Since Rome has a character system, I figured I’d slightly update my character system idea to fit with the latest one. And throw in other marginally related ideas as well, but I always do that.
I’ll just point everything out in sequence. Firstly, my paint skills are atrocious and constitute an argument that god does not exist. But enough theology.
Instead of a mother and father, you have your two most immediate superiors. For a divisional commander, it is the corps commander and the army commander. For army group commander, it is the chief of army staff and the chief of staff. The buck only stops with the head of state. In addition to being handy, they are two of the four people who influence the command efficiency of any battles that the actual spotlighted character engages in.
Instead of siblings, you have fellow commanders of the same rank or assignment (ie, fellow lieutenant generals, or fellow commanders who happen to command corps-sized units—the more ways you can filter, the better).
Instead of a spouse, a chief of staff. He is the fourth person who influences the command efficiency, as he takes care of the actual headquarters staff and whatnot. Obviously, the first person is the character himself if that’s not been picked up already.
Instead of children, subordinates. If there’s any underlings, that’s where they are—but only show the immediate underlings. An army group commander doesn’t care to see his divisional commanders listed, for instance, just his army commanders.
That’s the left side. We have changes on the right side as well.
Instead of family, political ideology. Political ideology affects loyalty—the further away the character’s own ideology from the state for which he fights, the less loyalty. This is important, we’ll come back to why later.
Age is, well, age. Martial is obviously leader skill on the battlefield. Charisma is how much effect he’s have as a minister (ie, how well he can implement his avowed policies), and can also affect combat events. Finesse is for research if he happens to be assigned to research doctrine, and also affects his ministerial capabilities.
Popularity, well, how popular he is with the troops under his command—the more popular he is, the more faith the troops will have in him. It amounts to a combat modifier.
Now, loyalty. Loyalty affects the impact of his martial statistic. If he’s very loyal, there will be little or no loss of skill impact on combat, if he’s disloyal, there will be a more considerable loss of skill impact on combat.
Corruptness would be the same as loyalty, except applied to ministerial and research positions, more or less.
Culture would be allegiance, basically.
So that’s that, and its all well and dandy. But what does it mean? Now I get to go on a slight tangent (yay).
This, naturally, ties directly into a hierarchical system for the military, with divisions, corps, armies and army groups.
There are several peculiarities that a hierarchical system would have. First, the HQs would only affect that army group. Second, as mentioned before, there are four characters affecting the combat of any one unit, be it division, corps, army or entire army group—this would allow for mitigation of those low skill German old guards, for instance, since they could be given great subordinates and brilliant chiefs of staff—it would also use a lot more of the leader pool, as is historical. Thirdly, it would be possible to base a logistics system on it (more on that later). Fourthly, it would make coordination between divisions in different corps/corps in different armies/armies in different army groups more difficult, as historically. It would also make command limits less of an important issue at the lower levels, as any divisional sized battle would be influenced by the army commander, and anything larger by the army group commander, which would allow major generals to command corps to some degree (as occurred historically). I’m sure there’s more I’m not mentioning as well.
Back to the logistics system, which I think would be relatively easy to implement. Base it off the convoy system—but on land. Instead of ships going from port to port, trains that go from the capital to the army group headquarters, from where the supplies are dispersed to the armies/corps/divisions under its jurisdiction (also by train). This would be an incentive to keep the headquarters behind the lines, but not so far behind that it makes intra-army group logistics difficult.
Air units on logistics strike can hit trains. Also, partisans can interfere with the convoy efficiency and, if they rise up, cut off the logistics until cleared out or the route compensates for the loss of territory, making partisans more dangerous. And encirclements. We already have the mechanic for defending the trains—garrisons, to keep the partisans in check. Infrastructure should also have something to do with the efficiency of the trains.
All in all, this logistics system, I think, has the potential to simulate the limitations of logistics fairly well. It obviously isn’t compete, trains should go to a lot more than just HQs and subordinate units (ie, airbases and ports as well) and there’s no doubt other stuff I’m missing. But I hope that this may point Paradox in what I hope is the right direction.
