Separating out military units into armies

[Azaghul]

The basic idea:

Instead of battles between being between all of the units of one nation vs all of the units of another, units are separated into "armies" that are capped at a certain amount.  That cap could be based on city count so that army size limits are directly proportional to city count, or a flat cap where army sizes are equal but bigger nations have more armies, or something in between.

When you launch an attack, you can only use one of your armies, and only one of your armies can defend.  Whether you or your opponent pick which army defends is up for debate, or it could be dynamic and based on things like ground/air control.

So for example, Nation 1 has 3 50,000 men armies and is attacking Nation 2 with 2 50,000 men armies.  Each ground battle would just involve one of each.  The odds, depending on other factors, would be reasonably equal for any particular fight, at least at first, would be about even.  Overall Nation 1 would have the advantage and more depth to be able to fight.

The overall idea is here is that right now a player with significantly more units is effectively guaranteed to win an attack, which doesn't really do much for anyone involved.  Under this system, someone at a disadvantage could still win some battles, without it being a situation where size difference doesn't matter at all.  It would also give someone something to do when their military is eliminated to build units and use them to fight battles without having them immediately stack wiped at little cost to the attacker.  And creates more opportunities for a number of nations who are all beaten down to coordinate on one opponent and take them down.

Something like this would also open up the game to more interesting features:  Things like different "stances" for different armies.  Or having battles take a certain number of turns where an army can't engage in another battle, which could add interesting dynamics to people fighting multiple wars at the same time.

The overall idea here is that it separates out to some degree how someone can do in any particular battle vs how they are doing in an overall war.  That allows blitzes and the seesaw of militarization to still mean something and have a big impact, while still allowing for more dynamic battles without a predetermined outcome and luck being more of a factor.

Edited July 14, 2018 by Azaghul

[Sir Scarfalot]

Honestly, this isn't a bad idea. It would really change the way high-tier warfare works, and in my opinion in a very good way.

I should point out that in this war alone, I've fought opponents as high as 2200 score and as low as 240 score. In my nations' history I have fought hundreds and hundreds of wars in both the high tiers and the low tiers, so I can say with some authority that the way battles happen between high tiers and low tiers changes in a much more fundamental way than anyone realizes. Simply put, as militaries get larger, it becomes easier, faster, and more likely for militaries to be zeroed, and harder, slower, and less likely for recovery to happen. Neither of these are good trends for game balance or fun warfare for either side, and limiting the total forces able to be deployed in any given battle would fix the issue, if implemented neatly and carefully.

Other ideas to add onto this one might be that each action point is one maneuver that one military unit (think an armored division or an air wing) can make. That way if you stack more action points you can use more military at once at the cost of more action points and thus do more damage and lower resistance more, or you can do smaller attacks with less action points that do less damage and lower resistance less. There's a lot more possibilities, like having a higher land area lower the proportion of military you can use at once (they're spread out over a larger area), or having military units be based and fight per city rather than all cities acting as a unified front, so weaker cities become liabilities. These could get complicated, but they'd be interesting IMO.

[Wendell]

Simple solution: keep your score as low as possible with maximum military capabilities at one click or turn away. That way your score(and military) is flexible for wars and you don't have to worry about down declares.

[Sir Scarfalot]

2 hours ago, Deulos said:

Simple solution: keep your score as low as possible with maximum military capabilities at one click or turn away. That way your score(and military) is flexible for wars and you don't have to worry about down declares.

A. You always have to worry about down declares; keeping your buying power in reserve just changes the scale of your enemies somewhat, but there is always the possibility for someone with some specialized military that can put the pressure on you in some fashion... unless you're Seb or Fraggle of course

B. That's not at all what we were talking about in the first place. Yes, basic tactics like what you've said here are used to work around the fundamental limitations of the war system; what is being suggested here is something to enhance the system itself.