After playing Rome a lot there is something i want to discuss.
What is disturbing me the most is that units are consuming supply within combats because therefore units are loosing battles because they last to long.
I'll give an example where this becomes highly annoying: A fully upgraded legion with medic IV, Primus Pilus, Tribunus Laticlavius and quatermaster IV is a 90 man, nearly undefeatable combat monster with wins against every enemy unit without loosing a soldier. But because of the supply issue it is very simple to defeat them with cheap units, while sending them into combat one after another (the AI does this). After some time the roman legion brigade runs out of food (depending on how long the march to the battlefield lasts it only needs 3-4 cheap units) and while starving, the moral of the legion drops and then they surrender. Because of the "unable to break from combat" feature (which make sense in princible) this ending is indispensable once the fight started. It seems to be a bit improper that a highly experienced, well trained roman legion which is hardly winning a fight surrenders because of having no food while fighting. Especially with the actual recruitment rates loosing 90 soldiers is almost unbearable.
This example is just a considerably one while the issue occures very often during rome.
Therefore my solution would be that supply should not be consumed while the unit is actualy fighting.

Sorry for bad english it is not my mothertongue .

I agree that something could be done about this. Food seems to burn very quickly.

I feel that the overall scarcity of food should be the game focus in regards to supply rather than the fact that a legionary can only carry enough food on his back to last a single day (or some other arbitrarily short amount of time).

My problem is not the food in general. It needs 4 minutes until the moral drops to zero. Thats not very long (especialy while sieging) but because of the towns are being not far from each other and because of the ability to build camps and in combination with the quatermaster it is not a big deal over all. Reducing the supply consumption a bit might be in favor of the player but it would not solve the problem I mentioned above.

I like the sound of this. So I agree, supply consumption during combat should halt, after all an army in a field battle does not have time to stop and eat between sword swings while maintaining an unbroken shield wall.

To counter though from a balance perspective, after a fight has ended (perhaps add a 60sec in combat timer) there should then be a 10-20% instant supply loss. This would account for looting, burning the dead and then returning to camp to feast. Makes for more sense than food being eaten in the middle of a fight.

Is this even possible?