durbal
Sergeant
Right now when an army is faster it can bounce around, doing endless about-faces and generally do whatever it wants as long as it is 0.1 faster than an enemy. Army movement speed is a constant and entirely calculable. I am 0.1 faster, therefore he can't catch me. This makes campaign movement speed way too important and causes the 'almost there...c'mon...' kind of nonsense when chasing looters and such. It also makes having hundreds of horses mandatory and only further deepens the hole you're in when you lose a battle (bye bye horsies..time to run around collecting you all again! fun!).
In reality, this obviously wasn't the case. Armies didn't go on a full march all the time. They marched for some amount of time depending on exigency, terrain, supplies, etc. and then they set up camp and rested. We already have a similar mechanic in the game with the 'Disorganized' debuff that's applied when leaving a siege or a battle, presumably to stop people from sieging, getting up, re-sieging, etc. endlessly. The same needs to occur for field battles to not have the ping-pong armies bouncing around everywhere.
The best way I can see to implement this is simply to give armies stamina. They need to rest in order to refill their stamina. Low stamina slows armies slightly down and can drain morale. High stamina allows armies to move faster. Very simple. It could be expanded to include forced marches have an effect on movement speed during battles and other stuff, but that isn't really needed. The only thing stamina needs to do is provide an x-factor that allows army movement speed to not always be a constant, allowing slower armies to sometimes disengage and faster armies to sometimes get caught.
This would also have other beneficial gameplay aspects:
In reality, this obviously wasn't the case. Armies didn't go on a full march all the time. They marched for some amount of time depending on exigency, terrain, supplies, etc. and then they set up camp and rested. We already have a similar mechanic in the game with the 'Disorganized' debuff that's applied when leaving a siege or a battle, presumably to stop people from sieging, getting up, re-sieging, etc. endlessly. The same needs to occur for field battles to not have the ping-pong armies bouncing around everywhere.
The best way I can see to implement this is simply to give armies stamina. They need to rest in order to refill their stamina. Low stamina slows armies slightly down and can drain morale. High stamina allows armies to move faster. Very simple. It could be expanded to include forced marches have an effect on movement speed during battles and other stuff, but that isn't really needed. The only thing stamina needs to do is provide an x-factor that allows army movement speed to not always be a constant, allowing slower armies to sometimes disengage and faster armies to sometimes get caught.
This would also have other beneficial gameplay aspects:
- It would also make scouting more important than it currently is, because with a good scout you would know when it's safe to rest and when you can expect to engage an enemy (pretty much just like in real campaigns).
- Borders would be more clearly defined. Armies would likely rest in or near friendly towns or villages for additional safety, and when planning an offensive would stay near borders in order to have larger amounts of time with high stamina so they don't get caught tired in enemy territory.
- Would add a defensive advantage that's lacking right now. Armies move all over the campaign map doing whatever they want and can stay in enemy territory almost indefinitely. This is incredibly unrealistic. If an army crossed a bridge and the enemy occupied that bridge and gave chase, the enemy couldn't escape by going deeper into unfriendly territory, because as soon as they got tired (or ran out of supply) they were dead. Right now armies can get cut off and just run halfway around the world to escape.
- Would help to alleviate the stealth siege armies of 1000+ men somehow marching through territory unnoticed and setting up a siege 3 castles deep. They'd need to rest at some point and could be engaged.
- Resting in towns would become more important, focusing gameplay more on landmarks rather than bumbling around on the world map. It'd also make village battles outside of raids or raid defense more common since armies might see enemies resting in villages and decide to attack.
- It would add some much-needed risk to trading which is currently entirely safe for small parties and extremely lucrative.
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