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I'm sure something has been posted about this, but I can't find it. I don't understand supply in this game.
Now playing France my Allies don't show supply amounts when I press the #2 key, but they still supply me, correct?
Or do they just pass along supplies from my country?
How come my units run out of supply when in in an allied country, example French unit in the Italian area that was given them by Pressburg.
How come I can't build a depot in an allied country?
I took an Austrian depot and after three turns all it has in it is a lot of ammo and no supplies, its connected back to Italy by a road that the French have 100% control of all the way back.
I understood how supply worked in TEAW but this game baffles me.

zooter wrote:I'm sure something has been posted about this, but I can't find it. I don't understand supply in this game.
Now playing France my Allies don't show supply amounts when I press the #2 key, but they still supply me, correct?

Yes. You can only see the supplies in your own depots.

zooter wrote:Or do they just pass along supplies from my country?

Your supplies can pass through any region where you have Supply Rights; maybe Passage Rights too, but I haven't tested that.

zooter wrote:How come my units run out of supply when in in an allied country, example French unit in the Italian area that was given them by Pressburg.

Because supply production and distribution hasn't keep up with consumption. I don't know how much supply minor factions produce, but certainly not as much as France.

zooter wrote:How come I can't build a depot in an allied country?

You need at least 25% MC to build a depot. You cannot gain MC in an allied region, therefore you cannot build a depot there.

It's a simple game mechanic, which if lifted would then basically be giving your ally a depot, which still only moves that ally's supplies. I can't think of any way the game might allow for a French depot on foreign soil, other than by changing some code to allow it.

zooter wrote:I took an Austrian depot and after three turns all it has in it is a lot of ammo and no supplies, its connected back to Italy by a road that the French have 100% control of all the way back.
I understood how supply worked in TEAW but this game baffles me.

The Kingdom of Italy is its own nation. Although you can draw supplies from it, its depots will not transport your (French) supplies. The best solution I can think of would be to capture an Austrian harbor on the Adria, but a depot in it and use naval supply to keep it in supply. Then build a chain of depots leading from that harbor to your forces.

Your forces are using GS every turn, but using Ammo only when they are fighting. Thus GS can be used up to the point that only Ammo is left in a depot.

Is this problematic for having a large force in a third nation, with an second allied nation where you have/can have no depots, between the third nation and your home land?

Without having played the French, but simply looking at the map, I can see that France could have great problems in keeping their forces supplied when invading Austria through Bavaria, since they cannot build depots in Bavaria.

Captain_Orso wrote:Yes. You can only see the supplies in your own depots.



Your supplies can pass through any region where you have Supply Rights; maybe Passage Rights too, but I haven't tested that.



Because supply production and distribution hasn't keep up with consumption. I don't know how much supply minor factions produce, but certainly not as much as France.



You need at least 25% MC to build a depot. You cannot gain MC in an allied region, therefore you cannot build a depot there.

It's a simple game mechanic, which if lifted would then basically be giving your ally a depot, which still only moves that ally's supplies. I can't think of any way the game might allow for a French depot on foreign soil, other than by changing some code to allow it.



The Kingdom of Italy is its own nation. Although you can draw supplies from it, its depots will not transport your (French) supplies. The best solution I can think of would be to capture an Austrian harbor on the Adria, but a depot in it and use naval supply to keep it in supply. Then build a chain of depots leading from that harbor to your forces.

Your forces are using GS every turn, but using Ammo only when they are fighting. Thus GS can be used up to the point that only Ammo is left in a depot.

Is this problematic for having a large force in a third nation, with an second allied nation where you have/can have no depots, between the third nation and your home land?

Without having played the French, but simply looking at the map, I can see that France could have great problems in keeping their forces supplied when invading Austria through Bavaria, since they cannot build depots in Bavaria.

I brought this up some time ago:

http://www.ageod-forum.com/showthread.php?41824-A-Few-Questions&highlight=magazine

As it stands now, the supply mechanism won't work late-game. There is no way that the French player can remain supplied to invade Russia. Either French supplies need to be able to "push" through allied countries' depots or we need another type of Depot, as I suggested. I'm currently playing the game with "easy supply," but that's just cheating...

It is a massive issue : Already in earlyish game one can have problems after the Pressburg peace because flow of supply is so bad trough allies (BAvaria, Kingdom of Italy) or defeated ennemies at peace (Austria) : the return to France/southern germany from Austria after Pressburg tends to turn into a mini russian retreat for at least a pair of corps !

The problem is really in how supply flows through allies : You can see France being loaded with supplies but the supplies just stopping at the border an not flowing past : When you are campaigning in Austria from Bavaria it seems you are effectively living off the land with only bavarian and austrian supply production to feed you. I can't prove it, but I have the sense french produced supplies doesn't flow through allied depots.

I have started a new Aug 1805 campaign and have decided to build depots everywhere in Austrian territory, hoping that when it reverts to Bavarian/Italian after the Pressburg peace, it will still allow some flow of supplies : I have built supply depots in the 2 austrian provinces south of Ulm (Memnigen and Ludvigshafen or something like that) + in the province near the Donau confluent 2 provinces west of Regensburg and in one of the regions between Regensburg and Passau and Passau itself. In austrian ITaly I built one in Padova, in Treviso, and in 2 provinces west of Trieste that will become the eastern most provinces of the kingdom of Italy. Basically my new mantra is to build depots like my nimble and fast napoleonic army is a slow plodding early 18th century army : I build gendardmes and use the captured wagons as "depot builders" around the map and the gendarmes are there to help get MC up everywhere to get supply to flow.

