I’m reading through Domains at War: Campaigns and I’m confused about the Line of Supply rules. It states that it can be blocked or overextended, but it doesn’t explain how the line is to be drawn in the first place. Must it take the shortest possible path? or can it snake around enemy armies freely so long as the new route doesn’t cost too many hexes? And if the latter, doesn’t that make it rather hard to block an enemy’s Line of Supply unless it’s dependent on something like a string of river hexes?
EDIT: Actually, even if it were dependent on rivers, one can imagine it snaking around the blocking army and back onto the river and thus increasing the hex cost only marginally.
The reading is that you “…count the number of 6-mile hexes between the army and its supply base…” applying some cost modifiers depending on terrain. So just from that you can tell that it doesn’t need to be a straight line; particularly if you can use a river, it doesn’t necessarily align with the direction your army is from the last supply base.
But doesn’t that make it hard to block a line of supply? If you’re on the steppe, it sure does! What you can do to disrupt your enemy’s supply is to take over his supply bases; if you can take one over, it’s very unlikely that he can still be in supply from his previous base. Alternately, if you have a mountain pass or some other chokepoint where the supply line has to go through there, then that is a good hex to occupy.
But the flip side of that is that your armies are relatively difficult to run out of supply, as well, at least as long as you’re smart about it and hedge up your gains and pay attention to how far you can go before you spend time constructing yet another supply depot. Which is par for the course in military campaigns, hopefully the standard interaction will be battles, not necessarily maneuvering to cut off supply lines. If you get a chance to screw with your enemy’s supplies, then great. Otherwise you’ll be depending on regular terrain advantage, numbers, and powerful commanders and heroes to carry the day with heroic forays.
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