I was reading in the manual and on this site's, Info Center, trying to get a good handle of a city's unit support. Here on the Info Center, Unit Support values for larger cities seem to decrease depending on government type. I guess my question is what does this number actually mean, that a city of size X can support Y number of units, and anything beyond that incurs a maintainence penalty?

Just a little confused on this point, I'd appreciate it if someone could clear it up for me.

thanks in advance

res

I guess my question is what does this number actually mean, that a city of size X can support Y number of units, and anything beyond that incurs a maintainence penalty?
Yes. Anything beyond the stated limits costs 1 gold per turn. Also note that your total support capability is "pooled" together across all your cities (i.e. units are not tied to a specific city, which may be obvious but is different than it was in Civ2 if you played that).

I see, and if I'm not mistaken my total Unit Support number is listed with my Military Advisor screen, so I could just take that number and divide by my total number of cities to get my maximum number of allowable units in each city without incurring a maintainence fee?

thanks by the way

res

The military advisor tells you both how many units you have and how many you can have for free.

gotcha, thanks for helping me clear that up.

residue

Yes. Anything beyond the stated limits costs 1 gold per turn.

Actually, this is also government dependent. In C3C it's 1 gpt for every government except Republic where it's 2 gpt and Feudalism where it's 3 gpt.

Actually, this is also government dependent. In C3C it's 1 gpt for every government except Republic where it's 2 gpt and Feudalism where it's 3 gpt.
Ah, I'm still playing vanilla and didn't realize that - thanks.

I see, and if I'm not mistaken my total Unit Support number is listed with my Military Advisor screen, so I could just take that number and divide by my total number of cities to get my maximum number of allowable units in each city without incurring a maintainence fee?
No. You don't need to divide anything. The number you see in the military advisor is the total number of units that your entire civilization can build before you start paying maintenance.

Another concept I think is important is that, especially later in the game, you will probably need more units than just the free ones. If you develop your economy well, you can afford to support the additional units and still make plenty of gold.

Many of us use Republic for our government for most of the game. Although you pay 2 gold per additional unit, you can earn a LOT of gold in that government to afford a large military force. When you get to that point, you can also disband or upgrade obsolete units. If you choose to disband them, be sure to do it in a town/city so that the shields from them go to building something (but not a wonder).