Yes, I admit this was all geared specifically so I could talk about the logistics system.
I’ll just point everything out in sequence. Firstly, my paint skills are atrocious and constitute an argument that god does not exist. But enough theology.
Instead of a mother and father, you have your two most immediate superiors. For a divisional commander, it is the corps commander and the army commander. For army group commander, it is the chief of army staff and the chief of staff. The buck only stops with the head of state. In addition to being handy, they are two of the four people who influence the command efficiency of any battles that the actual spotlighted character engages in.
Instead of siblings, you have fellow commanders of the same rank or assignment (ie, fellow lieutenant generals, or fellow commanders who happen to command corps-sized units—the more ways you can filter, the better).
Instead of a spouse, a chief of staff. He is the fourth person who influences the command efficiency, as he takes care of the actual headquarters staff and whatnot. Obviously, the first person is the character himself if that’s not been picked up already.
Instead of children, subordinates. If there’s any underlings, that’s where they are—but only show the immediate underlings. An army group commander doesn’t care to see his divisional commanders listed, for instance, just his army commanders.
That’s the left side. We have changes on the right side as well.
Instead of family, political ideology. Political ideology affects loyalty—the further away the character’s own ideology from the state for which he fights, the less loyalty. This is important, we’ll come back to why later.
Age is, well, age. Martial is obviously leader skill on the battlefield. Charisma is how much effect he’s have as a minister (ie, how well he can implement his avowed policies), and can also affect combat events. Finesse is for research if he happens to be assigned to research doctrine, and also affects his ministerial capabilities.
Popularity, well, how popular he is with the troops under his command—the more popular he is, the more faith the troops will have in him. It amounts to a combat modifier.
Now, loyalty. Loyalty affects the impact of his martial statistic. If he’s very loyal, there will be little or no loss of skill impact on combat, if he’s disloyal, there will be a more considerable loss of skill impact on combat.
Corruptness would be the same as loyalty, except applied to ministerial and research positions, more or less.
Culture would be allegiance, basically.
So that’s that, and its all well and dandy. But what does it mean? Now I get to go on a slight tangent (yay).
This, naturally, ties directly into a hierarchical system for the military, with divisions, corps, armies and army groups.
There are several peculiarities that a hierarchical system would have. First, the HQs would only affect that army group. Second, as mentioned before, there are four characters affecting the combat of any one unit, be it division, corps, army or entire army group—this would allow for mitigation of those low skill German old guards, for instance, since they could be given great subordinates and brilliant chiefs of staff—it would also use a lot more of the leader pool, as is historical. Thirdly, it would be possible to base a logistics system on it (more on that later). Fourthly, it would make coordination between divisions in different corps/corps in different armies/armies in different army groups more difficult, as historically. It would also make command limits less of an important issue at the lower levels, as any divisional sized battle would be influenced by the army commander, and anything larger by the army group commander, which would allow major generals to command corps to some degree (as occurred historically). I’m sure there’s more I’m not mentioning as well.
Back to the logistics system, which I think would be relatively easy to implement. Base it off the convoy system—but on land. Instead of ships going from port to port, trains that go from the capital to the army group headquarters, from where the supplies are dispersed to the armies/corps/divisions under its jurisdiction (also by train). This would be an incentive to keep the headquarters behind the lines, but not so far behind that it makes intra-army group logistics difficult.
Air units on logistics strike can hit trains. Also, partisans can interfere with the convoy efficiency and, if they rise up, cut off the logistics until cleared out or the route compensates for the loss of territory, making partisans more dangerous. And encirclements. We already have the mechanic for defending the trains—garrisons, to keep the partisans in check. Infrastructure should also have something to do with the efficiency of the trains.
All in all, this logistics system, I think, has the potential to simulate the limitations of logistics fairly well. It obviously isn’t compete, trains should go to a lot more than just HQs and subordinate units (ie, airbases and ports as well) and there’s no doubt other stuff I’m missing. But I hope that this may point Paradox in what I hope is the right direction.
Yes, I admit this was all geared specifically so I could talk about the logistics system.
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