Military Manpower Draining for Civ 4

Here is a radical but interesting idea for Civ 4:

ALL military troop units should cost a population point (obviously special units such as spies, if they return to the game, are exempt). Of course each point of population would have to be toned down and become easier to obtain, but clearly all military troop units are made of large numbers of humans, so how can the drain of population going off to war be completely ignored?! This may turn out to be the major factor balancing the potential of Civ easily becoming both a builder's and a warmonger's game. To make the population factor even more interesting, citizens that are unhappy with the war can refuse to join a regularly constructed unit, forcing a draft to use those population and creating more unhappiness...suddenly propaganda becomes absolutely vital (as it is in real wars) to any complete war strategy.

This would actually go very well with the Integrated Interface / Physical Population idea.

Any comments, suggestions, and questions are welcome!

I've actually always wondered why this hasnt been the case in all 3 civs... I know you can change it in the editor, but I don't know if you can change the amount of food needed to expand a city, so I haven't touched said issue.

I was thinking that but someone said once that they tried it and the AI's just kept building units without regard to the pop costs. So they only had size 1 cities all the time. It would ad interesting logistics to civ4 though if done right.

The only problem is realism. A military unit, IRL, is drawn from all over and just formed up in one particular location.

Maybe it could have different effects in different periods. For example, a Roman legion contained 4000-6000 troops, which may be more of drain on a city or empire than say, fielding an air unit, even after figuring in ground support troops. Switch to the middle ages (europeanly speaking) and armies were much smaller.

I don’t really like it. It would take away my SoDs and make war-fighting much more small scale. Echoing earlier comments, without improving the AI it would turn computer opponents to little more than barbarian unit generators.

Maybe go back to the old idea of having to expend food and gold on support to reflect a city’s armed contribution?

In fact it was incorporated with the concept of shield maintenance in 1 and 2 - the soldiers were from that city but didn't produce anything, in contrary the city had to support them, but I am glad it's gone.

Me too, but I think Civ 3 armies have become REALLY huge because all you need it gold to support. Well, that and actual cities. I think you should have to feed your armies.

@slothman

I have tried in the editor, but with the strange and contrary result of the AI never building any military units at all. I don't know why; perhaps, it thinks it is building workers simply due to the population cost? Well, in the end, it certainly did not work...

@The Quirk

You are right, a military unit in reality is drawn from all over--but at the moment I can't think of a way to reflect that. Perhaps your idea of using more than one population could work, but that would be extremely excessive unless the population point is massively tuned down to represent, say, only 1000 people. That is still possible, I suppose, although I would find the populations of normal cities to be awkwardly large (mostly likely in the hundreds or even thousands of population points). Yet I do not want to abandon the population cost idea altogether...

The other method is to have maintenance, which I actually do not equate to solving the same problem, but anyway, I think it would be good to somehow factor production, not just gold, into maintenance since material supplies are obviously necessary to a war, besides soldier salaries. I also do not particularly like the Civ 2 method of reflecting this, but I advocate an even distribution (percentage of each city's production) of the shield support costs throughout the empire. To do this would require my new trade system with to its ability to mobilize and transport products and resources among cities, and the government or army, perhaps, could simply "buy" the supplies necessary for the army. Food requirements could be fulfilled in a similar fashion.

The ultimate result, of course, would be an army that is expensive both to build and to support. However, wars in reality *are* that difficult to wage, and it explains the general reluctance of nations, once all consequences are clear, to delare war. War actually does stunt future population growth, send off portions of the current population to die, and use up resources otherwise useful for public works and/or trade.

Unfortunately, this system indeed would limit most "stacks of death" and reduce the number of wars, but in any case I think Civilization should have a greater emphasis on civilization (which is the opposite of war, in my view). Of course, the woefully inadequate AI must also be fixed and adopted to this new system, as well as the other systems I would like to see.

I love the idea of millitary units (at least ancient ones) costing population points.

I'm thinking that this could be implemented like this: first of all, population growth should not be totally dependent on food surplus. As in, a city's pop grows at 0,100 per turn depending on several factors (one of them could be food surplus), meaning it will reach the next pop point in 10 turns.
Then, you could have a "recruitement tab" where you decide the maximum % of pop you will drain from cities to train millitary units. This way, a city that has a growth of 0,100 per turn, if the recruitement tab is raised to 20%, will grow at 0,080 (the remaining 0,020 going to the army). All this population that is being "recruited" would form a pool from wich every new millitary unit drains a certain number. Ofcourse, cities should be connected by a road to be able to form this pool of recruits.
Just my two cents, but I think this could get somewhere...

Wow, J-S, that is indeed a most creative idea.

In conjunction with my ideas for taking a percentage of every city's production and food surplus as maintenance, I should add the parallel idea of taking a certain percentage of each city's population to form a military unit. An inevitable result, I suppose, would be to reduce the "population point" to representing a scant number of citizens, perhaps 1000 (I will further explain this in my Integrated Interface / Physical Population thread). Anyway, I do note that your idea calls for a portion of city growth to go toward a "recruitment pool," but I think it may be difficult to integrate such a new growth concept into the rest of the game. If you think of a better, all-encompassing solution, please post it! I would be quite interested to know.

