civ5 - to limit the number of military units

[Churchill's Hat]

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 ?

Simplified isn't the same as let's go invent something illogical and ahistorical which at best screws Space Race and Diplomacy victories, and makes Cultural victories about nothing but culture. I'm not going for a simulation, I'm going for a balance between gameplay and realism. When neither needs to be sacrificed, neither should be sacrificed.

@Skallagrimson: I agree with you on Logistics, War Weariness, and Diplomacy. However, insurgency isn't always the case (West Germany after WWII) and sometimes it is stronger than others (Iraq). Secondly, military is tied to both production (how many weapons you can produce) and population, but coming up with a system that would work for each and fit the numbers on the demographics chart (military) and the city screen (population) would be incredibly complicated and hard to implement.

 

[Naokaukodem]

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.

I absolutelly agree here. I am for any unit to consum a pop point. Now that would be a big argument in favor of upgrading!

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

Agreed. War weariness is still too contraignant for me. There should also have war happiness, maybe according to early civics, for populations for which the war is an important part of culture.

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.

I think AI civ ganging against you is nearly already the case in Civ4! I hate when that happens. Just build more units to earn their respect. However, i think there should be bad moves allowed that give you instant benefits and negative bonuses in diplomacy. Slaving is a perfect example for that. It should give modifiers to foreign AIs. You could also have a extermination camp (not labelled as it), giving your city 100% or 50% more productivity. You also have the option to perpetrate crimes against humanity, in order to calm a revolt for example. Using gases against your population (Saddam Hussein), calming the revolt but giving you modifiers with the AIs.

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.

I think logistics is already represented in the game, by it costs gold. But it's maybe not enough represented. There, i can't imagine a good system that would avoid micro management but be still representative.

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.

You should be able to force some of the population to migrate in order to reduce this insurgency.

 

[Skallagrimson]

I absolutelly agree here. I am for any unit to consum a pop point. Now that would be a big argument in favor of upgrading!

In my view an "upgrade" should simply represent the cost of purchasing weapons and equipment on the open market for the troops in a refitting sort of exercise. Or if weapons have been built by one or more cities of the empire, simply decomission the old weapons, assign the new weapons, and the unit is "upgraded" (although there may need to be a training requirement to teach macemen how to use rifles, etc.)

Agreed. War weariness is still too contraignant for me. There should also have war happiness, maybe according to early civics, for populations for which the war is an important part of culture.

War happiness is a big gap that needs to be fixed. Some populations really WANT to be at war with certain other populations, and will even get angry if no war materializes. If you are the leader of the Palestinians, try telling your people you've made peace with Israel!!!

I think AI civ ganging against you is nearly already the case in Civ4! I hate when that happens. Just build more units to earn their respect.

It's the way they do it that's a problem. In present civ they ONLY dogpile on you if they think you're "weak". In real life nations will also dogpile if many consider you a threat to the entire world. Real life stability and peace comes from being "strong yet not too much of a threat".

However, i think there should be bad moves allowed that give you instant benefits and negative bonuses in diplomacy. Slaving is a perfect example for that. It should give modifiers to foreign AIs. You could also have a extermination camp (not labelled as it), giving your city 100% or 50% more productivity. You also have the option to perpetrate crimes against humanity, in order to calm a revolt for example. Using gases against your population (Saddam Hussein), calming the revolt but giving you modifiers with the AIs.

I think civics should be a big driver of that. Nations in emancipation, representation, universal sufferage, and/or free speech, should all take a dim view of slave-whipping (or SUPER-slave-whipping by way of modern concentration camps or "ethnic cleansing" programs), and yes, there should be diplomatic effects among those AIs. "We consider you a villain" with, say, -4 on the diplo screen. But then AIs that are Police State or Hereditary Rule, etc., wouldn't care as much about that.

I think logistics is already represented in the game, by it costs gold. But it's maybe not enough represented. There, i can't imagine a good system that would avoid micro management but be still representative.

There should be a gold cost, a food cost, and a requirement that supply lines be open. When supply lines are cut off, the gold and food costs are gone because they can't GET to the units that are cut off, but then the morale and health of the troops degrade due to being cut off.

This also ties in with the need for a general imperial food supply to be fed by a "food supply specialist", from higher-food cities, into a national "pool" of food. Some would be siphoned off for supporting troops on the march, and some can be applied to food-poor cities for tile work or specialists or growth.

You should be able to force some of the population to migrate in order to reduce this insurgency.

Building settlers represents some of that, and whipping represents it in a different way, but I think slavery is better represented by way of slave specialists. And any slaves within a city should be transportable to other cities, which could represent a "forced migration" with a lot of unhappy citizens to deal with.

 

[Naokaukodem]

In my view an "upgrade" should simply represent the cost of purchasing weapons and equipment on the open market for the troops in a refitting sort of exercise. Or if weapons have been built by one or more cities of the empire, simply decomission the old weapons, assign the new weapons, and the unit is "upgraded" (although there may need to be a training requirement to teach macemen how to use rifles, etc.)

You are telling that upgrading could be made without gold? It seems to be a good idea. You just build the equipment and weapons, that are stocked in a national reserve, and when you upgrade, the reserve empty itself. If you don't have any weapon or equipement in the reserve, upgrades cost gold. The things would however begin to complicate if you want to upgrade units in different type of other units, for example maces and pikes into riflemen, cavalry, machine guns, grenadiers, canons, etc... one would need a permanent displaying on main screen on every types of equipement you already have, and you would have to count how many canon you want out of your old units, the same for cavalry, canon, grenadiers, etc... For example if you 39 maces and 18 pikes, you would have to spread among those 39 maces how many you want to convert into riflemen, and among those 18 pikes how many you want to convert to riflemen also. It would take a bit of processing, but i imagine that would be feasable.

War happiness is a big gap that needs to be fixed. Some populations really WANT to be at war with certain other populations, and will even get angry if no war materializes. If you are the leader of the Palestinians, try telling your people you've made peace with Israel!!!

