Automatic (Gradual) Upgrading of Units

Ö

Öjevind Lång

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I find it rather vexing and ridiculous to have to spend a lot of time and money updating military units. I don't mean that I want to abolish this completely, but I think there should be a mechanism that over time upgrades your units. In that way, we would escape that foolishness with 19th century armies featuring catapults and knights beside cavalry, cannon and riflemen.
Some time after a new military discovery, the game should start to upgrade the units affected (for the civ that has reached that stage of discovery, of course), starting with the least valuable ones. The prioritizing of the least valuable units would give you (and the AI civs) an incentive to upgrade units despite the automatic upgrading mechanism - it may not be a good idea to wait until the game comes around to upgrading your elite units.

Öjevind Lång
 
yah its completely ridiculous to spend large amounts of money on military technology.....
 
Gamewise, it is a bore to have to spend so mch time updating units, and even so you usually have many older units that you couldn't find the money to update. That is a bit ridiculous.

Ö. L.
 
Öjevind Lång said:
Gamewise, it is a bore to have to spend so mch time updating units, and even so you usually have many older units that you couldn't find the money to update. That is a bit ridiculous.

Ö. L.
Click to expand...

u may not know this but in the last civ game upgrading was less expensive and ppl would actually pillage their resource every turn just to build the less advanced unit then upgrade it. now that is ridiculous.

its important that upgrading ur military is expensive because it is inherently a very powerful strat.
 
yavoon said:
u may not know this but in the last civ game upgrading was less expensive and ppl would actually pillage their resource every turn just to build the less advanced unit then upgrade it. now that is ridiculous.

its important that upgrading ur military is expensive because it is inherently a very powerful strat.
Click to expand...

I have played Civ 3, but I honestly don't have the faintest idea what you are talking about. "People would pillage their resource every turn just to buld the less advanced unit then upgrade it"? What one Earth does that mean?
And I maintain that it should be possible to have a gradual upgrading system of the kind I suggested. For one thing, one could make it impossible to build the more primitive unit when a more advanced one has been discovered. After all, that is already generally the case - for example, you can't build musketmen after Rifling has been discovered; you can't build knights once you are able to build cavary. True, for some reason it is possible in Civ 4 to build ordinary archers after longbowmen have been discovered, and some similar things, but that makes no sense to me and should be removed.

Ö. L.
 
Öjevind Lång said:
I have played Civ 3, but I honestly don't have the faintest idea what you are talking about. "People would pillage their resource every turn just to buld the less advanced unit then upgrade it"? What one Earth does that mean?
And I maintain that it should be possible to have a gradual upgrading system of the kind I suggested. For one thing, one could make it impossible to build the more primitive unit when a more advanced one has been discovered. After all, that is already generally the case - for example, you can't build musketmen after Rifling has been discovered; you can't build knights once you are able to build cavary. True, for some reason it is possible in Civ 4 to build ordinary archers after longbowmen have been discovered, and some similar things, but that makes no sense to me and should be removed.

Ö. L.
Click to expand...

people would pillage their resource(iron) every turn just to build the less advanced unit(horsemen) and upgrade them(to knights). and this strat was incredibly powerful.
 
yavoon said:
people would pillage their resource(iron) every turn just to build the less advanced unit(horsemen) and upgrade them(to knights). and this strat was incredibly powerful.
Click to expand...

I see. However, in Civ IV, you can't pillage your own resources, so that point is irrelevant.

Öjevind
 
Öjevind Lång said:
I see. However, in Civ IV, you can't pillage your own resources, so that point is irrelevant.

Öjevind
Click to expand...

I dont know what game ur playing but u can most certainly pillage ur own territory in civ IV.
 
well you could make it still cost gold

ie for every obsolete unit you have, X gold per turn is deducted from your treasury and put into a unit upgrade account.... when that unit upgrade account has sufficient gold, it automatically upgrades a unit.... on any turn that you have no obsolete units, the gold is dumped back into your treasury.

