Needs me an idea re: hinder unit building

Its come to my attention that historically civilizations were hard pressed to muster military forces larger than 3% of their population. Rome became an empire predominantly because it could muster a standing army of 80,000 out of a surplus and nobody else could match that. It wasn't until well after the implementation of industrialization that a miiltary force approaching 10% was feasible. Subsequently, despite exponential advancement of technology the size of military forces shrunk to significantly less than even a mere 3%; the creation of units and the absolutely necessary training requirements to use the tools of war made massive armies prohibitively expensive; besides which the increasing lethality of the ever more modern technology of war made it utterly moot. So: how do I implement a natural limitation of military forces proportional to population?

I toyed with the notion of population point reduction for military unit creation. But how many people is one population point? It has to be something large, e.g., 100,000. And having 500,000 spear brandishing warriors just seemed absurd to me.

So I entertained the idea of setting food requirements for a population point to be 97, and set the food production value for normal terrain to be 98, 99 (good), and 100 (bonus) - with appropriate irrigation benefit , and military units consume 1 food.

That'll work for the ancient / medieval periods, but I'm at a loss of how to get increased units with technological advancements in the industrial age. Curtailment of military units in the modern age is obvious: just make them outrageously expensive.

Furthermore, the number of workers devoted to agriculture is another vexing issue. There's documented evidence of about 2500 laborers involved in agriculture in a population of about 6000 in a late neolithic culture.

I want farm laborers supporting both themselves, non-farm laborers, e.g., road builders, and specialists, e.g., Elvis-clowns, and to minimize the ability to build a massive military force.

Any ideas?

You could increase the upkeep cost of military units in each government type. If the civ can't afford them they are disbanded

Your input is appreciated. However, how does that result in population proportionality of ~3% that trebles with industrialization?

What you propose is a purely financial mechanism which if extended to 1600 era would intimate $16,000,000,000 per unit per turn based on X $'s per Gold unit commerce income. And yet in 4000BC no civ has $16,000,000,000,000 to spare, unless 50 GP are that. For all practical purposes they prolly should be.

I believe that in the beginning if you could afford a single 'unit' that does nothing else but sits on their collective haunches, chip flint into spear tips and run screaming at the other guys who had been doing the very same thing, you'd be doing well?

The question boils down to how many guys could one afford to NOT be in the field WORKING? And if they're merely building roads, or buildings, then they're not in the fields - WORKING - are they?

The flip side to this issue is having 50 pop points WORKING the fields, and a few pop points merely lolly gaggin' about with the 'slow / stop' signs on the road-buildin' crews, and a couple other guys collectin' the tax / tariff, but a single unit of screaming spear-tips wielding radicals could upset that apple-cart, eh?

Given the existing schema of CivIII, this has to be related to food somehow.

About the only way that I can think of to get the game to do what you want is set all of the pre-Industrial Age units to be auto-produced at set intervals, say 10 turns, from various buildings. Warriors from Barracks, Horseman/Knights from Stables (you would have to add a Stable building for this), Galleys from Harbors, and later units from additional buildings, although Coastal Fortress could be used to produce either the Caravel or the Galleon.

As for food, if you boost the effect of irrigation to two or three additional food per tile, increase the terrain yield from coast, sea, and ocean tiles, and the resource yield of some of the bonus resources, along with increasing the population limits on towns and cities to say 12 and 24, you will get roughly the correct proportions for the Ancient and Medieval periods, if you are autoproducing units.

Then for modern units, just make them cost a lot of shields and population. If you look at my Naval Mod located here:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=322522

that should give you some idea as to the terrain and resource modifications that I use. If you go to City Level 3, you can get very large populations in coastal cities and favorable inland locations.

Woah. Interesting idear; it is logically congruent with the idear already presented a while back concerning the production of Damascus Steel, i.e., a city improvement makes 'units' of such that are then upgraded to actual military units utilizing such. Which in itself is a phenomenal idear in that Damascus Steel - and any other type of resource I can dream up, e.g., charcoal / coke, et ali - 'units' are commerce generating 'units'.

You broach the autoproduction mechanism - something that I was extremely concerned about with respect to loss of a crucial ingredient to make a 'unit' type Damascus Steel resource, but was assured that if the crucial ingredient(s) were missing autoproduction would halt and resume once the missing prerequisites are present again.

I'm excited by your idea; labor-shirking flint-nappers can be a resource-feed-into' requirement to make 'warrior' units. Excessive output of the lolly-gaggin' flint-nappers can be a 'commodity' that generates commerce.