civ5 - to limit the number of military units

[V. Soma]

I think there should be a recruitment value. When monarch etc you can recruit all your population into an army as they're only a bunch of clod-loving serfs. However in modern times (democracy) you must entice people into the army; through higher pay, advertising campaigns and a positive image for your military.

Your ability to raise an army should also depend upon how much you hate your enemy / how much danger you are in... That makes conscription a powerful civic.

As for a max army population; maybe do that through really high upkeep or war weariness. I agree though that the results of many civilians/military dead should inflame your civilians to either action/fear.

I like this

So this recruitment value (RV) would mean a cap on the number of units you can have.
Perhaps the way this RV is set could be determined by several factors, as you already mentioned:

- by the civic you have
- by the money you allocate to it (% of GNP)
- when in war, by the relation you have with the enemy
- perhaps certain great persons / wonders / buildings could also influence this
- image of making war: the % of battles already won/lost
EDIT: - by population

all these would give out the RV, so there would be a max on the number of military units you can have - but then no need for the military city specialist and the units would cost no population...

I would also go for differentiated upkeep costs for units, getting higher as technology advances... also higher when fighting on another continent...

 

[Walkin]

I would say still have military specialists. e.g. when you have a unit that has reached the best veterancy (elite? I'm a little out of touch), then you have a choice of 'retiring' them to a city - where they become a military specialist. For a slight upkeep cost, they then can boost RV within the city. (and perhaps give a slight benefit in city defence?)

 

[Strig]

This will probably bring a world of flame down upon my head, but I really like the way Civ: Colonization handles this issue ... (that and the choice between what resource a tile will produce are the best things that game has going for it).

A unit of population is required to work a tile, or must leave the city to improve it (only to return to work it) ... OR they must stop working tiles to defend a city or attack a neighbor.

Just my 2 cents, but I agree that some form of restriction would be ok as long as that restriction made you make interesting choices and isn't just a "unit cap" like in RTS games.

 

[V. Soma]

I really like the way Civ: Colonization handles this issue ... some form of restriction would be ok as long as that restriction made you make interesting choices and isn't just a "unit cap" like in RTS games.

Oh, yes, CivCol - I forgot that, but you are right on that

It could be for civ5...

I absolutley agree you have to make interesting choices...

 

[Xellos-_^]

military units should be tied to the amount of food generated by your empire. As the old saying goes, a army travel by its stomach. and not just military units too, pop+military units+other units(medic unit, missionary, workers, specialize inside cities should also cost more food).

 

[BigBaldDaddy]

I like the idea of making it harder to have a huge military mainly because once you get powerful enough to have a large SoD (or 2 or 3) the game gets monotunous.

I think the idea of bribery is a good one and can be enhanced even more. There is a mod, Influence Driven War, that allows combat to change the cultural balance of tiles, but what if the culture of the tiles also influenced desertion rates?

A unit would have a chance of desertion (just disappear or flip allegiance) based on their current health, their location (enemy, neutral or home), difference in culture points between the Civs, relationship between Civs (no flipping to worst enemy) and a measure of risk of death (total all visible unit strength for and against).

This could be morale of the unit. Promotions could be added to modify adjustments to morale and the risk of desertion. Barb units would be more amenable to flipping allegiance.

Separately, I also like logistics of war. Civs could need to stockpile ammunition (like spy pts) in order to attack. When there are too few ammo points even defense is weakened. I don't want to have to choose a mission to attack, but have it work automatically.

 

[SirDrake]

My two cents... or maybe twenty-three cents...


V. Soma - My idea: Military units tied to military city specialists....
you have to make decisions: more of food/hammer/gold or military?

The game already forces you to make decisions about the allocation of resources. Hammers spent to build units are hammers that can't build a library or theatre. Gold used to support units reduces your research and/or culture rate.

The result? A military strategy is more powerful, not less. The Civilization which has a focused, militant plan wallops the civilization which is trying to balance culture/research/infrastructure because the latter cannot square off against the former. This is how humans beat up on the AI.

