In defense of long unit production times

[Stringer1313]

A lot of people understandably complain about how long it takes to build a unit. However, I think they should stay the same (but agree that tech progression is way too fast), because it makes the red military policy cards more valuable. In my most recent game, I built a ton of jet bombers but only after I got the policy card.

Right now, military policy cards are undervalued; I almost always pick the government with the maximum number of yellow cards. At least this gives them something to do.

 

[criZp]

or just fix the military policy cards and then fix the production times.

think I did a decent job at it in the policy rework mod, so shouldn't be too hard for firaxis either.

 

[Leyrann]

If it's best to just build your army in the ancient era and then upgrade it throughout the game, production costs for lategame units are too high.

Also, military policy cards need a rework anyway.

And all production costs are high and too formulaic. They should be used as a balance leaver instead.

 

[Archon_Wing]

I think it's more of an issue of unit vs building production later in the game. It really does everything to stop you from building late game.

Maybe if they took an axe to projects....

 

[Infixo]

The feeling that units (and buildings) take long to build is imo an effect of the general fast pace of the game. Too fast, obviously, if the game designed to last 500 turns usually ends in half of that. If going through entire tech tree would take 500 turns and each era would last 60-70 turns, then the perspective would be different.

 

[Myomoto]

The feeling that units (and buildings) take long to build is imo an effect of the general fast pace of the game. Too fast, obviously, if the game designed to last 500 turns usually ends in half of that. If going through entire tech tree would take 500 turns and each era would last 60-70 turns, then the perspective would be different.

I'm honestly afraid the addition of the Future Era in GS will make them speed everything up even more. Although it looks like they are getting rid of some leaf techs...

Eurekas/Inspirations might need another nerf. I feel they are one the big reasons you can end up 2-3 eras ahead of everyone else. Maybe nerf them to 25%?

 

[Infixo]

Why so? R&F slowed down the game a bit: beelining to the next era costs 20% more, boosts went down to 40%, city states don’t give bonuses just for districts. Step into the right direction.
Adding Future era means that victory conditions should somehow be moved a bit later (I hope). Plus there is a new tech, maybe more, who knows? So, the game should be a bit longer.
But if Firaxis will fail on this front, changing costs of the techs and civics is very easy, we will just mod it.

 

[King of Prussia]

I will agree the pacing of Tech/civic vs production is not that well balanced. I think it is fairly decent in the early game, but gets worse as the game goes on. You are always better off building early rather than later. thanks to most humans being better than the AI on average in combat, it just punishes the AI more when it struggles to rebuild its army after loses.

i modded my own game to knock a fair amount of production off units starting around the medieval era. at first its 20-40 production, and by the late game upwards to 100+. i gave a little extra love to some units that i thought were a little weaker. from what i seen, i think it makes the AI a little tougher to face, and makes facing units you dont see often(like air units) a bit more common. there are still issues where the AI for some reason has no army, and isn't rebuilding or just plays poorly in combat. im not sure what the logic is for AI and policy cards. i would hope they would run the right policies more often than not, like when making more units.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

A lot of people understandably complain about how long it takes to build a unit. However, I think they should stay the same (but agree that tech progression is way too fast), because it makes the red military policy cards more valuable. In my most recent game, I built a ton of jet bombers but only after I got the policy card.

Right now, military policy cards are undervalued; I almost always pick the government with the maximum number of yellow cards. At least this gives them something to do.

The biggest issue is that replacing a lost unit costs the same production as building a unit from scratch. Losing an army in the field, therefore, means you don't just lose that war, you lose the game. The AI has been coded to make peace quickly, likely because the dev team recognizes that the player's position becomes untenable after they lose a few units.

I'm okay with production being expensive for units above a certain base threshold, but the time to replace a unit that lies below that threshold should be dramatically shortened.

That would significantly help the AI, who's more likely to lose their units (and who, per the above, has been coded not to go for the jugular in any event).

 

[AriochIV]

Long unit production times hurt the AI more than the player. I'm seeing a lot of AI civilizations in the industrial & modern eras with few or no military units.

 

[Dirichlet]

I think the red cards are plenty powerful. You just do not need them as much in single-player as the AI is so bad at war (so many of Civ 5+6 issues stem from that single fact).

The problem with the high production times are all the relations between normal city production and other items.

Chopping produces too many hammers compared to city output in the late game.
Civics and techs progress too fast compared to production.
Updating a stone-age/classic era army throughout the game is too efficient compared to building new units as the game progresses.

In turn, both the AI being bad at war and unit costs being so high is partially due to 1 UPT. If units become too plentiful, you will have carpets of doom throughout the game. This is worse that a stack of doom in terms of being able to control your army (as they get in each others way, especially with the limited road-building) & both you and AI have to command them one unit at a time.

