What if units couldn't heal 100% ?

Well, lets be honest, I haven't thought this idea through, but I wanted it out before I forget about it (happens a lot, more than I would admit), and Gen Discussions have a lot of great civ minds.

But... what if an injured unit couldn't heal 100% so only newly built units were 100%.

Reason I was thinking about it, was I was doing a campaign, and it always goes like this : I attack, I take city, I heal units in city, I attack etc, etc, etc.
Since my units (relatively fast) is up at 100% strength, there seem little incentive not to continue the "winning streak", but if my units became worse, the campaign wouldn't become a "blitz-war" as many of my wars are. (The AI however is not very good at blitz-wars, so in the end it would strengthen them and weaken the human player).

Is it realistic? Well, the "healing" as well as many other aspects of the vanilla game isn't really realistic. This should be aimed at gameplay and better AI.

The % could be :
1) Max heal up to 50% of total strength
2) Max heal up to 75% of total strength
3) Max heal up to 90% of total strength

There are many alternatives or additional rule-suggestions such as
a) units cannot "heal" OR cannot "heal 100%" in newly captured cities (while in disorder)

b) units cannot "heal" OR cannot "heal 100%" in cities without own culture
b2) and a unit healing will subtract culture (perhaps 1 / 1 so if a 100 unit is 50% damaged it costs 50 for it to heal)

c) a severely damaged unit heals faster than a slight damaged, meaning instead of a 10% and a 80% health unit heals 10% per round, then a 10% health unit would heal 20% and a 80% health unit would heal 5% (perhaps based on a 1/x principle formula)

d) units would heal relative to their last max strength. I.E. a unit that was damaged and healed up to 90%, next time it was damaged, it could only heal up until 80% etc.

As I understand "healing" is the reinforcements that "go" to the unit so if in culture terms while the city is in disorder they could not "heal" units stationed in it - this I think would be realistic and besides how can You take reinforcements all the while city is undergoing a revolution or take reinforcements from other conquered countries (although history shows this was the case with Romans) On the other hand You've got all of those railroads/roads so other cities could send reinforcements to You I think.

I was thinking the same thing lately. In part due to healing, a civ with a slight tech advantage can conduct war with very few losses, which is often enough to seal a game. My idea was to let units heal only, say, 20 out of 100 HP. E.g. when a unit is down to 22 HP, it doesn't heal beyond 42. Units can be healed further by disbanding a unit in the same plot.
A fixed %-cap sounds OK too. I'd be interested to try any mod of this kind. I'd like to write a mod too, but -- "too much on my hands right now".

Vincentz, from a certain stand point I could understand what you are suggesting. Under such a game play model one could imagine that using the "drafting" technique would not produce new stand alone units, but drafting would be used to restore injured units to full strength with new recruits. Sending damaged units back to friendly / neutral territory, drafting from established cities would let pre-existing units become combat ready with veteran soldiers supporting the new fresh troops.

Looking at the code, I was thinking about the GlobalDefines defines :

and thinking 2 simple changes could do a lot of wonders :

First, units can't heal unless CurrentHitPoints / TotalHitPoints *100 < Heal_Rate *5
Second, a city in disorder is counted as enemy_heal_rate.

So a unit in enemy territory (or a city in disorder) can only heal up to 25% of total strength.
In Neutral it would be 50%, in Friendly 75% and in own city 100%.
This would be improved with Medic promotions.

Though AI would prolly need specifics on this (proper retreating, which they need anyway, because vanilla sucks at it).

It would definitely delay a Blitzwar having to send damaged friendlies back to own land to revitalize.

There's revolutions that half the health of all the units in a city that has been conquered and not fully influenced yet. Just as there are factors that could heal units there are also factors that don't allow units to heal. I'm not really sure what you're asking?

reddishrecue said:

There's revolutions that half the health of all the units in a city that has been conquered and not fully influenced yet. Just as there are factors that could heal units there are also factors that don't allow units to heal. I'm not really sure what you're asking?

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I didn't know that (bolded), can you give an example, as it would make it easier for me to code the healing stop.

The thing I want is basically to slow down "blitz'ing" where a human player can steam roll an AI, because its easy to get fresh 100% health units to the frontline (even if there is no techlead, it is still easy for human player to outwit AI in combat).

