What if units couldn't heal 100% ?

Well to change things about the game i would first allow units to stay in enemy territory when a war is declared. I never liked how they were magically transported to the border in 1 turn for no reason. This was one thing civ3 did right and was made wrong in civ4 from my point of view

On the topic, I like the suggestion of slower/no heal in a city that is in a state of revolt. In fact, units inside such a city could even take damage each turn as they fight the resistance, instead of damage at the beginning of the revolt. So this damage would be applied too in recently conquered cities, makes sense to me.

While the teleportation isn't very realistic, it does serve an important gameplay purpose: it prevents a player from marching stacks up to important cities and then declaring war and crippling the other side on turn 1 of the war. Yes, you can do the same thing with nukes, but they're nukes.

Flipantropo said:

Well to change things about the game i would first allow units to stay in enemy territory when a war is declared. I never liked how they were magically transported to the border in 1 turn for no reason. This was one thing civ3 did right and was made wrong in civ4 from my point of view

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This really was one of the most stupid features in Civ3 in my opinion. I don't remember much of the game, but I remember how ridiculous it was that you could position all your units next to their cities and take them out immediately on t1 of the war. I am very happy that they changed this in Civ4.

Completely agree.

elitetroops said:

This really was one of the most stupid features in Civ3 in my opinion. I don't remember much of the game, but I remember how ridiculous it was that you could position all your units next to their cities and take them out immediately on t1 of the war. I am very happy that they changed this in Civ4.

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Well Id call that an AI flaw (either they should be able to match the forces near their cities should their "ally" decide to backstab them, or not agree to sign the right of passage at all in the first place).

But not the feature. The exploit you are concerned with is even historically accurate, there have been famous examples, Napoleons conquest of Spain begun with a right of passage, or so said my history textbook (he tricked some idiot spanish minister into letting a french army pass through the Pyrinees saying they were going to invade Portugal or whatever, which wasnt the whole truth, obviously).
The point is, Napoleon exploited this feature IRL to make his invasion so much easier, garrisoning important cities and strategic locations with his troops before the war even started.

Haven't played with this in Civ 3, but it sounds a bit broken. Means you could strategically place armies right outside, theoretically, every city of your target, declare, and capture ALL cities in turn 0 of the war. Bonkers.

But, if you did it once then the rest of the AIs wouldn't sign Right of Passage with you ever again.

elitetroops said:

This really was one of the most stupid features in Civ3 in my opinion. I don't remember much of the game, but I remember how ridiculous it was that you could position all your units next to their cities and take them out immediately on t1 of the war. I am very happy that they changed this in Civ4.

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Not to get too far off topic, but it makes no sense, IMO, to allow military units of one civ to pass through another civ’s (land) territory unless the two civs are at war with a third civ, or have a PA/Defensive Pact. And as you say, no way should a potentially hostile civ be allowed to camp a stack outside an opponent’s key city and then take the city on the first turn of war.

I like the idea of modifying the way units heal, but I’m not sure that preventing damaged units – even badly damaged units – from healing to 100% is a good way to do it. All that would do is cancel the effect of gaining experience through combat, and effectively getting rid of “super units” wouldn’t be fun. What's the point of getting a CR3 Swordsman with an effective strength of 4? Moreover, a lot of the game’s mechanics – culture, movement, fortification, terrain, etc – favour the defense already. Nerfing attackers even more by making them permanently weaker after combat might be a step too far.

Making it impossible for units to heal in a disordered city makes sense. Requiring a Drydock to heal steel ships, or an Airport to heal planes, makes sense. Maybe a Stable should be required to heal mounted troops and a Barracks to heal (repair) other non-foot soldiers (siege units, tanks, helicopters, mobile SAM, Mech Infantry)? Maybe medic units should only be able to heal human-based units (i.e. foot soldiers, as opposed to animal-based units like Knights, or machine-based units like Galleons, Destroyers, Cannon, Tanks, and Bombers)?

Making it harder for units to heal in traditional ways (Medic, or sitting in a domestic or friendly city) could then be offset by having units heal faster with the new methods (e.g. heal 50% of health per turn with the appropriate improvement – Drydock, Barracks, Stable, Airport).

