Corps System

I've already posted this elsewhere in the forum, but I was just looking through and realized that this would have been the proper place to allocate the idea, and so I'll put it up here in case it would lend itself more useful here. Here's the idea...

Corps

Corps system feature proposal for Conflict of Nations developers

Feature suggestion: corps system

Supremacy WW3

OVERVIEW

This suggestion proposes a corps system — a lightweight organizational layer sitting between individual units and full armies. Corps give experienced players a meaningful way to manage large forces, reward sustained play, and add operational depth without disrupting game balance.

CREATION AND LIMITS

A corps is created by selecting between 6 and 20 units (grouped or individual) for a negligible resource cost. Upon creation, the player names the corps — the word "Corps" is appended automatically (e.g. "Republican Guard Corps").

Players begin with the ability to create one corps. The maximum number of corps increases by one every two in-game days, preventing early-game exploitation and rewarding survival. A new corps cannot be created if any existing corps is currently below its 6-unit minimum — the player must replenish that corps first, or disband it. Disbanding is instant, provides no resource refund, and removes all buffs immediately, including mid-combat. There is a minimum amount of time after creation that a corps can be disbanded— somewhere between 4-5 in-game days— to prevent exploitation of changing corps doctrine at whim to fit instantaneous need.  

EFFICIENCY CURVE

Each corps operates on a soft bell-curve efficiency model. Peak benefits occur between 12 and 15 units. The curve slopes gently outside that range, reaching its minimum (but still meaningful) benefit floor at 6 and 20 units. This discourages both oversized blobs and throwaway micro-corps, and means a corps worn down by attrition to 9 units remains useful and worth maintaining rather than feeling broken.

DOCTRINE

At creation, the player selects one of three doctrines, which shapes the corps' bonus profile for its lifetime:

Maneuver — improved movement speed and reduced damage taken upon enacting the retreat command.

Assault — small coordinated attack bonus when two or more corps members strike the same tile simultaneously.

Defense — slightly increased unit(s) defensive stats. 

All bonuses are intentionally modest — enough to reward organized play, not enough to distort balance.

COMMAND UNIT

Upon creation, the player designates one unit as the corps commander. This unit receives a small defense/attack debuff (representing higher administrative presence) but with a unit speed buff, and appears with a star icon in its unit tile. If the commander is destroyed, command automatically transfers to another unit in the corps and the player is notified. The commander can be manually changed once every 1–2 in-game days to prevent cycling exploits.

The choice of commander type creates a meaningful tradeoff: a fast recon unit as commander extends corps cohesion range more easily but is fragile if exposed; a heavy infantry commander is resilient but slower to reposition.

PROXIMITY AND BENEFIT CHECKS

A corps member only receives benefits while within a defined radius of the commanding unit. The benefit check is snapshot-based for performance: combat bonuses are evaluated at the moment of attack or being attacked; movement bonuses are re-evaluated at each movement tick. Units outside proximity receive no benefits until they return to range. This prevents long-range transfer exploiting — any unit added to or transferred into a corps must physically travel to the commander’s proximity before benefits activate.

UNIT MANAGEMENT

Units can be added to a corps at any time up to the 20-unit cap. Units can be transferred between corps, or removed entirely. The origin and destination corps both have their efficiency recalculated immediately based on new counts. A unit in transit between corps (not within the new corps commander’s proximity) is in an unattached state and receives no buffs. Units from different corps cannot occupy the same stack, nor can a corps unit stack with an unaffiliated unit. If a non-corps unit is forced onto a corps-occupied tile by retreat or by simple movement, both units coexist at that coordinate but are treated as independent units — displayed separately with the separate lines pointing to the same location, and each fighting individually (not as a stack) if that tile is attacked, sharing only terrain effects.

UI AND MAP INDICATORS

Each unit permanently displays a small corps tag beside its name. In a mixed stack, the commander appears as its own entry with a star icon in the upper-right corner of its unit tile, separated from any same-type stack-mates so it can be split off independently.

On full zoom-out, the commanding unit (or its stack) shows a small flag indicator within the standard green unit box (if friendly, red or grey if enemy or neutral), making corps leaders and their stack identifiable at a glance on busy late-game maps.

A collapsible on-screen panel lists all active corps, their member units, current cohesion level (as a percentage of efficiency based on optimal vs current size), and allows the player to reassign the commander designation within the cooldown window.