Reduce the number of units

[wrylachlan]

I see these as totally separate issues - total number of units, and how those units do combat.

You can have a micromanagement nightmare with combined arms combat just as easily as with individual unit combat. The deciding factor is implementation. In fact if you had the implementation suggested above where you announce an attack, then have to select checkboxes in a pop-up to indicate which units attack, you would have more micro than performing the individual attacks with a single keystroke. Arguable more satisfying because of depth of strategy, but still more clicks necessary.

And I agree that the way to limit units in the late age involves some sort of variable support cost so that MA cost significantly more to support than say an archer.

edit-
It also requires a change to the build cost of units (see my Total Number of Units thread). If you increase the upkeep without increasing the unit cost, even warmongers end up building fewer units, which leaves them with a ton more shields for buildings, erasing the differences and trade offs between strategies. Thus if you reduce the amount of units by increasing the upkeep, you have to make sure that the units cost more shields to keep the war vs. builder balance.

[GePap]

If people want, there are two simple ways of cutitng down the number of units right now:

1. Make modern era units cost pop. point to make, like workers (I assume you can edit this): if drafting one pop. point leads to one unit, why don;t regular units cost one population point? If you can add the "join city" option, after you moblize your population for war, you can then "bring them home"- making units cost population points forces the players to economize. Now, this would only apply to units after nationalism (ie. after you can draft people)- meaning you can still make war in the medeival period, but war in the modern age goes up exponetially. This doea you you have to limit the ability to update defensive and offensive units going into the modern age. Also, triple, quadruple or more the cost of units you have to pay for to 3, 4 or 5 gold each to represent the realities and costs of modern war.

Both those ideas right now would cut the number of units drastically.

[lajzar]

Originally posted by wrylachlan
I see these as totally separate issues - total number of units, and how those units do combat.

Whereas I see these are being intrinsically linked. In a system which allows stacked combat, you can typically expect a battle to be conducted to the limits of the stacking allowed. CTP typically had 9 times as many units due to the ability to involve them all in a battle. Civ 3 has a slightly different dynamic because there is no penalty for have huge stacks.

You can have a micromanagement nightmare with combined arms combat just as easily as with individual unit combat. The deciding factor is implementation. In fact if you had the implementation suggested above where you announce an attack, then have to select checkboxes in a pop-up to indicate which units attack, you would have more micro than performing the individual attacks with a single keystroke. Arguable more satisfying because of depth of strategy, but still more clicks necessary.

Not really. Since I am also proposing that defender units that aren't involved in the combat due to the command limitation can suffer collateral damage, you have a very good reason not to stack beyond the limit of units that can actually fight in the battle. Sure, you can stack 100 units if you want to, but if your command limit is 10, and those 10 (drawn randomly when defending) happen to lose, all of your stack takes some damage. That is a painful loss with big stacks.

And I agree that the way to limit units in the late age involves some sort of variable support cost so that MA cost significantly more to support than say an archer.

Yes, this is something that really ought to have been implemented in Civ3. If it could be implemented as long ago as MoM, why not now?

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by GePap
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.

Agreed. In fact, if you look at the order of battle, there were in fact dozens of divsions. When you consider that those were the biggest battles in WWII, that is not surprising at all. Germany put most of the troops there, and so did the USSR.

Originally posted by GePap
The fact is that modern states can field massive armies.

Only conditionally. That is, you cannot field large armies without taking away from other areas.

Originally posted by GePap
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.

Something like a combined arms bonus?

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Shogun Gunner
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.

There is no indication that a NATO infantry unit was stronger than its Warsaw Pact counterpart, particularly when you compare an US unit with an USSR unit. They were both similarly equipped.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by GePap
1. Make modern era units cost pop. point to make, like workers (I assume you can edit this): if drafting one pop. point leads to one unit, why don;t regular units cost one population point? If you can add the "join city" option, after you moblize your population for war, you can then "bring them home"- making units cost population points forces the players to economize. Now, this would only apply to units after nationalism (ie. after you can draft people)- meaning you can still make war in the medeival period, but war in the modern age goes up exponetially.

This works. It would be better if there's a more realistic population and production models.

[wrylachlan]

Originally posted by lajzar
Whereas I see these are being intrinsically linked. In a system which allows stacked combat, you can typically expect a battle to be conducted to the limits of the stacking allowed. CTP typically had 9 times as many units due to the ability to involve them all in a battle. Civ 3 has a slightly different dynamic because there is no penalty for have huge stacks.

I think your analysis is flawed. The reason that CTP has a different number of units than Civ3 isn't the combat model, but the cost balancing vis a vis the total economic output. If you were to mod CTP such that the units cost the same percentage of Total Shield Production that they do in Civ3, you would find that the total number of units would be very similar.