Cost of naval units

Just some research I did as to the cost of naval units. According to the U.S. GAO (General Accounting Office) and the Navy bureau of statistics the cost of naval units is as follows:

Nimitz Class Carriers: 100 mil/year
Nuclear Powered Cruiser: 40 mil/year
Nuclear Powered Sub: 13 mil/year
Destroyer: 25 mil/year

These are current costs and (unfortunately) happen to include purchase price (i.e. the purchase price is divided by the expected lifetime of the unit) but should give a relative idea of the comparitive costs of maintaining these units. I could not find any statistics on battleships since the U.S. Navy does not have any currently in service. Suffice it to say that the battleships would probably cost about 60-70 mil/year (although that is just a guess).

Granted, current costs may be higher than costs for WWII units (even adjusting for inflation) but this should demonstrate conclusively than the 1gp/unit system is broken to start with.

If we took the NP sub as the base then the costs would be
NP sub: 1 Destroyer: 2 NP Cruiser: 3 or 4 Carrier: 8

This would make the game much, much more realistic.

i like this idea. certain ships do cost more to maintain than others. but this is also true for other units too. if they staggered the upkeep for all units, it would necessitate more planning when creating an army, and make for a more realistic game.

That was the general idea. Tanks could cost more than infantry, horsemen more than spearmen, etc. This has been suggested in other threads, I was just trying to show some of the obvious discrepancies.

But is realism what we really want in a game? The rising expectations of realism killed the wargames and military flight sim markets. It was costing more to make a realistic flight sim that would make the customers happy with their rising expectations than they would ever hope to get back.

In this case it is simple and sensible and I agree with it, but the further you go down the path of demanding more and more realism the sooner Civ becomes a small niche title (at which point the big publishers won't touch it).

The IOWA class were only struck off around 1995, you could get some idea from that

The problem with this is that it puts the whole economic system out of whack.

If units cost a lot more to maintain, then you have to rebalance tech costs so that maintaining an army doesn't cost 4x or 8x as much as researching. You then have to alter how much income is brought in from the tiles... do you make it so that all tiles produce at least 1 gold? What about Golden Ages?

As you can see, doing this would add quite a bit of new complex issues that would have to be dealt with in order to keep gameplay balanced.

Another problem - you have to make units worth their cost. Navies are already pretty useless, why build units which cost 6+ gold per turn if they don't do anything? You'll end up with a situation where civs build no naval units.

There must be some middle ground between realism and gameplay. For my part it still bothers me that a tank or aircraft carrier costs as much to maintain as a warrior! That is not only unrealistic, I also think its really LAME.
Definitely variable unit costs would mean the rebalancing of other elements of the game, but I feel that would be a worthwhile cost to pay ! Also, it might be high time to revisit the many in which wealth/income is generated by cities and by the nation as a whole, and come up with a system that makes variable unit costs more palatable.
I don't think that it has to be too complicated, perhaps as simple as a abse cost of 1gpt for Ancient, 3gpt for classical, 5 for middle, 7 for industrial and say 10 for modern. Then individual units within an age might vary by between + or - 2gpt!
I do agree though, Trip, that naval units have to be made MUCH more effective and important, but for me that is irrespective of whether units have variable maintainance costs!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

I would make the game un-ballanced.

The reason the USN assets cost so much, is because they are manned by US personel (who demand high wages, pensions, etc.). Poorer nations, such as N.K., spend far less but that doesn't stop them having large militaries!

The reason is that everything costs less for them. Wages are lower, Pensions are lower, Clothes are cheaper, Housing is cheaper, Food is cheaper..

Maintenance cost is not inherently flawed, but it should be proportional to the civilisation's economic strength.

If it's flat-rate (the same for every civilisation) then the game would be too easy for the first civilisation to get an economic advantage.

If it makes you feel any better, carriers in the game actually cost 5 GP to maintain - provided you have it loaded with the aircraft. I believe the operating costs for the carriers include the airwings assigned to the carrier.

Aussie_Lurker said:

I do agree though, Trip, that naval units have to be made MUCH more effective and important, but for me that is irrespective of whether units have variable maintainance costs!

Click to expand...

My point is that a LOT needs to be done to add such a "simple" change.