It's also worth noting that, even under the current system, one must strike a skillful balance. AI-Montezuma might be dangerous early in the game, but he stinks over the long haul.



rysmiel - Re-enable the diplomat/spy unit bribing function
Scilly guy - I think the addition of assassination units/sabotaging units as spies missions would help.

I dislike anything that takes the game "off the board". At its core, Civilization is a mapboard game. The chart-interface Espionage screen is annoying enough-- adding more importance and more elements to that sort of thing would diminish the value of the visual interface as the game's strategic center.


V. Soma - war as a too simple way for victory
rysmiel - The way I would prefer to see Civ 5 handle war being too easy is to make other ways of winning stronger and better capable of defeating military power.

No question that going to war is the optimum strategy for beating the AI. I definitely see your points, both of them. However, rather than addressing war in general, I'd like to point out some more specific factors that contribute:


* Higher difficulty levels give the ambitious human player no choice The AI advantages at Monarch, Emperor, etc. are heavily front-loaded, preventing the human player from establishing an equally-viable empire peacefully.

One solution is to fix the front loading. Eliminate workers, scouts and techs from the AI advantage and instead give them even better production & research rates.


* War is a great way for solving conflicts with your neighbors Again, the presence of effective-but-peaceful tactics like espionage and cultural borders drives up the importance of war. Playing against an advantaged AI, you cannot produce equal cutlure and equal spy points and defend yourself from Alexander's advancing Phalanxes. Only by beating down the AI militarily can you overcome all three obstacles.

I'm not sure what the best solution is, but I think it should be easier (somehow) to protect your cutlural borders. Perhaps more weight should be given to distance from city, or how long the city has been there. What I would really like is if you could go to war and win a tile without having to conquer a city.


* Kill or be killed The cost of losing a well-developed medieval city and then retaking it is utterly ridiculously high. Yes, cities suffer damage during war, but they do not take centuries to recover! The human player simply cannot afford the possibility of losing a city, even for one turn, so (again) the mechanics drive him to an aggressive strategy.

Simple solution: Allow buildings to "recover" the same way culture does when a city is recaptured by its original owner. Perhaps also do something to prevent the stoopid AI from whipping/starving the population from 16 to 1 over the course of seven turns.


* Resource allocation (a biggie) How many wheat farms does it take to make +1 in three cities? One. How many wheat farms does it take to make +1 in fifty cities? One.

Be it copper, gold, stone, fish, or whatever, the bigger empires just get more and more diversity of resources without ever running short on supply. Again, this drives a warmongering strategy to acquire health, happiness, and strategic resources.

Solution: Overhaul the resource/health/happy system.


* Early conquest provides huge future payoff in full-length games (The biggest biggie) If you want to win a Space Race starting from the Ancient era, you start by going to war. But try it with a Modern start and see if it's so useful.

This could partly be addressed by placing more limits on the size of an empire during earlier eras. The Rhyes mod does this with its Stability function and with civs that crop up during the course of the game. The limit is historically realistic, as governing was more difficult without modern transportation and communication. The Roman Empire was considered huge, but its peak land area is exceeded by six modern nations. The Mongolian Empire was bigger, but proved too big to endure for more than a generation as a whole.


EDIT: * Scoring system favors Domination A minor point, perhaps: When you play for domination, you're "double-dipping" on the score. The same actions which let you finish sooner also add to population and land area. Got a lot of culture when you built your spaceship? Sorry, no reward.

Twenty-seven cents? Sorry to ramble.


Cheers,
J

 

[Churchill's Hat]

Here's what I think should be done to rehaul the military system: logistics.

What this means is instead of long sieges that take ten turns deep in enemy territory, it would be wiser to attack a closer, less well defended city. I have two ideas as to how this could happen:

1. Supply routes: Establish a supply route by putting soldiers on a track of land leading from your army to your territory. It's unrealistic to have soldiers simply feed off of nothing in the tundra or desert during wartime. Also note that it is okay if your supply route goes through territory of countries with which you have open borders. If the enemy cuts off your supply route, however, they will get 1 free supply wagon and your army will receive nothing that turn.