With the new rule, if the player either goes with "damaged" units (since units have limits on how much they can restore) the chance of succes is smaller,
OR sends units back home for 100% healing, then AI will have time to reorganize.

vincentz said:

I didn't know that (bolded), can you give an example, as it would make it easier for me to code the healing stop.

The thing I want is basically to slow down "blitz'ing" where a human player can steam roll an AI, because its easy to get fresh 100% health units to the frontline (even if there is no techlead, it is still easy for human player to outwit AI in combat).

With the new rule, if the player either goes with "damaged" units (since units have limits on how much they can restore) the chance of succes is smaller,
OR sends units back home for 100% healing, then AI will have time to reorganize.

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Units don't always get to heal quickly. For example, units that have survived defenses in hostile borders, usually take up to 18 turns to heal. 18 turns is a really long time to heal particularly if you can have your units with 1-2 turns with a double medic.

Not sure I understand why this is an issue. Most times I'm fighting with units under 100% anyway. After blimps and air power the chances of fully healed units near the front is remote. This would only serve to bog down players and make games last longer. Healing could mean anything (reinforcements, ammunition, r&r, training, medical care improvement) so I don't see why a unit could theoretically not be fully healed.

covok48 said:

Not sure I understand why this is an issue. Most times I'm fighting with units under 100% anyway. After blimps and air power the chances of fully healed units near the front is remote. This would only serve to bog down players and make games last longer. Healing could mean anything (reinforcements, ammunition, r&r, training, medical care improvement) so I don't see why a unit could theoretically not be fully healed.

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I guess this. Though I don't see it as a bad thing. My guess (without having tested it properly yet) is it will improve AI by bogging Human Players while still maintaining same rules for AI and Players (which is something I enjoy rather than penalizing Players to boost AI, or worse, boosting AI to penalize Players)

covok48 said:

Not sure I understand why this is an issue. Most times I'm fighting with units under 100% anyway. After blimps and air power the chances of fully healed units near the front is remote. This would only serve to bog down players and make games last longer. Healing could mean anything (reinforcements, ammunition, r&r, training, medical care improvement) so I don't see why a unit could theoretically not be fully healed.

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That's about defending units, he's talking about offensive units.

You could change healing (reinforcement&resupply) to be based on Culture percentage of the tile the unit ends its turn in rather than the current Enemy-Neutral-Friendly-City heal rates.
That would suit many of your goals

The % could be :
1) Max heal up to 50% of total strength
2) Max heal up to 75% of total strength
3) Max heal up to 90% of total strength

If this was instead determined by the Culture of the tile You would only be able to reinforce to the Percentage of Your culture in that tile (I exclude allied healing at this point as being too complex to Mod AI easily-for a first attempt)

There are many alternatives or additional rule-suggestions such as
a) units cannot "heal" OR cannot "heal 100%" in newly captured cities (while in disorder)

Newly captured cities will very likely have almost Zero of your culture giving you little healing potential.
However cities that you have been Culturally pushing or cities you recapture will already have some percentage of your culture from influence, fifth columnists, quislings and others willing to support your occupation, Kinda realistic.
Great Artist culture bomb will be very popular representing propaganda, bribes, gifts and other cultural support to sway a new conquest

b) units cannot "heal" OR cannot "heal 100%" in cities without own culture
b2) and a unit healing will subtract culture (perhaps 1 / 1 so if a 100 unit is 50% damaged it costs 50 for it to heal)

B) covered under 1-3
b2) Subtracting culture representing recruitment,resupply and actual medical return to combat duty of soldiers from your units is a cool idea. I think it might be quite complex to mod and I imagine the AI will find it as hard to use as the current paradigm.
As you currently pay unit upkeep for operations in enemy borders so you would be sort of paying twice

c) a severely damaged unit heals faster than a slight damaged, meaning instead of a 10% and a 80% health unit heals 10% per round, then a 10% health unit would heal 20% and a 80% health unit would heal 5% (perhaps based on a 1/x principle formula)

No a severely damaged unit like a Severely damaged individual heals slower than a lightly injured one.
A soldier with a small shrapnel wound will be up and back up to 95% combat readiness in a few days whereas a severely injured man with internal injuries will require months of care to return to the same readiness or require complete replacement.
A battalion with a few soldiers hours de combat and a few Horses/chariots/jeeps/tanks lost will find it easier to scrounge or receive replenishment than a hammered battalion missing large chunks of its table of Organization (Officers/NCO's/Veterans) and with Equipment and support infrastructure torn to shreds.
In real life Severely damaged units are often disbanded rather than being brought back up to strength unless other factors argue against disbandment.

d) units would heal relative to their last max strength. I.E. a unit that was damaged and healed up to 90%, next time it was damaged, it could only heal up until 80% etc.

