Have you considered a feature with army attrition?

[moredrowsy]

I was just wondering. It's kind of absurd to field an army outside your cities for lengths of turns without resupplying. I mean, military units are still citizens (and humans that need food). This might be hard but is it possible to add army attrition?

Like if you're going to war and you leave your army too far out for x number of turns, the army run out of food supply and starts losing hp/turn. Possibly, after 20 turns in standard when your army is outside your cities, each army unit will start losing -0.5 hp per turn until you move them back into your cities? Or maybe u can create a new type of unit (supply unit) that can sustain your army outside your cities for far longer amount of x turns? Also, the supply unit will be consumed (loses hp per turn) as he supplies food to the army. Or, you can possibly add roads to connect to your armies (and imitate food supply traveling to your armies) and if that road is obstructed by an enemy, your army no longer gets food.

I think this will make the combat system a lot more interesting. But then, the ai will have to be updated to accommodate this too..., which will be really hard.

ps
there's a lot of features in the vanilla civ that doesn't make sense like the pop growth = unhappiness. thank god you made this mod and reverse that around. it's silly that your empire prosper and you get happiness hit bc your cities grow from prosperity.

 

[Chile]

I think this will make the combat system a lot more interesting. But then, the ai will have to be updated to accommodate this too..., which will be really hard.

I think I can answer this:

While it certainly would make the military-system more challenging, there are two problems.

1. As long as the dll's aren't yet published, there is no way to make the AI understand such a feature.

2. Your idea is quiet a complex concept which would not fare well with some, especially with those, who are just checking out a new mod.
Therefore this would be more suitable for a modmod, me thinks.

 

[markusbeutel]

I was just wondering. It's kind of absurd to field an army outside your cities for lengths of turns without resupplying. I mean, military units are still citizens (and humans that need food). This might be hard but is it possible to add army attrition?

Like if you're going to war and you leave your army too far out for x number of turns, the army run out of food supply and starts losing hp/turn. Possibly, after 20 turns in standard when your army is outside your cities, each army unit will start losing -0.5 hp per turn until you move them back into your cities? Or maybe u can create a new type of unit (supply unit) that can sustain your army outside your cities for far longer amount of x turns? Also, the supply unit will be consumed (loses hp per turn) as he supplies food to the army. Or, you can possibly add roads to connect to your armies (and imitate food supply traveling to your armies) and if that road is obstructed by an enemy, your army no longer gets food.

I think this will make the combat system a lot more interesting. But then, the ai will have to be updated to accommodate this too..., which will be really hard.

ps
there's a lot of features in the vanilla civ that doesn't make sense like the pop growth = unhappiness. thank god you made this mod and reverse that around. it's silly that your empire prosper and you get happiness hit bc your cities grow from prosperity.

I've thought about things like this regarding combat - how to make it more interesting / add depth, etc. Unhappiness/Happiness in early versions of the mod used to actually be called stability/unrest in an attempt to add a different flavor/feeling. And it is possible to have armies outside of your borders lose hp, but this happens immediately and can't be staggered for a set amount of turns with the current tools that we have.

But the main problem with any changes to combat, like you mentioned - is the AI, and at this point I'm not looking to tweak anything related to combat until the tactical AI is improved and actually understands/implements basic features effectively. Again, it's a .dll dilemma, and until we get that, there won't be any significant changes to how the AI plays the game tactically.

 

[ilshur]

a corollary:

All Land units automatically decay 1 hp per turn when outside friendly territory
all land units automatically decay 2 hp per turn when in enemy territory (Scortched earth attrition etc)

2 new promotions:
1. Supply - removes the decay from neutral territory
2. pillage - in addition to being able to move after pillaging a tile, unit only loses 1 hp per turn instead of 2, when in enemy territory.


additionally, i would love it if units that were highly promoted cost more gold to field, as they are 'elite' and more versatile, but that might be asking a bit much

 

[moredrowsy]

When will the dll's be released?

I've also thought about another perk for the military system. Military units (ultimately are drafted from the citizens). Not only do you get Unhappiness for building military units, but that you can only build x amount of military units from x amount of citizens in your cities.

Or additionally, if you build one military unit, it takes away one citizen to work (such as working tiles). You won't lose citizen numbers in your city that produces that military units but you'll lose that x amount of the citizens' ability to work that tile. For example, your city (Athens has 5 citizens), you can only build up to 4 military units. 1 citizen is needed to work on tile at least. The other 4 citizen can are available to be turned to produce military units. So you build 4 military units. Then, 4 citizens are "used up" for military production and can not work tiles. You can tweak this for balance purposes.

There's a lot of implications for this change. Such as, small upstart cities can no longer beat a powerful huge city. The small city can focus military like Sparta but loses capacity to grow into a prosperous city. The Huge city, will have to stagnate their citizens and prosperity if they want to defend with military units.

I just find it absurd for a city to keep pumping out armies w/o sacrificing population. Or that a city can pump out 5 military unit when your population is only 4 citizens. lulz. Additionally, this has historically happened in the past with the greek cities when alexander the great keep asking for men to conquer persia and into india. This has dramatically reduced the greek's manpower to field armies in their later years against Rome's superior numbers.

Concluding, I think it would only make sense that you can only have so much "people" to fight corresponding to your population. As example, if you're war hungry, naturally you'll use most of your population to field armies. In the end, ARMIES are still people.

PS.
I know this is too complicated and would probably not be implemented. Just expressing my ideas that the current rts still have many stuff that doesn't make sense.

 

[Kirschi]

About the military units need food and loose hp after xy turns.
I have not programmed with lua or did a lot of modding for civ so I am not sure if this would work. Would it be possible that, as soon as a unit leaves your borders, it gets a "Hunger 1" promotion. Next turn, you check all you units in a loop and if one has "Hunger 1", it gets "Hunger 2" promotion. And so on until lets say "Hunger 10" (ten turns). When a unit has that promotion it looses xy HP per turn.
For the resupplying: You have special units that have some sort of ability, like the GA culture bomb. When activated, all units in a radius of xy tiles have their Hunger promotions removed.

So if it is possible to give a specific unit a promotion after it has been built and check all your units for promotions/stats, that would be feasible I think? Or any other thing that needs some delay in turns. Enlighten me please

 

[moredrowsy]

@Kirschi Wow. that's a great idea for the mechanics! Seems like it'll work but I just hope the AIs will know what to do with hunger promotion.

 

[Kirschi]

Yea the AI... I think they could learn it too. The AI uses the Diplo units from CSD Mod quite good, so it should be possible to implement some subroutine to handle "supply units" or whatever.