2. Supply wagons: Fill up supply wagons through production during peacetime, and then bring them with your army as you march to battle. They will lose most of their supplies, but you can ship supplies directly to cities with which you have trade routes with. Furthermore, supply wagons can be captured by enemy forces.

The Russians didn't beat the Germans or French by hiding behind the fortified defenses of Moscow, the Americans didn't beat the British by holding the line at the city limits of Philadelphia or New York, and the Viet Cong didn't defeat the Americans by staying solely in their cities. Logistics are important. However, armies that are on food producing tiles will need less supplies (as they'll simply take the food from the enemy) and if they are staying on a very high food tile (say, grassland corn with farm) will not require any supplies as long as they are on there.

Having said that, this tips war far too much in the balance of the defender. Here are ideas to re-balance the scales:

1. Have defender logistics during warfare as well: When an enemy approaches the gates, the food is going to begin to run out. High food cities will be able to support larger garrisons during wartime as there is more to go around. If the enemy approaches the city, excess food will be channeled to the army from that city.

2. Reduce defender bonuses: Two ways: First, the obvious way, a slight decrease in defender bonuses. Secondly, attacking from the forest into another forest shouldn't be as bad as leading a charge from the plains right into a forest ambush. Attackers should get bonuses as well (not as great as the defender) if attacking from strategic ground.

3. Have a cap on units per tile. This will limit large city garrisons as well as make it more viable, from an attacking point of view, to have a multiple pronged attack. Smaller skirmishes will follow, because defenders cannot simply bait an AI attack while sitting on a wooded hill. Whoever is being attacked will need a strategic plan to defeat them, because you must remember that chokepoints will be vital if and only if you can defend the chokepoint, and because you can't stuff it with units you have to control the battlefield.

Here's an example: Montezuma and Tokugawa are at war with each other. Montezuma has three stacks that are marching towards Nara, a key city as it is on a narrow peninsula and blocks off Toku's main cities. Tokugawa leaves his two stacks waiting behind the city in anticipation, while Montezuma leaves his stacks waiting outside the gate. Tokugawa rushes forward with his attack plan, and, Montezuma, in his haste, forgot to include enough counter units in his stacks. Tokugawa's army bests Montezuma's (although Montezuma is not beaten) and because they attacked, must stay in the city. However, on Monty's turn, Monty is delighted to find that Tokugawa's overstretched supplies have left his army ravaged as they have lost much of their number. He launches a counterattack designed to whittle Tokugawa's numbers down with the units in his army that aren't injured. Tokugawa suffers a shocking defeat as the Aztecs nearby now have a much more superior numerical advantage, and his best defending units were left out to dry.

Finally, three more suggestions that I will try to type quickly.

1. Random promotions: Set barracks to train certain types of military thought for each unit. Having units gain wisdom three hundred years after they have been trained doesn't make sense. Secondly, base future promotions on what the units have done. If a Spearman heroically defeated an Axeman, give it a shock promotion. If a Horse Archer traveled a long distance to beat back an enemy invasion, give it mobility.

2. Less one-sided and decisive battles: Instead of giving one side one strike in one round, have them both attack against each other. This will cause a more equal spread of damage, and make it so that Macemen can't remain the same exact number after attacking a group of archers.

3. Morale. This has been mentioned by previous posters. Mine would be based on assessing relative strength in the battle and in the area (also some randomness), and units could perform the following actions:

a. Retreat: Take some extra damage, but let your CR3 Swordsman live to fight another day rather than die defending against a Shock Horse Archer. Also, retreats would have varying degrees of order/momentum to determine how much damage is done (a retreat because a key Axeman cannot clobber a Spearman if it is to defend against a larger overall invasion is different than a retreat by an Axeman being crushed underneath the wheels of a chariot.

b. Desertion: This would sap a unit's strength not fully but enough to cause the rest of the men to be lose morale and fighting strenght.

c. Surrender: The unit becomes enemy prisoners of war. They can be rescued in a manner similar to workers/settlers, or through peace talks.