I'm not sure palestinian against jews is a good comparison. I would rather employ the comparison with for example zulus, that have a small community warmongering mentality. Maybe that it would be funny to put with the trait Agressive some notion of happiness in a war, so that when you are in multiplayer with Shaka, you know FOR SURE that he will declare war on you if you are near of him. A bit exagerated maybe.

It's the way they do it that's a problem. In present civ they ONLY dogpile on you if they think you're "weak". In real life nations will also dogpile if many consider you a threat to the entire world. Real life stability and peace comes from being "strong yet not too much of a threat".

I think they can dogpile even if you are strong in Civ4. They simply see you as a threat for victory. It is logical, but when that falls on you, it's raging. AI should rather play as if they were real nations, not nations into a game, because fatally they unite themselves against the only human there is, YOU. We are in 2009, and AI already wants to take over the human world! I think the best would be to respect more the modifiers, and scrap those silly demands as Construction against Polytheism, or those negative modifiers due to arrogant demands. Well, something more serious.

I think civics should be a big driver of that. Nations in emancipation, representation, universal sufferage, and/or free speech, should all take a dim view of slave-whipping (or SUPER-slave-whipping by way of modern concentration camps or "ethnic cleansing" programs), and yes, there should be diplomatic effects among those AIs. "We consider you a villain" with, say, -4 on the diplo screen. But then AIs that are Police State or Hereditary Rule, etc., wouldn't care as much about that.

Differencies in civics should play a role whether the AIs can help themselves, be integrated in a new empire (example: European Union), but not a decisive factor for going to war with them. However, modifiers due to slaving, camps, and crimes against humanity should be factors for the others civs to gang up against us. Talking about modifiers, I would even scrap them entirely. Nations should enter in war only if they find a politic interest to that. Be it communism against liberalism (Vietnam) (different from "you don't have the same civics as us *moan moan*), ressources (Gulf Wars), preventive wars (Iraq), terrorism (Afganistan), expansionist/militaristic civ (Rome), religious (Arabs), etc... Now, I don't think a system of modifiers would do the job. It's more case by case. And about ganging up, i think this should rarely happen, due to the difficulty the real nation have to understand themselves and have different objectives. This could happen only in civil wars, through alliances, when differents cities fall to have the same temporary objectives: fight against the stronger and same geographical foe.

There should be a gold cost, a food cost, and a requirement that supply lines be open. When supply lines are cut off, the gold and food costs are gone because they can't GET to the units that are cut off, but then the morale and health of the troops degrade due to being cut off.

I'm not sure that if units costs 1 pop point each, it would be wise to attach 1 or 2 foods to them. It could be done for sure. Maybe, I don't know. About supplies, most of the armies of ancient eras provided their food on enemy land. So if the supply line is cut off, that would not change anything, because armies can pillage and get their food on the conquered land. Probably that not implementing supply line would do the job. More, example of supply lines cutted in History are not so numerous, they have a limited impact on wars.

This also ties in with the need for a general imperial food supply to be fed by a "food supply specialist", from higher-food cities, into a national "pool" of food. Some would be siphoned off for supporting troops on the march, and some can be applied to food-poor cities for tile work or specialists or growth.

That would add some complexity and micro management to the game, for an incertain result IMO. You would need a new interface so you can tell x city is taking food from the national food pool. For what result? I have difficulties to see it. What I would prefer to see is the ability to plant known vegetables or raise known animals anywhere.

Building settlers represents some of that, and whipping represents it in a different way, but I think slavery is better represented by way of slave specialists. And any slaves within a city should be transportable to other cities, which could represent a "forced migration" with a lot of unhappy citizens to deal with.

But what would be the characteristics of such specialists? Costing only one food? What else?

 

[SirDrake]

...a one-for-one exactly accurate simulation...

Arguably, that would not be a simulation, but a re-creation of reality itself. But we'll leave that to the philosophers.

If what you want is... the logistical management for World War II, then I doubt that's going to be playable in anything resembling a reasonable amount of time...

It'd be pretty boring, too, sitting here for hours on end clicking on the mouse to install rivets. Although it might be fun when Paris is liberated and the local ladies show their gratitude... then again, that might bump the game rating beyond that accessible to some younger players.

I do not get this emphasis on "realism", considering how many other aspects of the game are simplifying reality to make the game playable.

Consider the following values given for pi:

83.761234701276010236 = very precise, not accurate
3.14 = not so precise, much more accurate

As with precision and accuracy, there is a difference in the quality of a simulation between realism and detail. If I had to order each musketman to load his gun prior to an attack, that would increase the precision while adding nothing to the realism. But if the game required Flight as a prerequisite technology for the Apollo Program, that would increase the realism without adding any (significant) detail.

...if what you are willing to accept is anything less than that, then you have already acknowledged that playability is more important than "realism"

I do agree that playability merits compromising realism. However, this being a simulation, a degree of realism enhances playability.

Imagine if Workers, Settlers, and military units all walked on water, where cities were built amidst floating resources, and only boats could enter land tiles. Imagine if Infantry had a strength of 3, Archery were a prerequisite to build factories, and the most powerful unit in the game were the Chariot (available with Divine Right; requires Bananas).

All of this could be achieved with a few judicious swaps in the XML files, and without changing the underlying gameplay one iota. But all realism would be lost, the game would be counterintuitive, and it would generally stink. Gameplay would suffer.

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.

A bit more arguing, then I'll actually try to be helpful:

Does military trump everything else? My perspective is this: It is powerful, useful, and-- if you want to survive-- required. If you are attacked militarily, your defense must absolutely involve military units.

But compare it to other core aspects of the game. You must build workers, you must build cities, you must improve tiles, and you must research new technologies.

Perhaps you don't absolutely have to build wonders, culture, and spy points, but you'll be in dire straits without a minimal degree of each.

Now consider this: If I settle my region and improve my tiles intelligently, I get more productive cities. The additional hammers will let me out-produce a militant rival who neglects these details (I will have more units). So city and tile management "trumps" military.

Or: If I research wisely, build +% buildings, and leverage my traits (more cities with an Organized leader, cottages with Financial, etc.), then I will out-tech a militant rival who neglects these details. Montezuma's massed Jaguars will die en masse at the barrels of a handful of Riflemen. So tech "trumps" military.

