Capital Units

snaphance

Chieftain
Joined
Aug 14, 2011
Messages
72
So I've put more thought into my ideas for naval expansion and whatnot, and I've finally hit on what I think could be a good addition. Currently we have a "supply system" for units, a hard limit to the number of units that can be made. I'm proposing a smaller, second "supply system" aimed specifically at very powerful units.
-heavy tanks/armor and perhaps certain heavy artillery
-capital ships (battleships, carriers, ballistic missile subs)
-heavy bombers and nuclear weapons

Basically a representation of how such weapons/units cost significantly more than others and allowed for a heavier punch in certain areas. Like with the regular supply system you would have to carefully think about which capital units you want to sink resources into. Someone in an Australia position could focus his capital supplies towards capital ships and heavy bombers, while someone landlocked might focus more on heavy armor/arty. City states would have absolutely zero ability to build capital units (and I'm even thinking through a special line of coastal only ships for city states to use, better representing the smaller defense navies of weaker powers).

Any thoughts so far?
 
So I've put more thought into my ideas for naval expansion and whatnot, and I've finally hit on what I think could be a good addition. Currently we have a "supply system" for units, a hard limit to the number of units that can be made. I'm proposing a smaller, second "supply system" aimed specifically at very powerful units.
-heavy tanks/armor and perhaps certain heavy artillery
-capital ships (battleships, carriers, ballistic missile subs)
-heavy bombers and nuclear weapons

Basically a representation of how such weapons/units cost significantly more than others and allowed for a heavier punch in certain areas. Like with the regular supply system you would have to carefully think about which capital units you want to sink resources into. Someone in an Australia position could focus his capital supplies towards capital ships and heavy bombers, while someone landlocked might focus more on heavy armor/arty. City states would have absolutely zero ability to build capital units (and I'm even thinking through a special line of coastal only ships for city states to use, better representing the smaller defense navies of weaker powers).

Any thoughts so far?

We already have strategic resources to accomplish special units being more scarce. We also have existing levers in production/gold cost. I think adding on another way of regulating how much you have of an unit is just needless complexity. What is this new system going to add that cannot be done by the existing one?
 
We already have strategic resources to accomplish special units being more scarce. We also have existing levers in production/gold cost. I think adding on another way of regulating how much you have of an unit is just needless complexity. What is this new system going to add that cannot be done by the existing one?
Eh, I know, I'm mostly trying to add some sorely needed variety in surface units for navies and air forces. Partly it's to reflect what a massive sink those sorts of units were and how only massive/extremely wealthy nations could truly afford to field them in large numbers. Feels like every damn civ in the game just spams out unrealistic numbers of these things.
 
Super carriers have a hard limit. I think we voted down the hard limit to giant death robots, but that was also in consideration. So we do have some, but I tend to agree that strategic resources are better positioned to offer a more realistic limit, and automatically scale with map size (indirectly). And by tying "capital" units to resources means there's more of a reason to fight or trade with someone for that resource, which fosters more interactions between players.

I would argue the problem might be that players feel entitled to being able to fill their entire military roster with strategic units, which probably shouldn't be the case. We see it a lot with coal specifically, "not having enough to do everything in every city", but that should precisely be the point. Not every unit should be a tank, not every city should have a factory.
 
Super carriers have a hard limit. I think we voted down the hard limit to giant death robots, but that was also in consideration. So we do have some, but I tend to agree that strategic resources are better positioned to offer a more realistic limit, and automatically scale with map size (indirectly). And by tying "capital" units to resources means there's more of a reason to fight or trade with someone for that resource, which fosters more interactions between players.

I would argue the problem might be that players feel entitled to being able to fill their entire military roster with strategic units, which probably shouldn't be the case. We see it a lot with coal specifically, "not having enough to do everything in every city", but that should precisely be the point. Not every unit should be a tank, not every city should have a factory.
Yeah there are too many strategic resources (especially if you go autocracy, they stop meaning anything).

Although there is also a little too much strategic resource volatility in map gen. There are occasional games where I get borderline 0 oil or aluminum and it is profoundly crippling (especially oil).
 
We see it a lot with coal specifically, "not having enough to do everything in every city", but that should precisely be the point. Not every unit should be a tank, not every city should have a factory.
Yes, exactly. Or more precisely, not every city should have a Factory without some kind of strategic planning to make it so.
 
At least maybe change capital units to use two supplies instead of one, basically making it more of a sacrifice and a calculation. Give players and AI the choice of, for example, "do I build two cruisers or one battleship?" to add a doctrinal dynamic.
 
Yeah, to me this sounds like too much complexity. But I'm on board with potentially making some units cost 2-3 strategic resources instead of one. Especially late game ones, when you typically already have more than enough resources. And it doesn't introduce any more complexity.
 
Yeah there are too many strategic resources (especially if you go autocracy, they stop meaning anything).

Although there is also a little too much strategic resource volatility in map gen. There are occasional games where I get borderline 0 oil or aluminum and it is profoundly crippling (especially oil).
Then we need to cut down autocracy while providing some static sources of strategic sources (e.g. through the refinery).
 
Not only could you tone down autocracy strategic resource machine, You could have super units cost more strategic resources as well
 
Having Autocracy (I call it Might instead in my games) be the "Strategic Resources" ideology is very funny considering how impactful the lack of such resources was in deciding the war goals and eventual defeat of the countries the tenets are inspired by.
 
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