How much does the average war cost?

[MerchantCo]

It usually costs me about 2000-4000 gold or a lot of hammers to wage war effectively. Is this even worth it?

 

[Blackknight1239]

What's an "average" war?

 

[MerchantCo]

A war which results in 2+ captured cities.

 

[Blackknight1239]

What era? Against what kind of Civs? Are you fighting a runaway, or attacking a weak opponent? Civs next to you, or is there travel? In a warmongering situation, or is this a surprise attack?

 

[MantaRevan]

It depends on if you have units kicking around from your last one. On higher and intermediate difficulties you want to have a sizable and well-equipped army anyway to stop from being DOWd. Sometimes all I have to do is add 3-4 units to my existing army and maybe upgrade a few more.

 

[VainoValkea]

Yeah, you'll need an army for defense anyway and depending on its units and size, losses from well-planned warfare can be minimal or nonexistent.

 

[Cicerosaurus]

It does irritate me slightly that there are no costs for units in war. I mean in the sense that artillery can bombard without having to have a break to have a cost for ammunition used, submarines have an infinite supply of torpedoes and ships can stay at sea indefinitely. Units should need to be rested every x number of turns for repair and refurbishment.

 

[VainoValkea]

If you wanted to make that realistic, it would become very annoying and turn the entire game into something different. Isn't there also a supply cost for units at war? I don't think they are at all "free".

 

[Cicerosaurus]

Don't you already pay a cost for units?

 

[VainoValkea]

There are two separate categories, if I recall correctly - normal upkeep and a supply on top of that. Supply costs come only from troops outside your borders or something like that. This is the way I remember it going but I don't have the game at hand at the moment so I can't check - I may as well have it confused with some other game.

 

[Cicerosaurus]

I think there could be worked in some supply system whereby you could build an oiler or supply ship that operates in friendly territory. As it is we have limited supply routes (by distance) but your ships can go on forever.

It is no biggie but it could add another dimension.

 

[VainoValkea]

Civ IV had a mod where units needed a supply wagon to be able to heal on foreign territory. It didn't really add any dimensions apart from the dimension of "keeping an extra unit in your SoD".

I've played wargames where units, even on large scale, may need resupplying etc, but Civ doesn't really need that kind of complexity in my opinion.

 

[Cicerosaurus]

I guess there are no complexities now. Aside from how Research Agreements work, how aqueducts work- oh, you just need to see the board to view how other people need advice on complexities.

One more is neither here nor there.

 

[VainoValkea]

I don't understand your point at all. It's as if complex mechanics were a purpose in themselves, while I consider them to be a necessary evil.

 

[Chiatroll]

unit maintenance is the supposed to reflect the supplies and other needs. Complex mechanics often feel weird when one turn represents what happens often over several years in this game. I think unit maintenance is fine as is it.

In the modern age we could have carrier go from US to japan and back quite a few times within single year but not in the civ game.

In most wars I'll lose maybe two units thanks to bad AI understanding of positioning and tactics. So the costs are mostly about unit maintenance. Those drastically increase with time.

 

[Socratatus]

It usually costs me about 2000-4000 gold or a lot of hammers to wage war effectively. Is this even worth it?

I can`t give you a cost as that`s too specific and difficult question to answer (for me anyway), but I can say that any war is always costly unless you can do it quickly.

So it doesn`t matter if you take one city or three, just do it quickly if you don`t want it to start emptying your bank account.

 

[b7fanatix]

Here's an example, fresh in my mind, of an early war that just happened to me.

I start in a temperate area with forests. Research mining, start building a worker. By the time the worker is built, I've gotten Pottery researched, so i can use the worker to chop forest tiles to speed the construction of my monument and granary. Manage to get great library at turn 50. Unfortunately, I then run into Boudicca, who attempts her Pict warrior zerg.

The war lasted from turns 75-95. A worker got captured, a warrior and composite bowman were lost. Two tiles were pillaged, and maybe half my improved ones were unavailable due to besieging forces. For twenty turns i was unable to improve any tiles due to the presence of the enemy.

She lost four melee units and two ranged. She's only just reached the Medieval era on turn 142 - i'm on my 4th Medieval tech. She's now at the bottom of the demographics and another Civ has DoWed them.

Even so, i'm intensely annoyed to have lost so much time to this. I'm thinking to backstab them while they are busy with Bismark and get myself a couple of her cities - that would be some compensation, though i was after a science victory. Actually, it would be quite good if we just wipe her out.

 

[b7fanatix]

...Grrr, well i did take one of Boudicca's cities off her, as "reparations". But then Russia shows up and wipes her out. They started plotting against me but fortunately my musketman upgrades came through at just the right time. Catherine's going destroy Ethiopa instead. Russia is now a runaway, twice as strong as the #2 military on the planet, and she killed someone else before the Celts (never met them, unknown civ).

Nice job on the "gang up on the human" thing. The Celts make a suicide attack to slow me down in the ancient era, allowing Russia to get a lead in the Renaissance.