3. Better negotiations: Ability to each give concessions. If you traded cities that each now undergo heavy cultural pressure, swap em back. Release possible POWs only if your opponent pays up.

 

[rysmiel]

rysmiel - Re-enable the diplomat/spy unit bribing function
Scilly guy - I think the addition of assassination units/sabotaging units as spies missions would help.

I dislike anything that takes the game "off the board".

My suggestion here is not to go "off the board", fwiw. I don't like espionage as a separate screen; I mean Civ 1/2 type diplomat/spy units where when you move them onto the same square as an enemy unit you get the option to bribe that unit, as if it were an attack.

* War is a great way for solving conflicts with your neighbors Again, the presence of effective-but-peaceful tactics like espionage and cultural borders drives up the importance of war. Playing against an advantaged AI, you cannot produce equal cutlure and equal spy points and defend yourself from Alexander's advancing Phalanxes. Only by beating down the AI militarily can you overcome all three obstacles.

This is why I urge that culture be strengthened to the point where if Alexander puts his energies into a pile of phalanxes and builds no culture, and you focus on culture, you are going to flip half his cities and convert any of those phalanxes that spend any amount of time on your territory.

* Kill or be killed The cost of losing a well-developed medieval city and then retaking it is utterly ridiculously high. Yes, cities suffer damage during war, but they do not take centuries to recover!

Agreed entirely.

* Early conquest provides huge future payoff in full-length games (The biggest biggie) If you want to win a Space Race starting from the Ancient era, you start by going to war. But try it with a Modern start and see if it's so useful.

This could partly be addressed by placing more limits on the size of an empire during earlier eras. The Rhyes mod does this with its Stability function and with civs that crop up during the course of the game.

Or, you know, we could stop messing around with completely new mechanisms, and put back the ones that were shown to work before Civ 4 messed them up; corruption and fixed governments.

 

[r_rolo1]

Tell me exactly why would you want to revert to a system that eats most of the production of city just because you have too many.......

I agree with most of what has been said here, but there is a thing I would like to add and that it my biggest peeve about civ IV military: you shouldn't be able to have a national army with more soldiers than the population of your empire ( mercenaries are a whole diferent deal ) . In fact a army being bigger than 10% of the pop of a country is a extrememly rare event in real life and it is perceived as highly militaristic .

 

[rysmiel]

Tell me exactly why would you want to revert to a system that eats most of the production of city just because you have too many.......

Because there are people who think that early success building too easily to later success is a problem. I am not sure I agree, just pointing out that if you do think this there are tried and successful mechanisms for implementing it.

The problem with corruption in Civ 3 is basically there not being enough ways of countering it; as a mechanism in and of itself, I think it's great. What it needs is more improvements to reduce it, and more advanced governments with less of it.

I agree with most of what has been said here, but there is a thing I would like to add and that it my biggest peeve about civ IV military: you shouldn't be able to have a national army with more soldiers than the population of your empire ( mercenaries are a whole diferent deal ) . In fact a army being bigger than 10% of the pop of a country is a extrememly rare event in real life and it is perceived as highly militaristic .

How are you counting here ? IIRC, a city with population 1 is meant to represent ten thousand people, and increase in size follows an exponential pattern so that you're up over a million people by the time you're into the late teens; how many people do you think of a unit as representing ?

 

[r_rolo1]

I'm counting as it appears in demographics. Soldiers ( every unit has a soldier count attached: a warrior counts as 2000 armed persons and a mechanized Infantry as 40000. There is a article in the Strategy guides that shows it all..... alternatively you can read the XML ) count vs Empire population. In OCC the soldier count beat easily the empire population and in late game wars it is not unlikely to see that too.

About corruption.... I don't think that a city production should be affected by the size of the empire directly ( or do you think that Geneve ( for a example ) would become less able of producing things just from switching from Switerland to France , for a real life example? ). In fact I don't have any objection to civ IV maintenance expect in the sense that buildings don't need maintenance ( either in terms of cash spent to maintain it and of physical materials, represented in Civ IV by coins and hammers respectively ). I'm pretty sure that if you needed to maintain the buildings in terms of hammers, the number of military units would automatically be downsized.....

