Someone please explain supply to me like im 5

[PK SPACE JAM]

Having trouble figuring out what the hell is going on and its ruining my games. For seemingly no reason at all, with me doing nothing to will this so, supply only goes out in one direction from my home city, to the north, refusing to go south according to the supply layer, why does it do this, I have built truck stops and supply bases to the south but still there is no supply getting sent in that direction, really pissing me off and at this point im ready to trash this game.

[Felius]

I would recommend you to play with midcore logistics. The outright easy logistics can be a bit too easy, but the normal hardcore logistics is a bit too unforgiving and a whole thing to get into, as well as a complete headache to (micro)manage in larger maps.

[besban]

Use the 'P' key or click 'Preview Pts' to see how your Pull Points (i.e. demands) and Logistics are planned out. Also, check if there are black/red colors on 'Bottlenecks' Logistics.

[Slippy]

1. Read the chapter in the manual on logistics if you havent already. Its going to help.

2. Logistics moves out from a logistic provider (eg a truck stop) along roads/rails in all directions UNLESS you have used traffic lights to stop/limit movement. It should split itself equally along all paths.

3. Are you looking at all the logistic layers? For me the most useful are initial points (this will show you before any allocations where your logistic points travelled) and then current points (showing how many unused logistic points you have available on each hex). If your initial points are showing nothing to the south its probably a traffic sign you put in place. Preview points is useful to see the effect of traffic signs you have put in place during the turn.

4. The quick, simple logistic rules are: dont build branching paths unless required so you try and keep 1 'main line'. If you have offshoots that arent going to zone city hexes you can use traffic signs to block off all LP apart from stuff being used by pull points. This ensures rural assets get supplied as well as units with food/ammo/fuel etc.

The AI builds wild and wacky logistic networks that wont work for the player so you will often need to rebuild as you conqueror, removing excess roads and branching paths.

[MikeisaGoob]

Originally posted by PK SPACE JAM:

Having trouble figuring out what the hell is going on and its ruining my games. For seemingly no reason at all, with me doing nothing to will this so, supply only goes out in one direction from my home city, to the north, refusing to go south according to the supply layer, why does it do this, I have built truck stops and supply bases to the south but still there is no supply getting sent in that direction, really pissing me off and at this point im ready to trash this game.

Use traffic signs, block all lp going to whatever road you dont want and then hit pull points at the top, now your logistics network will only send as many lp as needed down that route and wont waste the rest

[Hasefrexx]

1. Logistic points represent how many resources can be moved (including units, ammo etc). Fuel and water require no points to move on land, but a bottleneck will affect these resources.

2. AP represent how far these can be moved. 100 AP means you can move without logistic point loss through up to 10 dirt road hex, 15 sealed road hex, 25 rail hex. Past this distance, the points decrease with every hex, down to 0 another 100 AP later.

3. AP can be reset to 0, this happens when logistic points enter into a truck or rail station (only of the corresponding logistic points). When this happens, the amount of logistic points is reduced by a flat 25% IIRC, but also by an amount that depends on how many AP have been spent so far.

4. A supply base will "reset" AP, up to how much AP has been spent. This can only happen once no matter how many bases the logistic points go through. * This one is more complex but outside of niche cases it should do the trick.

5. Rail logistic points can only flow optimally between one train station and another train station or a rail head. Otherwise only 10% of logistic points can flow there.

6. Every turn, at the end of your turn, the SHQ transfers resources towards cities and units to fulfil their needs. Then resources produced are all sent to the SHQ, to be used or moved around the next turn. Not directly related but something often confusing players, resources are spent, then stored in the SHQ. This means that often if you have resource shortages, you will still see some stockpile in the SHQ, but this stockpile is less than you will need, so there's a shortage but the game just won't tell you.

6. You only need to check bottleneck view regularly. Green is great, yellow fine, blue means beware, red means upgrade your logistics asset soon, black means you are short of logistic points.

7. Logistics spread evenly between every single branching, however the game will automatically assign pull points to redirect a bigger fraction of points where there are cities and units (automatic pull points). You can (but need not) override this by placing traffic signs (restricting the flow of points in some directions), or pull points (redirecting more points towards this direction).

