Campaign features you'd like to see in FoG:Empires

[SirGarnet]

TheFPG AO can give a highly capable but not very sociable opponent, while having a human playing the other side in FOG II campaign battles would be more enjoyable for many, and would not tax the engine. Like proxy players for miniatures campaigns where the players cant be face to face.

[Pocus]

If by "FOG II campaign battles" you mean Empires, then I need to point out that Empires is a full standalone game with great features and not a glorified campaign simulator for the excellent FOG2

[SirGarnet]

If by "FOG II campaign battles" you mean Empires, then I need to point out that Empires is a full standalone game with great features and not a glorified campaign simulator for the excellent FOG2

Not at all my thought - but I can be more clear in light of day.

..Enabling allowing another human to playing the other side in some or all of the F Empires player's FOG2 battles in his various single player or multiplayer campaigns in his FOG Empires game. (ignore for sieges with their different mechanics) would be more enjoyable for many, and would not tax the engine. Like proxy players for miniatures campaigns where the players cant be face to face but online mediated by the already available FOG2 engine multiplayer feature.

Regards

[vakarr]

I'd like to see generals gaining or losing skill depending on how well they perform in battle, or if you send them to the academy for a while they might upgrade that way, so you aren't always stuck with a bad general (until he dies in battle or of old age, sickness etc).

[devoncop]

I'd like to see generals gaining or losing skill depending on how well they perform in battle, or if you send them to the academy for a while they might upgrade that way, so you aren't always stuck with a bad general (until he dies in battle or of old age, sickness etc).

I like the Military Academy idea but not sure there is an historical justification for it. Generals often led as a result of an ability to be born into the right families or successful political manoeuvres more than any military training or experience.

Also as the skill bonuses are only 1 or 2 then to gain or lose 50% or more of a bonus based on a battle won or lost would seem too dramatic.

[vakarr]

Well you could make it that a general only gains after a dramatic victory involving say 1:2 or worse odds, or a loss from 2:1 or greater odds - or else give generals some sort of experience points that are gained or lost for each victory and they would have to reach a certain level of experience before going up or down a level.


I would also like to see units able to be upgraded once they have reached a certain level of experience so that an ordinary unit could lose all its experience to be upgraded to its provincial equivalent or to the next level of that type of unit eg from ordinary heavy infantry to pikemen to silver shields. This is also a possible use for the academy or one of the training type buildings.


The military academy already exists in the game even though it was rare or mostly non-existent in the ancient world, so you might as well make the most of it - a military education was given in places like Athens as part of a general education - I would put a limit (like one step) on how much the training could improve a general. The military manuals and training provided in places in Byzantium certainly gave those people an advantage in battle when pitched against nations that did not have such things.

[devoncop]

Military progression already exists and differs from nation to nation.

Representing the reforms of the Roman military their Legions can be improved twice from the base design whilst the phalanx can never be improved reflecting its outmoded design despite being competitive at the beginning.

It is interesting you feel Generals should be rewarded for success.....many great Generals have argued that armies only learn through failure

[vakarr]

Well when I run a PBM campaign I usually make it a rule that you can change your army list only if you are defeated, to include the troop types of the army that defeated you. So if you have a pike army that gets defeated by a Roman army you can then start building Roman troops - and if you don't get defeated by Romans then you never needed that troop type! This is another potential use of a military academy, training such alien troop types. I would normally also make it a condition that you had to get a trainer from somewhere e.g. a Roman mercenary or a Roman rebel, to train the new troops. I have a problem at the moment that all my troops (other than Silver Shields) are graded as raw or below average when converted to FOG2... I hope that changes or can be changed via experience - they don't seem to improve after a FOG2 battle (but I've only had one so far)

[devoncop]

That makes sense possibly from a balance sense but not from an historical one. Pyrrhus did not suddenly adopt Legions after Rome started beating his phalanxes and earlier in the war Rome after they suffered losses did not gain expertise in phalanx warfare.

