[Loren]

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

Supplies:
Local supply by a fort isn't what I'm talking about. The crusaders during the first crusade managed to supply an army in the holy land far from any local supply centers. This seems like an emminently reasonable thing for at least organized civilizations to be able to do.

Yeah. We have magical supply sources. How about some non-magical supplies? It would be a supply wagon unit--a troop type anyone could recruit anywhere. There would probably be a couple of them, say a 10 unit and a 100 unit one. They would only cost a gold but creating them would use up that much supply from the province--this could never cause the supplies to go negative. (Same as with resources--if there isn't enough supply the unit simply doesn't get built.)

If an army is short on food it eats supplies that are tagging along rather than starving.

I find tactical flight of the nature i'm talking about distinct from retreat, which is what the fire and flee seems to represent (since it actually cedes control of something the size of a province). You might also consider the experience of the Romans (infantry) agains the Parthians (primarily light cavalry). The Romans couldn't bring the Parthians to melee, the Parthians rode circles around them and annihilated every legion ever sent to fight them.

Agreed. Fast ranged troops should get a basically free victory over slower melee troops.

I suppose there are two problems here: 1) the battlefield is so small that rather little force is sufficient to compel a foe to melee. A cavalry unit should be able to keep out of range of a melee unit indefinitely if it so desires. 2) ranged units do not attempt to keep out of range of shock units. Given that classical light infantry (slingers especially) and all light cavalry routinely used their improved mobility to deny shock combat to the enemy, this is a failure of modelling.

Agreed. I think the battlefield should be infinitely long.

New - army strategic choices
Speaking of bizarre. Anyone who knows anything of pre-Napoleonic military combat knows that the hardest thing to do was to compel an opponent to fight. Generals should be able to be given strategic settings that tell them when to engage and when to refuse to engage when challenged by another army. The only way to force an army to fight when its determined to flee should be when every route of escape leads to an entanglement with military forces (in which case the initially encountered army should be fought, potentially in combination with whichever military units it tried to withdraw into. And I don't mean go to battle map and have every unit start withdrawing, I mean no battle occurs (the enemy army never gets that close) unless the retreating army is cut off.

This should depend on mobility. A faster army should always be able to bring a slower army to battle.

So, for example:
-Starved fortresses surrender: Implement a counter during the phase where you check to see if the walls are breached that counts down until fortress surrender. (trivial)

How about doing it as a morale check? Have two siege modes: light and heavy. In light siege mode the defenders have to make morale checks once the supplies run out, failure causes the unit(s) that failed to flee--they retreat from the province. In heavy siege mode the checks are against a lower threshold but a unit that fails surrenders (disbanded, the other side gets anything it was carrying). In light siege mode the defenders can be ordered to leave the province.

-light infantry attempt to fall back when shock troops get too close: Each light infantry unit would need a metric of too close, although you could just make it 'is within movement range of an enemy shock unit'. Unit then moves backwards until it reaches a 'safe' distance and reforms. This is a quick If/Then check at the start of the units action. (easy)

Yup. If there is an enemy unit within range, move away, otherwise shoot. If you're out of ammo and don't also have a melee weapon, keep moving away regardless of range.

-Units behave more like units and less like mobs: This is the most profound change I proposed, actually. Its also the most desirable. So, there are two ways you can go about this: (1) define a unit entity which has a depth and facing size, and move that unit entity instead of moving individual guys (this substantially decreases the processor work because it aggregates decisions).

I don't believe this would work--the formations would keep getting disrupted by the presence of other troops.

Or (2) have individual models know where in the unit they are and check stay in the same position relative to other models in the unit. This is aided by doing things like checking the slowest speed in the unit and capping all model speeds at that speed.

This is how I would implement it. At the start of battle each unit notes it's position within it's group and always seeks to maintain that. The group moves at the speed of the slowest mobile unit in it (anything that can't move gets left behind.)