Buildings Limiting Number of Unit?

[Thunderbrd]

you'll still end up crippling a civ that starts to go the route of large military

That is the point entirely. And yes, the AI would need to be told to understand this. And besides, the food cost would really be seriously minimal.

Ok, lets say you have two cities and 100 units (assuming all to be melee). You'd still have a food expense of just 5 food in a given city! Even THAT is survivable with halfway decent terrain and being set up with the right food buildings before staffing such a ridiculous force. The gold maintenance would cause the nation to suffer worse. The POINT of the system then would be to create a food 'drag' and when those units start getting slaughtered, the civilization as a whole suffers from the loss of life, not just the loss of production investment.

As it is now, the combat loss of such an army would be a benefit to the civ that throws that force uselessly up against your walls and well promoted defenders! How does THAT make any sense?

I often wonder where humanity could be today if we never had a war - a hell of a lot more people would be walking the Earth, that's for sure!

(When I disband a unit I imagine I'm sending them home, not executing them.)

The system would be taking that into account by not costing any population loss for disbanded troops and would actually be yes... sending them home and they no longer drag on population growth and production.

 

[ori]

its no benefit though - precisely because of the invested production and the stuff not produced while producing the units - and senselessly letting them die will already create war weariness galore (infact having them win will do the same jsut not as much) - already a cost for that which actually lasts until the end of war.

 

[Necratoid]

Dead. Humanity without war would be dead as a race. Predators would have eaten us,. Other hominids would have removed us from existance. One of the weapons that are credited with disposing of the Neanderthall is the atl atl... a stick with a cup like thing at the end used for at least tripling the throw distance of a spear. Chimpanzees war on a tribal/gang level all the time... ending in canabalism. Ants and other hive organized insecets war with each other on horrific scales. that doesn't even count normal territorial fight of animals.

In short... war isn't an invention of mankind like certain political agendas keep rambling about. I think 'The Time Machine' covered the humanity casting off war angle pretty well.

---

How does combat losses help a society? End the third world. Combat losses remove 'extra' people that have no jobs or purpose. Once gone they stop using up resources and those that surrive are better off and often stronger as a society. This is one reason sappers (aka suicide bombers) work for some societies. One sapper can take out dozens of troops or civilians.

Troops that are sent in to do as much damage as possible and don't care if they survive are some of the most dangerous in existance. Once a person removes the need to survive from the missin check list they become an extremely effective weapon. Its far far easier for assassins to succeed if they don't plan on surviving... it opens so many options for force multipliers.

Concidering conscription... they don't target farmers and skilled craftsmen first... you conscript the unemployed. You target the dead weight. The criminals. The 'surplus population'. Cannon fodder is great for expending on the other guy to wear them down... then you can send in the experienced units for mop up.

 

[robomani]

If you want unit to use food you could look at that: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=388545 ( [BtS] Food Supplies Mod )
«This mod adds several new tags that allow the simulation of units needing food.
The tags let you specify how much food a unit starts out with, how much they
consume a turn and how much damage is done to them if they don't have access to
food. In addition there are tags that can be added to units to specift that
they provide food to other units but bewarned when theif food supply is
exhausted the unit will go away. So it would be best to create a new unit
specifically for carrying food...»

and maybe that to: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=333270 (Food Distribution)
«After digging through Requests Thread I liked the idea to be able to redistribute food among cities :

You can send 1-4 ( i have no idea about which formula i should by using to determine maximum amount of food you are able to send, so its 4 hardcoded ) from one city to another - in target city this route takes ones trade route place ( so the number of routes is limited by available number of trade routes ) and you lose the commerce trade yield...»

 

[ClassicFrog]

One mod (Total Realism?) had a mechanism of over crowding on a tile. All units on the plot had the overcrowded promotion applied to them which reduced their effectiveness at attack ad defend. When they moved to a plot with few enough units on it they lost this promotion.

That sounds reasonable. If its possible to mod it that the more units the more severe the penalty (im thinking - % to combat to model how difficult it is to operate in a crowd and even negative heal rate [like terrain damage, maybe slightly weaker tho] for really big stacks to reflect the matter of starvation) and calculating in the fact of being stationed in a friendly (cultural borders), neutral (unclaimed land), foreign (passing by through some other civs borders youre not at war with) or hostile (civ borders of a civ youre at war with) land. I guess with some tech advancements the number of stacked units could be increased before they start to overstack or penalties of stacking up too many reduced a bit.

 

[Thunderbrd]

If you want unit to use food you could look at that: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=388545 ( [BtS] Food Supplies Mod )
«This mod adds several new tags that allow the simulation of units needing food.
The tags let you specify how much food a unit starts out with, how much they
consume a turn and how much damage is done to them if they don't have access to
food. In addition there are tags that can be added to units to specift that
they provide food to other units but bewarned when theif food supply is
exhausted the unit will go away. So it would be best to create a new unit
specifically for carrying food...»

and maybe that to: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=333270 (Food Distribution)
«After digging through Requests Thread I liked the idea to be able to redistribute food among cities :

You can send 1-4 ( i have no idea about which formula i should by using to determine maximum amount of food you are able to send, so its 4 hardcoded ) from one city to another - in target city this route takes ones trade route place ( so the number of routes is limited by available number of trade routes ) and you lose the commerce trade yield...»

For many of the reasons expressed in the responses to the first one, I didn't really like the way that one worked all that much. I see too many reasons that would just flat detract from play.

But the second one... I LIKE that and will definitely be taking a look at that for possible adaptation into our mod down the road.