with the war effort.

However it's never easy to implement such things, especially with the mapsizes that we currently have. Food would have to be a local resource, not a global anymore. For example units would lose health unless they go back to a storehouse and take some resource of that storehouse. Might be a can of worms (the problem, not the food).

[macemen]

This was implemented in Rise Of Nations if I recall correctly. There, you had to carry around a special unit (storage wagon?). When leaving your own territory your units started to loose health unless they were in the radius of this special units. I don't remember the specifics (didin't play much RoN) except that this was extremely annoying, but then it was also probably a nuisance to the generals of old.

[Lion.Kanzen]

32 minutes ago, macemen said:

This was implemented in Rise Of Nations if I recall correctly. There, you had to carry around a special unit (storage wagon?). When leaving your own territory your units started to loose health unless they were in the radius of this special units. I don't remember the specifics (didin't play much RoN) except that this was extremely annoying, but then it was also probably a nuisance to the generals of old.

That was one worst feature I never seen.

[Astrid]

How about on Northgard when you run out of food,and the whole village cries,and gets sick,and stops working That can be a bit annoying. I do love how on OAD how much you have food determines if you can train a new villager or military unit or not. If you want it historically just use your imagination. The romans also carried porridge on their journies because it was the easiest food to prepare,and drank wine when water was hard to find. So if you don't include this on OAD it will be historically inaccurate. You can't have every detail of history on a RTS

Spoiler

 

 

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Food depletion effects can work, you just have to extend the GUI (how food is shown in the ribbon, the avg rate of income should be shown) and some other things. Units wouldn't cost 50-100 food to train, they'd cost something like 5 food to train and then cost something like 5 food every minute or so. A "food bar" wouldn't be necessary though. You could just make the lack of food effect a global effect on your units (-X hp every Y seconds you have zero food or something like that, perhaps a small slowing speed effect too). The important thing is you keep it pretty abstract, so it's simple to understand and manage during gameplay. Also, the player should be informed when the stockpile is getting too low in some obvious way.

Edited August 8, 2018 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[Ulfilas]

In terms of playability of the game, in addition to the realism- here are the matters it addresses:

1) The ability to make an army of 200-300 soldiers and wipe it from corner to corner of the map. Let it sit in the middle of the map for an hour. In real life there would be an immense cost to such an army, and there should be in the game as well, even if it is 'annoying'

2) If you have such an immense army, the requirement to have food gives an additional level of strategy that a clever opponent could exploit. For example, your enemy spams up a 300 unit army with their fast click fingers, then go out and attack you; you send a small force around the back, find their undefended supply train and attack it, and their giant army begins to starve as they surround your city center. Cleverness over click fingers. I like it. Obviously people who's play strategy is spam up a 300 unit army before the enemy does would  find it 'annoying'

Edited August 8, 2018 by Ulfilas

[Ulfilas]

On 8/7/2018 at 5:58 AM, macemen said:

This was implemented in Rise Of Nations if I recall correctly. There, you had to carry around a special unit (storage wagon?). When leaving your own territory your units started to loose health unless they were in the radius of this special units. I don't remember the specifics (didin't play much RoN) except that this was extremely annoying, but then it was also probably a nuisance to the generals of old.

That was why I suggested the already existing Caravan unit. Since the caravan unit is slow and vulnerable it makes a good symbolic supply source and is already in the game. Perhaps the caravan itself could have a very large food capacity, which itself is drained as a marching army feeds off of it, which would add some realism, and perhaps it could be captured by an opposing side if so;

[macemen]

17 minutes ago, Ulfilas said:

In terms of playability of the game, in addition to the realism- here are the matters it addresses:

1) The ability to make an army of 200-300 soldiers and wipe it from corner to corner of the map. Let it sit in the middle of the map for an hour. In real life there would be an immense cost to such an army, and there should be in the game as well, even if it is 'annoying'

2) If you have such an immense army, the requirement to have food gives an additional level of strategy that a clever opponent could exploit. For example, your enemy spams up a 300 unit army with their fast click fingers, then go out and attack you; you send a small force around the back, find their undefended supply train and attack it, and their giant army begins to starve as they surround your city center. Cleverness over click fingers. I like it.

I like your suggestion. I like the idea of giving the underdog in a fight a chance to break their opponent (or at least get some breathing time) by a well executed quick raid. I hate to see players resign as soon as they loose their army in the first collision because "I have no realistic chance any more". One should not be able to sit back and relax after the first battle is won, knowing that the enemy has no real fighting chance to recover any more.

Whether something like this would be annoying or a pleasant addition to game-play depends mostly on how well it would be executed.

Of course care must be taken to not make matches last forever by making it nigh-impossible to take the enemy's base. A standing war is disheartening, I hate when it is impossible to break a front in the middle of the map and it takes many minutes to move it even a few centimetres. So some degree of snowballing effect is absolutely fine.