Similarly (although I've never been as good at this): If I have an Espionage advantage, I can instigate revolt, steal technologies, gain significant advance notice of unit types and positions, and even sabotage my rival's strategic resources. Espionage can "trump" military.

But wait! you say, if I may so rudely put words in your mouth, each of these processes still terminates in the use of military units. True enough. But that is how all the core aspects of gameplay function. I say again: All of the core gameplay aspects affect each other, so that the successful use of one leads to the success of another.

I might research Music with the goal of winning a cultural victory. The technology makes it possible, but I cannot neglect the building of cathedrals.

I might go to war to expand my empire with the ultimate goal of winning a space race victory. The conquered cities make it possible (providing more and ), but I cannot neglect actually doing the research and building the spaceship.

I might vassalize a lukewarm rival and eliminate a hateful rival with the ultimate goal of a diplomatic victory. Military action makes it possible by shifting the balance of rival populations in my favor. But I cannot neglect building the Apostolic Palace, spreading my religion, and calling for votes.


Conquest & Domination Victories
The exceptions to the rule, these victory conditions combine the means (conquest) and ends (conquest). Frankly, I do not like them as they are. At the least, they should be considered "abnormal" game options (like 'Always War' or a modern-era start) instead of being the standard default (which they unfortunately are for HoF and GotM).


Culture
The exception to the other rule. Building, teching, spying, expanding and fighting all provide "universal" benefits. I.e., success in one aspect improves your situation in the others. Not so with culture, and I think this is one of your complaints. If so, I fully agree. There are many reasons for this problem, but I'll reiterate what I think is the most significant one: A city's culture provides no benefit to the rest of the empire; thus specialization is irrelevant and interior culture is worthless.

War happiness is a big gap that needs to be fixed. Some populations really WANT to be at war with certain other populations, and will even get angry if no war materializes. If you are the leader of the Palestinians, try telling your people you've made peace with Israel!!!

Excellent point! I rather think that the same attitude modifiers used by the AI should be visible and relevant for the human player: They would represent your populace's attitude toward those rival civs, and if the attitude is sufficiently negative you should acquire happiness by starting a war (or suffer unhappiness for avoiding one).


Cheers,
Jason

 

[Skallagrimson]

The things would however begin to complicate if you want to upgrade units in different type of other units, for example maces and pikes into riflemen, cavalry, machine guns, grenadiers, canons, etc...

IMO that's a training requirement. Put the units in a training queue for x number of turns, with their new weapons. OR they go to 0 XP and lose previous promotions.

one would need a permanent displaying on main screen on every types of equipement you already have, and you would have to count how many canon you want out of your old units, the same for cavalry, canon, grenadiers, etc... For example if you 39 maces and 18 pikes, you would have to spread among those 39 maces how many you want to convert into riflemen, and among those 18 pikes how many you want to convert to riflemen also. It would take a bit of processing, but i imagine that would be feasable.

Production queues could either be based on "build enough weapons to outfit 1 unit" and take n number of turns, or "just build weapons and accumulate them in the armory" and then deplete n number of the weapons whenever you commission a unit of that type.

I think the best would be to respect more the modifiers, and scrap those silly demands as Construction against Polytheism, or those negative modifiers due to arrogant demands. Well, something more serious.

Real nations make arrogant demands, but it's usually not for technologies. It's usually for resources or for a better alignment of borders. Or things like "stop your nuclear program".

I'm not sure that if units costs 1 pop point each, it would be wise to attach 1 or 2 foods to them. It could be done for sure. Maybe, I don't know.

Troops in reality are like a "specialist". They're military specialists which bring, instead of beakers or hammers or gold, military power. I'd be willing to cost them at 1 food and 1 gold maintenance as army food isn't necessarily "top quality" compared to the sumptuous meal a highly prized engineer, et al., might eat. This should come from an imperial food pool though, rather than a city pool.

About supplies, most of the armies of ancient eras provided their food on enemy land.

Supplemented, perhaps, although in Civ right now this is partially represented by "pillaging", although really pillages should match what it is the army is pillaging. If they pillage a farm, the yield should be however much food the farm would have yielded that turn. Hammers for a mine. Coins for a town, etc.

So if the supply line is cut off, that would not change anything, because armies can pillage and get their food on the conquered land.

You should ask Napoleon how that turned out for him in Russia.

That would add some complexity and micro management to the game, for an incertain result IMO. You would need a new interface so you can tell x city is taking food from the national food pool. For what result? I have difficulties to see it. What I would prefer to see is the ability to plant known vegetables or raise known animals anywhere.

Terrain transformation was an option in Civ2 and they took that away.

As for complexity and how to see if a city is eating food, just reflect it similarly to how it's reflected right now, but maybe add a new number to it. Instead of "24/20" to show it's yielding 24 and eating 20, show "(20+4)/20" to show it's yielding 20, drawing 4 from the national food pool, and eating 20.

But what would be the characteristics of such specialists? Costing only one food? What else?

Food pool specialists would just assign some of a city's food to the national food pool.

Slave specialists would be a more realistic way to represent slavery: 1 food cost, 1 hammer yield.

 

[Rusty Edge]

What do you think about the Sid's Colonization approach to fat cross management/ military/workers?

 

[rysmiel]

You are telling that upgrading could be made without gold? It seems to be a good idea. You just build the equipment and weapons, that are stocked in a national reserve, and when you upgrade, the reserve empty itself. If you don't have any weapon or equipement in the reserve, upgrades cost gold.

I'm not seeing clearly how "either build the weapons so the units can upgrade or pay for them" is going to be all that strategically different from "either build upgraded units or pay to have them upgraded"; it will still take a certain amount of time after you get the tech that lets you build muskets/musketeers respectively, and having a pile of muskets sitting arround waiting to be picked up and having a barracks sitting there waiting for units to go there seem more or less equivalent. Unless one wants to enable delivering msuskets to units in the field to upgraded them, which I think I would like particularly if you could steal a shipment of muskets, but which I suppose many people here will go "eeewww micromanagement" at.

