Using Military Units Like Rounds of Ammunition

[Rasputin]

Those civilisatons that are ok with suicide missions usually have a non demoratic form of government, so the appropaite way to deal with this is via the government choices in civ 3... Make it harder to control the populace in democracy if you are using your military in suicide missions.. Under fundamentalism , you can send kamikaze missions as much as you wish

[eNo]

Well the Kamekaze were more of a last ditch effort to turn the tide of a war right? I don't think they were that willing to give up their lives for their emperor.

Urban Ranger has a point, there is incentive to bring the units back to disband for production. Probably a more effective use of you're units since you would only be getting rid of you're units if they were outdated (in which case their attacks would do squat) or you're at peace (in which case attacking would pull you back into war).

[Kropotkin]

Some historical cultures do not take death as such as a defeat as stated above.

Nevertheless, getting a division slaughtered in a godforsaken moutain range on the other side of the continent for no other real reason than that the great leader feels they are causing a logistic problem won't exactly raise moral in the units homecity even if they are all very religious.

That is, If the troops are not mercenaries...

[colossus]

Somebody suggested that peacefully discharged soldiers don't cause unhappiness, uhmm...interesting view.

Discharging soldiers, especially veterans, are always hazardous tasks. Augustus had to empty his treasury and provide ample land to settle for his civil war veterans. Russian soldiers was agitating for reform after the Napoleonic War. And soldiers discharged from Vietnam War had been causing social troubles in the US.

The truth is, soldiers cause unhappiness when they are in being, more unhappiness when discharged, dangerous when victorious(politically overpowerful), and even more unhappiness if defeated.

[Urban Ranger]

What Lao Tzu said

Armies are dangerous and pernicious. A gentleman will only resort to them if presented with no other reasonable recourses.

Krop,

While it is indeed true that some cultures didn't treat death as defeat, I don't think there's one of them included in the game.

[Kropotkin]

I didn't mean that it is/will be so in the game. Just commenting some ideas in the thread about kamikaze-missions, Jihad etc

[Quartz Dragon]

Originally posted by Rasputin
Those civilisatons that are ok with suicide missions usually have a non demoratic form of government, so the appropaite way to deal with this is via the government choices in civ 3... Make it harder to control the populace in democracy if you are using your military in suicide missions.. Under fundamentalism , you can send kamikaze missions as much as you wish

This is what I meant, not civ specific.

[korn469]

two things in civ can cut down on using military units like rounds of ammo...

multiple levels of morale like in SMAC

the other thing is special resources, most military units will need special resources, and all modern military units will need a variety of special resources before you can build them...so if these resources are scare it would make military units more valuable and you'd be less likely to throw them away

[SerapisIV]

Originally posted by korn469
the other thing is special resources, most military units will need special resources, and all modern military units will need a variety of special resources before you can build them...so if these resources are scare it would make military units more valuable and you'd be less likely to throw them away

I like the idea, but a problem with this is how Firaxis will be handling special resources. How many resource squares are needed for certain production? Do they get used up? That kind of thing. From what I gather of the Firaxis info its only important that your civ has acces to a resource, its quantity is not measured.

Now this is definitely not completely true as the diplomacy screenshot shows 1/3 of a resource available. Not sure yet what each resource quantity represents or effects. Does each legion being produced require one iron resource? Is it limited in this way, or is simple access to the iron enough to allow production? Still a lot of unanswered questions about how resources will effect gameplay.

[Admiral PJ]

I think democracy and maybe Repub. should give you penalties for wanton use of cannonfodder troops, the others like Fascism , Monarchy etc shouldn't cause any problems with this.
Penalties could be 1 unhappy person in their home city for 5 turns maybe resultin in the government falling , score penalties, maybe a reduction in reputation, finally a lowering of Civility culture as your heading towards a more barbaric society.

I picture this as like what the japanese really did in WW2 , using kamikaze planes, and not looking after their trroops well, making them expendable.. as their fascist government supressed freedom of speech and protests.

It would be nice to have simulated popular and unpopular wars too.. like the Vietnam war, perhaps my system would work with this, basically if your troops are dying and your losing a war people will get unhappy and revolt.