I think big wars should be like “grand tours”

[Shampoo]

War is a big deal back in the ancient times.

I watched Three Kingdoms (2010) which took place way before the time this game takes place in and Zhuge Liang constantly has to worry about supply lines (e.g. he had to abandon a nearly won campaign because his supply lines was just way too long coming from Hanzhong with the loss of Jingzhou), and enemy ambushes in the mountains.

Big wars shouldn’t be just raising your army and move to attack a castle. Making sure your supply line isn’t too long should be important too. It is unrealistic to think a massive army of 70000 warriors can be supplied with enough food and fresh drinking water by carrying it themselves.

It can introduce new ways to play such as having a smaller army cut off the enemy supply lines while the main army keeps the enemy focused.

A big army is useless if they aren’t fed. And a big army is even more useless if they don’t have fresh drinking water, which makes it even more important to plan your war carefully.

My suggestion is:

When you start a big war or a big defensive war that would usually require all of your military power to attack or defend, you start with a “planning” stage, where your Marshal will show on the map the predicted enemy attack path (if defending) or the predicted enemy defend path (if attacking) and from there they suggest key points that you can attack/defend and shows you your supply line.

You don’t have to follow the plan (because the predicted enemy path can change depending on what happens in the war), but the plan will warn you if supply lines will be a problem and/or if there will not be enough freshwater for your army if you move this way…

Depending on the personality of the enemy commanding general, they may prefer to cut off your supply line, or attack you straight up or choose to delay your war campaign by defending castles and refuse to attack, causing you to lose gold and food until you give up.

Depending on the enemy’s ruler personality, they may force their commanding general or dismiss them if they feel like they should be attacking and not defending even if defending is the best choice.

As we all know, food does not grow in a few days. Especially not in the amounts fitting to feed a army as big as 70000. It usually takes several months to grow the needed food so starting wars during certain “food” seasons may be advantageous and strategies involving making the war last longer to force the enemy to run out of food or cause their supply line to become so long that you can cut off their supply line from behind!

Of course all of this will not apply to smaller wars, and this should only happen when the enemy is big enough to use this mechanic.

What do you think?

[taomastercu]

A few upcoming CK3 adjacent games have something like this if not better. Think OPB also has a similar suggestion for wars. Possibly Paradox can't do this because it will cripple the AI but we'll see. Maybe once the potential competition releases they'll have to commit to doing some fancier stuff like this.

[taomastercu]

Publicado originalmente por 󠀡󠀡:

managing warfare could certainly be a bit more complex in ck3 then the click raise > click move cycle currently where supply and attrition is largely ignored but on the other side, the nightmare of micromanaging supply infrastructure in HOI is why a lot of people (including myself) are allergic to that series - so i wouldn't want too much of an overcorrection in that direction if the gameplay is overhauled

CK3 probably wouldn't have anything like HoI4 although most of these issues could simply be resolved with a not ♥♥♥♥ UI. Tall order for PDox, though.

[Kimlin]

Long ago a game named Rise of the Phoenix had an interesting way off handling supply lines but it wasn’t overly complicated. Something like that would work.

[Jet]

supply lines are the focal point for expanding the mechanics of war without making it overly complex as the devs and some players want to avoid

[Solitus]

Ambitious changes when in the game levies and Men at Arms magically materialize wherever the flag is instead of raising locally and gathering at the mustering point.

Sacrifices were made for gameplay and unfortunately CK3 is all about naked cannibalistic memory rather than the immersive running of a feudal society.