 

[Churchill's Hat]

@rysmiel: The switching because of culture doesn't make sense. From what you're saying, had the Huns, Goths, Saxons, etc. invaded the Roman Empire in your game, they would have, surrounded by the culture of Rome, switched sides like that. This makes no historical sense, as there is little evidence of soldiers switching sides because of better culture in the other land.

Your second idea, with diplomats or spies bribing units to join the other side, makes some historical sense, but should be approached with caution for the sake of gameplay. The fact is, one "unit" counts as more than just 3 guys, and there should be a steep price to pay if you want them to join you. Furthermore, the odds should be worsened if they are experienced, well-equipped, have a greater presence in the area than you do or are part of a stack. Again, the prices and odds shouldn't be very appealing to the player unless it is a desperate situation. Also, you shouldn't be able to bribe units if you have no military presence there, as they will fear retribution. Finally, no bribing Great Generals!

 

[SirDrake]

Churchill's Hat - 3. Have a cap on units per tile. This will limit large city garrisons as well as make it more viable, from an attacking point of view, to have a multiple pronged attack.

They tried to weaken the power of "Stacks of Doom" already. From the Civ4 Info Center:

The fact that Artillery can attack all units in a stack forces players to spread out their forces to avoid damaging more units (artillery units can damage all units in a tile because of the collateral damage feature they have).


Obviously, they were seeking a "realistic" solution that altered the tactical value of large stacks, rather than forcing the issue. But it's far from perfect:

Firstly, a realistic implementation requires more units in play, not fewer. If you're defending against, say, two Macemen and a catapult, you're much better off with two Longbows than with one Longbow and a Catapult. But scale everything up by a factor of three: You're facing six Macemen and three Catapults. Now you might like to have five Longbows and a Catapult.

Secondly, the AI is too stoopid to realize that Catapults are great defensive units.

Thirdly, they implementation is sloppy. Collateral damage applies to a maximum of six units regardless of the stack size, and does not affect other siege engines. It would make more sense for collateral damage to increase as the stack gets bigger. For a stack size n, the number of collaterally-damaged units could be, say, 2^(n-4):

stack 2 = 25% chance of one collateral (or 0, depending on how it's programmed)
stack 3 = 50% chance of one collateral
stack 4 = 1 collateral
stack 5 = 2 collateral
stack 6 = 4 collateral
stack 7+ = all units damaged

Fourthly: Catapults? Trebuchet? I imagine the designers must have sat down and asked, "Well then, why is it bad for an army to get all bunched up?" "Because they're easier targets!" "Brilliant! Let's introduce collateral damage!"

But in regards to realism, they misapplied the rules of trench warfare and high-rate-of-fire bombardment to the weapons of antiquity. Sure you can load a Catapult with smaller shot (probably not a Trebuchet), but it doesn't gain anything close to the advantage against massed opponents that an archery unit does, to say nothing of a machine gun.

So the collateral damage and/or increased strength bonus gained from facing large stacks should favor ranged units with area effects and/or high rate of fire. Roughly in order: bombers, machine guns, infantry/tanks/mechs, fighters, archers/longbows, rifles, muskets, crossbows, catapults.


Fifthly: Collateral damage & defense are only half the story. Bunching up units makes it harder to attack, too.



And if all that is too complicated, there is a simpler solution:

Churchill's Hat - Have a cap on units per tile.



But the cap should be on the number of effective units per tile. If the cap is, say, four units per tile, imagine the howling frustration as you try to exchange units between two stacks of four. Instead, allow only four units to attack from a given tile per turn. Allow only four units to defend normally in a given tile in a turn -- for defense, the other units lose defensive bonuses and suffer -50% strength (if and only if four units already defended in that same round).

I can see that being rather cool. Imagine that you attack my monstrous stack of 10 units (axes & spears) with four swordsman. Each time, one of my axes kills your sword. Then you send in the chariots (from another tile, 'cause you spread out). Either the axemen have to defend with their inherent disadvantage, or the spears defend at -50% with no terrain bonus. I think that's realistic, too, because the axes had to come to the front ranks to face the swords (hence they are vulnerable) and the spears are stuck in the back, not given time to properly form ranks and take up positions.


