Unit Ratios!

and also military units should be very expensive to maintain ensuring mini 'whipping boy' nations don't develope armies , only communistic fascist and religiously zealot based governments would be able to produce conscript standard units , easi;y wiped out by more advanced civs weapons a la saddams so called elite republican guard getting toased by depleted uranium missles before the allies superior tanks mopped up the renmants


Thanks, but the way this mod is going to work is already basically mapped out. I don't want to see you spend too much time coming up with that kind of gameplay stuff at this point, because it's likely too late for your ideas to be used. You can see how it works when it is released, and then we can all discuss possible changes and improvements.
 
I agree, not expensive to build, BUT very expensive to maintain more so than weaker 'conscript/miltia/police' units that could be quickly drummed up by a nation intent on war

Theory behind that being if for example if gordon brown wanted to quadruple his army it should effectively cripple the nation finacially unless he inteded on using it to plunder other nations till he was eventually overstretched and vulnerable to counter offensives
 
I agree, not expensive to build, BUT very expensive to maintain more so than weaker 'conscript/miltia/police' units that could be quickly drummed up by a nation intent on war

Theory behind that being if for example if gordon brown wanted to quadruple his army it should effectively cripple the nation finacially unless he inteded on using it to plunder other nations till he was eventually overstretched and vulnerable to counter offensives

That I agree :)

But as DVS said, may be we can discuss the game balance after we've got a working scenario.
 
Another thought on this:
Maybe the idea of expensive units and comparatively low number of starting units isn't so bad after all for a present day mod. After all these day's nations don't use their units so much as cannon fodder as it was the case still in the world wars (and in Vietnam maybe...but they also used conscripts). The trend is toward small but highly expensive and well trained units for battle. (But you can't deny that you need the vast amount of manpower to keep the captured cities. But...when was the last time in history a state attacked another and kept a considerable amount of land area for more than just a couple of years? The only example I can think of is the Six-Day War in 1967.)
If one of these units is completely destroyed it is a serious loss for that state's military.
Maybe we should force the player and the AI to take care of their units.
Longer building times might be realistic since it simply takes time to drill those modern units. It's not so much a matter of resources but of time. It wouldn't be realistic if a big city like New York could pop out a highly advanced and trained infantry unit every month.

So, to sum it up:
Characteristics of modern warfare:
- less, well trained and highly expensive units
- greater amount of unit loss is extremely endangering public war support at home
- impossibility to keep enemy territory after war without serious penalties

--> low number of starting units
--> extended building times for advanced units
 
Another thought on this:
Maybe the idea of expensive units and comparatively low number of starting units isn't so bad after all for a present day mod. After all these day's nations don't use their units so much as cannon fodder as it was the case still in the world wars (and in Vietnam maybe...but they also used conscripts). The trend is toward small but highly expensive and well trained units for battle. (But you can't deny that you need the vast amount of manpower to keep the captured cities. But...when was the last time in history a state attacked another and kept a considerable amount of land area for more than just a couple of years? The only example I can think of is the Six-Day War in 1967.)
If one of these units is completely destroyed it is a serious loss for that state's military.
Maybe we should force the player and the AI to take care of their units.
Longer building times might be realistic since it simply takes time to drill those modern units. It's not so much a matter of resources but of time. It wouldn't be realistic if a big city like New York could pop out a highly advanced and trained infantry unit every month.

So, to sum it up:
Characteristics of modern warfare:
- less, well trained and highly expensive units
- greater amount of unit loss is extremely endangering public war support at home
- impossibility to keep enemy territory after war without serious penalties

--> low number of starting units
--> extended building times for advanced units

spot on! less is more

when playing the max riga mod i used police units to guard citys rather than military units which i situated in foreign countrys which i had open borders and defence pacts with ensuring the random DOW by russia and their nuclear strikes didn't wipe me out completely

i know DVS'll go 'too late' but i built the police as they were quick and easy to build for defending citys and freed my army up for invading , maybe units like riot police for the west , religious police or terrorist/freedom fighters for muslim countries and some patheticly weak national service militia for more oppressive governments like south america and russia , china etc
 
kuff-dam, my point is, we are well beyond the point of needing people who are not helping on the mod telling us what to do. If you want to do some work, great, you can influence the mod that way. If not, your posts here are going to waste. The people who are actually making this thing generally have a good idea of what they're doing, so unless you see a specific question (like the one sheep made this thread for), you are not really helping by telling us how you want to see the mod work.

Your police idea for example, was discussed many months ago. That unit will be used in version 2.0 when we focus more on crime, not as city defense.

I don't mind you posting whatever you feel like posting, I just don't want you thinking that what you are suggesting has much chance of making it into our mod.

Edit: Here is a place we need new ideas; U.N. missions.

And FYI, if I say it's too late for something, it's probably because I have already finished that area. ;-)
 
I don't disagree either way with you Kuff-Dam.

All I was saying...in terms of realism: If we are going to have a small amount of units - then we need to increase the build times to make it more realistic (ala what Ianinsane said about NYC being able to rattle off 10 Infantry units in 1 year). Not exactly very realistic.

To keep the game playable (with smaller amounts of units...just make everything more expensive to build). Seems simple enough...
 
