Absurd wars!!

[King Squanto]

well, if were talking about the problems of warmaking in Civ 4 and impossible to implement solutions to end them, the problem goes way beyond communication. For one the mere orginization required by a computer program to have a status of "war" and "peace" and conditions (such as border-crossing) that depend on these statuses is a problem. In real life there is alot of confusion and indefinateness about war; and they can range from global destruction to regional, short-lived flare ups.
What I think is the biggest flaw is the difficulty in having when taken by surprise that's able to be won, the difficulty of gaining much from war that outwieghs the production costs unless it's on a grand scale, and the time taken to prepare for war. If I want to take over france and I'm the English, I have to build swordsment and catapults to take the cities, archers to occupy them, boats to transport the troops and boats to protect those boats. And when I only have four cities in England and 5 turns per unit that can take two centuries- and what country has ever planned for war over two centuries? The problem is the completly unrealistic unit system--where you build a unit out of produciton and he stays alive for all eternity and can survive hundreads of years on a desert square in the ocean with no supplies, so long as he has 1 credit a year. The truth of it is armies are raised from populations and can be adjusted by a few million numbers at one time, allowing for cost of training and salaries.

Solution? Well, they're probably isn't one in Civ 4. But for Civ 5 or a very ambitious modder, armies need to be built on capability, not time spent building. So for example, if you have a large, loyal population, a positive cash flow (not even really necessary, so long as you've researched "Bonds"), and someone to make into public enemy number 1, you're on. Winning it often has to do with how much grain you have and how smart you are. Once you do have tanks and industrially produced weapons, they aren't built one at a time, each taking x amount of years. In life, they build as many as possible at the same tame, depending on the cash and factories avaliable.

Armies need to be raised from your populace, and their armament needs to come from you're factories which may have to be diverted from their current production of luxury goods (resulting in an unhappy populace unless they're particularly sold on the war's cause.) If you implement the draft civic, you will get as many soilders as you ask for on an adjustable slidder of # of avaible populace, albiet unhappy ones, but if you have volunteer service, you'll have happier, better trained (the current experince system would work fine) soilders but the popularity of the war and your degree of militarism (which would be determined by your history and civics and culture, not predescribed traits) would be a factor in how many people signed up.

Production of tanks and guns would depend on how many factories you're naiton had, and then how many of those factories you had making weapons instead of teddy bears and televisions.

 

[Danger Bird]

I completely agree, King Squanto. Part of what causes these unrealistic wars is that the AI (and the player) tend to build up a large permanent army of units over time, and need to find a way to use them. As you say, it would be much more realistic if armies were raised quickly (depending on your civs infrastucture and 'happiness') and then disbanded when not needed. Of course, this would be a major overhaul, and would make the promotion system useless.

I tend to think of the units as regiments, and that the promotions stay (over hundreds of years) because new recruits into that regiment get superior training. Bt, ideally, it should be more costly to keep a regiment active, and there should be the option to disband it (like in Civ3; not delete it) for some population gain. And, if the AI could handle this, we might see the non-elite units increase in wartime then decrease in peacetime.

 

[King Squanto]

True, it would take massive overhaul to make anything I said possible. But you're right, it would be feasible to make a 'disband troop' option that would add plus one or two to the nearest city. Of course if you're going to put this option in, it would seem to make sense to have soilders cost food or populatio to produce as well. But armies would still take a century to build up to proper strength.

In this trian of thought, why not then make soilders very cheap, and even cheaper if your happiness is high, so that military units are expendible and a sizable army could be raised within 20 turns? This makes the realty of war, where thousands die, military and citzens both, resulting in population decreases all around, reflected somewhat in CIV 4. You could build "training camps" improvements that would increase soilder training rate by 50% or whatever, and later on factories would increase tank and artillery and ship and plane speed by 100%. These camps could have levels, like I, II, and III, but each one would cost food points, accounting for rationing usually accompaning wars. (btw, camps would be cheap so that players could sell them after war was done to free up their food supplies).
One problem of Civ 4 is that wars rarely have reversals--if you lose three cities, you're in a crapshoot. The battles I've fought have been rather one-sided: either my neighboor, formerly second-most powerful country in the world, succumbs to my 1,000 year old army within a matter of ten turns at hardly a loss to my troop count, or option b, where my underdeveloped nation is swarmed by hungry neighboors. If there is a city taken back, usually it's only one city that changes hands a few times before being inevitably razed (and never to rise again due to the utter uselessness of building a city after 1800).
So once again the idea of cheap soilders might do the trick. If you can afford to send dozens into the front lines then they're might be more tides in war, espically if these soilders die more quickly as well. However, so would the enemy's troops, which could cancel everything out. Therefore the combat system would have to be modified so that groupings of soilders under a general would be strongly encouraged as compared to individual units. That would make it so even if you had 200 troops you would want to keep them into three armies, and these three armies would have to go to strategic locations. This is where the promotion system could come back in, because generals could be the ones who have promotions and share them with their peons, and they could last forever, representing schools of military thought and passed down knowledge.

And finally, to prevent army size from escallating to gigantic proportions, you're economy, infastructure, and happiness would all limit you're max number of troops, because you could only sustain a costly army a few turns before going bankrupt and traning camps + soilder production could starve you're cities until they're at the point of rioting--esp. w/war wearyness factored in.

So this boils down to:
-Disbandable troops
-Cheap troops that cost food
-Training Camps I, II, III: cost food but increase production
-cheap, meant to be sold after war
-Factories: 100% tank, airplane, ship, and artillery construction
- subtract happiness to account for lost luxury production
-also expendible
-Generals: lead troops, dramaticlly reduce their vulnerability

Sounds like a mod, but who knows if it would even work. Sounds about as far fetched as changing the game all togheather!
I just hope population is not representive but real in CIV 5, with troops being raised from them. And also, where is taxation? Increased taxes should cause unhappiness but raise that precious extra cash needed in war time. And with real population, you could have demographics (10% b, 80% are serfs, ect.), and then you could have class warefare (and thus European history would be, for once, possible.)

all in all would this take the fun out of Civ?