civ5 - to limit the number of military units

[rysmiel]

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

Treat food in the same way that gold is treated.

Units costing food. production, and/or happiness was taken out between Civ 2 and Civ 3 and presumably the designers had a good reason for it; I would be happy to see it back in, but not with an empire-wide food pot - that steps way too far away from city management towards whole-empire-level management. I would rather have units have home cities, which they cost food and shields and maybe happiness, and cost money at a whole-empire level.

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.

Not everyone considers reducing micromamangement a good thing.

 

[rysmiel]

I disagree with this. Unless they built adequate defenses and can marshal their forces, Alexander should be pretty much guaranteed a win against them.

Despite what you say here, I think we are essentially in agreement in the examples you give.

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.

I agree that all of these should work. (And also an option where Washington builds his economy up to the point where his response to Alexander's army is to bribe two-thirds of them to wipe out the other third and then go back to take a few of their home cities.) I'm just concerned that culture in option B should be strong enough to be used aggressively rather than just defensively. I am also concerned that all these options (except maybe the diplomatic) work well against a military-focused opponent early in the game.

 

[Churchill's Hat]

Culture is actually the best path against a military-focused opponent in the early game, as cultural cities get defense bonuses. Adding an option where culture flips units destroys the Civ military system, as all you do is declare war on a less cultured Civilization and you receive they're military units with little effort on your part. The bribing and culture flipping can be abused too easily (declare war on someone, then steal their units) if it is in a game. Also, bribing, while realistic, cannot be anywhere near 2/3 of an army (maybe a couple of low leveled units) as its not fair to Alexander to build up an enormous stack and then lose some of his cities because of said stack.

 

[rysmiel]

Culture is actually the best path against a military-focused opponent in the early game, as cultural cities get defense bonuses. Adding an option where culture flips units destroys the Civ military system, as all you do is declare war on a less cultured Civilization and you receive they're military units with little effort on your part.

It would have to be balanced, but I am thinking culture should a) only affect units on someone else's ground, and b) should depends partly on whole empire culture and partly on nearby city culture; if you want a guranateed win over another civilisation you'd have to both outbuild their military and outculture them, which should be hard enough that if you can do it you deserve to win.

The bribing and culture flipping can be abused too easily (declare war on someone, then steal their units) if it is in a game. Also, bribing, while realistic, cannot be anywhere near 2/3 of an army (maybe a couple of low leveled units) as its not fair to Alexander to build up an enormous stack and then lose some of his cities because of said stack.

Why not ? He's chosen to put his money/productivity into stacks rather than into city defence at some other level. Every strategy should come with weak points. Every choice should have a cost and a benefit. The underlying objective of my thinking here is that a military-focused strategy has way too little cost for the benefits it gives.

I don't see "declare war with someone then steal their units" as a broken mechanic if it is balanced right. For one thing, it would seem straightforward to balance how much bribery costs to prevent that being all that effective; even Civ 1 and 2 managed to balance the bribery cost depending on how close the enemy unit is to your cities and how far from their own so that a campaign of aggressive bribery is much harder than defensively bribing an invading force.

 

[Churchill's Hat]

When you DoW on someone with a stack, they attack you. You can simply wait for their hordes to come and steal them with your culture to gain a military advantage without much work. Secondly, the disadvantage of a military strategy is that it takes much less to defend then it does to attack. Implementing something such as the need for logistics or supplies is much more historical than armies switching sides and would be a much better solution if you feel this is a problem.

 

[rysmiel]

When you DoW on someone with a stack, they attack you. You can simply wait for their hordes to come and steal them with your culture to gain a military advantage without much work.

It's not "without much work" if you have to put a lot of work into the culture in the first place, is my point.

 

[Churchill's Hat]

Yes, but you can do it again and again with the same amount of work.

 

[rysmiel]

Yes, but you can do it again and again with the same amount of work.

What makes you think that has to be the case ?

Picture it this way. Civ A has built a few temples. Civ B sends a handful of archers to invade Civ A in the hopes of getting lucky early. They fail Civ A gets the archers.

This does not necessarily have to mean that if Civ A quits with the culture and focuses on other things, Civ B can't hit them again with a dozen legions or two dozen knights when Civ B is bigger and better cultured and have a much higher chance of success. That much is balancing/implementation details, not flaws with the basic idea. If Civ A wants to keep off the knights with culture, they'd better get cracking on some cathedrals, and again that's productivity not going in other directions.

 

[Churchill's Hat]

Picture this: Civ A captures Civ B's capital. Civ B sends a strike force into Civ A's territory, but they promptly flip to Civ A. Now Civ A is even more powerful.

Also, if you're going for a culture victory, you shouldn't have a powerful military without effort that you would use for culture regardless! In order to beat a culture victory, you have to attack the person who's going for culture (just as with diplo, space race, conquest and sometimes domination). You can't do this if your units immediately flip to the person who's going for culture.

