Fortified Camps

[Hohenlohe]

I wish and hope for the possibility of building fortified camps ingame like the Pirna camp because historically there are some decent combats around fortified camps between the Prussian and Austrians in which one or the other side tried to assault these fortified enemy positions.
It even looks like a necessarity for the game because you need some good depots between certain cities to supply your armies in the field and without some fortifications any depot someone builds offers a good opportunity to the enemy to break the supply line and communication very easily. With some decent fortifications like a fortified camp this would become a better challenge for any good PBEM game not only in Campaigns against the AI.

So I hope you can implement this option, but consider that the recruiting costs for the requisite units are very high, so that I suggest that you need only a supply train and an artillery unit each as a pre-requisite building a camp. Perhaps I would consider an upgrade to a fort with doubled costs.
But for a better playability the fortified camp seems to be enough. A Fort upgrade could be an additional option. I even suggest that you should need a Pioneer unit at the Fort location building the Fort or even the Camp.
For the Camp you should need only 15 days, but for the Fort upgrade I consider about 75-90 days as a necessarity because it would be built from wood and some stone materials and therefore you could add some war supply and money as additional pre-requisition. Additionally a camp could be erased because of fort level one, but after upgrading to a real Fort it should be at Fort level 2 and could be never erased anymore as I like to suggest.
A fortified camp in connection with a depot would improve the supply for the field armies and could even serve as a decent winter quartier for a corps at depot level one and for an army at depot level 2-3.

Sofar my opinion and hopes and wishes...

greetings

Hohenlohe

[caranorn]

Fortifications of Level two in RoP are substantial constructions that took decades, even centuries to build. It's unrealistic to have anything of the sort buildable in the game. Fortified camps are another issue, but even those relied on natural circumstances and prior buildings (at Pirna iirc a number of castles in the area). Even then level 1 fortification for such a camp seems like an exageration. In the end I'm not sure those camps were anything more than field fortifications (levels of entrenchment)...

[lodilefty]

Currently, the Max Entrench level in RoP is 2 with Artillery, 1 without

Does it make sense to raise these?

Also, once upon a time, there was discussion of a change to code that would "keep" the entrench value in a region even if all forces moved away, with a gradual erosion of the value over time. I wonder if that would do what we want here?

[Hobbes]

I am doing something similar for WiA King William's War. If certain units are in certain regions an option will appear that will allow a player to build a stockade (or fortified camp). This approach suits King William's War however as most of these camps would be built around the Saint Lawrence river or Lake Champlain so you can predict the fairly small number of regions where these options may be needed (the player can tell where they will be made available by the anchor icon). A better solution would be to allow a player to build a camp or stockade in any location if a certain unit is present using the UnitLoc idea (but it seems that this would be difficult to do for player options) :-

http://www.ageod-forum.com/showthread.php?p=177641#post177641

I've not played RoP but I would think as there is an entrench value that this is a fairly good way of modelling a fortified camp.

Cheers, Chris

Edit: another thought about this. If it were possible to build a fortified camp using the UnitLoc idea the event that fires could at the same time add to the AI interest in the region - even add an objective (although for a camp this would probably be over the top).

[Hohenlohe]

I think that a fortified camp should be necessary even for some historicity. Such constructions consisted mainly earth walls with some emblaced batteries in small fortified positions therefore level 1 fortifications. About the suggestion to make the building of a Fort with lvl 2fortification available I thought of a wooden aka Palisade construction which need not so much time to erect and improve it. I imagine either a simple Palisade Wall with some emblaced batteries or an improved doubled Palisade Wall with some small Watchtowers and strong emblaced battery positions.
I do not know if I remember it right, but some Fortresses which exists in the SYW were based on simple fortifications made earlier during the Silesian Wars.
A Fortification made completely of Stone needed really a very long time especially the Vauban-like Style of Fortresses which needed a stronger garrison to secure every position with a minimum force.

If you think that all of the above suggested possibilities is nothing of interest for you so I suggest to consider of an improvement of the entrenchment level to 3 with added Pioneers or Genius Troops and therefore lessen/decrease the recruitment costs for Pioneers and Artillery.
Its a little irritating for me that I need for example about 85 conscript companies for a four-element unit...

Sofar my personal opinion. I hope it makes things clearly better.


greetings

Hohenlohe

[PhilThib]

It shall need to be checked a bit more thoroughly...I'll discuss it with modders who have a good experience and see how we can proceed, so may be we could have something for an upcoming patch