{The List-} Movement, supply, etc.

[wrylachlan]

Originally posted by skywalker


If every unit was more powerful, would they have the same relative strength and thus be just as powerful?

Yes, they would be as powerful against each other, but since their cost is more, there would be more vested in each one.

[Kuciwalker]

So you shouldn't bother to make them more powerful, but rather just make their cost more

[Bleyn]

If the goal was to reduce the total number of units in the game at the end(when its a real issue), by this method one would have to do both. Both increase production costs and powers that is. The reason is that the earliest units couldn't be increased in power(obviously) and it would be ridiculous to increase their costs. So, effectively this method would be just spreading out the range of costs.

But just spreading the range of costs without increasing the power of units wouldn't work very well. The reason being that the computer AI, and a lot of hardcore players are going to focus on the most cost effective units. Ie. the units with the most bang for the buck. And just by increasing costs, the most powerful units become less cost effective. It might work out that riflemen are a better unit than Mech Infantry because they cost enough less that you can produce enough of them to equal or beat the strength of a Mech Infantry at the same or a slightly lower cost.

The problem is the current cost of units is all in gold and shields which can be substituted by gold(in the right governments). And gold is the one resource in the game that is effectively limitless. It is very easy to boost one's treasury, especially if one doesn't mind sacrificing science production, and it would give commercial civs a big advantage.

I think a better way to slow down unit production would be to add food back as an upkeep cost for all the units. Food is a very limited resource. It is very hard to drastically increase the available food supply quickly. And it would force a lot of balance decisions. Build more units, or let cities grow. Of course it would also be nice to see a support model that at some point shifted from city-based to nation based as modern transport technology appeared.

[wrylachlan]

Thanks Bleyn, you said it better than I could. Yes it's all about performance/price ratio. If you increase the cost without also increasing the performance, the ratio goes down, and earlier units become more cost effective.

I also agree that a food upkeep would help keep unit numbers down, but if you're going to do it, you need to make some sort of provision for wartime rationing. Like maybe if you go into mobilization, each of your citizens only uses half as much food as normal, but the surplus can only go to military upkeep, not city growth. That would allow you to grow your army in wartime, but it wouldn't be feasible to maintain as large a standing army.

[Bleyn]

I hadn't thought of the rationing aspect. Though, I'd still want to see some allowance for city growth, at least among smaller towns. Even under the rationing of WW1 and WW2, rural farming communities in the US rarely noticed a major impact. The government knew better than to ask the people growing the food to ration their own supplies as much as they required of everyone else.

[Kuciwalker]

You are missing the point! If you increase the power of all of the units, then you really haven't increased the power of ANY of them! If I double the A/D values of every unit, it has ZERO gameplay effect (unless rounding occurs with the defense bonuses). Now, if you are talking about increasing the power of SPECIFIC units, then it has nothing to do with what we were talking about - reducing the number of units - but rather simple balance issues.

[Shadedmelee]

Faster, Patrolling Naval Units

I think naval units should be faster. To not to ruin the naval combat, give naval units "Patrol" ability. When a naval unit is ordered to patrol, it automatically attacks any naval unit entering its patrol zone even in AI's turn. That way we could order our naval units to patrol the coast and automatically attack units entering our borders. How many squares a Patrol zone consists of should depend on the speed of the naval unit or another seperate unit attribute.

[Fosse]

People have tried to do similar things with double hit points per age, double ADM values per age, etc. The idea he's advocating would mean you don't need overwhelming numbers when dealing with inferior forces, but would do little to curb unit building when on equal tech terms.

It's a half solution, I think. And not good enough by itself. The ability to group and coordinate (read: stacked combat) our forces will be the only way to defeat micromanging. Forcing us to have fewer units will not by itself cure the problem.

[lajzar]

The sea movement system sucks for transports. It i almost impossibel to recreate a Roman empire without either having excessive transports (there goes productivity) or conquering northern Europe.

Any city that has a harbour structure should be able to instantly create a transport unit for any land unit that tries to move into the sea. This tranport would be AI controlled, and can only move to a designated city you control; the AI will move it back to the home port if that city is captured. This way, you still have sea transport between your cities for minimal cost, but still have to build transports to do an assault.