The things would however begin to complicate if you want to upgrade units in different type of other units, for example maces and pikes into riflemen, cavalry, machine guns, grenadiers, canons, etc...

I am kind of hoping Civ 5 will untangle and linearise the upgrade paths, actually.

Maybe that it would be funny to put with the trait Agressive some notion of happiness in a war, so that when you are in multiplayer with Shaka, you know FOR SURE that he will declare war on you if you are near of him. A bit exagerated maybe.

I like this notiuon, though.

I think they can dogpile even if you are strong in Civ4. They simply see you as a threat for victory. It is logical, but when that falls on you, it's raging. AI should rather play as if they were real nations, not nations into a game, because fatally they unite themselves against the only human there is, YOU.

I think that's a sensible response only when you're actually clearly winning, and if you've not been snesible enough diplomatically to keep them from doing it.

I'm not sure that if units costs 1 pop point each, it would be wise to attach 1 or 2 foods to them.

I think attaching food consumption is a better plan than making them cost population, though. (Apart from settlers and workers). It allows their effect on a city to scale more as the game progresses.

in re slaves:

But what would be the characteristics of such specialists? Costing only one food? What else?

If I were designing it ? They work somewhat harder than your average ancient citizen, but your average medieval/industrial citizen is a LOT more productive than either (so they are woth having in early game but become economically unfeasible later on); they have an increased chance of going into revolt if your city's happiness slips, or need more happiness to keep them working than regular citizens; they need a minimum number of units present as military police of they will revolt. And you'd need a mechanism for emacipating them, which should be either slow and difficult or quick but risk chaos.

 

[Naokaukodem]

IMO that's a training requirement. Put the units in a training queue for x number of turns, with their new weapons. OR they go to 0 XP and lose previous promotions.

No! A training queue would be too much micromanagement, first. Second, the gold spent into upgrades reflects that time cost. It's already in the game!

Production queues could either be based on "build enough weapons to outfit 1 unit" and take n number of turns, or "just build weapons and accumulate them in the armory" and then deplete n number of the weapons whenever you commission a unit of that type.

... And no! Too much micromanagement also. Plus, you missed my point. The problem with the "just build weapons and accumulate them in the armory" is that you should know precisely how many weapon of each type you have to build. If out of your 39 maces you want 20 riflemen, 10 grenadiers and 9 canons, you should build out 20 riflemen equipments, 10 grenadiers ones and 9 canons ones, and no more. How could you check such a thing without going in a second screen every turn? And also, you would have to do the maths in order to determine how many units of each type you want. That's just too contraignant, especially on huge maps. (with plenty units)

Again, nowadays upgrading is doing the things well. Gold versus better equipment. The only minus is that you actually can't upgrade a mace in cav. That should be possible in civ 5, as long as you have the necessary ressources.

Also, depleting a pop point for every unit is not that wise, first because you couln't build any unit with cities 1 size, second because there might be a reminder each unit you create about how really you want to "kill" a pop of your city. That would make the building painfull. The best I see is to attach two foods to any military units AND to allow the construction of rice, corn, wheet farms everywhere if you have the prerequirements (aka a former source of those), the same with animal, including horses, but obviously not iron or copper.

Real nations make arrogant demands, but it's usually not for technologies. It's usually for resources or for a better alignment of borders. Or things like "stop your nuclear program".

Real peacefull nations propose deals that are largely discussed. (oil in reality)They do not propose ridiculous "deals" that take the form of ultimatums. Or they do it according to their real positions, in the sort of a deal will be acceptable by the two sides in the state of the things in this era.

Troops in reality are like a "specialist". They're military specialists which bring, instead of beakers or hammers or gold, military power. I'd be willing to cost them at 1 food and 1 gold maintenance as army food isn't necessarily "top quality" compared to the sumptuous meal a highly prized engineer, et al., might eat. This should come from an imperial food pool though, rather than a city pool.

So how would you them to be able to quit their cities?

Supplemented, perhaps, although in Civ right now this is partially represented by "pillaging", although really pillages should match what it is the army is pillaging. If they pillage a farm, the yield should be however much food the farm would have yielded that turn. Hammers for a mine. Coins for a town, etc.

Pillaging only gold is a mean to simplificate things. If we were to pillage hammers (?), how would those serve us? Same for food. How many food tiles would you have to pillage in order to maintain your army alive?

You should ask Napoleon how that turned out for him in Russia.

Unfortunately, Napoleon is dead, so that i can't demand him anything. :/

Terrain transformation was an option in Civ2 and they took that away.

It's not terrain transformation. It's ressource spreading.

Food pool specialists would just assign some of a city's food to the national food pool.

Why not? But most importantly: why?

Slave specialists would be a more realistic way to represent slavery: 1 food cost, 1 hammer yield.

When i fail to see the usefullness of any specialist, i fail to this the usefullness of a so weak slave specialist.

I think slaving the way it is could easilly represent the modifiers to other civs, first with the civics, second with the actual use of slaving.

 

[rysmiel]

... And no! Too much micromanagement also. Plus, you missed my point. The problem with the "just build weapons and accumulate them in the armory" is that you should know precisely how many weapon of each type you have to build. If out of your 39 maces you want 20 riflemen, 10 grenadiers and 9 canons, you should build out 20 riflemen equipments, 10 grenadiers ones and 9 canons ones, and no more. How could you check such a thing without going in a second screen every turn?

Go into your normal build list, say "build 20 rifles, 10 sets of grenades, and 9 cannons", and let it sit there buliding them until it's done.

And also, you would have to do the maths in order to determine how many units of each type you want.

Or you could build some extra and pick what you upgrade to depending on what you need, because the strategic situation might just change between the time you start that build queue and the time it finishes.

Also, depleting a pop point for every unit is not that wise, first because you couln't build any unit with cities 1 size,

This becomes less of an issue if you can pump your population early with slaves, though.

When i fail to see the usefullness of any specialist, i fail to this the usefullness of a so weak slave specialist.

