SMAC Maintenance?

In SMAC, maintenance was paid for with production rather than with cash. In a recent LAN game with a friend, he forgot to put AI players on the map, so he ended up putting together a huge army and smacking me with it. Stupid me spent too much time trying to get some big cities before I built up my own military. The was a loosing one from the start, since even if I killed one of his units, all I did was reduce the drain on his economy. He could still churn them out like no tomorrow.

One thing I liked about SMAC was units cost production to maintain. Therefore if one has a large army, their ability to produce further military units is also reduced. I'm tempted to try implementing this into my own mod, but I would like to hear some thoughts on the subject first.

How do you think this would affect the game? For good, for bad? Should it be in conjunction with a cash cost or in place of?

what about a civics tree for diffrant military supply styles.
(always seems a little odd paying troops in gold coins before you even have Currency)

as an example the first civic in the tree could have a kind of food support so (1 food for every 3 units over free support) just as an idea to start with
2nd or 3rd level support system civics could change it to a hammer and/or gold supply style.
another system that comes to mind the culture support style so mebey (5 culture points per unit over free support)

just some ideas that might be considered.

Spitefire said:

what about a civics tree for diffrant military supply styles.
(always seems a little odd paying troops in gold coins before you even have Currency)

as an example the first civic in the tree could have a kind of food support so (1 food for every 3 units over free support) just as an idea to start with
2nd or 3rd level support system civics could change it to a hammer and/or gold supply style.
another system that comes to mind the culture support style so mebey (5 culture points per unit over free support)

just some ideas that might be considered.

Click to expand...

This should be possible to implement as a mod (by someone who isnt totally lame with XML like me), since one of the scenarios has the option to support units with food based on civics I think. Could be the China one

if you mean unification of china it has a civic for producing troops with food but not supporting them however if you mean something in BTS well i have not got that expantion so i could not guess.

The maintanance thing is the only thing I actually HATE about Smac(and Civ2 and civ1).