Cheers,
Jason

 

[Churchill's Hat]

That does sound like a good solution, SirDrake, as the attacking/defending caps are much better than a singular unit cap. However, I now think there should still be a unit cap based on how many units can be supported on a single tile.

 

[SirDrake]

rysmiel - My suggestion here is not to go "off the board"... I mean Civ 1/2 type diplomat/spy units where when you move them onto the same square as an enemy unit you get the option to bribe that unit, as if it were an attack.

That sounds much better. I did not play any previous versions, so I am (was) unfamiliar with the diplomat function.

Spies that have to physically move, even invisibly, to attack a location-specific target (e.g., a tile improvement) are cool. I can defend with my own spy or improvements, counter with the same tactic, and make a pretty goood guess as to who sent them.


SD - Playing against an advantaged AI, you cannot produce equal culture and equal spy points and defend yourself from Alexander's advancing Phalanxes. Only by beating down the AI militarily can you overcome all three obstacles.

r - This is why I urge that culture be strengthened to the point where if Alexander puts his energies into a pile of phalanxes and builds no culture, and you focus on culture, you are going to flip half his cities and convert any of those phalanxes that spend any amount of time on your territory.

Of course, if that happened, we'd be complaining about stoopid AI.

But applying this to the human player, I think what we want are more opportunities for non-military strategies, and a stronger requirement for diversification within a mostly-militant strategy (i.e., build some culture).

One of the problems with the culture mechanism is temporal. I can build an effective military advantage over a fairly short time. The phalanxes that Alexander built 300 years ago aren't going to be much use against my rifles. More to the point, the phalanxes that Alexander expended in his war with Cyrus 300 years ago aren't even there.

Culture is different. In my current game, playing as England, I have a formerly-American city which I conquered about 100 turns ago (Marathon speed). The Culture is up to 300 that I generated. The Americans came and settled a new city 3 tiles away (just beyond my cultural border) and built up to 30 culture. One-tenth of mine. The result? All of the tiles halfway between the two cities flipped to the new American city.

Sid only knows how many wonders, shrines and artists it would take for me reclaim the big fat cross. On the other hand, it cost me two catapults to raze the new American city. Which option would you take?

So my first suggestion: Culture needs to decay over time. At least, the power of culture to influence tile control needs to decay in order for it to have the same game-changing status (for skilled players) as military.


The other problem: While the local culture of a border town should be the most important factor in determining control of local tiles, it should not be the only function of culture.

You can build a big army in your capital, at the heart of the empire, and send it off to a frontier war. But building culture in the interior is 100% worthless once you hit 30 for the BFC (and maybe one more level to access a resource in the corner).

So another idea: Make your empire's total and/or average culture a factor in every city.

For a given city "Somewhereville", allow it to exert a cultural influence on the tiles which it reaches under the current system. So let's say Somewhereville has 300 cutlure at Marathon speed, giving it a three-tile radius. It has zero influence beyond that, regardless of the empire's total culture. But within that radius, the weight of influence (the number which determines control) would be given by the formula:

square root [ (c * e) / t ]

where c = the culture of Somewhereville
t = the number of tiles away from Somewhereville
e = the average culture of your empire's three most cultured cities (using the empire's total would give too much advantage to huge empires; using the average would unfairly penalize you for building new settlements).

A geometric mean is easier to increase by increasing the smaller of the two numbers. I.e., you'll gain a lot more advantage locally by increasing the small, local culture number than by increasing the empire's culture (but the empire's culture is still a significant factor). It also means that a "culture bomb" won't be as effective if the rest of your empire has poor culture.