The mechanics for gaining access to certain troop types like Cretan Archers seem to revolve around controlling certain territory rather than who you have been fighting.

It would not be satisfying for me immersion wise in the mid to late game if I was fighting Rome in Britain to find I was facing a Roman Army of warbands,chariots and the odd phalanx !

[vakarr]

But the Seleucids did have Roman Argyraspids and countries like Pontus and Armenia had imitation legionaries; Also the Greeks switched from long spears to pikes after being beaten by pikes, there are numerous examples of such things and you can make it difficult to do the change like I said you know like needing an Academy and a friendly nation to train them (plus you have to lose a battle which you don't want to do if you can help it, probably will lose you a region)

[Don60420]

Perhaps in DLC scenarios like these:
1. The Punic Wars.
2. The Rise of Julius Caesar.
3. The Wars of the Diadochi.
4. The fall of the Empire in the West, beginning with the death of Theodosius.

Events could give an immense amount of flavor to such scenarios.

[76mm]

One thing I hate about games with tech trees is that once you have the tech to build a unit, you can build it forever.

But that's not really how military organizations work--if you don't build a certain type of unit for a generation or two, you won't have the workshops to make the weapons, the cadre to train, or the experience to use the unit. Or even if you build similar units, they are not the same--eg, look at the Successor phalanxes, etc.

So what I'd like to see is even if you have the "tech" to build a unit, if you don't build one for some period (Ten years? Twenty? Fifty?), then you lose the ability to build them. I like the idea of the military power of empires rising and falling as they gain and lose access to certain types of military units.

[76mm]

It would not be satisfying for me immersion wise in the mid to late game if I was fighting Rome in Britain to find I was facing a Roman Army of warbands,chariots and the odd phalanx !

I've not read all the threads in this forum, so sorry if I've missed something... Will the armies created in Empires and then exported to FOG2 be limited to existing army lists in FOG2, or will the game allow the creation of mixed army lists as devoncop describes?

Seems like empires which take over certain areas should be able to create/use unit types from that area?

[loki100]

yes, you will convert unit types from Empires to unit types in FoG2 (and this translation is fully moddable) but the linkage is not faction---army list, its unit ---unit.

So lets say your noble Picts take Carthage ... you can raise African Elephants to supplement your army - and if that army fights in FoG2 then it will indeed have Pictish elephants.

Way to think of this,is that each cultural group has a set of units and traits specific to that group. If you create certain buildings or take certain decisions, then new types become available but they are still faction specific.

The other block of units are raised when you control specific provinces. Anyone who holds that province can raise these. So if your state expands ahistorically, then the addition of regional units may well mean your army in FoG2 bears only limited relevance to the standard army list(s) for that faction. Some of these regional units are really just interesting variants of the standard unit type, some are very useful and some are very unique.

If you stay in your historical borders, then your army will bear a close resemblance to the standard army lists.

[76mm]

Way to think of this,is that each cultural group has a set of units and traits specific to that group. If you create certain buildings or take certain decisions, then new types become available but they are still faction specific.

The other block of units are raised when you control specific provinces. Anyone who holds that province can raise these.

This sounds great, it is good that we will not be locked into historical armies as empires evolve non-historically...

[vakarr]

One thing I hate about games with tech trees is that once you have the tech to build a unit, you can build it forever.

But that's not really how military organizations work--if you don't build a certain type of unit for a generation or two, you won't have the workshops to make the weapons, the cadre to train, or the experience to use the unit. Or even if you build similar units, they are not the same--eg, look at the Successor phalanxes, etc.

So what I'd like to see is even if you have the "tech" to build a unit, if you don't build one for some period (Ten years? Twenty? Fifty?), then you lose the ability to build them. I like the idea of the military power of empires rising and falling as they gain and lose access to certain types of military units.

