DESIGN: A couple of thoughts about upkeep

[MrBaggins]

Originally posted by Tamerlin
I agree but I don't think you can achieve this through changes in the upkeep system, a major alteration of the AI is needed.

The changes mentioned here are for a very specific reason. To give a real and actual disadvantage to an empire that maintains an offensive army. This on its own isn't a complete solution.

Changes to the AI are certainly necessary, but the game model in itself; Civ1-Civ3, SMAC and CtP is fundamentally flawed... the most successful strategy is expansion through conquest.

If the AI were as capable as a human, this wouldn't be an issue. Its not possible to make an AI as capable as a human, especially in a large 2d space.

Therefore you have to limit the game world to reduce the effectiveness of the strategy that the human is best at, and the strategy that is best overall, in addition.

[drulius]

I mentioned this idea in the end game thread, but it seems to dovetail here. If this modified unit support structure was abstracted into Veteran status, you could have a class of buildings for offensive unit construction which would build Veteran units with full offensive power. Buildings already cost gold to maintain and production to build, these offensive military buildings could also cost food to maintain and have a higher gold maint as well. In order to tie army size to population size further and to prevent cost saving destruction of the buildings after an army is in the field, you could have each building of each type (air,sea,land) provide ongoing support for a population dependant number of units of that type. Say a city with pop under 500k and the proper buildings in place could build and "support" one 12 stack each of veteran air, sea, and land units. Veteran status earned in the field would then be a "free" bonus of successfully repelling invasions (if you haven't built any of the coresponding air, sea, or land veteran buildings, if you have, then they count towards your total support cost). Also, veterans might be killed or downgraded if their support base is destroyed (Spies destroy the right buildings in the right cities, or you lose cities on another front and you lose units (or they downgrade or defect) because now you can only support a total of three stacks of vet air units instead of five.) In this system I would make the warmonger rebuild each building for each age (a land vet building from the renaissance couldn't build vet Machinegunners or Artillery) There should probably also be a special building and cost for nukes and cruise missles.

Hope this post didn't make too much of a tangent with the original post, because I value any discussion that might lead to a game where "bigger is always better" isn't the only viable strategy for winning, where it is

quote:
possible to play(and win) as a diplomatic leader(playing one enemy off against the other for example), or maybe as a peaceful trader(e.g using my vast wealth to hire mercenaries when threatened), or maybe as a small but technologically advanced civ with a small but awe inspiring army?