What is really annoying is that this strategy works quite well when at war : it does seem like my many south german supply depots seem to be able to drain some supply from France. But once at peace they will probably only harbour Bavarian supplies and this won't be enough. It seems that in the engine "passage of supplies rights" doesn't exist or work : you have passage rights which allow to pass through a country and You have supply rights which allow you to pump supplies from this country. Your allies give you both of those.

But it seems that passage of supplies allowing YOUR supplies to flow THROUGH your ally's depot network from France does not exist. This will make late war very very very challenging : How the hell do you keep an army of 600k supplied in eastern prussia before invading russia if you can't have an effective supply chain from France : The duchy of Warsaw just won't be enough to feed it all !

Really some "passage of supply" mechanism allowing the french supply (in this example) to flow through the depots of their allies would be needed.

Can one of the developers clarify exactly how supply works through nations that you have supply agreements with? For example can my French armies in allied Bavaria pull supplies from the nearest French city through the Bavarian regions and depots?

TC271 wrote:Can one of the developers clarify exactly how supply works through nations that you have supply agreements with? For example can my French armies in allied Bavaria pull supplies from the nearest French city through the Bavarian regions and depots?

It is indeed the 100€ question. My bet is they don't or hardly, supply agreements (and alliance) seems to mean that you can feed from their supplies...

so as I understand it, transport ships have to be in the closest sea box to a receiving port to transport supplies to a port and then on to your troops. Would you have to build a depot in the receiving port to facilitate the transfer? In Italy that would be no problem, but that doesn't help in Bavaria. I switched to easy supply also, its the only way to make any progress.

I've gone through the work to test if supply move through foreign regions in which you have Foreign Access Rights. It does.

I started the August '05 Campaign and controlled all factions. I moved the Austrian troops out of the way from western Bavaria and capture Ulm.

Ulm is surrounded by regions either with 100% Austrian MC, or where France has Foreign Access Rights. France gets Supplies in Ulm from many cities up and down the Rhine from Koblenz down to Mulhausen. You need to have debugging and supply-verbosity (undocumented option) turned on to get a supply distribution report.

The issue is not whether supplies will move through friendly regions, its that French supplies will move only to French depots and that you cannot have French depots in friendly regions, because as was noted, a depot in a friendly owned region belongs to that owning faction and only transports that faction's supplies.

The question is, what solution can we come up with that doesn't break the paradigm of the game, but solves the issue?

Having just taken over a losing France, I have become aware of this fundamental problem. If France can't supply her forces effectively abroad it rather negates the logic of (offensive) wars of Napoleon.

As for a solution when I read the thread earlier today I think someone described the obvious one. That is when a minor allies to a major power its supply system (and if necessary for game system reasons its army and force pool) are treated as belonging to the major. Indeed as has been pointed out it would make sense for its army to be directly controlled which certainly happened with Napoleon's minor allies and for example Portugal in respect of Britain. If necessary a constraint could be built in to reflect any unease in the relationship.

When the alliance breaks the troops and supply system reverts back to the minor or to its new ally. If more than one there would need to be either a random allocation or a weighted one having regard to historical or regional dominance of one major over its other allied majors.

Apart from solving the supply issue - this approach would allow the major ally to pay for and build depots in its minor allies - at the risk that their failure of the alliance may gift them and the supplies to its enemies. Which is exactly what happened during the course of the wars.

Ironclad wrote:Having just taken over a losing France, I have become aware of this fundamental problem. If France can't supply her forces effectively abroad it rather negates the logic of (offensive) wars of Napoleon.

As for a solution when I read the thread earlier today I think someone described the obvious one. That is when a minor allies to a major power its supply system (and if necessary for game system reasons its army and force pool) are treated as belonging to the major. Indeed as has been pointed out it would make sense for its army to be directly controlled which certainly happened with Napoleon's minor allies and for example Portugal in respect of Britain. If necessary a constraint could be built in to reflect any unease in the relationship.

When the alliance breaks the troops and supply system reverts back to the minor or to its new ally. If more than one there would need to be either a random allocation or a weighted one having regard to historical or regional dominance of one major over its other allied majors.

Apart from solving the supply issue - this approach would allow the major ally to pay for and build depots in its minor allies - at the risk that their failure of the alliance may gift them and the supplies to its enemies. Which is exactly what happened during the course of the wars.

Vicberg is working on a mod that will do something very similar to that (major will effectively annex the minor state and contro, tis economy and forces) - its still in testing but as you state this is the obvious solution.

Its interesting that the supply position of my French units have much improved even though I'm still across the Rhine. Admittedly all my forces are now much closer to France and a couple of allied supply depots (with minimal amounts of supply listed) have been recaptured. Checking the french cities supplies along the Rhine show large amounts being sent out , with in some cases equally large amounts being received. Now its possible this outgoing supply is being distributed within France - but with the bulk of the army in Germany and few units left in France - the more likely answer is that it is being distributed across the Rhine and is reaching the Grande Army and its corps abroad.

That suggests that the supply system is working abroad - but that that these exported French supplies do not show up on the supply overmap when they leave France. The fact that my position improved as the forces moved back towards the frontier zone (or within 4 regions or so) but was much worse further out may suggest that either the foreign depots aren't forwarding it or haven't the capacity to do so without more depots being built.

I have to strike a note of caution in that I'm describing the change one turn has brought rather than the evidence over several turns or a longer period. If its a true representation - it means that the issue definitely concerns the operation of the allied depots and a way to build spare depot capacity as well as enabling the French player to see the foreign distribution of his supplies.