Siege upkeep

Yeah I agree. basically this type of system would greatly increase the strategy involved in the game, and mean that even very small players can have considerable impact on a war simply by placing a blockading army half way between a town and destination. And hope the player doesn't notice untill too late.
However i realise before all this could be implemented the full function of messenger units would need to be implemented as well as the ability to provide an escort for caravans. otherwise 1 commander and 1 troop could be placed on multiple squares and take forever to clear. when realistically you should be able to go from blockade to blockade rather than go back to town each time.

The more effective a siege, the more quickly food consumption goes down.  The specifics of balance can't really be found by speculation.  Plenty of preliminary testing and simulation would be required to ensure that attackers and defenders face the same level of complications.

I very much like the general gist of this idea.  I think it is sufficient that siege and blockade have a resource-stopping effect, and that negative food income at the home of a any troops result in a "starving out" effect whereby those troops take a defensive penalty scaled by the magnitude of food deficit (when food is at 0) at their home town--no messing with caravans etc.

This keeps things very simple and straightforward both in understanding of the mechanics and their implementation.  It also provides opportunity to benefit from well-coordinated ops, such as planning a bunch of blockades to land moments before a major Sally Forth or other counteroffensive.

It also makes food supply important for more than queuing up stuff, and closes a loophole whereby there's no need to have sufficient food income if you just sit at 0 and ship food in on demand for stuffing queues.  Military-focused cities will still need to retain that balance.


Edited by HonoredMule - 16 Jul 2010 at 15:25

Yeah thats basically what I ment. Although it works both ways. Caravans are also needed to supply a siege encampment with food. And once the encampment runs out of food, it'll automatically disperses
However the number of food resource available in the siege square as well as the sov level would provide a percentage of the food upkeep required. That way blockades will become useful as the sieged town can be starved out but also the defending players attempt to use blockades to break the siege encampment.
It'd just allow another way to determine siege rather than mindlessly attacking each other (mindless once the siege encampment has been set up)

wait. what? how do you set the food gather rate to zero. at 100% tax you still have 25% resource production.