 

[rysmiel]

Also, if you're going for a culture victory, you shouldn't have a powerful military without effort that you would use for culture regardless! In order to beat a culture victory, you have to attack the person who's going for culture (just as with diplo, space race, conquest and sometimes domination)

Why should you have to attack them with your military, though ? That just puts us right back to military trumping everything else, which is what I am trying to get away from here.

You can't do this if your units immediately flip to the person who's going for culture.

So you balance some other way of doing it instead. Like bribing their cities to join you.

 

[Naokaukodem]

Military trumping everything else is plenty realistic.

 

[Churchill's Hat]

Why should you have to attack them with your military, though ? That just puts us right back to military trumping everything else, which is what I am trying to get away from here.

Yes. That is a great idea. Since when in history does the English army fight for England? What's that about?

Anyway, your idea is completely unhistorical in a game based on history. It doesn't make sense, and there are many other ways that are historical to help limit the power of military.

 

[dguichar]

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).

Great way to attach food to military support. Did you ever played Master of magic?

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.

...because in that game city growth, though is based in food production, has a lot more factors involved on it

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.

That's exactly what a granary does in Master of magic, increasing food harvest. Though there's nothing random on city growth, many food-related building increase food harvest and city growth.

There's a general pot and if by the end of turn there's a negative food reserve, a pop-up appears notifying that some units will die of hunger. Then you can turn some workers into farmers and fix the problem or, if it's necessary for the strategy, let them die. If this happens before the end of your turn, specially when a city is conquered, there's no time to turn workers into farmers... they just die.

Of course in Master of magic there was an extra resource for supporting unit: raw magic. So manteinance goes on food/gold/magic, by replacing magic for "military training" then the system will perfectly fit in Civ 4.

 

[rysmiel]

Military trumping everything else is plenty realistic.

And if realism pulls against balanced gameplay, realism can go get stuffed.

 

[Naokaukodem]

And if realism pulls against balanced gameplay, realism can go get stuffed.

It is not a question to pull against balanced gameplay. Conquests have always been the mean to build big empires in reality. Put this in the game does not denaturate it. I personnally think that culture conquest is stupid, fortunatelly this barely never happens in the game. A city can fall into revolution for a certain amount of time but will nearly never fall under your control. That's a good thing.

 

[Churchill's Hat]

And if realism pulls against balanced gameplay, realism can go get stuffed.

And if rysmiel's ideas go against realism, rysmiel can go get stuffed.

If gameplay isn't balanced (in your opinion) find a realistic approach.

A conversation that never happened, should happen or will happen:
"My king! We started next to Montezuma!"
"Quick! Build culture! Only that can defend us!"
"What about Axem-- ?"
"No! Culture!"

 

[Skallagrimson]

Military trumping everything else is plenty realistic.

True, so what is it that prevents military trumping in real life?

a) POPULATION limits the number of units that can be built (not "production"). Staffing a unit needs to cost population. Period. End of. If you spam units, you obliterate your empire's population. That would make warmongering a more severe choice, with greater economic consequences than in current Civ4.

b) WAR WEARY limits the level of activity your armies can engage in. Civ4's representation of this is.... close enough for now.

c) DIPLOMACY limits how much warmongering you can get away with before all other civs unite against you (e.g., WWII versus Hitler). Just a few minor tweaks to Civ's diplomacy engine would be sufficient to reflect that reality.

d) LOGISTICS limit how far your units can travel, how fast, at what cost. This needs greater verisimilitude in Civ, far greater. A gigantic "stack of doom" without any ghost of a prayer of real supply lines feeding them, is all too common in present Civ. There's a reason why Napoleon lost Moscow, and that's not reflected in the game engine today.

e) INSURGENCY limits how productive conquered land will be once you conquer it. Civ's current game mechanic of "resistance" is... close enough I suppose.

 

[rysmiel]

It is not a question to pull against balanced gameplay.

It is if the only way to get to any victory condition is to go a-conquering; to my mind this is an ongoing problem with every Civ game so far. Gameplay is not balanced if a single element has to be core to any successful strategy.

 

[rysmiel]

If gameplay isn't balanced (in your opinion) find a realistic approach.

Why ?

Seriously, I do not get this emphasis on "realism", considering how many other aspects of the game are simplifying reality to make the game playable. If what you want is a one-for-one exactly accurate simulation, of, say, doing all the logistical management for World War II, then I doubt that's going to be playable in anything resembling a reasonable amount of time; if what you are willing to accept is anything less than that, then you have already acknowledged that playability is more important than "realism", so could you stop harping on about realism and talk about this idea in gameplay terms ?

 

[Skallagrimson]

Role-playing FDR realistically in WWII would be playable, but not with micromanagement. Your decisions would have to be higher-level, and restricted to broader vistas of diplomacy, politics among your chief generals, and internal politics. It wouldn't be as much fun as war gamers would anticipate, which is why they don't make games like that.