Roads, barbed wire, trenches etc

[CE Bounty Hunter]

Would roads, barbed wire, trenches and so forth be a good addition? I saw this suggestion in a review and thought it would be great to see implemented.

[Stardustfire]

not if the want to stay at least a little near the TT things, and there all what you suggested are not a theme, at least when i understand you correct and you want them buildable. nearly only buildable (buyable with army points) defense is already in game, also the matter of heavy terrain is already covered. hard enove they leaned out of the window very much with this fortification DLC Buildings.

[kane]

It would be nice to be able to build roads between my cities for faster movement.

[El Presidente]

I'd love to be able to do things like that, yeah!

[❖Marauder❖]

Imperial guards are a rather weak detachment. What if add technology for ordinary guardsmen to "dig in", which gives + 17% of long-range damage. They receive this bonus if they have not moved at least one turn and are not in the city / outpost.
Also add an improvement to this technology "barbed wire", which allows to return 10% of melee damage back to the enemy.

[WAAAAGGH]

Originally posted by Stardustfire:

not if the want to stay at least a little near the TT things, and there all what you suggested are not a theme, at least when i understand you correct and you want them buildable. nearly only buildable (buyable with army points) defense is already in game, also the matter of heavy terrain is already covered. hard enove they leaned out of the window very much with this fortification DLC Buildings.

Or roads / trenchs / barbed wires can just be some random tiles like actual "imperial city".

[sarrowquand]

I'd like it if player made fortifications had a time limit of say 20 turns and then they vanished due to degrading beyond usefulness. That way the map wouldn't get too cluttered but would show the scars of recent conflicts and battlegrounds. You could put roads between your cities but they'd need periodic renewal (maybe you could automate that).

[Overread]

The risk with adding too many fortified structures is that the combat can end up turning into too much of a grinding experience. This can result in the game getting a bit like WW1 where things get bogged down on the front lines with factions unable to really push their own advantage enough to punch through and gain new territories.

Whilst this can be fun for a while, its not a good thing if its gets drawn out too far as it can seriously slow the game down.


That said I would welcome some increased fortification system. Perhaps, as noted above, having strict limits per turn so that you might not be able to fortify a whole side of the map; but might be able to better hold choke points or a single quarter or so. Letting you protect one flank whilst focusing on another.

Of course another risk, esp against the AI, is that AI tend to be really bad at learning how to deal with defensive positions. Namely they will rarely use things like artillery (which is built for breaching defences) and will often just rush with whatever they've got. This can mean that even if they add more artillery units (or give artillery bonus against defences) the AI can still end up treating it like a meat-grinder and wasting units against them. Resulting in it working too well at stopping the AI from advancing.
In that case its less of a meat-grinder problem and more one that it allows a human player unfair advantage in segmenting and protecting their areas of the map and curtailing the AI's ability to expand.




That also raises another issue. Necrons. They have very restricted expansion tied to the map. with increased fortification features they'd need some early breaching methods otherwise they could easily be blocked from all their expansion points. Damaging their mid to late game potential considerably.



PErsonally I'd love to see IG digging trenches across the map; see artillery line up ready to breach and blast through (or in the case of spore mines, rain down terror in the trenches). It could be the really neat focus of a huge expansion to the game and enhance the experiences on larger maps especially.

[Venrez]

I think a great compromise of this would be to allow Cities of X/Y/Z size a certain number of charges for an ability or two to deploy defensive emplacements a small distance outside of their city boundaries.

For example, a default city with no +radius upgrades could deploy 1-2 defensive barbed wire tiles that provide cover for units directly next to them and slow / damage enemies attempting to move through it, similar to Creepvine.

A city with +1 radius would have 1 more charge for this ability, and so forth. Perhaps also extending the distance from the maximum possible range of the city that they can be deployed. (So if a city is 3x3, its deployment zone for these could be anything within 5x5.

Cities can spend a certain amount of Building "Resource" per turn to either place or remove these, similar to how any other structure or unit is built. Perhaps even a new building type could be added to increase this, such as Engineering Corps (Krieg! Krieg! Krieg!) for the AM, housing teams of engineers that mean they can build / tear down / move the trenches, bunkers and barbed wire faster.

It could vary between Factions. AM get Barbed Wire, Trenches that provide significant defence bonuses but require all movement and action points to get out of or Bunker Emplacements that significantly increase the defence and slight range improvement for the unit occupying that tile.

SM could get Tarantula Turrets. Improved Barbed Wire. Reinforcement beacons that allow a unit produced at the city, to be drop-podded by that beacon for no cost. (Allowing instant reinforcement around the city but not offensively). Or Chapter-Banners that provide morale immunity / full Morale to nearby SM units.

Nids could get Mini-Hives that spawn attacking (weak) Ripper Swarm units per turn. Or Hydra-Nodes, like the turrets from DoW2. Or fields of Nid-Vine that do small amounts of damage to units within its field of effect but feed biomass to the relevant Hive, similar to the 'City of Spiders' later research, with less effect but can be deployed beyond "city" limits in limited quantity, such as in the direction foes are coming.

Chaos could get Localized Warp Storms which completely block a single tile from all unit movement and sight. Or Chaos Altars that provide X/Y/Z bonus to units immediately next to them. Perhaps +Resource / +0.1 Population / +Influence / +0.2 (Temporary) City Loyalty to enemy units killed adjacent to them. Khorne / Nurgle / Tzeentch / Slaanesh.

Orks could get Dakka-Piles, which allow units immediately next to them to shoot an additional time per turn. Or Piles'o'Bitz that give slight regeneration per turn to immediately adjacent units. Or Stacks'o'Barrels that can be shot by Orks (and the owning Ork player only) to detonate and do damage to units immediately adjacent to it whilst also clearing any terrain modifiers (forest, creepvine, etc).

Tau could get Mont'ka / Kauyon Command Posts that provide X/Y/Z bonus to immediately adjacent units. Or Caste Banners that give the owning City +Influence per turn for enemy units near the Banner. Or perhaps Embedded Shield / Gun Drones.

Necron could get Chrono-Towers that reduce ranged accuracy of nearby enemy units. Or Blackrock Sigils that provide slight reanimation regeneration to nearby adjacent Necron Units. Or Chrono-Mines that when triggered, teleport the unit that just activated it back to their previous turn. (And then has a multi-turn cooldown before the Mine reactivates).

These objects cannot be attacked directly, but when the relevant owning City is destroyed, they are too.

This would give Cities and Factions greater tactical depth, whilst in certain scenarios, also expose them to flanking maneuvers (think Maginot Line) where you place everything a City has in the one direction the enemy is coming, but then they attack from around the other flank.

- - -

Similar to this, Cities could place 'roads' a certain distance, tile by tile, away from City edges. It would not be a large enough radius to connect the whole map, but certainly give a movement advantage city to city, in the direction of conflict, with small gaps of regular terrain between Cities in "your" corner of the map.

Or in the Nid's case of many, smaller cities, a linked network that enables even the furthermost-back cities to produce units and send them quickly to the front incase of defence or pouring out an endless tide of Gaunts.

[Falaris]

Roads between your own cities - yes, definitely, for Imperial Guard at the very least.

But outside of that.... not so sure. Some infantry can entrench already, I think, and tying it up with that rather than having trenches all over the planet is a better solution.