[Suggestion] Escorts for caravans

from Elemental Forums

Caravans work nicely.  I especially like how they form roads.  But they die fast, because there doesn't seem to be a way to assign an escort to the caravan once it's automatically doing trade runs.  One can of course micromanage this by moving a combat unit in tandem with the auto-moving caravan, but that would be tedious.  Could we get the ability to add escorts to caravan trade routes?

I suppose one downside of this would be that the AI might not be as good as assigning escorts, which would give us humans an advantage.  But I hope Stardock might at least consider it.

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Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

An alternate way of acheiving the same benefit might be to add a subsequent technology (one or two tiers after the initial caravan tech) that automatically gives your established caravans a combat rating / an always-present troop that defends the caravan in tactical battle if it is attacked.

You know, like hiring Mr. Reynolds.

- Ash

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

Yes please. I'm getting fed up of having my Caravans destroyed by Spiders...

I will admit its pretty cool having bandits and monsters attack them though, even if it is annoying.

Galactic Civilizations III
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Having  a tech advance to allow guards is a brilliant idea and adds an aditional tech to the tree which is all good man.

Very good idea.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Reminds me of a History channel show where they talk about Stage Coach drivers needing sawed off shotguns.  :P

 

I would offer up another idea.  Being able to station a unit in/on the caravan as a guard. This could be any unit the player can design/build/summon.

 

 

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

I've take a quick look at this and I believe this is something that could be modded in one of two ways.

First, the caravan unit is defined in the CoreVehicles.xml file. It's possible that you might be able to make this a upgradable unit. I'd have to play around with it. Idealy you would want it to have a group of guards, rather than one guard in a tactical battle.

The second would be to add a new Caravan unit, by adding a new Technology. The techs for the kingdoms are in the Techs_Amarian.xml file, but you would have to make sure that Kingdoms also had a tech upgrade path. You would then just define a new Caravan unit with a Attack and Defense rating.

If I have some time this weekend, I'll play around and see if I can come up with a method to make this work.

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

I had the same problem in the late beta and requested that they add "caravan" packs to the unit design system so we can design our own caravans with their own weapons.       https://forums.elementalgame.com/390424

I'd still like to see it.  Some of the original problem goes away as they change spawning rules, but monsters and enemies can still come in from outside.  And why not -- the game already lets you design units with "scout pack" and

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

yeah, i would like this as well.

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Asharak, reply 1
An alternate way of acheiving the same benefit might be to add a subsequent technology (one or two tiers after the initial caravan tech) that automatically gives your established caravans a combat rating / an always-present troop that defends the caravan in tactical battle if it is attacked
- Ash
End of Asharak's quote

Agreed, a tech level guarded caravan would be a great feature.  I continually clean out the creatures, brigands, and thiefs, but they keep respawning and killing the caravan.  Not worth the micro manage so I just stopped making the caravan.  The tech level would be great solution.

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

I rarely lose a caravan any more.. of course I do not build them until my cities area of influence has covers most of the ground between locations XD

Reply #10 from Elemental Forums Top

I want my caravans to go underground ! or make them fly with a spell research, so no more problems :)