Influence with Somewhereville=300 and the average of top three cities = 1500:

1 tile away = 671
2 tiles away = 474
3 tiles away = 387
4 tiles away = 0


Influence with Somewhereville=300 and the top three average = 2700: (small benefit of increased culture in empire)

1 tile away = 900
2 tiles away = 636
3 tiles away = 520
4 tiles away = 0


Influence with Somewhereville=1500 and the top three average = 1500: (greater benefit for "catching up" with the border town)

1 tile away = 1500
2 tiles away = 1061
3 tiles away = 866
4 tiles away = 750


Influence with Somewhereville=4500 and top three average = 4500: (high-culture city with high-culture empire)

1 tile away = 4500
2 tiles away = 3182
3 tiles away = 2598
4 tiles away = 2250


Influence with Somewhereville=4500 and top three average = 2000: (culture bomb with underdeveloped empire)

1 tile away = 3000
2 tiles away = 2121
3 tiles away = 1732
4 tiles away = 1500


Also, culture should have some value for fringe coastal towns, isolated islands, et. al. Perhaps it could affect happiness and maintenance costs.



Cheers,
Jason

 

[rysmiel]

@rysmiel: The switching because of culture doesn't make sense. From what you're saying, had the Huns, Goths, Saxons, etc. invaded the Roman Empire in your game, they would have, surrounded by the culture of Rome, switched sides like that. This makes no historical sense, as there is little evidence of soldiers switching sides because of better culture in the other land.

This is an argument from realism. It does not to my mind have any direct connection to gameplay; I am proposing a gameplay solution to a gameplay problem.

Your second idea, with diplomats or spies bribing units to join the other side, makes some historical sense, but should be approached with caution for the sake of gameplay. The fact is, one "unit" counts as more than just 3 guys, and there should be a steep price to pay if you want them to join you.

Of course; on the other hand, one "gold" is not one guy's salary either. I think it should be possible to balance this workably.

Also, you shouldn't be able to bribe units if you have no military presence there, as they will fear retribution.

I think that should make them more expensive, but not impossibly so. I'm just noodling mechanisms where Alexander who spends a goodly chunk of the early game building phalanxes is solidly not guaranteed a win over people whose civs have specialised in other directions.

 

[rysmiel]

Spies that have to physically move, even invisibly, to attack a location-specific target (e.g., a tile improvement) are cool. I can defend with my own spy or improvements, counter with the same tactic, and make a pretty goood guess as to who sent them.

Or have counterspy units that can find that out for you.

But applying this to the human player, I think what we want are more opportunities for non-military strategies, and a stronger requirement for diversification within a mostly-militant strategy (i.e., build some culture).

That's exactly the perspective I am coming from.

Culture is different. In my current game, playing as England, I have a formerly-American city which I conquered about 100 turns ago (Marathon speed). The Culture is up to 300 that I generated. The Americans came and settled a new city 3 tiles away (just beyond my cultural border) and built up to 30 culture. One-tenth of mine. The result? All of the tiles halfway between the two cities flipped to the new American city.

As a balance issue, that strikes me as very much a problem.

So my first suggestion: Culture needs to decay over time. At least, the power of culture to influence tile control needs to decay in order for it to have the same game-changing status (for skilled players) as military.

I am disinclined to think so. It does not seem to address the problem of the case you just posted, if anything the other way round; to my mind, given a city of yours with 300 culture and a just-founded American city three squares away with, say, six squares overlap of fat cross with your culture boundary, that American city should be up there at a 15% to 20% chance of flipping per turn, and this chance should increase every turn depending on how much your culture increases and how much theirs does.

So another idea: Make your empire's total and/or average culture a factor in every city.

Agreed entirely, I like this a lot, as a general notion.

e = the average culture of your empire's three most cultured cities (using the empire's total would give too much advantage to huge empires; using the average would unfairly penalize you for building new settlements).

I don't agree here, though. I think the way to make this work is that it should lean primarily on the culture of your empire as a whole, but that the more expensive later buildings should produce exponentially more culture, so you get a whole heck of a lot more benefit out of piling up advanced cultural buildings in your core cities (that take a long time to build even there) than out of spamming temples in your newest size-1 outposts (which may never have time to build a later culture-heavy building). Your example numbers come out weighting entire empire's culture quite a bit less than i would like.

