The Problem of Blobs

[Duvaille]

So, if it is a problem that people tend to make huge blobs of units and crash them at the enemy, something should be done about it. Everything in the game seems to scale so that it is always better to split a huge blob into smaller ones - like it is more efficient to have many estates than a single large one, or many different units instead of one huge. But the question then is essentially how to change this so that the same is true on an army level.

Sure, there are methods already there, like crowded roads. But that is a hindrance, not an encouragement. Would we perhaps benefit from such encouragements, like giving more power to raiding parties somehow? What if it somehow hurt more to have enemy troops present on a number of regions? If you only march your troops in one or two enemy regions, no problem, the population can take that. But what if there were increased morale penalties throughout the realm if many regions were simultaneously under attack? All you need then is a small force to cross the border and spread around the place, so you only need a little bit stronger force to counter it, but then.. and so it becomes a game of guessing what the other will do.

This proposal probably has its problems and it may not be a perfect one, but perhaps we could think of more ways how it would actually be beneficial to split the forces most of the time. When conquering a city, you might still want to blob it and that would perhaps be fine, but for the rest of the time it could be different.

[LilWolf]

So, if it is a problem

Is it a problem? I don't really see it as one.

A larger army will always beat a smaller one unless they're really close in strength and the other army uses some weird line settings. Changing the scale from 20k vs. 20k to four 10k CS armies clashing won't really change things much.

[vonGenf]

To avoid blobs, I think we need better looting and higher walls. Or, maybe, we just need a culture change to convince people that looting is good and walls are high.

The typical scenario currently is the following: Realm A and B are of roughly equal size. Realm A has a single army, realm B has three armies B1, B2 and B3.

Army A meets army B1 while armies B2 and B3 are in different regions. Army B1 is crushed, B2 and B3 are free to roam around. Realm A does not care if armies B2 and B3 loot; it has managed to cross the frontline unharmed. It beelines to the capital and storms it. Realm A dies.

We need to give a very good reason to Army A to want to avoid this scenario. We need the armies B2 and B3 to do a lot of damage, so much that army A cannot help but to turn around and fight them.

[LilWolf]

To avoid blobs, I think we need better looting and higher walls. Or, maybe, we just need a culture change to convince people that looting is good and walls are high.

Have you actually witnessed what a good brutal looting will do to a region? It's destructive enough as is. The fact most looters just go for the tax gold that the peasants don't care about much is no indication that looting needs to be stronger.

And higher walls? How will that encourage smaller armies when you suddenly need a bigger army to attack something?

[Indirik]

There are several reasons why blobbing your army is the most common tactic.

• Big blobs are hard to stop. It requires your enemy to blob up to stop you.
• Big blobs are less susceptible to loss of a few nobles who fall behind. Two out of 20 is no big deal. Two out of 5 is a significant loss.
• Big blobs take less losses. Two equal size armies meeting in the field will both take heavy damage. A huge army meeting an enemy half their size will suffer much lighter losses, and be able to continue on for longer.
• It's getting harder and harder to find people willing to be generals and marshals. And even harder to find willing people who are good at it. It's already difficult enough to find one good general and a good Marshal/VM pair. And you want to find four competent pairs? Not gonna happen.

If you want the big blob theory to not rule the warfare aspect of the game, you have to address all of these issues. The last one is perhaps the most difficult, and probably the most important.

[Shizzle]

If we want to prevent blobbing, why not increase attrition, similar to WI?
It does not adress the lack of (V-)Marshals or Generals, though.

[Anaris]

Duvaille raises an interesting potential solution to the problem of big blobs, though a tricky one:

At present, all combat strength is calculated at the unit level. What if we were to apply bonuses and penalties based on the number of troops of the same realm in the same region, thus achieving a similar level of diminishing returns that we do per unit?

[Tom]

The solution is actually very, very easy. But it requires something we don't yet have in the game: Logistics.

The reason that you rarely see blob-armies in the real world is that supplying them is a nightmare. Check some numbers for WW2. How much it took the germans to keep their encircled armies on the russian front supplied.

Real warfare is a lot about logistics and supply. I've long wanted to bring that into BM, but I've not yet found a way to simulate it that makes it fun.

[Gustav Kuriga]

Key word there... encircled. That's when they don't have an open supply line...

