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[member66170]

.

 

[Hadrean]

I like it, but how to do it.

 

[Chamaedrys]

Hm, this would lead to big armies of obsolet units.

 

[TheLopez]

This is a brilliantly simple idea that, I think, will add a lot of realism to civ and make life easier for the peacemongers here. Basicaly it allows you to put troops into reserve, half disbanding them.

After the research of gunpowder (or some other tech) you get the option to tell units in cities to 'stand down'. When a unit is in stand down/reserve it does not cost any maintenance, does not give any happiness with hereditary rule (but does prevent the "we are not feeling safe" penalty). However, the unit can not fight, if an enemy unit attacks the city it will not defend it and will just die if the city is captured.
To take a unit out of reserve mode takes 1 whole turns (it will appear at the begining of your next turn) and it will cost some small amoutn of gold (about 5-10).

This will allow peacefull players to save money on unit maintenance but at a risk, as your enemy will have two turns to attack you before your army becomes opperational. It also adds a lot of realism as most modern countries have a large proportion of their army as 'reserves'.

Hmmm.... I really link this idea... Let me see what I can whip up today.

Hm, this would lead to big armies of obsolet units.

Well, this is really easy to solve... you could pay the amount to upgrade the unit when pulling the unit out of its reserve status. Does this solve the problem?

 

[woodelf]

I really like this idea Olleus. Maybe cap how many reserves per city?

 

[TheLopez]

How about (population of city / 4) + 1 ?

Hmmm... I would opt to make it configurable and have cap by population be one of the options.

This would lead make the cap quite hard to reach, but as you still have to build the units it seems fair.

Lopez if you can do this it would be simply brilliant. Problem is I can't think of how to do it. Maybe completely deleting the unit, saving all of its info in a seperate array, and adding an icon in the city view for the player.

I think I have a solution but I want to solve the flag question that Mozza asked. I am almost done with it... if I can get it to work then we'll be able to have civilization change their flags when eras change...

The AI shouldn't be too hard. Just tell it to stand down troops in inner cities when at peace, and wake them up when at war.

Actually there is already a method in the SDK that the AI uses to determine if it will go to war... I can use this to wake the units.

 

[woodelf]

The Bot is on it!

 

[dh_epic]

This is a REALLY neat idea. The AI would need some getting used to it... and I think maintainance costs would need to be tweaked, since it might make a lot of empires VERY cheap. But I'd really like to see it.

Also, I might make the stand-down take longer than a single turn. If it's a single turn, it only encourages lots of tedious micromanagement rather than overall strategy. A 3 or even 5 turn thing wouldn't be so bad -- sort of like anarchy and civics. The additional turns would represent the re-training time.

 

[Grey Fox]

Maybe Reserves should lose experience over time? Or something.

 

[woodelf]

I think the fact that it costs money to get them out of reserve will be a good balancing factor. Think about getting war declared upon you when you have no cash.

So you could trade for the AI's gold, then declare war. A bad exploit...

 

[Grey Fox]

Yeah but what if the reserves are now old men with bear bellies?

 

[woodelf]

I always have my first warrior guarding my capital until the end of the game. We need to suspend some reality here.

 

[Kissamies]

I think one of the CTPs had a similar 'military readiness' system, or whatever it was called. Not a bad idea. In my case, if there is not enough military units built, it's rarely because they are too expensive to maintain.

 

[woodelf]

Would it be possible for a pop-up to appear when you start paying maintenance asking "Do you want to reserve some troops?"? Likewise when war has been declared and another message says "Should we pull troops out of reserve?"

When in reserve, do these troops add to the pop, maybe add a hammer? Or are they simple non-factors?

 

[Grey Fox]

They could become a Free Specialist while in reserve.

 

[Grey Fox]

Depends on if you limit number of Reserves to the size of the city or something.

 

[woodelf]

It's all about balance. It's a terrific idea, but needs some tweaking.

 

[dh_epic]

The fact that reserves aren't costing you maintainance means they're being productive.

TURN 1a = The enemy declares war on you and attacks you
TURN 1b = Order troops out of reserve mode
TURN 2a = The enemy attacks you for a second time
TURN 2b = Your army is finaly opperational

The thing with this is I believe it would lead to lots of MM, with huge rewards for doing so. The enemy starts to move away from one city, so you put those troops on reserve. The enemy starts moving back towards the city, so you get the troops ready again.

Because the advantage of putting troops on reserve is so big, you should try to encourage players to be extra cautious about putting their troops on reserve. If it takes more than one turn to shift stances, players won't be so eager to put their troops on reserve first moment it looks like it can save them some cash.

 

[Gerikes]

The fact that reserves aren't costing you maintainance means they're being productive.



The thing with this is I believe it would lead to lots of MM, with huge rewards for doing so. The enemy starts to move away from one city, so you put those troops on reserve. The enemy starts moving back towards the city, so you get the troops ready again.

Because the advantage of putting troops on reserve is so big, you should try to encourage players to be extra cautious about putting their troops on reserve. If it takes more than one turn to shift stances, players won't be so eager to put their troops on reserve first moment it looks like it can save them some cash.

Well I think one idea is that every time you put units on / take units out of reserve, it costs you money. This means that doing this one turn in - one turn out will cost more money than it will save you.

Even if you gain 1 extra gold from no maintenance that turn, it will cost you 5-10 gold to get them out.

 

[Grey Fox]

It doesnt need to be much micromanagement if you can bring all (all in a city or all in a nation) reserves back into the military with a press of a button.

(and the exploitability of having reserve specialists are cured by the cost to bring them back like Gerikes said, and limiting the amount per city depending on city size or not)