While on offensive operations which is what you envisage and your example illustrates as you move further from your culturally strong areas you will be less and less able to heal your units back up to 100% without withdrawing from the front-lines anyway. So using culture rather than the present system will give you the more realistic effect of invasions loosing strength as they progress if they do not receive fresh new built units to continue your invasion at the same strength.

I imagine the AI will gain small advantages in healing times on defense as one of its key weaknesses is not withdrawing injured units to better locations for Healing (especially allied Land and cities) instead of standing around in effective no mans land their units would be standing inside their culturally strong lands more often healing faster to potentially higher levels.

Naval forces would have to be assessed for game balance as I am less confident in my conclusions at sea.
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Actually what is my error most of the time is getting my less experienced units go first on the front line - and often they survive and get a lot of experience and my experienced units just die at first combat .... which is kinda sad ... overthinking things I think.... still as covok48 pointed out after air units and bombers You can hardly get 100% healed units (collateral damage)

reddishrecue said:

That's about defending units, he's talking about offensive units.

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Precisely. How would you like having to take huge losses of under strength units to city that has strong defenses? This would force you to build massive stacks in case which stretches the game out longer.

Or what if your attack force got wiped out by a counterattack even though your forces were equal?

Then you'd have to build and rush in more units...during wartime. War weariness?

Or say you make peace and have to rebuild everything.

Every scenario stretches out the game longer with a possibility of rage quit. Sounds unfun.

Why culture? I've always thought there should be some kind of system where hammers are diverted to reinforcement of damaged units.

Seems like limiting healing (unit is permanently weaker after fights, especially tough fights) would kind of cancel out promotions (unit is permanently stronger after fights, especially tough fights).

I like the promotion system - it's one of the things about the game that's definitely interesting and fun. Actually I'd like promotions to be a bit stronger, especially higher ones which kick in during the "arduously grinding it out long after the outcome is seriously in doubt" stage

Kid R said:

Seems like limiting healing (unit is permanently weaker after fights, especially tough fights) would kind of cancel out promotions (unit is permanently stronger after fights, especially tough fights).

I like the promotion system - it's one of the things about the game that's definitely interesting and fun. Actually I'd like promotions to be a bit stronger, especially higher ones which kick in during the "arduously grinding it out long after the outcome is seriously in doubt" stage

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I love the way You say "tough fights" ^^ It's not trolling. Really I thought I have not paid much attention to individual fighting - "The glory of a general is a soldier's blood"

I made a system where units can only heal up to HEAL_RATE * 5 % with cities in disorder acting like Enemy_Heal_Rate.

Promotions override this, so promoting a unit in enemy territory will make it heal from promotion like normal (which makes promotions very powerful.)
Medic promotions also increase the Max% a unit can heal.

If anyone is interested in trying it out, I can make a minimod with only these changes?

vincentz said:

If anyone is interested in trying it out, I can make a minimod with only these changes?

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The source code would suffice for me. Then I can merge with AI Auto Play to give it a quick try. I wouldn't want to play a game from the beginning right now.

@covok48: I find that games are too often already decided in the Renaissance era, i.e. either my civ or an AI is far ahead. Slowing down conquests could make the game less volatile. Of course, once someone has a strong lead, it's only delaying the inevitable.

f1rpo said:

The source code would suffice for me. Then I can merge with AI Auto Play to give it quick try. I wouldn't want to play a game from the beginning right now.

@covok48: I find that games are too often already decided in the Renaissance era, i.e. either my civ or an AI is far ahead. Slowing down conquests could make the game less volatile. Of course, once someone has a strong lead, it's only delaying the inevitable.

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Fair point. But the building of extra units and frustration of losing more units would leave players in the same position as before. I don't see how slogging through an endless campaign is any better. Especially when you lose a highly promoted unit because they couldn't heal all the way. At least if the game is too easy you can ramp up the difficulty.