6K Man said:

All that would do is cancel the effect of gaining experience through combat, and effectively getting rid of “super units” wouldn’t be fun.

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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.

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.

6K Man said:

Making it harder for units to heal in traditional ways (Medic, or sitting in a domestic or friendly city) could then be offset by having units heal faster with the new methods (e.g. heal 50% of health per turn with the appropriate improvement – Drydock, Barracks, Stable, Airport).

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...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!

Plus captured cities rarely stay near the front line for long, so building these buildings in freshly-captured cities for healing properties on units stationed in them would rarely pay off. It could work though if the healing effect "radiated" around with decreasing power. So e.g. a unit would "heal" (i.e. replenish its numbers) more quickly the nearer it was to a city with a recruiting office. And e.g. even more effectively if multiple recruiting offices were within range. Perhaps there could be army, navy, airforce recruiting offices as separate buildings. Perhaps there could be multiple tiers of recruiting office unlocked at different techs. Something like that could add strategy to planning out the direction and timing of of thrusts in a war campaign. Perhaps spies or great spies could build a recruiting office ahead of time in key enemy cities!

All in all I don't think the OP is a good idea but I can see potential in adding some more strategy to the mechanics of healing. So long as it isn't just extra micromanagement, and it doesn't make wars impossible to conduct in normal-speed game time frame.

OK brainstorm over for today

There ought to be some way to heal units 100%; I don't think that's disputed. In vincentz' last proposal, you'd have to move units to a friendly city that isn't in disorder to heal them. It might be wiser, at times, to keep the pressure up by attacking with damaged units, and I can see how that could be unpleasant, or how shuffling units back and forth could be tedious. How about disbanding a unit to heal units in the same plot? I'm still fond of that idea.

Kid R said:

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.

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If an aggressor conquers two cities and holds onto them, that can be a substantial gain on a standard-size map. The AI has a "limited war" mode with modest goals and modest preparation. This kind of warfare is more fun to me, and I'd like to incentivize it more. It's conceivable that players would build even larger stacks (as covok48 suggested) if healing were slowed down; to have units work in shifts. It's hard to say w/o having tested it.

Another way I'm looking at the healing rules: If I have a stack of 10 Knights and come across an enemy stack of 10 Macemen, the attacks odds are 70%, meaning that, on average, I'm going to lose 3 Knights. If we're on neutral ground, my 3 healthiest survivors will have an easy time hunting down the enemy survivors. I'll have gained 30 XP, which pretty much makes up for the lost Knights. Managing to attack Macemen with Knights is certainly a tactical accomplisment that should be rewarded, and a Knight costs more than a Mace (90 vs. 70), but "I lose nothing, they lose everything" is too drastic. Evening out the combat odds isn't really an option -- at 60% odds I may well take higher losses than the enemy.

Kid R said:

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.

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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. I’m 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 haven’t 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 don’t 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.

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I guess we differ here – I’m 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 don’t 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 enemy’s 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 don’t 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!

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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.

Haha re. HMS Warspite - that would be awesome if after a battle some of your units lost "steering control" and spent a few turns randomly charging around the map ramming into things

But yes I totally forgot about "healing" also including a factor of replacing/repairing equipment. So there's logic in boosting it with docks for repairing ships, stables for replacing horses etc. Not so sure about making it so they can't heal at all outside of cities with those buildings though. I mean you can e.g. build ships without docks, just slightly slower

Proximity to the building would arguably be just as useful for replacements. E.g. I have a fleet of 10 ships (one "unit") which has a battle and is reduced to 5 ships (unit with 50% strength). Why should it be beneficial for those 5 remaining ships to sail to a dock to enable 5 new ships to be built and sent out? In fact this is the abstraction already there in the game by having docks accelerate the production of new ships.

The city-in-revolt thing I was just thinking that under those conditions there might be a lot of disaffected homeless hungry people wandering around and maybe attracted by the thought of joining the army ... *any* army ... even the "enemy". Lots of people aren't that patriotic

Not exactly related to healing but I wish the damage suffered was somewhat more proportional to the odds of the fight. A unit winning at 90% odds can survive without any loss of health but also go down to 10-20% of former health. This makes the blitz promo fairly useless because with a little bad luck even cavalry will be to weak for a possible second attack because it was reduced to half health after a >90% fight