Reduce city population when military unit is built!

[polymths]

When you build a military unit the population from the city should be reduced to reflect that. Of course the population loss should depend on the type of unit being built.

Once military units reduce city population, the totally unrealistic tactic of building military units and treating them like rounds of ammunition will be removed. Instead of being able to essentially build a military that is literally more than 100% of the total population, you can only build a military out of the existing population. So when that armor unit is killed, its not seen as the lost of a piece of machine but of actual people that you had to draft from the city to man that tank brigade/division/whatever.

Like settlers, military units can rejoin the cities if you don't need them to wage war or after a war has ended. This simulates the effect of "bringing the boys home" after a war.

[SerapisIV]

This would be a great idea if actual population numbers were used, but being that CivIII appears to be using the same abstract number of heads model, I don't think this is possible or reasonable (assuming the continued model of CivII). This is because when a city is large every population point is something like a hundred thousand people. Using those numbers, the current US military is only 14 units. To me that is unnacceptible as I can no longer create large armies.

Do I like the idea of using population for military, most definitely yes. Does it work in the CivIII model of humanity, no, it doesn't

[Sabre2th]

I agree that it would be tough to do with the current population system, but I like the idea. Maybe if they changed to a more accurate population system......

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"We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything."
-Thomas A. Edison

[Pedrun]

Realistic but impossible to play. There would to few unit. Unless the cities size numbers in civIII are a lot bigger than CivII - That means small cities with size 15 or + and regular cities with size 40.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Hi Guys,
Just a couple of points for your consideration concerning this topic. I'd be interested to know what you think.

1) If you build 6-10 units (depending on unit type), in a single city, then the population should drop by 1 (resulting in a drop in happiness in that city). Every unit built in this city above that will continue to reduce happiness. Conscription should allow you to build 1-2 extra units in the city before happiness and population drop. The main purpose of this would be to force the player to spread his unit construction over a number of cities.
2) Having more than 4 units in a city should cause happiness to drop. Though this should be mitigated somewhat by the construction of barracks. Allies should only be able to store about 2 units in your cities before happiness drops (look at Okinawa!) This is mostly to prevent players producing units ad-infinitum and storing them in a convenient city until they are needed!
3) Armies outside your city should contribute to a drop in regional happiness. Though this would be mostly offset if you are currently at war.
4) When a unit suffers more than about 50% damage. The city the unit originated from should suffer a drop in happiness (as well as causing a drop in regional happiness). If the unit is routed or destroyed, the happiness drop is greater still. Happiness can be partially restored if the unit is brought back to one of your cities and disbanded (as suggested by Polymths). Of course the more units that suffer heavy casualties, the more unhappy cities you get, and the more unhappy your civilization becomes. This would force players to consider their forces as more than just Cannon-Fodder and consider potential casualties before engaging in combat. It might also force a player to negotiate a peace with an enemy simply to avoid a revolution at home (a la Vietnam!)
5) An Advance like "Propaganda" should reduce some of the happiness losses caused by the above factors (particularly war casualties), to reflect the impact of "Positive News Stories from the Front Lines!" Additionally, war victories would increase the happiness of your civilization (and partially offset any of the unhappiness caused by the above factors)
6) Conscription would exacerbate the happiness effects of war casualties and units outside of cities. Lastly, certain government types (Fascist/Military Dictatorship) should be able to almost completely offset many of the causes of unhappiness mentioned above (especially with Propaganda!)
Anyway, that's "my 2 cents worth" again. I hope to hear some comments in the not too distant future.

Yours,

The_Aussie_Lurker

[Alexander's Horse]

This is an incredibly stupid idea.

[Grumbold]

When you build a unit in a city, are you training the troops or building the weapons, armour and uniforms while conscripting from a wider area? I suggest it is the latter because otherwise the time taken to build the unit would be fixed, not dependant upon your manufacturing capability. Until recently there was only one tank/heavy weapons manufacturing plant in the UK. That doesn't mean all the armoured units recruits were conscripted from its nearest city.

[Roman]

Someone on those forums once posted an idea that just like citizens in cities can be turned into scientists, tax collectors and entertainers, you should also be able to convert them into "soldiers". One such soldier could than provide manpower for lets say 3 millitary units. While the units exist, the "soldier" citizen would be completely unproductive. If the units died - the citizen would dissapear and the city would loose population.