I envision this fitting together as something like the CtP model. You make your slaver unit - who like a diplomat or a spy does not cost anything in upkeep or population, though is expensive to create. This unit can enslave workers, and possibly also weaker warriors - you'd want an effective attack equal to, say, an archer, but no defence. The slaver is invisible to the enemy except when attacking; so if it attacks and fails (against any unit with actual defence there's a chance) it is vulnerable the next turn. A successfully enslaved unit can be kept in the field - as a weaker version of the original unit, like a conscript or captured barbarian, perhaps - or sent back to your city and added to its population, so that next time you build a regular unit, you have an extra population point to put into it.

As I say above, I don't think a slave member of a city population should be notably weak in the ancient era. I think that as the productivity of each square around the city increases, though, as you work on them and develop them, there should be a fixed cap on how much a square worked by a slave can produce so that slaves become increasingly uneconomic as non-slave workers become more productive.

I don't think this overpowers the slaver, particularly if a) regular units upgrade their defence regularly so a slaver has very little chance of taking anything but a very weak military unit (unless of course you have a slaver upgrade path, and even that should run out fairly early, and anyway they should be expensive) and possibly also b) if enslaving a military unit used up the slaver.

The biggest difference this makes is that barbarians become resources to be enslaved. Come to think if it, you could do something similar with an animal trainer unit if you wanted to be able to tame wild animals.

(Edited for clarity and also because I can actually spell at least some of the time, honest.)

 

[Naokaukodem]

Go into your normal build list, say "build 20 rifles, 10 sets of grenades, and 9 cannons", and let it sit there buliding them until it's done.

So you will have all the 39 maces upgraded by only one city?

Or you could build some extra and pick what you upgrade to depending on what you need, because the strategic situation might just change between the time you start that build queue and the time it finishes.

Extras would be a loss of efficiency, as when you have 152 maces, 40 pikes, 50 catapults, you will not have more the time you can build riflemen, grenadiers and canons. You just can't allow yourself to build 50 more equipment in your 20 cities than you need.

This becomes less of an issue if you can pump your population early with slaves, though.

With your idea of enslaving, you can't enslave units early.

I envision this fitting together as something like the CtP model. You make your slaver unit - who like a diplomat or a spy does not cost anything in upkeep or population, though is expensive to create. This unit can enslave workers, and possibly also weaker warriors - you'd want an effective attack equal to, say, an archer, but no defence. The slaver is invisible to the enemy except when attacking; so if it attacks and fails (against any unit with actual defence there's a chance) it is vulnerable the next turn. A successfully enslaved unit can be kept in the field - as a weaker version of the original unit, like a conscript or captured barbarian, perhaps - or sent back to your city and added to its population, so that next time you build a regular unit, you have an extra population point to put into it.

As I say above, I don't think a slave member of a city population should be notably weak in the ancient era. I think that as the productivity of each square around the city increases, though, as you work on them and develop them, there should be a fixed cap on how much a square worked by a slave can produce so that slaves become increasingly uneconomic as non-slave workers become more productive.

I don't think this overpowers the slaver, particularly if a) regular units upgrade their defence regularly so a slaver has very little chance of taking anything but a very weak military unit (unless of course you have a slaver upgrade path, and even that should run out fairly early, and anyway they should be expensive) and possibly also b) if enslaving a military unit used up the slaver.

The biggest difference this makes is that barbarians become resources to be enslaved. Come to think if it, you could do something similar with an animal trainer unit if you wanted to be able to tame wild animals.

(Edited for clarity and also because I can actually spell at least some of the time, honest.)

If only one specialized unit can enslave workers, then it would be pretty random if you find your enslaving units capable to enslave enemy workers, especially with a movement of 1.

 

[rysmiel]

So you will have all the 39 maces upgraded by only one city?

OK, that was an extreme example, but seriously, do you ever really have more than a handful of cities doing most of your military production ?

Extras would be a loss of efficiency, as when you have 152 maces, 40 pikes, 50 catapults, you will not have more the time you can build riflemen, grenadiers and canons. You just can't allow yourself to build 50 more equipment in your 20 cities than you need.

And how is this different from building more units than you might absolutely need to win a war, just to be sure of having superiority ?

With your idea of enslaving, you can't enslave units early.

How not ? Say slavers can be built with a first-tier tech; you can be enslaving workers and settlers from very early on.

If only one specialized unit can enslave workers, then it would be pretty random if you find your enslaving units capable to enslave enemy workers, especially with a movement of 1.

it would take a bit of planning, yes. This is a problem how ?

 

[Tholish]

Babylon was taken by a culture flip. Not unheard of: I've lost the game by my capitol culture flipping. The answer to war being too easy an answer is to add more game to those who do this (rather than adding a hidden subtraction to large economies). The partisans you get when you burn cities down are the right model for this. Give the warmonger a bunch of rebels to worry about. Only get it for any conquest, and have them crop up like barbarians wherever there is enemy culture in your territory.

 

[V. Soma]

Well, so many thoughts have been poured here on the topic,
after 3 weeks I feel I would kind of summarise the posts, in key words.
(Forgive me that I do not mention authors behind the ideas)

So, what I see is that limiting military can be based on two big starting points.

1.
DIRECTLY LIMITING THE NUMBER OF MILITARY UNITS

- City specialists/buildings/civics/traits to allow a number of units
- population to limit the number of units
- to have a recruitment value (things like civics/diplomacy/population would affect it)
- units tied to food support, or a combination of food/production/gold (maybe
units also to have home cities - like in old version of Civ)
- Civ:Colonization way to get limit...
- to have mercenaries besides the limited number of own units

2.
HAVE RULES THAT MAKE MILITARY ACTION DIFFERENT

- bribing away of units (defense by gold)
- culture able to convert units (defense by culture)
- protecting your cultural borders with no military (defense by culture)
- Spies to eliminate units (defense by non-military units and gold)
- concept of stabilty of the empire (affected by size, number of cities etc)
- logistics
- supply routes
- cap on (effective) units per tile
- retreat
- surrender
- improved collateral damage
- diplomacy: dog piling on the warmonger

*

I feel that elements from both 1. and 2. could be woven into a new good system...

