Day and Night bonus

[roman]

IMO: There can be no positive offensive or defensive bonus for night attacks, because these troops are no special forces but masses of soldiers. Therefore at night you always suffer from disorientation and fatigue and fighting is highly ineffective. There shoud be a higher penalty for attack and a lower for defense.

Only the first hours after sunrise should give the attacker a small offensive bonus because his troops are fresh and prepared for attack and the defender should get a small penalty because of beeind surprised, a bit disoriented and not having all his soldiers on their posts.

During the day there should be no bonus at all because the attacker choses the time to attack but the defender should be prepared and warned by his guards.

At the end of the day a small penalty for both sides should be used to simulate weariness.

Edit:
The higher the a penalty the higher the losses on that side should be, regardless if winning or losing. So a victory at night should be costly even for the attacker (losing many men).

[bashar]

I like this.

So we have to split the day in a few parts then and based on those parts to give different bonuses.

So the day will be split in:
-dawn
-noon
-dusk
-midnight

We have to decide the hours of these parts based on seasons.

[roman]

To make it short: I do not want any game to be realistic, but positive bonus at night is against any reason, see below if you want.

This game simulates combat at a very large scale so small unit or special forces tactics do not apply. What does it take in the middle ages to attack another country?
- The King has to convince his noblemen to get involved in a war.
- Forces have to be mobilized - usually there are no standing armies. (This takes weeks at least.)
- Unite forces at some meeting place to march from there against the other Kingdom. (some more weeks.)
- Cross the border of the other Kingdom and march through the lands towards an important strategic point (from information gain from spy reports)

This all cannot be done without the other Kingdom being aware of it. The defender has enough time to mobilize his forces or to retreat until mobilizing. - I don't know the speed of middle age armies but i think 50 km per day is not too slow. (Armies cannot appear from nowhere - especially large ones.)

Given the case war has started and the two armies are in conflict, the defender will always fortify his army and be prepared for an attack. His posts will be alerted knowing that the enemy is near.

Except the initial surprise the attacker has only disadvantages at night:
- He does not exactly know the position and size of enemy forces and reinforcements
- He does not know the surroundings as well as the defender
- Once the attack has started he loses control of his forces and has no overview. The defender can always command his forces to known places and he will fight only if he sees a chance of success. Otherwise he will retreat to a better position and wait for daylight and reinforcements.

Negative aspects for both sides: orientation, enemy recognition, formations coordination.

If you think of The Night Attack (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Night_Attack) then I want to point out that Vlad was the defender, fighting at home, and the scope of the attack was to kill Mehmed and not to beat the ottoman army. So this is a small unit or gurrilla tactic and a good example why the defender should have a lower penalty at night than the attacker (the ottomans).

see what Clausewitz writes about night combat for more details (english translation):
http://www.clausewitz.com/CWZHOME/VomKriege2/BK4ch14.html

Therefore in history attack at dawn was the best idea (no march at night) hoping to achieve a decision until the evening. Otherwise the attacker remains more vulnerable than the defender over night. Though the defender rarely risked a night attack to avoid unnecessary loses among his men.

[bashar]

Usually armies will try to cross rivers at night fall to avoid detection so i think this is a plus for the attacker.

Now how do we imagine the war in raceconflicts is taking place?
Enemy army invades and then more episodes will take place like in the battle with Dracula and Ottomans?
Imaginary episodes like the defender will burn his lands so that the enemy has nothing to eat, the defender will conduct guerrilla tactics, small and many battles that together will create the war?
Or do we imagine the attack like a single battle?
Couse in a single battle the attacker is more powerful at night. But in a long war when someone invades another country many episodes will take place and sometimes the defender will become himself an attacker in some counterattack battles.

[roman]

OK, I can live with that - it's just a game, not the reality. And the most importat thing about a game is to be fun and this one is fun. Thank you, bashar.