@Mattygerst; I get exactly what you are saying, and we wouldn't have it any other way. :)

We will try to make it as hard (impossible) for a small country to catch up as it is in reality. Same with unit maintenance costs, etc. Everything will kept relative to everything else, it's just a matter of deciding how many units we want on our map, and then doing math from there. The more real world soldiers/equipment an in game unit represent, the longer it will take to build. 1 to 1.
 
As sheep21 and I have been discussing over IM in regards to unit ratios; basically we will have to start by figuring out how many units we have to give our civ that has the smallest military, and then multiply from there.

It would be nice to have a starting limit in mind. Genghis_Kai, do you know offhand how many units 1940 starts with?
 
As sheep21 and I have been discussing over IM in regards to unit ratios; basically we will have to start by figuring out how many units we have to give our civ that has the smallest military, and then multiply from there.

It would be nice to have a starting limit in mind. Genghis_Kai, do you know offhand how many units 1940 starts with?

Just did a count - 1553 units. That includes all types of units, such as workers.
 
bugger lol
 
Genghis_Kai said:
Just did a count - 1553 units. That includes all types of units, such as workers.

Thanks bro.

bugger lol

You were hoping for more I assume?

Just for reference, I've played that scenario through for almost a decade of total war; everyone is building units through the roof; and it is still running fast.

I will do a count in my latest save and see how many there are now.
 
was hoping for more yes. 1500 units shared between 50+ civs. Bugger lol
 
Don't worry, that is not our limit. ;-)
 
sheep my friend, you may be a little more encouraged by the number of units in the game of 1940 I have been playing (for well, several months)...

7563.

It runs fine on my (average) computer, only a couple minutes between turns max, this is with almost the entire world at war. It takes a while to load up, but we all expected that would be the case.

I'm thinking that this could be a possible starting point for our approximate total.

Of course, keep in mind this game only has 34 civs, several of which are gone. Also, our mod has a lot more additions to it than the standard GEM... we have yet to see how this affects game performance.
 
Chaps we need this one sorted out, I would be more than happy to enter all the data on units onto the excel table but cant till we agree the ratios.

I would say this, the ratio of 10 RL Destroyers to one Civ destroyer wont work (I saw it on the spreadsheet). This will leave RN with 1 Destroyer & the EU with 2 at most and most countries that do have blue water capability not having it reflected ingame.

This ratio if used for Frigates aswell will leave country like canada with one frigate ingame to cover both the Pacific & Atlantic!
 
For now buddy, you can enter the raw data (like Genghis suggested Ianinsane do for ideologies). Then, you can just plug in different ratios and see how many units they would give us. ;-)

As you and I discussed, at some point we need the unit data sorted by country.
 
First, I recognbize this thread is somewhat old, but I couldn't help but to contribute since I had worked on making a modern day scenario for myself quite some time ago.

Of course it wasn't a mod (just a map scenario) and not nearly to the degree or with the sophistication as what is currently being planned. I mostly just did a lot of research using almanac stats and borrowing a few ideas from other games such as superpower and supreme ruler 2010 .

I had done all the ratios and build times for all the army units. In fact what stopped me from completing the scenario was mostly culture (getting the borders right) and realistic simulation of cities' population.

Anyway if anything is needed in the research area (manipulation of numbers are my thing, but not programming) I'd be willing to lend any assistance to whomever is spearheading populating the map with cities,resources,armies,etc and attempting to simulate real life gnp,trade,etc. I've got a lot of info tucked away somewhere on my pc.

In any case I am looking forward to see how this project comes out.
 
See download link at end of message:

I've gone thru each of the countries listed in that attachment and gone through their militaries, etc (The naval fleets may be off a bit, but I only threw that together here recently and it has yet to be done in depth).

Sheet #1 of excel spreadsheet: Countries w/ land units and air units. The numbers shown are the amounts that will be displayed on the map in the game. It was reduced to a 20:1 ratio. This brought the amount of land/air units to a total of about 8,600 (without being completely 100% done). Once Failed States are added and soldiers overall for each country, it will probably be about 12,000 units for land/air.

After researching each army, I divided the tanks as they exist today: 1st generation, 2nd generation, 3rd generation with the corresponding amount of equipment for each country. For fighters, I used the 2nd thru 5th generations. (If you don't know what this means, wikipedia it). IFV information was slightly harder to put together 100% (will adhere any corrections) - and was split up into Cold War equipment and Modern equipment. SAM, artillery, and Mobile artillery are represented as well. The unit ratio of the soldiers is not broken down yet and will have to be figured out.

Sheet #2 of the spreadsheet:
With the naval fleets - we'll probably have to go with a 1:1 ratio to reflect real blue-water capabilities of the more powerful navies in the world. That will be *roughly* 1500 units.

In the end, unless we change the ratios up more - which will be hard to do because I've gone thru this for a long time - the mod will have approximately 14,000+ units when the scenario begins.

Any thoughts are welcome. I'm not exactly sure where to go with the "strength" of the units, but I simply put out some "guides" and those are labeled at the top of the spreadsheet.


Download link for Spreadsheet:
http://www.sendspace.com/file/5pgb14
 
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