 

[Zeiter]

Here's an idea that would change how the military side of civ functions:

Treat food in the same way that gold is treated.

As it is now, military units cost gold for upkeep. They also cost more gold when they are outside of one's borders. All well and good. But they should cost food too (and more when outside of borders. Just as with gold, there should be a certain number of units for "free" that don't require food support (vassalage would increase this, logically, as the units would be assumed to provide food for themselves using their own manors and whatnot). Make each subsequent unit require 1 food for support (or even 2 if outside of borders, or even 3 if in enemy territory, or have it scale by distance). If necessary, you could increase the food yields of tiles or food specials or whatnot in order to balance things (or maybe change it so that citizens only require 1 food for support as well, such that a grassland farm could support 1 worker, 1 specialist, and 1 domestic military unit, or 1 worker and 1 unit abroad).

In this scheme, food would not go to individual cities. Instead, food--like gold--would be collected into one pot for the whole empire. The whole empire would have a value for food, such as 200 food consumed (100 pop ~ roughly 10 size-10 cities), and 260 food produced. Then let's say you have 40 food that you have to use to support military units (10 free units, 10 other units stationed within borders that require 1 food each, and then 15 units stationed outside of borders requiring 2 food each). That leaves you with 20 food. (20/200)*some factor factoring in empire-wide eexcess health*some factor factoring in empire-wide excess happiness = your empire-wide growth % per turn. This growth then gets assigned quasi-randomly, but preferentially to the cities in your empire that have the higher excess health and happiness values (this is where people in your empire would want to emigrate and reproduce). Thus, getting your empire to grow would mean having workers work farms anywhere in your empire that was connected to your trade network, but getting a particular city to grow would mean building theaters, aqueducts, etc.

Granaries would have to have a different function, such as +25% food harvested in this city or something. This food would then go to the general pot after getting multiplied---just like a market multiplies gold and then sends it to the general pot.

Furthermore, when building military units, both food and hammers are consumed in the same way that they are when workers and settlers are produced. So when building military units, that city doesn't contribute any food to the general pot.

This would put a soft limit on number of military units--a limit that one could stretch through certain types of city development and strategy. And it would have very little micromanagement---actually, less than is the case already, because food would not have to be managed at each individual city.

 

[Churchill's Hat]

This is an argument from realism. It does not to my mind have any direct connection to gameplay; I am proposing a gameplay solution to a gameplay problem.

I think that should make them more expensive, but not impossibly so. I'm just noodling mechanisms where Alexander who spends a goodly chunk of the early game building phalanxes is solidly not guaranteed a win over people whose civs have specialised in other directions.

I disagree with this. Unless they built adequate defenses and can marshal their forces, Alexander should be pretty much guaranteed a win against them. I'll use the following examples to prove my point. Besides, the non-military victory conditions (Space, Diplomacy, and Culture) all have inherent strengths in military.

Please note that in all of these scenarios, Washington is adequately prepared for Alexander's attack.

Scenario A: Alexander invades Washington, who is trying for a Diplomatic win. Washington, having very good friends, bribes and pays off other civs to dogpile Alexander. A world war ensues.

Scenario B: Alexander invades Washington, who is trying for a Culture Victory. Washington immediately switches to unit production, but meanwhile, his high culture cities stall Alexander's forces long enough for Washington to gain the upperhand (he is, after all, defending) and pushes Alexander back.

Scenario C: Alexander invades Washington, who is trying for a Space Race victory. Washington, who has been focusing on science, begins pumping out units and beelines to the next military tech. Gaining the upperhand on the (rather) backwards Alexander, his superior units stem Alexander's masses and push him back towards Greece.

Scenario D: Alexander attacks Mansa Musa, who has been ignoring his military most of the game. Alexander quickly overcomes Mansa Musa, and conquers him.

Will this happen all the time? Of course not. But war shouldn't be something that is shocking when it happens. The player (or AI) should know how to build up their defenses, and if they do, they have a chance to defeat the attacker. If not, then they will end up like poor Mansa in Scenario D rather than Washington in Scenarios A-C.