8. When in doubt, upgrade logistics assets. Its cheap to do, but bottlenecks can lose you wars and take time to fix.

[way2co0l_2003]

Most of the time upgrading is the straight up solution and can just brute force the results you need, but learning how to use the traffic system to direct the flow exactly where you want it can have tremendous effect. Cutting off flow into directions you don't need, or restricting flow in directions that need less of it freeing up more to go in the directions you do need it. The link between cities is often the most important and the most easily bottlenecked so sometimes it's more important to restrict the flow heading out of your cities and actually directed back towards them... This may sound counterintuitive... If your troops at the border aren't getting the supplies they need, you'll likely think the best response is to set up the traffic system from the nearest city to restrict the flow inwards to your empire while increasing it outwards to the border, but this can actually decrease the amount of supplies that can actually make it that far.

Let's say we're working on a 2D plane with 3 cities and 1 border to each side and the rightmost city is your capital. Something like \--x--x--X--/. The road that typically matters the most there is the one between the 2 cities to the right, with the 2nd highest priority being the road between the 2 cities to the left and then lastly the roads leading to the borders. If you use the traffic system to block 80% of traffic from each of the cities.... 80% blocked from the leftmost city to the border, another 80% blocked heading left from the central city, and 80% blocked from going to it's border right of the capital, it still would leave you with 20% being allocated to each border, 160% being on the most important road, and 100% being on the 2nd most important.

Now obviously this is just as an example and very simplistic terms. There are plenty of situations where you might need to do this differently and the map you're working on isn't usually in such a straight and simple line but the general concept can really help you get the absolute most of the logistics points you have and ensure as few bottlenecks as possible without having to just brute force upgrades to make it manageable.

Edit: After actually stopping to read what the OP is describing, then it's tough to know without seeing your save or some images. It sounds like you likely have a major pull set to the north which isn't leaving anything remaining to go south. Clicking either the l or p key will bring up the current points or preview points overlay respectively which can make it easier to spot if you have any of those set in that direction. Any pull points being requested, either by the game or through a custom set one, will be shown as a number within a rectangular box. You can clear any custom pull you may have setup through the traffic system screen. You can use the same traffic system to set a limit to how much throughput is allowed to go north entirely which will force the rest to get distributed along any other viable paths remaining. If that doesn't fix your issue then I'd need more info to figure out why. Probably just have to get your save and load it up to see.

[The nubinator]

Originally posted by Felius:

I would recommend you to play with midcore logistics. The outright easy logistics can be a bit too easy, but the normal hardcore logistics is a bit too unforgiving and a whole thing to get into, as well as a complete headache to (micro)manage in larger maps.

What do you do on larger maps? Cause the biggest gripe I have with logistics is that everything seems to be going to the SHQ in the end and that seems like a stupidly centralized system that will be impossible if you play on a very large map or something.



Cant u make zones store stuff at least up to a point so they dont send stuff back and fort all the time. Really unnecessary.

[way2co0l_2003]

You're able to create more than one SHQ which can really help. I'm currently playing on the largest map I can and hold just shy of 17% of the planet atm without any real supply issues. I'm relying primarily on a circle of rail as the backbone of my supply network. While it's not quite circular, its path is a circular circuit where each station has 2 directions it can go and if you keep going in any single direction long enough you'll wind up right back where you started. I'm then using the cities the trains stop at as my main hubs which distribute to any cities that aren't directly on the circuit which affords me a fair amount of flexibility. And I'm still only using the single SHQ without any current issues getting supplies out to my forces.

[Slippy]

Originally posted by The nubinator:

Originally posted by Felius:

I would recommend you to play with midcore logistics. The outright easy logistics can be a bit too easy, but the normal hardcore logistics is a bit too unforgiving and a whole thing to get into, as well as a complete headache to (micro)manage in larger maps.

What do you do on larger maps? Cause the biggest gripe I have with logistics is that everything seems to be going to the SHQ in the end and that seems like a stupidly centralized system that will be impossible if you play on a very large map or something.



Cant u make zones store stuff at least up to a point so they dont send stuff back and fort all the time. Really unnecessary.

You can build more SHQs if your network is getting too large and unwieldy. Not something to be under taken lightly as each SHQ needs to be self sufficient.

Zones do already hold some extra supplies. You could mess about with zone orders to try and have more held in inventory but it’s largely not needed.

