[Discuss] Dwilight

[Anthony Anderson]

I'm not going to try to comment on any one particular message, but here's
two thoughts that I think will help us gear ourselves in the right
direction:

1) Give Generals the option to place "standing orders" that are only visible
to all Marshals in the realm(and maybe sub-Marshals, or whatever you call
them, should you create a more layered hierarchy).  That should limit the
orders sent to the entire realm, and would also help with overall military
organization.

2) I don't believe the food-in-region consumption by your troops
*actually*saps the food from said region.  Maybe it should.
Stockpiling a huge
militia in your city should necessitate that you have plenty of food to feed
those men.  Having your entire army gather and sit in a border region,
waiting to attack, requires that the region feed everyone there, and also
still have enough food for the people who live there.  If there's not enough
to provide for both the troops and the peasantry, not only do your soldiers
begin to starve, so do your residents.  Which causes a drop in population,
as well as associated region stats (loyalty, production...really everything
is directly tied to "do we have enough food to survive?").

3) Utilizing the same code that's in place for wall control, ensure that all
(or most) "automatic" caravan/food transport ceases during the times that an
enemy "controls" your region.  Consider it a blockade.  Traders can still
make their way through, but none of the automated food is guaranteed to make
the trip.

The one potential downside I can see to #2 is that it could be used as a
tactic to starve your enemy's regions.  However, if both the troops and
peasants are starving, it may not be such a hot option to use on a regular
basis.  And #3 obviously encourages starving an enemy, but it doesn't
require an incredibly large army to do it.

What this does is provide a much more realistic scenario when laying siege
to a city.  Surround it (especially significant in Dwilight, where the donut
regions were designed specifically for this reason) and starve them out.
They can't support a massive militia without incoming food to hold them
over.  And once the militia is dying off or disbanded, then the city becomes
ripe for the picking.  Another scenario that presents itself with the above
changes is that attacking a *city* is not always the most important step in
one's military tactics.  Find one of their heavily productive rural
regions.  You know, the one that produces most of the realm's food and yet
rarely has any militia in it?  It would require very few troops to squeeze
in there and stymie food supplies to the entire realm for a few days.
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