This is true of modern technology but ancient weapons were on the whole very simple, and it often required the same technology to make different weapons. Swords came in all shapes and sizes and so did spears. it's not a big leap in technology to go from an ordinary spear or javelin to a pike or a pilum. The most sophisticated weapons were warships, siege engines, and composite bows but I don't think other weapons fit your description. If you still have the weapons it would not be hard to recover the software required to use them - a pilum has to be thrown, a pike has to be used in large, well ordered formations. There were manuals of warfare written down, too, so losing the people with the knowledge is not necessarily a problem.

[76mm]

This is true of modern technology but ancient weapons were on the whole very simple, and it often required the same technology to make different weapons. Swords came in all shapes and sizes and so did spears. it's not a big leap in technology to go from an ordinary spear or javelin to a pike or a pilum. The most sophisticated weapons were warships, siege engines, and composite bows but I don't think other weapons fit your description. If you still have the weapons it would not be hard to recover the software required to use them - a pilum has to be thrown, a pike has to be used in large, well ordered formations. There were manuals of warfare written down, too, so losing the people with the knowledge is not necessarily a problem.

But it is not just about the technology--it is about military organization and military culture... From what we have seen from ancient histories and manuals, much detail is left unsaid about specific tactics and techniques, presumably because the authors assumed readers either already knew, or didn't care about, such details. Hence the continuing mysteries about how exactly a legion or phalanx operated...

If it was as simple as you suggest to pick up whatever military formation you wanted, why didn't everyone adopt a Roman legionary model (or pick your best-practice military formation for a particular era) once they saw how effective it was? While sometimes this occurred to some extent, the copies were generally not nearly as good (ie, the "imitation legionaries" we see in the game)? As another example, why did certain nations stop using cavalry lancers over time?

[loki100]

... As another example, why did certain nations stop using cavalry lancers over time?

Something I read suggests that this sometimes happened as the economic/class base of a nation changed. So as an eg, Macedonia, after the civil wars and the Gallic invasion saw the loss of the bulk of its landed aristocracy. And crudely to have a decent number of lance armed shock troops you needed that particular group. So they reverted to spear/non-shock heavy cavalry (also not a bad choice when realistically your wars were in Greece). By contrast the Seleucids could draw on a relatively large pool of a landed aristocracy so kept that troop type.

So not sure this is a complete reason but does suggest that changing demographics were one aspect, the ever changing power relationship between infantry and cavalry was another. Its notable that by the start of the Common Era the only lance based shock cavalry were some Steppe nomads and the Parthians, while by say the third century CE, lance armed shock cavalry were back in favour?

[HeinzHarald]

So what I'd like to see is even if you have the "tech" to build a unit, if you don't build one for some period (Ten years? Twenty? Fifty?), then you lose the ability to build them. I like the idea of the military power of empires rising and falling as they gain and lose access to certain types of military units.

From a gameplay perspective there's a risk this will only be an annoyance. If you remember to build at least one of every unit within a certain timeframe pretty much nothing has changed compared to not having this feature (just a very slight potential "modifier" to the size and composition of your forces), and if you don't you'll hit yourself for losing the ability to build a unit until you research it again.

HOI4 has a couple of mechanics that takes what you might call the inverse effect into account though. Production lines get more efficient the more of a type of unit that's produced, and the more a type of unit is used the more experience you get to make improvements to the design. And cost modification is certainly a mechanic that could be used in Empires. I'm not sure it would add anything meaningful, but let's say you get a 1% reduction in cost for every turn a certain type of unit is built, and a 0.5% increase for every turn it isn't produced.

[76mm]

HOI4 has a couple of mechanics that takes what you might call the inverse effect into account though. Production lines get more efficient the more of a type of unit that's produced, and the more a type of unit is used the more experience you get to make improvements to the design. And cost modification is certainly a mechanic that could be used in Empires. I'm not sure it would add anything meaningful, but let's say you get a 1% reduction in cost for every turn a certain type of unit is built, and a 0.5% increase for every turn it isn't produced.

That's a clever idea, so the fewer units you create and deploy, the more expensive and less capable they would be, within reason.