Finding a strategic home for outdated units

[wobuffet]

Continuing this discussion between Moi Magnus and tu_79 from the patch thread, I think upgrading a military unit should be at least 25% or so cheaper than just building a brand-new unit (before any upgrade discounts). I love the "pick and choose which units you want to upgrade" feel of upgrades now, but upgrades feel very very expensive now, and would feel better at just "expensive" to me.

The bigger issue now, in my view, is
what to do with outdated units that aren't worth upgrading (for peaceful players, mostly).

edit (from a later post I made in this topic):
Rationale: I think a Disband bonus is important because the "fun to game balance" ratio is extremely high here: any piddling reward to deleting units would greatly increase the feeling of forward progress that the Civ experience is all about. Deleting a unit feels like a waste, a setback, a defeat – no other decision that the player makes in the game does this.

If "upgrade or disband this unit?" is going to be a regularly occurring decision in this game (and again, I think this is a good change), neither of those options should feel like a step backwards.​

1. City-State gifts
In my last game, each unit gifted to a City-State was only worth 11 or 12 Influence or so. I know it's variable now based on how many units the City-State already has (which is a great idea!), but 11 Influence feels pretty pathetic in exchange for a Tercio valued at 500.

Ideas:

• tweak the new formula for Influence per City-State gift upwards. Perhaps increase the per-CS unit gifting cooldown from 3 to 5 turns to compensate, so you can't just convert old troops into multiple CS Allies.
• making the amount of Influence gained scale with the unit's / Strength (compared to the average of its extant units, say) or simply the unit's original purchase price (e.g., if an Envoy could now be purchased at 500 to garner 40 , a 500 military unit would be worth 13–20 .)
• +50% war bonus Influence from units gifted to City-States who are currently under attack (the existing "we need units!" quest seems to not fire consistently, even when the City-State is losing units and taking City damage).

2. Disbanding units
We could also make disbanding (i.e., deleting) units more feasible/strategically interesting:

• dramatically increasing the "refund rate" from deleting units (e.g., you get back 33% of its "original purchase price") – an Authority or Imperialism policy could even boost this %.
  (Caution: If this % is too high, building & deleting units could end up obsoleting the Wealth process.)
• Alternatively, disbanding units could trigger an instant non-monetary boost of some sort... e.g., 25% of a deleted unit's XP is converted to Culture (or Golden Age Points?)
• Disbanding a unit adds +0.5% Culture and +0.5% Gold during Golden Ages to the City with the Heroic Epic, max +25%. (Works well thematically, I think!)
• Deleting units temporarily reduces War Weariness ("We're bringing the old, weary troops home!")

 

[Funak]

Continuing this discussion between Moi Magnus and tu_79 from the patch thread, I think upgrading a military unit should be at least 25% or so cheaper than just building a brand-new unit (before any upgrade discounts). I love the "pick and choose which units you want to upgrade" feel of upgrades now, but upgrades feel very very expensive now, and would feel better at just "expensive" to me.

The bigger issue now, in my view, is
what to do with outdated units that aren't worth upgrading (for peaceful players, mostly).

Can we make units that are doomed to not be upgraded feel less like a wasted investment?

1. City-State gifts
In my last game, each unit gifted to a City-State was only worth 11 or 12 Influence or so. I know it's variable now based on how many units the City-State already has (which is a great idea!), but 11 Influence feels pretty pathetic in exchange for a Tercio valued at 500.

If you buy a brand new car for a million dollar, drive it for 30 years and then then try to sell it off, do you expect it to be valued at 1 million still?

 

[Bromar1]

If you buy a brand new car for a million dollar, drive it for 30 years and then then try to sell it off, do you expect it to be valued at 1 million still?

That's a horrible analogy. Each unit is an abstraction of a unit of soldiers. In the ancient era, when each turn is hundreds of years of "real time" it's obvious that it's not the same men fighting. When a unit fortifies to heal, those are new men joining the fight. What remains though, is the tactics, tradition, zealotry, glory, etc etc etc of that military unit. So no, it's not like a car you drive off a cliff, it's a warrior culture that grows stronger with experience.

 

[wobuffet]

If you buy a brand new car for a million dollar, drive it for 30 years and then then try to sell it off, do you expect it to be valued at 1 million still?

Fair point. My point is that with the new "selective costly upgrades" dynamic in place, lots of players are now going to regularly need to get rid of a decent number of units throughout the game. I think allowing for some graceful planned obsolescence/disposal program for those units is called for. Whether or not getting no reward for deleting a unit is realistic, deleting old units for 6 each is not at all fun, and the point of playing a computer game is to have fun.

