Cargo Ships, Trains, Naval Blockades, and Trade Rework

Other Discussions on Similar Theads - Supply Lines, Logistics, Merchant Marine, Transit of Goods and unit upkeep

Supply Lines (Suggestion April 2022)
Supply Lines (Suggestion Nov 2020)
Merchant Navy (Suggestion Jan 2017)
Military Logistics (Suggestion May 2015)


So clearly not a new Topic since it's been discussed in variously envisioned ways for most of the time CoW has existed.

I can't see a way that this topic will make it into the game in ANY iteration until it's SIMPLICITY in execution both in game play and game mechanics (program-ability) are laid out and until it's in game advantages are clear.

I can't see any sort of AI managed effect (controlling Cargo ships/trains/airplanes over the map) since it took almost a Decade to get any work done on current AI improvements.

This would need to be a PLAYER controlled (built and maintained) game mechanic with.

Current Game Mechanics
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Units consume resources for upkeep - Automatic function
Trade done via market - Instant results - Goods removed from Seller transferred to Buyer immediately
Infrastructure Building Improvement - Increases speed of units moving through Province with improvement

Proposed Suggestions
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Warehouse Building - 5 Lvls - Each Level represents area affect from 200km +100km per Lvl up to 600km at Lvl 5
Warehouse MUST be in range of Capitol or another warehouse which is linked to capitol. Or A Port of greater or equal Lvl to Warehouse in range of Warehouse(s) linked to Capitol

Units outside of Area of effect do not heal and take an additional 20% damage (does not affect Air or Naval units)

I can't think of a simpler way to represent the need to be... "tethered" to home base supply lines.

Example
W for Warehouse
C for Capitol
P for Port
#1-5 for Level of Building
(i) - location in small Roman numerals

If you had this chain

(i)C - (ii)WC2 - (iii)PC3 - (iv)Oceans - (v)PC1 - (vi)WC3

Think of it as a pipe and the smallest diameter pipe determines how much water gets to the end...
In this case... all buildings are connected to Capitol
The (vi)WC3 will ONLY provide the benefit as a Lvl 1 Warehouse, because the lowest capacity building in the chain is the (iii)PC1 port on the receiving continent. Until ALL the links are upgraded, it can only function up to the capacity of the bottleneck.

Losing your Capitol... would hurt.

To be honest, it sounds like a horrible job to keep track of all those warehouses in a big empire, what ranges they have and which are connected to which, and what happens when one of them drops out (because of enemy conquest).

During initial conquest, you start out with L1 warehouses. What is the incentive to upgrade to higher levels if you have a chain of L1's already?

200 km for the basic level is surely not enough. In some regions (N.Asia etc) adjacent provinces dots are further apart than that. Heck you need even more warehouses than airstrips (and this one is mandatory, not just about using an air force in a certain region!) which would be a huge drain on resources.

Like you said, losing your capital is penalized way too much.
I'm very sorry, but this suggested implementation doesn't qualify for that.

Warehouse, storehouse, repository storage, stockpile or transportation hub have function of store something.
However, there are those that have the function of refrigerating, packaging or processing the object and those that do not.
So if a boss assign for me that reproduce and implement this element, I might be sure that I would try to become reappeard an environment that anyone would waste resources a lot when he or she moves them between low-level building or keep to stockpiles something in low-level building per unit time and anyone's would waste less when he or she does the opposites.
In addition, there is a difference in the amount that can be stored and the amount that can be taken in and out per unit time.
I think it might be fine to associate these elements and their amount with levels or tires.
By the way, the industry that handles this kind of business in the real world is called the warehousing industry ( and is called "倉庫業" in Japanese though... ).
And Brigadier General Pagonis is known as a person who has distinguished himself in this field.
motherjones.com/politics/2007/…gulf-war-logistics-chief/