Unbalanced - General Population vs Millitary

[jglidewell]

One of the most unbalanced.unrealistic things about civ is the ratio of population to military population.

At most points in the game a city supports far more millitary units than there ever were in reality. And the military unit covers far more territory than they ever would in reality. This makes the cities and map puny in comparison to military units and makes micro management of the military ugly.

It turns the game into military conquest, all the time.

Stacking isn't the answer only the problem. Tone down the production of military units.

[MrFun]

I totally disagree - I want to be able to maintain the same mass armies that have existed since ancient times. In fact, Civilization II made it a little hard to maintain a realistic mass military force.

As for your second post - no way. It would make the game more complicated and less fun.

[Mihai]

Number of military units should be limited by your population (unless mercenary).
Maybe if you can set a max% of pop that can be drafted - and proportional with unhappiness?

[jglidewell]

One other thing I forgot. Millitary units should be produced in two steps. Personnel and weapons.

Personnel and the weapons should than be matched to produce a full unit.

[DarkCloud]

Huh? movement is not reflecting reality- A turn in the ancient ages is 20 years, in the middle ages it is 2-5 years, in the 1900-2000's it is 1 year.

If anything the movement is too less, a tile represents about 100-300 miles. A Roman Legion could travel 30 miles in a day.

The armies are most likely only made up of 1,000 people in ancient ages, and I do agree with you that the population should take a small hit as the unit is mustered.

But this brings up an interesting point, you should determine how many people in your city go into the legion or unit.

[Trachmir]

Another thing... WE NEED SEPERATE QUEUES FOR MILITARY AND IMPROVEMENTS!

with a little slider to determine how much production to be distributed to both.

As for actually drafting population... I'm all for that, and if you draft a large % of the population, the cities' happiness should drop (like Lords of the Realm).

Units should have more movement, but attacking should use a % of remaining movement (as well as boarding/landing/etc.) not a flat charge of 1. Units should be cheaper as well, it doesn't take 20 years to make a warrior unit... especially not 5 turns of 20 years! Instead, units should be instantly created (if they can be created in 1 turn), their production cost subtracted from the available pool... this process can continue on-and-on until there is no longer enough production... that "remaing" production is used to create the unit the following turn. In WWII, in the matter of 1 year, America greatly increased the size of it's military AND deployed them... Civ3 should strive for this level of realism, yes it makes conflict more of a threat and less predictable... but afterall, that is the nature of war.

[Grumbold]

I'd agree with all your points except for one thing - Civ is a game trying to be fun within the broad sweep of history. It is not (and never could be) an accurate economic, political and military simulator for the entire sweep of human history. I suggest you look up reviews of of Europa Universalis to get some idea of how difficult it is to produce a military and economic model for a period of even three hundred years when technology was evolving slowly. Any atempt to increase accuracy would have to start by reducing the timescale of a turn drastically. In ancient days a large empire might need months to muster and react to an invasion, but modern communications reduces that drastically. Combat, including the production and movement of military units, needs to stay very abstract if the game is to have its sweeping transition of time.