Reduce the number of units

[Urban Ranger]

It is silly that you can have a huge number of units in Civ.

Consider the United States of America. Suppose one unit is one army division. How many army units does it have? Not all that many, and it's a superpower.

So it makes a lot of sense to reduce the number of units, or at least combat units, that any nation can field at any one time.

First of all, of course, is to make it a lot more expensive to build. Secondly, construct a different maintenance schme for units. Third, make it impossible to rush build combat units. Afterall, you are mainly training personnel. It doesn't matter how much $$$ you spend, you can't make more time. Forth, maybe a hard limit? I am not really in favour of this idea, though.

[CerberusIV]

And if each unit only represents a battalion, rather than a division?

The point I do like is about rushing units. I'm not sure it shouldn't be possible but, like drafting, the unit should only be conscript level with 2HP if you rush it.

[lajzar]

I did a bit of maths earlier in another thread which suggests that in CTP at least, each ancient infantry unit represents about 500 men. Not exactly a division. By that scale, the USA would have about 500 combat units.

I agree that any rushed unit should start out green though.

[MrBaggins]

This whole premise sounds a hell of a lot like a thread I started in the CTP2 Source Project a month or two back...

*SNIP*

The second thought I had was about Unit upkeep, and the associated GDP. In CTP2 if you have 25% of your upkeep going to military upkeep, its a slight drag on your production, but nothing significant. You produce 25% slower. Since warmongering usually gains production, its usually moot anyway.

In the real world, a 25% military GDP is significant... or massive even. Thats the kind of military GDP which tore the USSR apart (around 120-170 billion roubles or about 13-19%)

There is a definite disparity, here. You can't solve it by just increasing production costs. The societial effects of high military GDP's go beyond that.

A solution, I thought, would be to have comparitive food and income upkeep costs for units... 50%, say, of the production cost. Thus a nation spending 100 production on units would also have 50 less food and gold.

Having both growth and science penalties, as well as production, might serve to both more accurately describe military expenditure, and be a game balance also.

Food and income upkeep should, of course, be separate from regular shield upkeep, but thats not clearly mentioned here.

Food upkeep would abstract rations and reinforcement of units. Gold upkeep would abstract wages of troops and/or maintainance of high tech units (like Stealth Bombers, Carriers or Nukes.)

[Plotinus]

Part of the problem is of course the fact that there is too much emphasis on military matters, especially later in the game. If there were other things to allocate your budget to, it might be a bit more realistic, and also interesting. What about variable funding for education, health, etc...

And there's no way to tell what each unit represents. Nowhere are we told how many people are in them. Notice that, unlike Civ1, the name of each unit is the name of an individual within it - "Legionary", "Archer", etc. For all we know, an archer unit is just one archer.

[MrBaggins]

/me laughs

"If there were other things to allocate your budget to" ?

/me continues to laugh

So THAT'S the reason why we have wars... because we've got nothing better to spend the money on.

I agree with the sentiment a bit... but this isn't SimCity thats being played here... its a definably competitive game.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by CerberusIV
And if each unit only represents a battalion, rather than a division?

At the current scale, though, an army unit is very big. I was, in fact, giving it benefit of the doubt. Realistically, I think the unit should be army/corp sized.

[Fatwreck]

I agree, it gets very tedious to move around all your military units in the end game... ruins some of the fun

[GePap]

At the current scale, though, an army unit is very big. I was, in fact, giving it benefit of the doubt. Realistically, I think the unit should be army/corp sized.

If the uS military is small today, it is due to the cost of units and thier power..

If we were to say each unit was about a division 10K, or mybe legion sized 5K, think about how many units would have been mobalized in a WW2 scenerio- some battles on the eastern front included dozen's of divisions.

The fact is that modern states can field massive armies.

The obvious solution to this is to make the cost of units much larger, or have variable costs, and to have units have to correspond to the population numbers in some way.

Th, of course, we could change the combat system so that if you go on the offensive, you have the ability to combine your units into armies.

[lajzar]

North Korea currently has 500,000 men under arms, or did have as of around 1980, and it's economy hasn't changed a awful lot since then. Scaling this up, it suggests that the USA could raise an army in the low tens of millions if it truly felt the need, and China maybe a hundred million.

Of course, this would mash the economies quite efficiently if done over a long period, as any North Korean will testify. But I hope it amply demonstrates:

- Any stacking limit lower than 100 or so would make these armies impossible
- Conscription makes huge armies possible
- Any stacking limit in 3 figures isn't going to make any meaningful difference to game speed.

