(6-VT) Introduction of the Military Readiness Slider

[Xaviarlol]

Proposal
Creation of a Military Readiness Budget slider that unlocks when all Civs get to the Medieval Era, inspired by the old Call to Power Civ game. This creates a slider that allows you to lower or increase military readiness which modifies (via simple multiplier) the unit maintenance gold cost, max unit HP and supply. This slider is found on the Miliary overview panel.
Has 5 settings:

Very Low (Modifies unit maintenance cost by -50%, reduces max HP of units by 40%, reduces supply by 30%)
Low (Modifies unit maintenance by -25%, reduces max HP of units by 20%, reduces supply by 15%)
Normal (normal maintenance costs, no HP modifier, no supply modifier)
High (Modifies unit maintenance by +25%, increases max HP of units by 10%, increases supply by 10%)
Very High (Modifies unit maintenance by +50%, increases max HP of units by 15%, increases supply by 15%)

If you increase the military readiness budget, the maintenance cost immediately increases to the new level, but Unit HP and supply slowly and gradually increase up until its resting point (eg. moving from Low budget to Normal takes 20 turns on normal speed to get the full effect of the unit HP and supply, using a linear formula: (new max HP modifier - current HP modifier) / -20 = (0 - 20) / -20 = +1% HP max HP per turn until resting point of 0% modifier)

If you decrease the military readiness budget, the Unit HP and supply reduces immediately to the new level but the cost savings slowly and gradually take effect (eg. moving from Very High budget to Normal takes 20 turns on normal speed to get the full effect of the maintenance gold saving, using a linear formula: (new max gold maintenance modifier - current gold modifier) / -20 = (0 - 50) / -20= -2.5% gold maintenance modifier per turn until resting point of 0% modifier)

Having a spy or diplomat in the target civ reveals their readiness status, and spies inform you of changes in readiness.

Rationale
There are a few reasons why I think this would be a nice addition.
1) To create a diplomatic meta-game where if you are peaceful and have great relations with your neighbors, you can let your guard down a bit and save on Gold maintenance in return for less readiness
2) To simulate military spending investments in Civ, allowing some customization in military decisions
3) To create a geopolitical metagame where you can get some clues as to what other civs are doing. You piss off your neighbor and they suddenly change their Military Readiness from Low to High? Better watch out and do the same!
4) To create an element of risk in being unprepared for a surprise attack by under-investing in military spending.

 

[adan_eslavo]

Wouldn't this cause massive yield (gold) inflation? In peace time you can easily set it to lowest and profit massive gold amount. This may create huge game imbalance.

 

[Xaviarlol]

Wouldn't this cause massive yield (gold) inflation? In peace time you can easily set it to lowest and profit massive gold amount. This may create huge game imbalance.

The idea would be that if you have low Military Readiness, you will benefit economically. However, this would come at the cost of substantial risk of having an unprepared military that is significantly weaker than it should be, and cannot be rapidly strengthened if a war breaks out.

For example, if you are at very low readiness, you will save around 50% on unit maintenance, however, your units will have 60 HP instead of 100HP - an almost halving of your total military strength. And it will take around 40 turns for them (on standard speed) to restore back to 100 HP after you increase the readiness back to normal maintenance. This is a very precarious risk to take.

By the way this also includes new units produced - they will also have low readiness (reduced HP).

Lastly, the numbers can be tweaked if the gold benefit of low readiness is too generous.

 

[ma_kuh]

I feel like this is already what trying to get away with a smaller army represents. It seems like too much work to add an entire system just to then have to teach the AI how to use it, all so they can guess at whether your army is big or small, which they already can try to do. Maybe changing the refund value for dismissing combat units is more what you want? Something that lets you add/subtract units more freely from your army, to reap the low-maintenance rewards in exchange for the lower XP when you buy them back.

 

[adan_eslavo]

It just breaks all the current mechanics, AI evaluation and whole AI behaviour. Also some UI mentions about the strength, not mentioning the global power comparison popup from time to time.

 

[Stalker0]

Its a really cool idea, it really is, and I'm intrigued, but I have to agree with some others it just feels like toooo much change at the end of the congress. This is the kind of thing I would have wanted to see discussed on discord for weeks, looking at nuances, checking the corner cases, thinking about how the AI would handle it, etc.

I personally would rather wait until next congress for this. Lets run it through discord discussions, really vet it out, and come back with a solid, polished proposal that has some initial buyin.

That is my recommendation; I just couldn't vote for such a change without that kind of discussion myself.

 

[Recursive]

Proposal vetoed.

Reason: Out of scope due to the sweeping AI changes required to properly handle this, which are not included in the proposal. I'm not convinced this could be sponsored.