Buildings and Wonders are almost never deleted over the course of a normal game. If units now will be, why not let peaceful players get some sense of progress from deleting old units and building newer ones? Good balance in a strategy game means not only having multiple strategies be viable in terms of winning and losing the game, but also having multiple strategies be fun.

 

[Funak]

That's a horrible analogy. Each unit is an abstraction of a unit of soldiers. In the ancient era, when each turn is hundreds of years of "real time" it's obvious that it's not the same men fighting. When a unit fortifies to heal, those are new men joining the fight. What remains though, is the tactics, tradition, zealotry, glory, etc etc etc of that military unit. So no, it's not like a car you drive off a cliff, it's a warrior culture that grows stronger with experience.

You're completely missing the point...
The point is that the unit served its purpose, and now that purpose is served and the unit is definitely not worth it's full value anymore.

 

[wobuffet]

You're completely missing the point...
The point is that the unit served its purpose, and now that purpose is served and the unit is definitely not worth it's full value anymore.

I never suggested you should get the full initial value of the unit back!

I'm suggesting adding a little bit of compensation for mercy killing your unit, to make the "to upgrade or build anew?" question more strategically engaging and fun on both sides.

 

[tu_79]

Considering unit strength when gaining influence looks like a good idea. As the game progress, the values are greater for almost anything. I can't see why shouldn't be the case with influence by gift.
It just needs to be always smaller than the diplo unit.

Edit. On second thought, strength might not be the best indicator for value. Hammer cost, or purchase price may be better, along with experience level.
The problem with this approach for saving the upgrading process, is that it's either limited or it makes diplo units irrelevant.
I mean, it could be right to get more influence for better units and less influence when the state has already too many units, but it's not a solution for the upgrading problem unless we hurt the value of diplomatic units.

 

[Dawnpromise]

I'm actually in favor of this idea of increasing/reworking 'disband' mechanics. The cost of upgrading old units can often make if unfeasible to update your current military so I think it would be an interesting decision to say: "Do I want 3 out-dated units or 1 upgraded units".

Also the concept of having Warmonger policies available to increase the disband value of units makes sense as well as if any culture would respect retired veterans it would be a warrior culture.

All in all I think the concept of having disband values based on a percentage of unit purchase value is a good idea. In the current state being forced to disband units feels more like a punishment than a choice.

 

[Gokudo01]

I will tell my mind : I don't like any gameplay mechanism which increases micro management/movement. If any new solution turn around disbanding and moving my unit over half the world in order to bring them back in position, I'm against it.
I want a solution which doesn't increase micro management and which doesn't give too much edge to human over AI. But it doesn't seem that we have the same priority.

I've got the elliot style. I fight lots of war, not always as a warmonger but I like to take opportunity war or play the shark and finish bleeding empires so I use to have big empires with 50-75-sometimes over 100 units to manage ON STANDARD
It's not like I was playing with 43 civs.
Do you think it's funny to delete -> rebuy even half of my 100 units ? What about all those extra micro management between delete -> rebuy -> move it to the right front line ?
Damn I feel like I'm alone to not play with only 5 cities all game long ... because any people which manage big armies know what I am talking about.
Or are you playing on tiny or small ?

 

[Grabbl]

I like the disband buff as it is flavorful and could use existing mechanics. However, I agree that it might be tedious for large armies, so I would prefer not having to move units back in my territory at least (but allow buff only for units at full health, to prevent abuse). War weariness reduction seems fine, also a (small to moderate) food bonus for the origin city would be cool (soldiers returning to their homes...).

 

[tu_79]

I was thinking in another method for disbanding the units, but this would require more work for Gazebo.

What if, disbanding a unit could give a temporary bonus to XP for the next unit produced/purchased in the closest city, scaling with the disbanded unit level?

For example, a disbanding a level 3 unit could give +15XP to the next unit. There's a bit of micromanagement in the sense that you need to send that unit closer to the city where you want the extra XP before disbanding, but the reward may be worth it. This is not easy to exploit. The bonus is to be only for the next unit and not cumulative. It is still posible to do this twice. With an armory we are getting level 2 units on the go. Disbanding the first unit to get a boost of 10XP for the next one could be useful sometimes, but not really worthy, unless you really wanted to disband the unit. With the military academy, or using Orders, we are getting level 3 units, which will give +15XP even without any fighting. Almost level 4 for newly produced units in specific cities, at the cost of two units.
So it's a reward for having to disband, but doesn't encourage disbanding as a mechanic.