Right now, the system I favour is:

* No stack limits
* CTP style army combat.
* The number of units permitted in combat starst at, say 4, and slowly rises as appropriate leadership techs are researched.
* Attacker chooses his attack stack, up to the unit limit imposed by the leadership techs.
* The AI chooses the defender stack, with the following two rules:
* If the number of units present is equal or lower than teh stack limit, all units are included.
* Otherwise, units are chosen randomly one at a time, weighted according to the defence factor of the units, until the stack limit is reached.
* This encourages the defender to choose the composition of defending stacks carefully to optimise combat performance, while allowing stacks to pass freely.
* Primitive example: Most of the defending units have been chosen by the ai. But there is one more free stack slot, and 2 units, a warrior and a phalanx. The phalanx, with its defence factor of 2, is twice as likely to be randomly chosen by the AI to fight as teh warrior with its defence factor of 1.
* If the attacker wins the fight, it only occupies the tile if all defending units have been destroyed.
* If the attacker wins, all defender units (including those who didnt fight that battle), as well as tile improvements, city improvements (if city), population (if in city radius) have a chance of suffering collateral damage. Note that population loss is limited to 1 in city radius zone, but could be several population points (especially in high pop areas) in a large metropolis.
* The above collateral damage rule encourages defenders to fight away from cities, which otherwise have many defence bonuses. It also discourages excessive stacking, as units beyond the stack limit will be damaged while being unable to fight.

[MrBaggins]

I think you're missing a couple of points lajzar...

Civ units are abstract.

If you want huge armies, no need to have 50 units in a stack... just have parallel oversized versions of whatever infantry... that is "supersized" units with more hits (equal A&D) and more firepower. They'll behave just like numerous smaller units... without the overhead.

[Xorbon]

The problem of oversized militaries mostly comes during the latter part of the game. IMO, this problem is because civs have a lot more gold to spend later in the game than they do in the early or mid games. One idea would be to have more advanced units cost more for upkeep. Upkeep could vary from unit to unit within the same era as well.

[Shogun Gunner]

Regarding modern warfare, I believe the civ model corresponds to firepower or kill power (whatever term you use). Since the attack factor of simliar units between two different civs does not change, it must be the number of soldiers and technology that is the variable.

Simple example: a Warsaw Pact (Polish) era infantry division versus a NATO (United States) infantry division. In civ terms, they are both 6-10-1. However, the United States fielded better trained solders, with better equipment, so in reality its a better unit than the Polish counterpart. Since both attack and defend at the same strength, the civ model suggests it's really a US infantry regiment (usually two or three in a division) versus the Polish infantry division.

So, Poland is forced to field three times the number of combat troops to reach the same "kill power".

[MrBaggins]

Originally posted by Shogun Gunner
Regarding modern warfare, I believe the civ model corresponds to firepower or kill power (whatever term you use). Since the attack factor of simliar units between two different civs does not change, it must be the number of soldiers and technology that is the variable.

Simple example: a Warsaw Pact (Polish) era infantry division versus a NATO (United States) infantry division. In civ terms, they are both 6-10-1. However, the United States fielded better trained solders, with better equipment, so in reality its a better unit than the Polish counterpart. Since both attack and defend at the same strength, the civ model suggests it's really a US infantry regiment (usually two or three in a division) versus the Polish infantry division.

So, Poland is forced to field three times the number of combat troops to reach the same "kill power".

Use Veteran Levels then.

[lajzar]

I think you're missing a couple of points lajzar...

Civ units are abstract.

If you want huge armies, no need to have 50 units in a stack... just have parallel oversized versions of whatever infantry... that is "supersized" units with more hits (equal A&D) and more firepower. They'll behave just like numerous smaller units... without the overhead.

I don't particularly want huge armies, but I fully expect that they will happen. The best counter I have seen is to have variable support costs as in MoM / CTP / moo. What I want is a way to simulate how having different units working together produce a combat potential more than the sum of their parts. So far, we've had:

Civ1/2 - no special benefit. Stacks die.

SMAC - no special benefit. Stacks take collateral damage.

MoM/CTP1-2/MoO1-2 - tactical combat screen. MoM/moo was more advanced in that you actually controlled the units if you wanted, or you could let the AI take control. MoM and CTP had hard stack limits.

Civ3 - no special benefit. Units with a bombard ability take a pot shot at the attacker. Stacks survive intact.


To those who say Civ shouldnt take the CTP system because CTP 'owns' it, rubbish. CTP took it from MoM.

The best implementation I have found so far is the MoM model. To that, I am merely adding unlimited stacks for movement, and collateral damage.