Military Guide to World Realism[Land, Navy]

by **Freddie the Barbie** Fri Jun 20, 2014 1:46 pm

Users Guide to World Realism

Army Units

The Army combat system is pretty simple in that it combines chance with modifiers that could skew the battle one side; these are terrain, rivers, etc. I mentioned in the other guy that more food provinces allow a country to have a higher army unit cap. This means militias for each colony can be bigger. This isn't like Europe where huge battles take place between professional armies; the armies in the America’s are mostly bandits, privateers, conquistadors and militiamen. Each colony can muster 20% of its population by default into the army; having 2 different food sources (fish and cattle for example) let's that cap increase to 25% and 3 different food sources let's it cap to 30%. If one of my colonies has 5,000 people then I can muster 1,000 soldiers. This number is not deducted from the main population of the colony in the beginning, even if the troops leave the colony to fight.

However, if your troops start taking casualties then every year you should reduce your colonies population by that amount of casualties and recalculate the troop amount. Say I lose 300 soldiers in a battle; my colony now has a population of 4,700; 20% of 4,700 is 940. This accurately reflects the available manpower even with troop replenishment. Since you lost 300 soldiers your original army count would have been 700, however due to troop replenishment it’s 940. Fighting in the America’s tends to be small scale, however it becomes very significant in that it disrupts the long term growth of colonies and may eventually cause colonial governments to collapse. Even with troop replenishment, you do not have to move your troops all the way back to your colony. If you were invading a faraway country, your troops will remain there after the end of the year.

Armies can only attack or move to an adjacent province once per year. Navies can move twice per year. Now I will actually tell you how the combat system works for the army.

River +5 when defending
Forest +5 when defending
Amphibious Assault +10 when defending
Marsh +10 when defending
Mountains +20 when defending
Iron (swords) +10 (no stacking with muskets)
Iron + Sulfur (muskets) +20 (no stacking with swords)
Horses (cavalry) +10 when attacking
Wood (wooden forts) +5 when defending (no stacking with other types of forts)
Stone (stone forts) +10 when defending (no stacking with other types of forts)
Wood + Stone (adv. forts) +20 when defending (no stacking with other types of forts)
When calculating battles, you add the total combat strength of each. Say your army has Muskets and is defending in a marsh; that would make its combat strength 40. If the enemy army has cavalry and muskets then their combat strength would be 30. So this is how the battle would more or less look like.

My army: 1000 troops
Combat strength: 40
Vs
Your army: 2000 troops
Combat strength: 40

[b]The combat formula is troop count / combat strength x dice roll

In order to ensure fair play each player throws the dice for the other; this means that if I throw a 7, that it will be used to calculate your casualty rate; whereas if you throw me a 3, it is used to calculate mines. Let’s put this into practice. I got 7 and you got 3.
My casualties: 1,000 / 40 [the higher the combat strength, the smaller the number] = 25 x 3 = 75 casualties. [The smaller the number, the less effect the dice roll has in multiplying casualties]
Your casualties: 2000/ 40 = 50 x 7 = 350 casualties. [Mathematically, lower combat strength gives larger numbers when you divide meaning that your casualties will multiply more]

These casualty rates are realistic especially for these numbers. Rarely did casualty rates exceed 10% or higher in a single confrontation. If an enemy surrounds your territory, and successfully defeats you, your army will automatically surrender since there is no escape route. The remaining prisoners of war will not be deducted from the colonies population. In order to determine a winner, we look at the ratio of troops lost compared to the whole army. If your army lost 350, that’s a casualty rate of 17.5% which is quite high. My army lost 75, so that’s a casualty rate of 7.5%. Therefore I won the battle. I am a firm believer in attrition and think that casualties aren't enough to determine a winner or loser; casualty rates better reflect overall loses. This is in order to stop a small army from constantly winning, since there would be devastating casualties. I think that covers everything army wise.

Naval Units

Naval Unit caps are solely based on two conditions: the amount of coastal regions you control, and whether you have regions with wood. The former condition gives the base amount of naval units in your whole Country; if you control 10 coastal provinces, then your Navy has 10 ships. However, if you control a province containing wood, then this increases by 25% and so on. So if you control 2 wood provinces, then this increases by 50%. You would have 15 ships instead of 10. Naval units replenish differently to army units, since they do not have a population that really determines their size; only province amount and wood really determines the size of navies. Navies replenish at a fixed rate of 10% each turn, based on the Naval Unit limiter. So if you can support 20 ships, but lose 5, then you will only gain 2 more ships every year until you reach your max limiter of 20 again. The 10% replenishment is based on your total support capacity, not the current amount of ships you have after a battle; If you have 15 ships after a battle it will still add 2 more ships every year rather than 1.5 (even though it’s still 2 because you round it off). This is pretty simple to follow.

Naval units can disrupt troop movements between Islands and the mainland as well as set up blockades to halt population growth to colonies. This will be further discussed in the blockading section of this guide.

Naval battles are more based on chance and numbers than army battles because there aren’t many extra modifiers that can really skew the outcome more, so it is mainly a ‘whoever has the biggest navy’ strategy. However, there is more to it! So players will again roll dice against each other; here is the formula as it is a bit simple and different to the army formula.

Formula -> Number of Ships in battle – enemy dice roll = remaining number of ships after battle.
This formula is a bit simple and small since naval battles usually do not exceed 20 or 30 ships. However if casualties do not mount then several phases will be conducted (this is what separates the naval system from the army system). These phases are Ambush, Skirmish and Battle. They are unlocked depending how many total ships are participating in the battle. The names are purely aesthetics since you just repeat the same combat formula throughout all phases.

The Ambush phase is the default phase for any battle with 20 total ships or less.
The Skirmish Phase is conducted when there are 50 total ships or less.
The Battle Phase is conducted when there are more than 50 total ships.
The skirmish and battle phases simply add one additional dice roll for each player.

Blockading
Blockading was a significant part of the colonization of the New World, in that it put a strain on the already scarce resources that many countries had to improvise with. Even though I have not explained the naval system yet, naval blockading has several useful functions; it is important to have both a powerful army and a formidable navy.

- Naval blockades can restrict troop movements and protect islands from being attacked. The thin black lines between islands on the map show that they can be kept separate during an enemy blockade. Friendly armies cannot move between the islands until the enemy blockade is dismantled. You do not need friendly ships to move armies between islands.
- Naval blockades put a strain on resources causing significant population drops, along with the population growth dice roll in the end of the year.
In order to determine the degree of damage a naval blockade is causing, a player must count all the sea regions that are adjacent to their provinces and then calculate the percent that are being occupied by enemy naval forces. If your coastal territories are adjacent to 3 sea regions and 1 of them is being occupied, then 33% of your colonies are being blockaded. According to the statistics below, that would mean the blockaded Country would receive a -10% population penalty each year the blockade would continue. The incurring effects are as shown below. These do not include yearly population growth dice rolls. These effects happen yearly.

If 0%-9% then no effects
If 10%-24% then -5% population growth
If 25%-49% then -10% population growth
If 50%-74% then -15% population growth
If 75%-100% then -20% population growth

@CopyrightFrederichBarbarossa
@Copyright♛Priscilla♛ (ideas)