...and of course surely it is not end of more ideas to flow

 

[V. Soma]

Let me add something to the concept of logistics:

I imagine there could be "attrition" and "supply" to each unit in each turn.
If you have supply, attrition is cancelled...

Supply can be present when unit:
– stand on any OWN tile
- stands in a city or fort that is connected with unbroken (i.e. no enemy is on it) road to an own or friendly city, or to own food resource
– stands on a road which is continuous to own or friendly city
– stand on ANY tile that has "food" improvement
– stands on ANY tile that has settlement improvement

Attrition would be % loss per turn based on terrain type

perhaps this could also result in more carefully planned and less roads

 

[Skallagrimson]

No! A training queue would be too much micromanagement, first. Second, the gold spent into upgrades reflects that time cost. It's already in the game!

You can't always purchase time. A rich man cannot offer the space-time continuum stocks and bonds as a reward for making him younger.

Training is one of those cases. If it takes 6 months to train a good Navy SEAL unit, and you have some emergency that requires a Navy SEAL unit, it's ridiculous to think you can simply "rush-build" those SEALs to make them "train faster".

... And no! Too much micromanagement also. Plus, you missed my point. The problem with the "just build weapons and accumulate them in the armory" is that you should know precisely how many weapon of each type you have to build. If out of your 39 maces you want 20 riflemen, 10 grenadiers and 9 canons, you should build out 20 riflemen equipments, 10 grenadiers ones and 9 canons ones, and no more. How could you check such a thing without going in a second screen every turn? And also, you would have to do the maths in order to determine how many units of each type you want. That's just too contraignant, especially on huge maps. (with plenty units)

You might prefer to play checkers if mm is "too much" for you in civ.

Again, nowadays upgrading is doing the things well. Gold versus better equipment.

And macemen just instantly know how to drive the vehicles for mechanized infantry units? Come on.

The only minus is that you actually can't upgrade a mace in cav. That should be possible in civ 5, as long as you have the necessary ressources.

And you would have the macemen instantly know how to ride a horse, with no training?

Also, depleting a pop point for every unit is not that wise, first because you couln't build any unit with cities 1 size, second because there might be a reminder each unit you create about how really you want to "kill" a pop of your city. That would make the building painfull.

First off, that's the POINT. Spamming units in real life takes human beings away from economically productive activities, which is an additional cost to an empire NOT reflected in civ today. Civ, in its cartoon fantasy glory, allows you to mine riflemen out of the coal mines with never a single thought to where the people for all those units come from. It's just nuts.

Secondly, it need not be a population "point", but can be a discreet number of PEOPLE, which at larger city sizes might not reduce pop by a point, but at smaller sizes, might. I could also live with using food points directly to staff units, since food is the driver of population growth in the game.

The best I see is to attach two foods to any military units AND to allow the construction of rice, corn, wheet farms everywhere if you have the prerequirements (aka a former source of those), the same with animal, including horses, but obviously not iron or copper.

Yes, propagation of food resources should be allowed on proper terrain (obviously not corn in the desert). There is no magical barrier in the space-time continuum that says you can't husband a herd of cattle to enlarge it and get double the head of cattle. Although it may be valid to say that while you're propagating a resource, you can't get yield from it during those turns (or you get lower yield temporarily).

Iron and copper, and other mineral resources, should be depletable, although perhaps with a generous enough store in a given mine to match how long real mines in history have been in service prior to being depleted. That would just take some simple math and cracking open a history book (perhaps too much to ask of Firaxis).

Pillaging only gold is a mean to simplificate things. If we were to pillage hammers (?), how would those serve us? Same for food. How many food tiles would you have to pillage in order to maintain your army alive?

For food it's obvious. The 1 or 2 food per turn per unit that ordinary support requires for a unit, could be consumed by pillaging a farm, up to the amount of total food pillaged. Huge stacks would not be pillage-sufficient this way, although smaller stacks could at least partially self-feed while on the march behind enemy lines. The reason Firaxis would hate this dynamic is because it is realistic.

For hammers, this begs the question: how is it troops are supposed to enter a copper mine and walk out of it carrying bags of GOLD? Why do we put up with the ridiculous, so often?

Maybe the best you can get out of pillaging a mine is simply to destroy it.

Unfortunately, Napoleon is dead, so that i can't demand him anything. :/

The point still stands. He was unable to pillage Russia. Facile quips won't change reality.

When i fail to see the usefullness of any specialist, i fail to this the usefullness of a so weak slave specialist.

Here's how slavery works: you give them just enough food to survive, and you get some measure of work out of them. Rome considered it a useful enough dynamic to employ it the entire time they were an empire.

If a 1 food to 1 hammer conversion doesn't look appealing, the thing to address is the conversion, not the entire concept of it.

Slave "whipping" as civ portrays today implies you simply murder large numbers of citizens and then the pyramids magically build themselves. That may indulge some disturbing fantasy on a Firaxis developer's part, but it has zero to do with how real slavery works.

 

[Naokaukodem]

You can't always purchase time. A rich man cannot offer the space-time continuum stocks and bonds as a reward for making him younger.

Training is one of those cases. If it takes 6 months to train a good Navy SEAL unit, and you have some emergency that requires a Navy SEAL unit, it's ridiculous to think you can simply "rush-build" those SEALs to make them "train faster".

Upgrading costs enough already to add a time factor for training. After all, you need time to earn the sufficient gold in order to upgrade. This time is the time when you upgrade your units, even if upgrading is an instantaneous move at the end. It is simply much more playable.

You might prefer to play checkers if mm is "too much" for you in civ.

There's a limit to realism and it's called gameplay. The moves must be as simple as they can be. Playing with different panels too oftenly is sure a bad gameplay. We have to keep things simple in order them to be playable. Upgrading as it is nowadays is simple enough to keep the game playable. Adding an armory would make the game too much heavy.

And macemen just instantly know how to drive the vehicles for mechanized infantry units? Come on.