Stuff shouldn’t generally go back and forth between zones. If a zone produces something it’s either sending it the SHQ or retaining it for immediate use. However you can set a zone to supply nearby units from its own supplies BEFORE the stuff gets shipped back to the SHQ. This can eliminate situations where you have an ammo or food producing zone that’s sending stuff back to the SHQ and then the SHQ is sending it back out to the units that are right next door to the first zone.

[LCcmdr]

A lot of good answers above!

Here's my simple offer: Supply dwindles down once you have exceeded the surrounding supply zone of a supply city (typically your initial city). The more troops you have spread out in every direction, the more shrinkage supply suffers (via you SHQ). Good news--roads upgrade supply (really they reduce the shrinkage) and extend how many hexes your supply route can reach. Now, all this begins with a transportation hub (typically owned by the city). I buy mine out ASAP to gain my first buff. I build 2 or 3 roads (without split offs if possible) to further supply reach. Finally, I build agricultural farms plus more transportation hubs (about 10-12 hexes from my initial city). If I can conquer a nearby city, it eliminates the need for a new city in that direction.

As your number of units increase, as well as cities in an extended range, you must tier up to the II tier transportation hub, improve dirt roads to sealed, and eventually lay RR lines to provide max supplies to the edges of your empire so that the extended small towns will have enough supplies to push them on out to the troops. BTW, I've played both ways--only having one SHQ or having more than one. I prefer to just have one. More than one can become terribly confusing.

One further piece of the supply infrastructure are your resources providing oil and energy, along with metal (and everything else integrated into growing your empire). It's so easy to overextend, dry up, crumble, and get punished by all kinds of civil rebellion and stagnation. I suggest you grow with patience trying to "live within your means." I've lost/walked away from too many games that way.

As you're discovering, "supply" is what makes this game both fun but frustrating!

[nDervish]

Originally posted by The nubinator:

What do you do on larger maps? Cause the biggest gripe I have with logistics is that everything seems to be going to the SHQ in the end and that seems like a stupidly centralized system that will be impossible if you play on a very large map or something.

Not an issue, in my experience. I'm currently playing on the largest "normal" map size (not the DLC-added "colossal" world) and hold 43% of the planet, plus my SHQ is still sitting only about a dozen hexes from the south pole instead of in a central position, and I've had no problems. Some cities are too far apart for trucks to efficiently connect them, but my rail network (powered by one level 2 high-speed rail station at the SHQ and two level 1 high-speed rails in the east-central and west-central parts of my territory) easily handles the load.

Originally posted by The nubinator:

Cant u make zones store stuff at least up to a point so they dont send stuff back and fort all the time. Really unnecessary.

Zones generally don't both send and receive the same item to the SHQ. Either they produce and export it, or they import and consume it. If it's something the zone both produces and consumes (e.g., if the zone has both an oil well and a power plant) then it consumes its own production first before dealing with the SHQ to handle any excess or deficit.

So you might get supplies being sent from the zone to the SHQ and then the same type of supplies sent from the SHQ to units in that zone, but not to the zone itself.

[DedZedNub]

Good question with some excellent replies. This ought to be considered for a Sticky Post or added to a Steam Guide.

And if any of you can recommend a solid guide on YouTube or other video site, where the person doesn't constantly go ramble all over the place (some of the great content providers often do unfortunately, like DasTactic - and he is not the worst). Hmm, I wonder if PartyElite covers this game, because his Total Warhammer series of 3-8 minute videos were excellent in value per minute spent watching.

To the Original Poster, I'm an older player, played many different Strategy PC and Board games over the years, but this one sometimes stomps me at first, so don't feel bad.

Notice a few of these replies mentioned that Traffic Signal mentality -- it is very useful in this game. So if you also like Railroad games, like the Railroad Tycoon series, or Train Fever and Transport Fever -- you will get the mindset.

I find it not hard per se, but if you play several games and take a couple weeks away from Shadow Empire, the need for the various overlays and sometimes unintuitive commands can get to you. But even outside logistics or supply, these overlays are really the secret to noticing that something like a hidden unit is doing something to your plan. So keep that in mind -- learn how to use all those overlays.

I think this Developer also made Advanced Tactics -- and at least the two are similar, in terms of concept for logistics, as Shadow Empire.