Hi Trade-Peror, I was actually thinking of linking some of your UET idea with the manpower idea. You see, I have a REAL problem with military units costing a WHOLE population point because, under the Civ3 system, a single population point could effectively refer to as many as 100,000 or more people-which just seems ludicrous.
Now, assuming the same population system is maintained for civ4, then my suggestion is that when you build a unit, it costs X food units-with X being dependant on the unit type, but possibly anywhere between 1 and 12 units!
The point is that, if they survive battle, then these units can be reincorporated back into a city, thus putting their 'food cost' back into the city's 'storage'. If, however, the unit is killed, then the 'food' that comprised it will be lost and, if you do this enough, you could see major population drops in certain cities! By the same token, though, by re-integrating a lot of soldiers into a city's population, you could could a massive 'population boom', not unlike the baby boom of post-WWII!
Anyway, I realise its VERY abstract, but it could better reflect smaller amounts of population than the current pop. point system alone can! Under a similar premise, you could also say that bombardment and plagues also destroy 'food', rather than population points directly! My only concern is that the system is TOO abstract, and might cause some confusion!
Anyway, I'd like to hear what you think!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker

What's the fun of the game if you cannot build big armies?

Have you play-tested this idea, or it's just a “I wake up with a new idea every morning"?

Geez, we are playing a game, not building a virtual reality from one's dream.

microbe said:

What's the fun of the game if you cannot build big armies?

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Funny, but I find overly large armies to be less fun than medium sized ones. While having too few units can limit your strategies, having too many units just adds lots of tedious clicking without really increasing the strategic options. There's an optimal number for fun - more is not always better! Even people who think that the current huge stacks are fun must admit that... otherwise, you're claiming that having a stack with 1000 units in it would be even more fun than a stack of 100. That seems pretty ridiculous to me!

The fact that units not costing population isn't realistic doesn't really bother me, since any way to fix that would just highlight other un-realisms.

The fact that all you currently need to support an immense military force is plenty of money, however, does bother me a little from a gameplay standpoint. I don't want to see a return to Civ 1/2's individual unit maintanance, I like the simplicity of Civ 3's system better, but maybe some abstract maintainance system involving food and/or shields (and not just gold) could be implemented.

If i understand it correctly any army in the confines of civ has two kinds of costs: initial production and upkeep respectively represented by shields and gold. Although arbitrary I think that this system is not bereft of representative power. The alternative would be a RON-like system where production cost would be expressed in raw materials+population and(unlike RON) maintainance in raw materials+food.
There are to problems that need to be addressed initially: the first is the much disputed resource-system=one source of oil is probably enough to maintain a gazillion tanks, one source of iron=a gazillion swordsmen. But if we use that what then with the shields+gold? Do we get rid of the shields completely? I think that with the trade system that Trade_Peror proposed we still can maintain some level of abstraction regarding units. Can you imagine micromanaging unit production too?

it costs X food units-with X being dependant on the unit type, but possibly anywhere between 1 and 12 units!

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Imho this is a reasonable suggestion but the pop cost should drop in the later ages
to reflect reality(you cannot draft a MA or a Stealth bomber).
Then we have upkeep. I think that the present system(gold) is ok but probably a small twist is needed: resources that are necessary for unit functionning should be in an altogether different category like oil.
You can build loads of tanks but you cannot use them without oil and the source of oil would be quantifiable. For each unit(if the case is similar) there could be a HP penalty if the player insusts of using the unit=no repairs, or no new horses=les healthy unit.
INTERFACE: a counter like RON from where everything will be substracted(?)
(If all the changes we proposed at times are implemented I see a very small hex in the center reserved for gameplay
Is Ybbor right? (if it works dont fix it):for me it all depends in the interface and the ability to mod the game.
It does not matter how realistic or interesting or complex and unwieldy a theory is. For the average player like me it matters how it reflects on my ability to play and (in the measure of my abilities) modify.

@Trade_Peror " The Swiss had uninterrupted peace for 300 years;and what they made of it? The coo-coo clock."
(I dont believe that ther are opposites to civilization other then temporary constructs that mainly serve the purpose of tribal, ethnical,national or racial self definition)...but that does not make anybody interested in manageable battles a warmonger.
Any way but please please please give some thought to the interface

judgement said:

having too many units just adds lots of tedious clicking without really increasing the strategic options.

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Wow, you think it's tedious to manage big stacks, while you want to add more MM to the game by adding all the complexity to calculating military support.

[/QUOTE]What's the fun of the game if you cannot build big armies?

i agree, thats a main part of the game (my favorite)

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What's the fun of the game if you cannot build big armies

i agree, thats a main part of the game (my favorite)

microbe said:

What's the fun of the game if you cannot build big armies?

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i agree, thats a major part o the game

microbe said:

Wow, you think it's tedious to manage big stacks, while you want to add more MM to the game by adding all the complexity to calculating military support.

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Personally I would rather be commanding a force of 20 or so units although there is an appeal to having large armies occasionally...

The whole idea about supporting military is quite a complex issue and also probably needs to be linked with supply lines although these may be covered by the gold per turn. Perhaps a way around the MM needs of moving sliders to say how much you wanted to go towards growth and the rest to armies would be to have a total military support limit which would be similar to the current allowed military unit limit that is already in the game.

Any units built over this limit would take away a population point from the city simulating that the pool of recruits has been used up building and maintaining (Even in peace time troops retire) units that have already been built. The limit would increase the more cities you built so potentially you could have large armies but if you were involved in a huge war then populations may suffer as you exceed the unit limit and population points are used.

To balance this loss of population from building extremely large armies it would be possible to return units to a city by disbanding them in a city and on top of the shields being returned there would be a 50% chance that a population point was added back to simulate that some troops might go straight back into the recruitment pool and that troops returning home doesn't guarentee population growth.