Imperialism Remake Community

Lately I thought about the seazones, mostly about the number. What I don't like from the original is that there are 40(!) sea zones in the europe map and this basically was a guarantee that except for blocking ports you played a game of hide and seek with any fleet of the enemy. This might even be realistic, but for a game I think it is not the goal of more or less random encounters. I want to concentrate it more and go down to 6 sea zones in this example and in general about not more than 10. You should still set directives of fleets to sail low profile or hunting agressively, but with 6 sea zones at least you do not need to worry long to find somebody to fight.

Unless there are great objections I will write it down as this in the design document.

I agree. We just need enough to make travel range balanced.

Btw. what was the travel range. How many zones did ships cross per turn? If it was only one then here it would mean that the time to go from one zone to another should be more than a turn. I would propose something like two turns.

According to the quick reference cards from GOG.com, they moved (in order of ship development) 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 9, 13, and 13 spaces in one turn. Early on it took 3-6 turns to make it to the capitals of other major powers, but with a modern fleet almost anywhere on the map could be hit in two turns.

Hi there!

Awesome I found your project and even more awesome you coded it! Just wanted to say that it also heavily depended on the type of ship. The first capture ship was able to move way faster. I'll check the original game when I got the time.

Cheers and hope you keep up the great work!
Max

I know this suggestion would add quite a lot of complexity for players (and I can only imagine how much complexity for programming...), but It would add a whole new layer of strategy if military units required supply lines.
Provinces with lots of food could support a fairly large army, but if the army is very large, or if the terrain is desert or arctic, then food must be imported or else starts effectiveness goes down. And maybe artillery units only carry enough ammo for one battle, and need resupply after that.
"Supply units" could be placed in a province to act as a bridge between the transport network and an army, until the new province can be connected to the transport network.
This would be a bit of a hassle (maybe a lot of it could be done automatically?) but it would add realism and create benefits to encircling/cutting off an army. In imp1 I would drive straight into a country as deeply as possible, going straight for the capital. I would then either take the capital or leave an army next to it to tie down their army (and/or occupy a key resource province). Tactics like this may still be viable, but rather than being an easy way to win they would be bets on a quick victory.
Requiring resupply would also bring a solution to the situation where you've taken all of an enemy's territory except the capital, but the capital is full of heavy artillery. The local food resources wouldn't support too large an army, and they would run out of ammo sooner or later.
This would make things especially interesting when motorized units arrive, since they would require fuel...
Another idea that may be impractical to implement - what if you could develop custom ship types at shipyards? E.g. you could decide to build ships that sacrifice armor for more firepower, or the other way around. And maybe technological development could be continuous and incremental, rather than sudden, e.g. 100 units of expert research at the shipyard leads to a 1 point improvement in effectiveness?

Hi alex347,

I have seen your contribution here. I cannot respond in detail now but I will do so as soon as being into the development again.