This was my point although I didn't put it so well as you. Cancelling out an existing mechanic (XP, promotions) which is fun and adds strategy in favour of an attempt at realism would be one for the realism fanatics, and that's even if it made any realistic sense.
And IMO it doesn't. Remember a unit is not one guy, it's a whole army. If it was one guy then sure he could lose an arm or whatever and be permanently weakened. But a weakened unit's mainly just lost some of its numbers...the game action of "healing" doesn't represent bandaging one guy's arm, it means replenishing numbers in the army till it's back to full numbers again. And after that it's stronger because the survivors learned from all the stabbing and bleeding
. Perhaps there is some small element of healing injured survivors but in general any non-trivially injured soldiers get retired from combat.
Good comments. I agree with you about unit healing soldiers who are injured usually get rotated home, and the unit gets restocked with new recruits. Im not sure how that should affect promotions if the unit is mostly new personnel, why would they be considered to have the same promos as the original personnel? Arguable, I guess.
I had thought that units like ships and planes might be permanently impaired after suffering serious damage, but havent found many real-world examples more the opposite
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Franklin_(CV-13)#Post-war
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Savannah_%28CL-42%29#Later_wartime_activities
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Warspite_(03)#Battle_of_Jutland_.281916.29 the exception (permanent unresolved steering problems after battle damage)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Newport_News_(CA-148)#1963.E2.80.931974 ship lost use of one turret following a turret explosion, but it appears more that there was no interest in fixing it, as opposed to it being impossible to fix.
So
no permanent damage to units, please. I dont see much real-world basis for this, although I suppose I may be cherry-picking a bit.
The existing "healing" rules (in a city, in friendly land etc.) reflect the practicalities of recruiting new soldiers and are IMO fairly realistic, so the only sensible poll suggestions are the ones allowing full healing but modifying it in some way. A city in disorder is arguably more fertile recruiting ground for the military than a peaceful one so I'm not sure that option makes sense - probably the reverse. I voted for "no heal without culture", and would extend that to say that healing proportional to the culture on a tile might be even more interesting.
I guess we differ here Im not sure why units would heal automatically in newly conquered cities. The city is in disorder, and presumably any soldiers there would be involved in suppressing looting, watching for insurgencies, and the like. And I dont see why there would be facilities to repair tanks, ships, and planes in a newly conquered city any facilities to do so would be designed for the enemys equipment, and might be damaged or looted. Thus the need to (re)build Barracks, Drydocks, and Airports. Having to send your damaged units back to your home cities for repair is realistic IMO, especially when it comes to ships.
I also dont see why it would be easier to recruit troops in a city that was an enemy city before it was captured
So I guess I see it like this:
- Foot soldiers heal with Medic, faster heal with Barracks
- Mounted soldiers heal with Medic, faster heal with Stable
- Motorized units + siege units heal with Barracks
- Air units and Helicopters heal with Airport
- Steel Naval units heal with Drydock
...So yes this would make sense, but I'm skeptical about how it could usefully work in play if they only affected units in the city. Think about how you (a) have to build the building once a city's out of revolt, then (b) move all your units through the hospital city after they were injured and before they could fight on, it would be a huge change to the logistical process of conducting a war. And I don't mean that in no nice way! Wars need to be wageable within the time frame of turns during which an enemy might reasonably be expected not to tech the next tier of defenders. And marching groups of survivors round the map like kids in a playground looking for more to make up a full football team just doesn't work on any level!
My guess is that the biggest issue, in terms of micromanaging, would be Siege units having to heal those in a Barracks city would greatly slow an attacker.