Also, ancient and medieval warfare involved mostly foraging, relying a lot less on logistics than modern warfare.

[vonGenf]

Have you actually witnessed what a good brutal looting will do to a region? It's destructive enough as is. The fact most looters just go for the tax gold that the peasants don't care about much is no indication that looting needs to be stronger.

Yes, then why is most looting performed by blobbed up armies? If looting is that destructive, then the best possible strategy is to spread out your army to loot all the regions at once. If your enemy takes its whole army in a blob, they'll defeat all your tiny armies one after another, but their realm will be dead before they manage to do it.

Why don't we see this happen?

And higher walls? How will that encourage smaller armies when you suddenly need a bigger army to attack something?

I though you just said that looting was destructive? Then why is it that an attack doesn't count unless it's against a walled city?

Of course, if you want to breach up walls, then you will need to concentrate your forces. This should be difficult and rare. It was difficult and rare in the middle ages.

[Tom]

Correct, you don't have the issues of ammunition, etc.

But you have the issue of food. I think one thing we could add quickly is that large armies simply can't forage enough. Our current food levels allow simulate total supply, not the difficulty of acquiring it.

What if every region could only supply X amounts of troops automatically? Beyond that, troops need to spend time to actively forage, and the more there are, the longer it takes.

[vonGenf]

Correct, you don't have the issues of ammunition, etc.

But you have the issue of food. I think one thing we could add quickly is that large armies simply can't forage enough. Our current food levels allow simulate total supply, not the difficulty of acquiring it.

What if every region could only supply X amounts of troops automatically? Beyond that, troops need to spend time to actively forage, and the more there are, the longer it takes.

Blobbed up armies would still have a tactical advantage in battle. Both sides would have more stragglers. This would equalize the forces when one army is bigger than the others by making it more difficult for the big army to bring its whole strength at once, but it would not encourage equal sized armies to split into smaller armies.

[Indirik]

Yes, then why is most looting performed by blobbed up armies? If looting is that destructive, then the best possible strategy is to spread out your army to loot all the regions at once. If your enemy takes its whole army in a blob, they'll defeat all your tiny armies one after another, but their realm will be dead before they manage to do it.

Why don't we see this happen?

You do see it sometimes. In many cases its usefulness is reduced by things like terrain, the presence of enemy forces nearby, fortifications, and the RL realities of player response times and activity. If you could count on 100% reaction and movement, then maybe it would work. But units cost money, and you don't want to lose them. 50 good infantry could run you 300 or more gold. Plus banners, siege engines, carts, etc. Units are expensive. Losing a 350+ gold unit to do some small amount of regional damage  is just bad economics.

[vonGenf]

Losing a 350+ gold unit to do some small amount of regional damage  is just bad economics.

Which is why my proposal was to make the damage bigger.

In the end, you are right that many of these decisions are economic; fortunately, the economic variables can be tweaked at will.

Another equivalent proposal would be to make the damage ot the unit smaller. Here is a proposal: make the total damage suffered by a unit proportionally smaller with the difference between the sides in a battle instead of larger. At the moment, overkill does that on a turn-to-turn basis, but an overwhelmed army will be destroyed easily. Maybe you could strenghten the evasive setting, or make retreat easier; or allow more options for a retreating army to damage the area, or even automatic damaging ("the fields caught on fire as the retreating soldiers just threw their torches on the ground to cover their nightly retreat!").

[Anaris]

You do see it sometimes. In many cases its usefulness is reduced by things like terrain, the presence of enemy forces nearby, fortifications, and the RL realities of player response times and activity. If you could count on 100% reaction and movement, then maybe it would work. But units cost money, and you don't want to lose them. 50 good infantry could run you 300 or more gold. Plus banners, siege engines, carts, etc. Units are expensive. Losing a 350+ gold unit to do some small amount of regional damage  is just bad economics.

I think that this is actually a very important point.

Dealing economic damage to an enemy should, I feel, be more powerful and cost-effective than it generally is today.  For one thing, if a realm is no longer able to effectively refit its army (even though it has not yet lost many regions to TOs), it should be a much stronger incentive to agree to peace.

I've got some ideas for this, but I think that this is probably not the right time and place to discuss them. I'll flesh them out a bit more, and bring them to a separate thread in a while.