[shuttleswo]

Originally posted by lajzar
This way, you still have sea transport between your cities for minimal cost, but still have to build transports to do an assault.

Maybe this could be done by having harbors serve like ariports currently do - possibly with some range limits. nearby enemy naval units could have intercept abilities. It sounds good in theroy - It's always bugged me that naval transports never really had the same impact in the game that it had historically.

It seems like a pretty good idea.

[wrylachlan]

Originally posted by skywalker
You are missing the point! If you increase the power of all of the units, then you really haven't increased the power of ANY of them! If I double the A/D values of every unit, it has ZERO gameplay effect (unless rounding occurs with the defense bonuses). Now, if you are talking about increasing the power of SPECIFIC units, then it has nothing to do with what we were talking about - reducing the number of units - but rather simple balance issues.

I'm sorry, but your wrong on this one. Think of it this way:

If the whole world, at maximum produces say 100,000 shields per turn. And the game lasts 200 turns. Then the maximum total shields used in that game is 20M. If every shield went to units then if units cost 100 shields, the max units that game will ever produce is 200K. If you increase the cost of units to 1000 shields, then the max units are 20K.

Obviously all the numbers are made up and don't include other factors like waste, and the necessity of building infrastructure, but the process is the same. If you increase the cost of units you will decrease the total numbers in the game.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by wrylachlan
Obviously all the numbers are made up and don't include other factors like waste, and the necessity of building infrastructure, but the process is the same. If you increase the cost of units you will decrease the total numbers in the game.

Skywalker doesn't talk about the cost of units, he talks about the power of units. Looks like a misunderstanding here.

[lajzar]

I considered having a chassis class (foot, cavalry, wheel, track, hover/NoE, flyer, sea) for each
unit, which would then be cross-referenced with a terrain/chassis table to find each move cost.
Instead, a better solution would be a single table for movement costs, then certain units would have
differentiated move costs as a separate special ability.

Examples:
Chariot (4-1-2)
move cost 0 (0 means impassable) in mountains, ocean

Alpine Troops (4-4-1)
Move cost 1 in mountains
Move cost 0.5 in tundra, glacier
Move cost 0 in ocean

(alpine troops should have benefits only in alpine terrain, and I never saw why their weapons were better. This system also allows for faster elves in forests, and specialised desert troops etc)


Helicopter (10-3-6)
Move cost 1 in ALL (ALL is a keyword to reference everything)
Move cost 2 in mountains (over-rides default terrain and anything written above)

(helicopters (and NOE/hover units in general) should have a higher move cost in mountains to reflect the fact that they can't fly over things that high).

Galley (1-1-3)
Move cost 0 in ALL
Move cost 1 in ocean

Where move costs remain undefined, it uses the default terrain move cost.

[wrylachlan]

Originally posted by Spiffor

Skywalker doesn't talk about the cost of units, he talks about the power of units. Looks like a misunderstanding here.

erm... I don't think so. Originally I made the statement that in order to cut down the number of units you should increase their cost and power. Skywalker replied, why not just increase the cost. Both Bleyn and I pointed out that the p/p ratio would be skewed to lower tech units if you did that, which would actually increase the number of units. Its absolutely necessary to increase both cost and power if you want to cut down on the number of units. To which he replied that increasing the power and cost wouldn't have an effect on gameplay... but it would! It would have the effect of decreasing the total number of units, which makes it more important to make the right tactical decisions with each.

[Spiffor]

I see the point you raise when you say "raising costs will lower the overall amount of units". This is clear.
I don't see your point when you relate the unit's power and quantity of units.
I could see your point if you were advocating to raise the power exponentially of past-bronze unit (such as giving 4 attack to the swordsman, 6 to the knight, 10 to the cavalry etc.).

But a flat stat raise would have no effect whatsoever: the raised attack stats would be simply cancelled on the raised defense stats. Don't forget battles are calculated as ratios. If an archer attacks a spearman, it will have half of a 2 (archer's attack) / 2 (spearman's defense) chance to win. If you raise all stats flatly, the archer will have half of a 4 (boosted archer attack) / 4 (boosted spearman's defense) chance to win.
See the difference between the two cases? No? That's because there is none. The archer has exactly as many chances to win as before.