Military Quirckyness...

[CivIVMonger]

Hello. Just a quick question here. I am rather dissapointed with Civ IV and what seems to be Civ V's military system. After buying Europa Universalis III, I discovered many flaws that should be noted. I will list a few of my complaints and add yours if you want to.

1.) Military units are named after the weapon they carry?
I think a centeralized "Militia" unit named after some aspect of a trait. In real history, (Which Civ has never lived up to... ) the regiments especially the early ones supplied their own weapons and didn't carry all the same type.

2.) No attrition and supply limit?
EU3 has this and it makes great sense. Also the fact that per se a lsevere winter can effect the total value of this. It makes much more sense and I think fans wouldn't be too dissapointed. If Firaxis wanted to get rid of the SoD this is a far better idea than making one army span hundreds of square miles.

3.) Manpower, manpower, and more manpower...
The extreme dissapointment that I have is the fact that you have to 'build' units with production? It costs no population and what the hell is the 'production' for? Building the weapon? I think it is really annoying how production is the staple of a strong military when in reality not a whole spanking lot of 'production' is really needed. Sure, I think it should be *part* of the equation, but I think some affect of taking population is needed. I think a manpower pool is definately needed in this respect.

[GhostWriter16]

Well, I think you're asking for a bit too much. Really, civ isn't supposed to be a military simulator.

[globalempire]

1) i get what you are saying but i like it better the way it is.

what would you have them call swordsnam. mixed unit of poor people with sticks a few swords, maybe an axe, a couple of cavalry. no siege, bows, and spearman

2) there is sort of atrition. you heal slower in enemy territory. but there is no real attrition.

3) i agree, you shouldhave to supply some food or something its not like the peopel require production

[Shurdus]

You are probably right, but I think civ needs no such things. Of course civ is not entirely realistic, but it is a highly abstracted boardgame if you will that does a nice job of grasping some very simple concepts and intertwine those in thereswting ways. The history aspect of the game is just a background thingy, mimicing reality is not a goal that civ is going for.

[Disgustipated]

I do sort of agree with #3. Perhaps a military unit should cost 1/2 a population point or something but require less shields. but other than that, I say keep it relatively simple. Supply lines are not something most players want. I have no problem with unit names either.

[Panzeh]

Originally Posted by Disgustipated

I do sort of agree with #3. Perhaps a military unit should cost 1/2 a population point or something but require less shields. but other than that, I say keep it relatively simple. Supply lines are not something most players want. I have no problem with unit names either.

Something like that would really limit early game military use, making units of the period where you don't have disposable population largely useless.

[kurtkage]

On #3 it does make sense for older armies and even large modern infantry armies (how much population does china have in it's standing army lol)

However don't forget that machinery does take production. Planes and Tanks, ships and munitions all make sense for hammers. Think of WW2 US factory production.

Now this is not to say that the modern vehicles do not Also need people to operate them of course, especially a super carrier.

Just as a note it has been done in previous versions of civ, population was spent to build settlers and workers and you could move population around between cities by building workers and then putting them into another city to disband kind of thing too. I think the compromise made was that in cIV the city no longer grows while building these instead of taking the pop.

Now as far as taking population to build a unit, I'm unsure about this in the context of the asbtractions that we think are going to be used in ciV mainly the strategic resources limiting the number of units is probably already enough of a limit. As Panzeh said it would really limit early game military, and in one of the review writeups they mention the AI building 6 warriors to go and rush a city state which wouldnt be possible if it costs even 1/2 pop that early in the game per warrior

[Disgustipated]

I don't like early rushes anyways... But I'm sure there is some historical context for early aggression.

Actually losing population is not a good thing. Perhaps a better way would be to have gold and food support for unit upkeep. Different civics would differ the amount of free units of course.

And yes good point about modern units. Production is important. Especially after the industrial age. And now I think of it, with the slavery mechanic the way it is, you can essentually use high population cities to create units. I just feel in earlier times, a higher population will enable a larger army, than the ability to make lots of stone tools.

[fortydayweekend]

I've always liked the idea of supply to limit stack size. Now that the goto algorithms work pretty well it shouldn't be too difficult to have a "line of supply" drawn from a stack to the nearest city that you'd have to protect to keep them fed. You'd have to think about terrain a bit more (march through the open land with plenty of food to pillage, or through the forest for protection) and split your huge army into pieces for the invasion, bringing them together for battles... imagine if you had to sketch your invasion out on paper first to get the timing right

In terms of population, I've always looked at the city pop as being just the city.. with the bulk of the population living in the countryside around. The army is mainly drawn from the rural population so doesn't affect city size.

All that said though, Civ is a strategy game, not a war simulator. As much as I'd like the warfare to be as realistic as possible it has to work as an epic civ-building game first. And the more features you add to make it realistic, the more the AI has to cheat to be a challenge..