It slightly annoys me that my level 2 warrior, earned by hard barb fighting, is as skilled as a newly produced unit, and even having being a good unit in its time, it is better to retire it. They could at least share a bit of their knowledge before retiring.

EDIT

Do you think it's funny to delete -> rebuy even half of my 100 units ? What about all those extra micro management between delete -> rebuy -> move it to the right front line ?

Of course not. But I think they are separate issues.
a) Being forced to upgrade just the top best units.
b) The punishment that becomes just disbanding a unit when you no longer need it.

 

[wobuffet]

@Gokudo01 @Grabbl Good points: a lot of unit micromanaging for middling rewards would not be fun.

I wonder it would be feasible to add a Disband option (="Delete with benefits") that can be done (1) anywhere on the map but (2) only if the unit is at full health. The idea would be, the Disband option shows up if available; otherwise, the regular, reward-less Delete option shows up instead. Poof, no micro-ing issues.

 

[Dawnpromise]

@Gokudo01 @Grabbl Good points: a lot of unit micromanaging for middling rewards would not be fun.

I wonder it would be feasible to add a Disband option (="Delete with benefits") that can be done (1) anywhere on the map but (2) only if the unit is at full health. The idea would be, the Disband option shows up if available; otherwise, the regular, reward-less Delete option shows up instead. Poof, no micro-ing issues.

Feasible I imagine since context sensitive commands do exist in the game. Of course then comes the "Have to teach the AI" issues I imagine and Gazebo seems to hate that.

 

[Dawnpromise]

Personally I'd rather keep the current "must be in friendly territory" state of things. The point of 'disband versus delete' is that you're taking the time to properly dismantle a unit to recoup some of your losses as opposed to simply trashing it. I can't understand the 'I have too many units to worry about bringing them home to disband" argument. That's the sort of management decision you committed to by producing so many units to begin with.

 

[tu_79]

The bigger issue now, in my view, is
what to do with outdated units that aren't worth upgrading (for peaceful players, mostly).

I will tell my mind : I don't like any gameplay mechanism which increases micro management/movement.

I don't see why this is a problem
At least maintaining a large, modern army is taxing

Well, well. Still talking different things.
What can we, peacemongers, do with the not worth to upgrade units? Maybe we are (too quickly) considering that a warmonger can as well send those units to die in the name of the homeland, as cannon fodder. But that adds to warscore, so maybe it's not the best idea.
The whole point of making units expensive and limit the army size was to avoid that huge micromanagement, since CIV V doesn't have the tools to manage several units at the same time.

-Can we affirm that making upgrading relatively more expensive has increased micromanagement? If so, it should be looked at. Several things have been suggested, I kind of prefer upgrade cost being a 75-80% of purchase cost. Clearly not worthy if we need to upgrade twice, but best option when at supply limit.

-Do we like that many/some units don't account for an upgrade and should be disbanded instead? If so, we are going to disband a lot more than before, so disbanding needs to be more interesting or rewarding. Giving a one shot XP to the closest city doesn't look like a lot of micromanagement unless you want it in a specific city (a micromanagement peacemongers may be willing to do). Taking XP level and purchase cost into account while gaining CS influence also helps making it more interesting (if you are gifting crap, they won't be impressed).

 

[Gazebo]

Disband buff could be abused easily by players, and we don't need that. Also, the AI should be remembered. I honestly feel like this is one of those situations where there are solutions looking for problems. Upgrading promoted units should be more expensive than buying fresh ones.

G

 

[Txurce]

If you buy a brand new car for a million dollar, drive it for 30 years and then then try to sell it off, do you expect it to be valued at 1 million still?

Re: your specific example, I would expect to make a profit.

 

[Funak]

Disband buff could be abused easily by players, and we don't need that. Also, the AI should be remembered. I honestly feel like this is one of those situations where there are solutions looking for problems. Upgrading promoted units should be more expensive than buying fresh ones.

Indeed, people complain about gifting units to city-states being exploitable every once in a while.

 

[tu_79]

Disband buff could be abused easily by players, and we don't need that. Also, the AI should be remembered. I honestly feel like this is one of those situations where there are solutions looking for problems. Upgrading promoted units should be more expensive than buying fresh ones.

G

Then, why don't you scale upgrading cost depending on the unit level? This should address better your concern.

 

[Bromar1]

Disband buff could be abused easily by players, and we don't need that. Also, the AI should be remembered. I honestly feel like this is one of those situations where there are solutions looking for problems. Upgrading promoted units should be more expensive than buying fresh ones.

G

What if disbanded units aren't removed from the unit supply until a few turns pass? That would limit how many you could disband and rebuild per turn