Can some modder please mod this idea?

[jacobwt226]

I've been talking with Thalassicus about the food for armies mod and he says it is not vanilla enough for him to add to his mod. He and others have pointed out that this may be hard to implement since we don't yet have the dll's and the AI would not know what to do.

But how about this alternative: we build military units with production, as usual, but treat them as we do population in cities. So a military unit, once built, would have both a gold cost (pay and weapons upkeep) and a one-time food cost (which would of course come from the food supply of the city of origin.)

This could be similar to the existing mechanism that allows for specialists, i.e. pop units that are taken off the map and used to supplement research, culture, etc. But these specialists would each allow one military unit to be built and exist on the map. We could even have a special "warriors" specialist slot on the city screen. Each pop in a slot = one more unit for the city.

Does that sound interesting? Or feasible? Would the AI know (or care) that cranking out unlimited units will eventually starve his cities?

Jacobwt226, what do you think?

I think 2 things

1. I love these ideas (and also honored that you thought I would care, and that I do)!

2. I was talking with my "sources" and most of them are war mongers, so they hated it, but when I talked to the culture, economic guru's I found they think it would be interesting and fun...

Random Idea: that whole scheme has one (or more) loop holes I can think of in this set-up, that is Germany, since they get less money cost from units they would be out of the punishment zone for one part of it, plus, there is the whole thing about what about in multi player? city states are going to become better looking, and so are the hanging gardens. I recommend instead of food or civilians, you try and find a fair mix of civilians=units. I say 20% loss of a civilian (I have not tried this so I may be wrong, I just call it as I see it) equals a unit, that way after 5 units made you get hacking into another, making it seem like a normal game til someone makes more than 5 units and the food starts depleting, it would make micro-crisis's that would put the economically ahead in the front of the pack (wall street anyone?). and what if it cost 1 gold a turn to put down food growing places (like farms)? another random idea I outlined below.

Outline of jumbled mess above:

unit= -20% civilian

farm (and other +food buildings made by workers)=-1 Gold Per Turn

 

[gunnergoz]

JacobWT226:
I can see this is getting more complicated and really hadn't anticipated that (though I appreciate that every part of the game affects every other part.)

If you check the part of the Mod Forums devoted to Thalassicus' UP/VE Mod, I started a thread about the whole "military units cost pop" and as that evolved, I got this response from Thalassicus:

If we brainstorm a bit, gaining experience over time is basically the Oligarchy policy, so we probably don't need a second effect to simulate it. We could even give a small xp-over-time bonus to all barracks: it would make them useful in all garrisoned cities, rather than just our military production city. There could be a "conscript" button on the city screen which subtracts population and gives us 1 best available Vanguard Class unit.

So it looks like we are going in the direction I'd hoped for, and still within the boundaries of the UP/VE mod which I always play with. It would be a mod that has its roots in Civ IV and would address a lot of my concerns about military and pop.

Your suggestions have merit too, but I think they would need their own mod and the question remains - would the AI work with it?

The more I discuss this with folks, the more I'm understanding just how constricted modding is without the .dll files and given the AI's limitations.