It's a shame that Macemen do not upgrade instantaneously as long as you have the Robotics (?) tech, as it was doing with the Sun Tzu War Academy (?) in Civ2. How could you imagine a Warrior in 2005? After all, you pay for that warrior. I think that that thing should be tryed out in the Civ5 beta. As long as you reach the tech and prerequirments, the units upgrade. More, that would delete the time when you build new units or upgrade, for a better tech prevalentness.

There would still be the problem if old units can upgrade to several new ones. Which of those ancient units would convert in which new modern units? That could be made by assigning to every unit an upgrade unique path. Or, if i want my maces to become cavalry, that could be done with a panel that pops as soon as the new tech is discovered, pointing at every type of unit you have, those types being divided into as many branches as the upgrade paths allow. For example, if you can upgrade your spears into paratroops, riflemen, cavalry, grenadiers, canons, you would have 5 lines with spears on the left, and the 5 new units on the right. You to increase the number of each troops you want, as long as you possess enough spears.

And you would have the macemen instantly know how to ride a horse, with no training?

again, the training part is nowadays represented by the time you earn enough money in order to upgrade. With my new system, training would be represented by the fact that one turn is equal to one years at the best.

First off, that's the POINT. Spamming units in real life takes human beings away from economically productive activities, which is an additional cost to an empire NOT reflected in civ today. Civ, in its cartoon fantasy glory, allows you to mine riflemen out of the coal mines with never a single thought to where the people for all those units come from. It's just nuts.

I would love to see one unit cost one pop point, but i hardly know how that could be feasable.

Secondly, it need not be a population "point", but can be a discreet number of PEOPLE, which at larger city sizes might not reduce pop by a point, but at smaller sizes, might. I could also live with using food points directly to staff units, since food is the driver of population growth in the game.

Hmm k, but that would not solve the fact that you can't build units into city 1 size!

Yes, propagation of food resources should be allowed on proper terrain (obviously not corn in the desert). There is no magical barrier in the space-time continuum that says you can't husband a herd of cattle to enlarge it and get double the head of cattle. Although it may be valid to say that while you're propagating a resource, you can't get yield from it during those turns (or you get lower yield temporarily).

What would be good for farm animal is to obey to the cottages model. You could attach to workers some head of farm animals and plant them in another square.

Iron and copper, and other mineral resources, should be depletable, although perhaps with a generous enough store in a given mine to match how long real mines in history have been in service prior to being depleted. That would just take some simple math and cracking open a history book (perhaps too much to ask of Firaxis).

Yes. That could be funny. But remember that ressources are vitually infinite in real modern life. Plus, in ancient era, some countries had to bring some metals from a distant location. I think those two facts are well represented in actual civ.

For food it's obvious. The 1 or 2 food per turn per unit that ordinary support requires for a unit, could be consumed by pillaging a farm, up to the amount of total food pillaged. Huge stacks would not be pillage-sufficient this way, although smaller stacks could at least partially self-feed while on the march behind enemy lines. The reason Firaxis would hate this dynamic is because it is realistic.

For hammers, this begs the question: how is it troops are supposed to enter a copper mine and walk out of it carrying bags of GOLD? Why do we put up with the ridiculous, so often?

That would add a lot of complexity to the unit management.

Maybe the best you can get out of pillaging a mine is simply to destroy it.

Yes.

The point still stands. He was unable to pillage Russia. Facile quips won't change reality.

I would say it is simply because of weather, and the fact that Russian continuously retreated until they reach Moscow, so that their forces were intact in this location, and Napaleon's troops were exhausted.

Here's how slavery works: you give them just enough food to survive, and you get some measure of work out of them. Rome considered it a useful enough dynamic to employ it the entire time they were an empire.

If a 1 food to 1 hammer conversion doesn't look appealing, the thing to address is the conversion, not the entire concept of it.

Slave "whipping" as civ portrays today implies you simply murder large numbers of citizens and then the pyramids magically build themselves. That may indulge some disturbing fantasy on a Firaxis developer's part, but it has zero to do with how real slavery works.

I think slaves whiping have a sense in term of gameplay, even if i rarely use it. Scrap it would not affect me too muh.

 

[Skallagrimson]

Upgrading costs enough already to add a time factor for training. After all, you need time to earn the sufficient gold in order to upgrade. This time is the time when you upgrade your units, even if upgrading is an instantaneous move at the end. It is simply much more playable.

And has much less to do with the reality of truly raising an army. It takes a step and a half away from verisimilitude, and towards electronic checkers.

There's a limit to realism and it's called gameplay. The moves must be as simple as they can be. Playing with different panels too oftenly is sure a bad gameplay. We have to keep things simple in order them to be playable. Upgrading as it is nowadays is simple enough to keep the game playable. Adding an armory would make the game too much heavy.

There are already 20 factors at least in growing the economy that have to be micromanaged in order to optimize unit output, and you seem to have zero problem with those factors as they are today. But to add a single one pushes it over the limit and all of a sudden it's "too heavy". In the broad scope of what the game already demands of a player, it's really a very tiny increase of MM. I'd certainly be willing to do away with forest chop hammer calculations in order to bring the complexity factor back to what it is now. Actually no, that would increase the simplicity and playability, even as a net result with producing weapons instead of mining axemen ridiculously out of a hill instead of having some resemblance to the way armies are built in the real world.

It's a shame that Macemen do not upgrade instantaneously as long as you have the Robotics (?) tech, as it was doing with the Sun Tzu War Academy (?) in Civ2. How could you imagine a Warrior in 2005? After all, you pay for that warrior. I think that that thing should be tryed out in the Civ5 beta. As long as you reach the tech and prerequirments, the units upgrade. More, that would delete the time when you build new units or upgrade, for a better tech prevalentness.

You want weapons to magically flutter down from the sky born on the wings of flying unicorns or what? Are you even playing the right class of game here? Certainly World of Warcraft has more of that fantasy insanity you seem to desire with every fibre of your being.

again, the training part is nowadays represented by the time you earn enough money in order to upgrade.

Time, once again, does not work that way. You can't put money away into a savings account and then withdraw that money in order to make a year's worth of training pass in the twinkling of an eye.