[Roman]

quote: Originally posted by Grumbold on 05-11-2001 03:07 AM When you build a unit in a city, are you training the troops or building the weapons, armour and uniforms while conscripting from a wider area? I suggest it is the latter because otherwise the time taken to build the unit would be fixed, not dependant upon your manufacturing capability. Until recently there was only one tank/heavy weapons manufacturing plant in the UK. That doesn't mean all the armoured units recruits were conscripted from its nearest city.

See Grumbold, the system described above would take care of your objections, as the "soldier" citizen would not have to be in the city where you built the unit and even in Britain regimennts are attached to specific counties, so this would make sense.

[Sava]

This is a good idea, but only if you make the city number contain less people. 1 city number should be equal to a thousand people. Then you could "draft" people to become soldiers, instead of building them. I think the ability to draft people is really what we are discussing. It's basically the allocation of resources. People are a resource. The more people you have working on something, the quicker it gets built. Not so in previous Civ games.

Call To Power was not a favorite among most Civers, but I felt it was more realistic than previous Sid Meier games. In CTP, the allocation table of a town's population is very realistic. In Civ3, a similar concept could be implemented. Having the groups, Laborers, Farmers, Merchants(businessmen after the corporation), Public works, Military, Caravans(shipping and freight later) and Entertainers.

I think the computer should set Farmers based on need, and the remainder would be put in the laborer class. Then the player would allocate whatever he/she wanted.

[Grumbold]

That works if a citizen "head" represents the same number of people throughout history. Currently the population to "head" ratio grows throughout the game so that we can end with multi-million population cities without being swamped in head icons. To do it your way I think we would be looking at reverting to percentage sliders for task allocation. I'm not adverse to that but it doesn't look likely since Firaxis want to appeal to the civ-lite public as much as, if not more than, the grognards among us. The tantalising screenshots we have seen so far have hinted at a unit limit being imposed somehow. Perhaps it is keyed to "military" heads or some similar concept.

Many UK regiments have been keyed to counties in the past and that was certainly an indication of the core recruiting area at one time. These days pretty much anyone can try for any regiment and with all the amalgamations many counties are no longer represented. Scotland as a whole has only one dedicated regiment I believe.

[polymths]

MathPhysto's idea is pretty good.

Although it doesn't actually remove any population from the cities as I would prefer, it does have the benefit that it doesn't require any change to the Civ1/Civ2 "population head" model and it does limit the size of the military to the actually number of people in the empire.

I would settle for this. And it is extremely easy to implement so there are no excuses in that regard.

I certainly hope that some thought goes into connection size of military with size of populaton and also culture and govt.

The number of units (i.e. the size of the military) that one could build is way too unrealistic (unless all those tanks, planes, subs, battleships are supposed to be robotically controlled) in proportion to the population.


[This message has been edited by polymths (edited May 11, 2001).]

[Mathphysto]

Hey all, here's an excerpt from a post of mine on the Battles thread:

[Another thing about combat - I hate how the size of one's army is only directly dependent upon production, not population. If I have a small civ that happens to own mineral-rich land, then I can build a huge army - but where did all the soldiers come from? It's much easier for China to field an army of 10 million than for France to. People are just as critical a resource for war as the metal used to fashion the guns.

I think that there should be a "cap" on the number of units a civ can build, determined by the civ's population, some sort of "threat factor" (determined by how much other civs dislike you, and how powerful those civs are), and cultural points (if this is my motherland, I'm going to defend it!). Maybe one could also factor in propaganda, or religious fanaticism. This, along with the production limitations of a civ, would determine how large an army the civ could field.]

Here, one doesn't really lose population due to war, but the population level does determine the magnitude of that war.

[Sava]

I think its time to get rid of the stupid head icons anyways... we're talking about change here people.

[polymths]

quote: Originally posted by SoulAssassin on 05-12-2001 11:09 AM I think its time to get rid of the stupid head icons anyways... we're talking about change here people.

I too would prefer that a more refined population model would be implemented. The "population head" model does have limitations.

However, even if this model is being kept. some kind of connection between population and number of units allowed to be built is still possible. And even with the Civ1/Civ2 model, you could still lose population realistically if this is done using a running total of losses.

The best model that was mentioned was one in which you had allocated (a la Taxmen, Scientists, etc.) soldiers and that this would determine the limit of your armed forces. This makes sense and forces you to allocate manpower. Even better that would be a "running total" of units lost and every time you exceeded a certain number, a "soldier population head" is lost. (Say every ten units or such). This system (not my original idea) would be extremely realistic, would solve a lot of problem and would require absolutely no change to the "population head" model except that there would now be an extra "soldier" head.

But even a simple, you have this amount of population therefore you can build only so many units is still better than the "infinite units syndrome".