[elexis]

On 7/30/2018 at 2:25 AM, Ulfilas said:

Battles could be won by attacking a supply chain

7 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

You could just make the lack of food effect a global effect on your units

If it's a global effect, it can't implement the effect of broken supply lines and scorched earth tactics (in case that was the actual aim).

It's rare that players create an army, delete the entire economy and then win with that, at least if there are more than 2 players. Players very rarely have no economy, because their units die too in a battle and have to be reproduced continuously, replaced with more expensive units. It's also very rare that one has exhausted all benefitial upgrades. Not stating that reoccurring food cost is a bad idea.

54 minutes ago, macemen said:

So some degree of snowballing effect is absolutely fine. 

Consider that snowball effect is also the method how the one that is outnumbered can win if the opponent doesn't group all units.

[Guest]

17 hours ago, macemen said:

I like the idea of giving the underdog in a fight a chance to break their opponent (or at least get some breathing time) by a well executed quick raid.

Lanchester’s law seems to be playing the biggest role in most RTS games (arguably not bad). But IMO this is not an accurate depiction. The underdog should be given a chance, whether by your proposal or something else is a question for another time.

Everyone knows battles weren’t won solely by numbers. Total War games have made a lot of effort to portray that accurately with flanking, stamina etc. However, Total War seems to be a very different game, atleast I think (havent played it). Such levels of army management would be counter productive in a game like 0AD.

For 0AD, one can wait for the implementation of formations and add some flanking bonuses. Or add another mechanic such as “loyalty” or stamina. It would make unit count not be the sole deciding factor in a fight. None of these are easy to implement so I suppose they would remain as ideas for a little longer.

Edited August 9, 2018 by Guest

[macemen]

41 minutes ago, (-_-) said:

Lanchester’s law seems to be playing the biggest role in most RTS games (arguably not bad). But IMO this is not an accurate depiction. The underdog should be given a chance, whether by your proposal or something else is a question for another time.

I'm not sure I fully agree with that. All RTSs I play have some way or another to ensure that numbers alone are not enough to win. Elaborate counter systems (soft and hard counter units) ensure that spamming mindlessly just a few units will take you nowhere. So army composition and battlefield tactics (making sure units attack those enemy units they are best against) is extremely important.
This is an area 0 A.D. is severely lacking in. Spamming just ranged units and rams is all you need . Maybe also a few spearman to fend off cavalry, but given how useless melee cavalry is this is unlikely.

41 minutes ago, (-_-) said:

Everyone knows battles weren’t won solely by numbers. Total War games have made a lot of effort to portray that accurately with flanking, stamina etc. However, Total War seems to be a very different game, atleast I think (havent played it). Such levels of army management would be counter productive in a game like 0AD.

I agree, I don't think an RTS should look at the TW series for inspiration, it's an entirely different genre. In TW a single battle alone can last as long as an entire 0 A.D. match.

[Imperator Ferrum Princeps I]

I love this idea, if it is not implemented in default it should at least be made a mod.

 

Also if it is implemented in default I suggest making it disable-able in match settings (eg. like how you can enable see initial map)

[Thorfinn the Shallow Minded]

I think that one of the issues with the ideas you have for food is the complexity a mechanic like that adds to the game.  Granted, I am not opposed to a similar concept, but the exact proposal you make seems to add a large amount of headaches to a player in the form of micromanagement, and given the fact that players only can do a certain number of actions per minute, this would force players to concern themselves with probably one of the more boring aspects of war.  The fact that it would affect health so much makes the player have to tear attention away from what could be far more exciting.  Granted, I could see some alternative options.  

I'd say that a streamlined idea for representing logistics would be good; in the final iteration of the game, it is planned for there to be a bar on all units called 'stamina,' which can be used for running.  As I see, units could recharge stamina fastest in their own and allied territory, recharge slowly in neutral, and don't in enemy by default.  This could be mitigated by some of the options.

Regarding adding in options like flanking, I personally am for it.  Granted, the pace of a single skirmish fight in 0 A.D. could be drastically shorter than those in Total War.  The reason that 0 A.D. has not made a very good combat system yet is because the game is in alpha and not all the pieces are together to make the full experience.  

[Nescio]

Individual food bars sounds both complicated and annoying. Global food consumption could work. In my 0abc mod I've simply assigned units upkeep (negative resource trickle). Elephants consume more food than camels, cavalry more than infantry; champions consume both food and silver; ships require 0 population but consume silver; etc. It's not perfect, but easy to implement, and interesting to experiment with in a mod.

[Splizard]

I have this working in the mod I am developing, I think it's a very interesting mechanic!

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

unfortunately, yellow bars are already used for resource amount.

[Guest]

How much of a performance hit does it have when there are a couple hundred units on the map?

[Splizard]

6 hours ago, (-_-) said:

How much of a performance hit does it have when there are a couple hundred units on the map?

With 600 idle villagers on the map, simulation still runs pretty smoothly. It's the Pathfinder and UnitAI that lags the game.