I would love to see one unit cost one pop point, but i hardly know how that could be feasable.

The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of using food. Food is what the game uses to determine population growth, and when food diminishes as a result of plundered farms or plantations, the city loses population points. So the population to staff a unit should be represented by a food score. If you want 20 units in one turn, you can do that if you have enough food (representing people symbolically in the city) and have the weapons to give them. And if you want them to have any measure of skill at all, then you need to train them, at a certain cost. Or if they're draftees, they can go into the battlefield barely knowing which end spits the bullets, and learn from the training brigade of hard knocks.

Mine (and then fashion) the weapons. Grow the soldiers. Why is that so f'ing difficult to grasp, as a concept?

What would be good for farm animal is to obey to the cottages model. You could attach to workers some head of farm animals and plant them in another square.

Yes.

Yes. That could be funny. But remember that ressources are vitually infinite in real modern life. Plus, in ancient era, some countries had to bring some metals from a distant location. I think those two facts are well represented in actual civ.

Vitally infinite? What color is the sky in your world where "peak oil" doesn't exist?

I would say it is simply because of weather, and the fact that Russian continuously retreated until they reach Moscow, so that their forces were intact in this location, and Napaleon's troops were exhausted.

Point being, the Russians self-plundered their land, "scorched earth" policy, such that Napoleon's troops could not live off of plunder, and had to rely on insufficient logistics. When they got to Moscow, the Russians burnt the city which Napoleon had counted on sheltering in over the winter and feeding his troops. Moscow supplied them with nothing but a nascent insurgency, and so Napoleon had to retreat.

It was a similar situation with Xerxes after his costly victory over the Spartans at Thermopylae. The real battle was won at sea when Xerxes' supply lines were destroyed. His huge army had to try to live off the land, which they couldn't, and so they began to starve to death. The remainder got ripped to shreds by a new Spartan army.

Is the entirety of military history... new to you? Does it even matter?

I think slaves whiping have a sense in term of gameplay, even if i rarely use it. Scrap it would not affect me too muh.

I give up. I really give up completely. We obviously want to play two entirely different games. Yours will be 100% fantasy with no connection to reality, and mine would at least attempt to lend some approximation to the real experience of ruling an empire.

 

[Naokaukodem]

You have to know that the game uses shortcuts in order to join reality. Nowadays, a golden age is created by a world wonder, and not the contrary, even if you can build a wonder with the help of golden age. In reality, golden ages are determined by a range of factors, not only one great person or wonder. But the way Civ implants it is only for gameplay purposes, the interface with the machine. We could try to synthetize a range of factors from which a golden age is happening, but we do not even know them in reality. We have no clue of what causes really a golden age in reality, or we would use it without parcimony. You will admit easily that we can't go through gameplay mechanics without touching them in that case.

That is the same with upgrading. Upgrading manually represents the efforts you put to improve your old army. with Civ's timespan, adding a time factor is not relevant, as a turn represents already at best 1 year. 1 year or 1 turns represents nothing compared to the time needed in order to discover the new techs. That's why upgrading is instanteneous, no, it is not even instanteneous, you have to wait the gold to full your wallet. That's why i suggest to do like the Civ2 Sun Tsu's War Academy (?), it is to say upgrade freely and instantaneously all you units once you discovered a new military tech. That would be much more realistic, and put the accent on techs, and last but not least, would spare the player those boring building sequences, where nothing happens but the building of new units, or the saving of cash for upgrading. And that would be balanced, as every civ would take benefit from that. Discover a new military tech, and that's your whole army that would be upgraded. Much more realistic, logical and convenient gameplay-wise (with no dead times)

As to World of Warcraft, it is originally a Role Play Game. Role Play Games tends to fit to reality, by different means according to the Role Play Game, which are rules. Role Play Games try to represent reality by rules. Those rules are arbitrary, but try with more or less success to represent how a hero becomes more powerfull with time and action, without entering in too much details. You need a character record, and a pen to fullfill this record, with its percentages, points and so on. Nowhere in reality you earn points at the end of an adventure, to deal to your different characteristics. But well, that's the best way to represent it. So don't be to quick to judge World of Warcraft. Of course there is magic in this universe, but this has more to do with the universe than the game concepts.

I do not speak about universe in Civ, but about game concepts. We need those in order to represent reality. Wanting too much reality would make the game too heavy, and solve nothing. Why would one want that the training of his troops to spend 1 century? That's stupid enough already that we need eons to upgrade or create. Except if we consider that an army needs a whole set of factors in order to be dominant, like the social factors. Why Arabs could invade the world that easily? Why Alexander the Great, Gengis Khan or the Roman could conquer so much land? It is due to random characteristics of their societies, that have been putted more or less, and i would emphasis the less, volontarily. So the time needed to build units would represent the time needed to grow a conducive war society. But nowhere in Civ you will see the real ingredients of such efficientness, because they are simply not well known in reality, and way too complex.

That's why we need shortcuts, and those shorcuts have to deserve gameplay, and reality as long as it is possible to do so.

 

[Antilogic]

You know, I skimmed through this long thread trying to look for simple ideas that would work. And work right now.

If we think about it, massive countries rarely send 90% of their army to one location to fight against a particular enemy. Instead, they need signficant amounts of troops to hold already-conquered areas, to enforce martial law, and to protect against other threats from abroad. The third option is already represented pretty well in the game, but what can we do about the first two? I've increased war weariness back to about v3.13 levels to model the martial law effect (with the Hereditary Rule civic), which works for most of the game...both monarchies and police states can stick in the fight longer than representative societies.

The first point I made can be countered by increasing the number of revolts, and maybe even having "barbarian" units sprout up around conquered cities like delayed partisans. This would force you to set more troops defensively as your attack progressed.

You can also impose a gold cost for every unit in the game, and Pacifism simply doubles that to two gold upkeep, if you feel there are too many units. Or, you could change the unit upkeep costs in the handicaps downward, so that larger militaries cost more to maintain. In any case, what you are doing is giving more leverage to countries with a responsible balance between commerce and military. Or, should I say, you are shifting the balance.