The cost would still be the same, but it would make upgrading necessary. (and it would mean the AI wouldn't need the tremendous breaks on upgrades to encourage them to happen)

[interesting scenario... you have a large army, and discover a new military tech, you can't pay the 'obsolesence costs' so your units begin going on strike... because you give them obsolete equipment.]
 
I don't think levying an outright fine against obsolete armies is fair, but perhaps a player could set aside a certain amount of money each turn to build up to upgrade a unit. Unfortunately, randomly selecting a unit is unfair to the player, so the player would have to decide which unit gets the upgrade, so in the end we get back to the same system we currently have: Build up your treasury, pick a unit, and hit "Upgrade" is really the only fair and logical system I can think of.

By the way, yavoon, not to sound rude, but could you please write out the word "you"? There's no time constraint on forums, and using that kind of shorthand can cause some people to prejudge you.
 
Mewtarthio said:
I don't think levying an outright fine against obsolete armies is fair, but perhaps a player could set aside a certain amount of money each turn to build up to upgrade a unit. Unfortunately, randomly selecting a unit is unfair to the player, so the player would have to decide which unit gets the upgrade, so in the end we get back to the same system we currently have: Build up your treasury, pick a unit, and hit "Upgrade" is really the only fair and logical system I can think of.

By the way, yavoon, not to sound rude, but could you please write out the word "you"? There's no time constraint on forums, and using that kind of shorthand can cause some people to prejudge you.
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they're welcome to prejudge me any way they wish. and ppl do get warned here for being spelling nazi's, just to let u know.
 
Just delete them and build new units, or throw them away in pillaging raids. Having lots of obsolete units just adds more variation and tactics.
 
Well it wouldn't be an outright fine... but it is in a sense Forcing you to upgrade... not by putting a penalty on Not upgrading, but by making the upgrade hapen automatically.

If it weren't for the experience cap, it would be a perfectly reasonable system, you could always set aside your Treasury if you wanted to upgrade a specific unit 'ahead of schedule'.
 
I would also like to add a comment about the (un)happiness bonus/penalty for military garrison. In one of my games I never cared to upgrade a warrior but chose to put him in a central city of my land to avoid the unhapiness penalty for no military presence. However, I was in the Industrial Age, so men armed with clubs don't seem to be a real military presence. Removing the hapiness bonus for obsolete units might help you pushing to upgrade your army, especially when using Heridatary Rule, which is quite often applied.

Jaca
 
on the warriors garrisoning ur metropolis stuff I think they should change the graphics of unit types to represent the era. keep the strength the same, just re-imagine the unit from a warrior to a neglected, untrained, guy w/ a bad rifle or whatever.
 
I've always thought that obsolete units should take a health hit to symbolize decreased morale for getting stuck with crappy weapons. Maybe something on the order of 25 lost hitpoints for every upgrade that a unit hasnt taken. For example, those macemen hanging around to get CR3 when infantry are available would lose 25 for not upgrading to rifles, then another 25 for not going to infantry.
 
alpha wolf 64 said:
I've always thought that obsolete units should take a health hit to symbolize decreased morale for getting stuck with crappy weapons. Maybe something on the order of 25 lost hitpoints for every upgrade that a unit hasnt taken. For example, those macemen hanging around to get CR3 when infantry are available would lose 25 for not upgrading to rifles, then another 25 for not going to infantry.
Click to expand...

I don't think the morale would be that bad. People would avoid extra military techs for fear of their entire army losing a quarter of its health.
 
Mewtarthio said:
I don't think the morale would be that bad. People would avoid extra military techs for fear of their entire army losing a quarter of its health.
Click to expand...

It might stop the beelining for rifles and cavalry while the AI is still on longbows and horsemen. Plus in reality, being given obsolete equipment has had big time morale implications. Also, I think that a archer is only 4 away from mech inf (long bow, rifle, infantry, MI).
 
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