Kuloth Kuloth

Unit Strength Depletion and Recovery

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Unit Strength Depletion and Recovery

from Elemental Forums

For units which are more than one figure in size (say a squad of swordsmen) there are two main models for unit depletion and recovery (which is to say loss of figures but not the whole unit, and replenishing the lost figures).

  1. The MoM model. Figures just grow back over time, the way health on an individual figure would. This is simplest to manage and does carry some realism - a military unit will recruit and train replacements if it has access to the right supplies and a populating willing to be recruited. But it also made for some cheap hit-and-run tactics (and perhaps over-emphasised these unrealistically).
  2. The TotalWar Model. In total war, if your archers unit of 60 men loses 40 men, it's at 20 and stays there until you "retrain" it. At which point, it will lose some of its experience (as the ratio of veteran to green troops within the unit gets worse) but might get its equipment upgraded somewhat if the right buildings are in the city at which it's retrained.

What do people prefer and why?

I see advantages and disadvantages to both models. I feel the TotalWar model is more realistic, but very micro-managey. On the other hand the MoM model is not totally devoid of realism - surely the King doesn't have to tell each unit commander to recruit replacements and historically indeed they did not!

Perhaps some kind of hybrid?

  • The MoM model happens, but very slowly. For example it could take 20 turns for a unit to recover full strength from near destruction, and to do so it requires supplies of the right equipment and a population willing to be recruited. For practical purposes, this would mean ZERO recovery of individual figures on enemy territory.
  • The TotalWar model is still an option. If I want to rush the replenishment of a unit I can take it to the nearest city and throw money at it.

I feel this would reduce some of the cheap hit-and-run tactics since you can't recover in enemy territory and recovery is very slow, but take out the micromanagement element when, for example, a border city is attacked by barbarians once in a while. Instead of having to zoom in and pay attention to it, you could expect the unit commanders to slowly replenish their forces.

The effect of experience?

How about:

  • Experienced commanders will recruit faster on their own.
  • Experienced units are more likely to be famous and attract recruits more quickly anyway - so there's significant argument for experienced units replenishing on their own more quickly.
  • If you 'retrain' a unit yourself, using the TotalWar model, the reduction in experience can be less because as the ruler you can send experienced troops from other units, poach the best mercenaries, or conscript the very best fighters in a given city into your army.

Thoughts?

 

Regards,

Kuloth

132,158 views 32 replies
Reply #26 from Elemental Forums Top

A unit can consist of 1-10 units at the moment iirc, and I think there was a data value which showed some pretty high possible numbers (probably for mods), although I think it would be safe to bet a single unit could reasonably consist of 50 soldiers.

Reply #27 from Elemental Forums Top

I prefer the HooM3 model. These units that died, are dead (duh!). The rest have their HP regenerated automatically after the battle ends. If you want to reinforce the given army, just train some units and send them there. Of course there is some micro-management involved, but not that much, and I think that it's still easier for a player to understand the train->send reinforcement system, than the automatic reinforcement system (how long will it take, how much would it cost, etc.).

Siege of Centauri
Reply #28 from Elemental Forums Top

if HomM3 is anything like HomM5, or Kings Bounty, then each unit is simply a potentially infinite stack, made up of as many units as you could gather and recruit ... possibly with some arbitrary limit based upon leadership, or class, or somesuch. Still, a nearly infinite stack made of 100s of soldiers.

We provide many actual cohesive fighting units made of a particular size (probably depending on logistics tech plus how large your barracks/training yard is) working together, moving across the battlefield. These "units" gain in experience over their battles, and are limited to a set number (depending on what the dev team decides) ... currently that number is 10 or 12 iirc, although getting to 50-80 would be a nice number just going on my experiences with Total War. Hopefully it will not be a tunnel vision battle-map like in HOMM5 (or the out-dated battle screenshot) but rather a vast, flowing, battle-scape with rolling hills and scattered patches of dense forest. Since the dev team has mentioned terrain will be a factor, I can only joyously hope for a sophisticated battle simulator .... and not a crude display of stacks of doom mocking themselves as a "tactical battle" like in the HoMM series.

In HOMM I couldn't even say, separate my stack of knights into two stacks of knights if I wanted too .... I just have one giant mob of knights, and one mob of peasants, and one mob of footsoldiers, against their mobs.

I admit it was fun for the time, I liked the game, hurrah and all that. but it simply was not sophisticated! and I would not appreciate that style of battle in a proper 4x game.

Reply #29 from Elemental Forums Top

"However, i do have a question for anybody who reads this; should replenishment of you 'swordsmen' squads depend on how many swords you have in stock? What i mean is, say you are producing swrodsmen at maximum rate (ie you produce 10 swords per turn and are producing 10 swordsmen per turn, leaving you with 0 sword in stock)."

Whatever is the answer to this question if a unit took casualties when losing, if they won maybe they could have picked up their fallen comrades stuff and would never have an equipment shortage delay reqruitment.  Depending on the implementation of inventory details, maybe the dead guy's stuff is just added to inventory.

Reply #30 from Elemental Forums Top

If it was a victory, I think dead team-mates equipment should be added to "inventory" ... so that if the excess inventory is retained until your unit arrives at the city, only training time will go into effect to replenish troops.

However, if it was a Retreat from battle, you would lose the equipment, and therefore need to stock the unit with fresh troops AND fresh equipment. There is still an upside to adding troops to experienced unit vs making a new unit. Fresh troops will gain at least some measure of the Unit experience (potentially all of it)

Reply #31 from Elemental Forums Top

If an army is structured by units and not by number of soldiers, I would say that all units get back to their full strength at the end of a battle.

If like in Civ IV there are very few units on the board compared to MOM where there are more units, I would say that damage stay there and units should be able to heal themselve. Else you could end up with a unit impossible to kill. Still, in civ IV you can wait more than 10 turns before a unit get's healed. I would say 2 or 3 turns according to various factors could be enough.

Reply #32 from Elemental Forums Top

If however, we are using units as multi-soldier cohesive military .... units .... and each individual soldier draws from the population pool ... then Men killed upon the battle-field simply do not re-grow, but must be sent from the population pool into the army.

There are many ways to do that, including sending new soldiers by caravan towards the marching army, or sending freshly recruited units of similar type to later "rejoin." In such individual soldier based battle-sims, weakened units of the same build can join together, to create a larger unit (up to the maximum allowed), and experience is re-divided among the unit to find the new experience level.

I prefer this method because it lends to a more sophisticated "real time" tactical battle, where soldiers are actually lost, people actually die, and unless you some-how suffer no attacks your going to have to recruit more soldiers to re-fill your ranks. Given that ... soldiers will have their own individual HP values, and yes I agree that HP should probably re-fill at the end of the TURN, not the end of the battle, unless they are Cavalry or have some special bonus/spell that allows them to quite sucessfully blitz through battles during the turn at minimalized cost (aka actually healing HP at the end of each battle)

Units with a per-battle turn health regeneration item, should heal after the battle is over as if another turn of battle has passed.