Minimum move cost for fliers

[KGB]

MoonKnight,

Against. Fliers should always pay 2 moves per square. This not only balances them easier but also simplifies them in that they now fly direct paths rather than searching out roads like they do now.

At the same time they need compensation for the fact they can never achieve a movement rate of 1. I'd suggest starting with +2 moves for all fliers to get:

Crow - 11 squares
Eagle - 10 squares
Ghost - 11 squares
Gryphon - 8.5 squares
Pegasi - 10 squares
Archon - 8.5 squares
Demon - 9 squares
G Dragon - 13 squares
G Archon - 9.5 squares
R Dragon - 12 squares


I an open to the idea of them being transported by boat in the same matter land units are if their movement was converted to boat movement (ie lowered to the ship movement number). As I mentioned above, this is the one place where it makes sense for them to get a different movement rate. But I realize that's a lot of extra coding.

KGB

[smursh]

Even though flyers do cost two movement points per move vs. the 1 pnt of the boat they still have two advantages .

First they don't have to embark/disembark. This allows them to move off the water and attack cities not quite on the coast.

Second, for the stronger units they get their full strength including all bonuses without being limited to the boats combat value.

I think that balances well with slower movement. Keep in mind kracken and serpents are limited to swamp/water terrain which balances the fast water movement.

[Molotov]

facts:
migratory birds do 100+ km per day.
while day's march for infantry is 30 km at best, on road. same for the heavy cavalry.
for light cavalry its 50 to 100 km, with historical exception for mongolian cavalry - 200-240 km in summer (they had a special race of horses).

[KGB]

Molotov,

Migratory birds are a poor example other than to get an idea of how far birds can fly. That's because those are tiny birds, not large flying creatures that would be requiring large amounts of food each day, potentially carrying riders, needing weapons etc.

I find it hard to believe Lt Calv moved anywhere near 100 km a day, much less Mongolian Calv moving 200 Km. If they got anywhere NEAR that, it was 1 day, forced march and no battle followed by lots of rest.

Here is the Wiki for the legendary Pony Express. The fastest horse travel at it's time and probably in all of history. There were hundreds of stations and thousands of mounts that were used to fast deliver mail by exchanging horses every few 5-25 miles (10-35km) Even with that, a rider only went 75 miles (120 km) a day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pony_Express

Then remember this was 1 rider who can sleep in a hotel/inn in a city and eat food there as well. A whole traveling army would require bring large amounts of food, camping in the wilderness etc. That requirement slows down movement rates immensely.

I think Napoleon's invasion of your mother Russia is probably an ideal example of distances that large infantry/cavalry march across open plains. It took roughly 3 months (Jun 24th till Aug 16) to reach Moscow. Not sure the total distance but I'd guess it must be about 1000 miles (1600 km) in 90 or so days which is about 15 Km a day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_invasion_of_Russia

KGB

[SnotlinG]

Current plan is change flyers to have movecost of 2 as standard (except difficult terrain like Mountains, ridge etc...) and it will work like SeaCreatures in the way that they wont be able to use other units movespecials, like Dwarfs for example...
Most likely the move of flyers will be slightly increased also.

[piranha]

I'm not very good at remebering exact details. I just recently read about the history of gengis khan and the mongolian empire and also about the roman empire from just before Ceasar until Augustus. I seem to remember that the roman infantry could travel 50-60 km per day for several days when pushed hard.

About the mongolians, I find it hard to believe that anyone ever matched what they did with horses. I knew they were good with horse but after reading a series about them and ghengis khan I'm really impressed (thats how the horse lord got into the game btw ). I recommend reading about them. Truly facinating. About the numbers, I did some quick googling without finding the answer, if someone feels like looking it up it would be fun to know the right numbers.

Did some more googling, seems Molotov had the numbers right:

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_Empire
The Mongol Empire had an ingenious and efficient mail system for the time, often referred to by scholars as the Yam, which had lavishly furnished and well guarded relay posts known as örtöö setup all over the Mongol Empire. The yam system would be replicated later in the United States, in the form of the Pony Express.[108] A messenger would typically travel 25 miles (40 km) from one station to the next, either receiving a fresh, rested horse, or relaying the mail to the next rider to ensure the speediest possible delivery. The Mongol riders regularly covered 125 miles (200 km) per day, better than the fastest record set by the Pony Express some 600 years later.

[LPhillips]

Fascinating information. It's still completely irrelevant to combat riding and game data. KGB's point about combat travel is still well taken. If you want to go for realism, then there are many aspects of the game as it stands that simply won't stand up to the test. Heavy Cavalry should move at 16 at most, Light Cavalry should move more like 26. We have to sacrifice some realism for game balance and fun

The Roman soldiers did not generally fight after such forced marches. They had a guarded camp system to rest before fighting, because they were well aware how foolish it is to enter combat with exhausted troops and animals.

[piranha]

Yes. I'm all about gameplay. But its fun to draw parallells to history. It's quite interesting to find out what some historic cultures were capable of.

[LPhillips]

I read that there was a Chinese emperor who built cities the size of ships and set out to travel widely across the world. A little Googling reveals that yes, indeed, the Chinese did this.

The internet is loaded with all kinds of crazy things, from previously suppressed information to blatant misinformation. A little more searching netted a few websites noting the extreme intellectual and technological advancements of humanity in the distance past -which I find to be far more believable than the concept that people who have been basically genetically identical to us for tens to hundreds of thousands of years have failed to advance significantly until the past couple of thousand.

In fact, I find it bizarre that people generally accept that theory. It's rather silly to think that with people of high intelligence in the world for that long, we were ever sitting around bashing rocks together. It's even far more logical to believe that "evidence" of space travel and other technology on earth is evidence that humanity has done before much of what we are doing now, albeit with less blatant disregard for the destruction of our home.

All food for thought. I don't think that 5000 years ago, the genes that produced me were producing morons. It's always laughable when people marvel at the pyramids or similar things and say "but they were so stupid, how could they have figured out basic engineering principles?" It's most interesting to me that people of the past claimed to know things which were not verified again until the 20th century, displaying incredible knowledge and understanding.

We live in a far more interesting world than we are told, from ancient 12 foot human skeletons to pet dinosaurs in Imperial China. Keep looking, and take everything on the internet with a grain of salt!

[KGB]

Food was the biggest limiting factor of why ancient man progressed so slowly. Until the early 20th century (Oil age) the vast majority of humanity was engaged in the day to day struggle to put enough food on the table (dirt farming). To make advances takes a surplus of food which allows some members of a society to engage in other productive work besides farming. In less than 100 years we went from something like 90% agrarian society (farmers) to less than 5% (farmers). If there had been the surplus of food 5000 years ago that there is today we'd already be colonizing half the galaxy.

The next biggest factor was probably long periods of stable peace. If you were regularly invaded/killed/enslaved it would be all but impossible to make many advances because so much would be lost in the sacking since written languages wasn't that common and translators between languages even less.

KGB