Proposal: Change the defines used to control unit maintenance costs as follows:
UNIT_MAINTENANCE_GAME_MULTIPLIER = 8 (from 7)
UNIT_MAINTENANCE_GAME_EXPONENT_DIVISOR = 5 (from 6)
Rationale/Explanation: For a warmonger that fields a large and advanced army, unit costs should be one of the constraints that need to be dealt with. With the current unit maintenance cost calculation, this is often not the case. Both changes proposed here will increase unit maintenance costs in the late game. The first change will increase costs based on the tech progress of the player. The second change will increase costs based on the army size, large armies will be considerably more expensive to maintain. This will also partially address the issue of having tedious late-game combat and a lot of micro-management due to the extremely large late-game armies.
Note that the first value (UNIT_MAINTENANCE_GAME_MULTIPLIER) was reduced last congress from 8 to 7 as part of the rework how unit scaling over time is calculated. The reduction was done to make sure unit costs wouldn't become too high, but that fear seems to be unwarranted as there are several reports that it's easily possible to maintain large armies late in the game (link). An increase of unit maintenance based on tech progress serves a similar purpose as the idea to increase the costs needed to upgrade units that was suggested in the that thread.
If you want to see how these changes affect unit maintenance in your current game, you can replace the file "(2) Vox Populi/Database Change/DefineChanges.sql" with the attached file (4+ versions only).
The first version also included a change to AI maintenance costs:
"AIInflationPercent changed from 100 to 90 on all difficulties (that means the AI will have to pay only 90% of a humans unit maintenance costs)"
Rationale: "Unit costs are reduced for the AI compared to the human players because the AI are already struggling with domination victories so those shouldn't be made even more difficult for them."
But as maintenance costs are already lower for the AI, this won't be necessary
Database Changes
UNIT_MAINTENANCE_GAME_MULTIPLIER = 8 (from 7)
UNIT_MAINTENANCE_GAME_EXPONENT_DIVISOR = 5 (from 6)
Rationale/Explanation: For a warmonger that fields a large and advanced army, unit costs should be one of the constraints that need to be dealt with. With the current unit maintenance cost calculation, this is often not the case. Both changes proposed here will increase unit maintenance costs in the late game. The first change will increase costs based on the tech progress of the player. The second change will increase costs based on the army size, large armies will be considerably more expensive to maintain. This will also partially address the issue of having tedious late-game combat and a lot of micro-management due to the extremely large late-game armies.
Note that the first value (UNIT_MAINTENANCE_GAME_MULTIPLIER) was reduced last congress from 8 to 7 as part of the rework how unit scaling over time is calculated. The reduction was done to make sure unit costs wouldn't become too high, but that fear seems to be unwarranted as there are several reports that it's easily possible to maintain large armies late in the game (link). An increase of unit maintenance based on tech progress serves a similar purpose as the idea to increase the costs needed to upgrade units that was suggested in the that thread.
If you want to see how these changes affect unit maintenance in your current game, you can replace the file "(2) Vox Populi/Database Change/DefineChanges.sql" with the attached file (4+ versions only).
Spoiler Previous Version of the Proposal :
The first version also included a change to AI maintenance costs:
"AIInflationPercent changed from 100 to 90 on all difficulties (that means the AI will have to pay only 90% of a humans unit maintenance costs)"
Rationale: "Unit costs are reduced for the AI compared to the human players because the AI are already struggling with domination victories so those shouldn't be made even more difficult for them."
But as maintenance costs are already lower for the AI, this won't be necessary
Database Changes
Attachments
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