I am not saying 1 UPT is bad per se, but the Civ designers have not made it work yet.

 

[seasnake]

I am not saying 1 UPT is bad per se, but the Civ designers have not made it work yet.

Which so weird, because Age of Wonders solved it years ago: build stacks of units, have maintenance costs for standing armies that project zones of control. When one stack moves into another's zone of control a fight commences on a different screen where there's a grid and turn based combat. Fight until there is a winner. In small skirmishes with AI opponents you can auto-resolve.

Seriously, it can't be that hard. And it allows for later units to have area effects. Want to call in a bombing strike? Well if you have nearby air units you can do that (AoW you could cast spells that did area effect damage). And you could expand it. For instance, if your enemy brought anti-air they have a chance to shoot down the fighters. If their engineers have been digging trenches it can mitigate that damage.

Seriously, if Civ could keep the rest and get with it on combat (use this system coupled with attrition when invading/supply lines) it would be the greatest.

 

[Siptah]

Which so weird, because Age of Wonders solved it years ago: build stacks of units, have maintenance costs for standing armies that project zones of control. When one stack moves into another's zone of control a fight commences on a different screen where there's a grid and turn based combat. Fight until there is a winner. In small skirmishes with AI opponents you can auto-resolve.

Seriously, it can't be that hard. And it allows for later units to have area effects. Want to call in a bombing strike? Well if you have nearby air units you can do that (AoW you could cast spells that did area effect damage). And you could expand it. For instance, if your enemy brought anti-air they have a chance to shoot down the fighters. If their engineers have been digging trenches it can mitigate that damage.

Seriously, if Civ could keep the rest and get with it on combat (use this system coupled with attrition when invading/supply lines) it would be the greatest.

Yes, I think there should be an option for tactical fighting, and I hope that it will come in civ VII. However, it should be somewhat optional, since I think civ caters much more to builder type players that don't want to fight that much than AoW does. Additionally, I'm not sure if it wouldn't be more fitting to copy Endless Legend's tactical fighting, where you still fight on the actual map with your small stacks. That means that you cannot have 6 crossbows in a city behind walls, but only one unit per tile in tactical fighting. But you would be fighting around the districts, plundering improvements, etc which I think would be really nice to do. Also, in Endless Legend, it's not a fight to the death, but limited to 6 turns of tactical fighting, so you can often retreat if you want to. (and I really hate[!] that wounded units do full damage in AoW, this is really harming the otherwise great fighting system of this game, which might be the best in all 4X games).

Back to OP: I think that long unit build times do have advantages, and I say that only playing epic and marathon speed. It makes you cherish your units much more. I don't have a lot of them around, some garrison units at some points and an army of between 5 to 8 units for defending and attacking. In many games, I don't use units at all, in others I lose one or two, and I like it that way. Not just because of the promotions, but also because of the 10+ turns a knight needs to be built an average city. It also means planning ahead in the earlier game - if the enemy catches you unprepared on marathon in classical age, you are in trouble. And it means that if I attack, I also need to plan ahead and have a good sieging team assembled, since brining in reinforcements every other turn isn't possible (except if I'd go for total war, which I really rarely do).

 

[Sostratus]

Districts and chops scale on the same variable (it's the greater of your tech or civic progress, it scales from 1x to 10x as you go through the tree) and units essentially follow a similar scaling: A modern Armor is about 10x the price of a heavy chariot, for example. Mech inf is close to 10x, Modern AT are closer to 9x. (Warriors & slingers are discounted ancient era units, most every "normal" ancient unit costs 65. Info era units are about 650.)

So turn one to future tech things get 10x more expensive. Buildings follow the same trajectory, there just are no info era buildings.

I think people really hate that once you "industrialize" things don't actually become cheaper - your productivity nears peak once you get to industrialization thanks to the factory and mine boost. But the Industrial era is only the fifth era.

When you enter the industrial era that cost scalar sits at about 5x. When you enter the modern it's at 6.25x - a 25% jump. By the time you finish picking up your tier 3 government and electricity, that cost scalar is at 7.5x. So there's a effecitvely a 50% spike in costs just for picking up all the techs and civics that actually boost your production ability! Earlier eras have proportionally greater jumps, but you also have a much larger gain from simple population growth and improving tiles early on. It's not like all those size 13 cities that are all working farms and mines also have a dozen hills each just sitting around waiting to be mined.

If they aren't going to slow down the game pace so that empires develop more while advancing, then they should blunt some of the cost growth in the later eras- either by reducing that cost curve or by giving more production bonuses to stuff like factories and power plants. With GS adding "power" resource I imagine they may have some solutions already at play.

 

[leandrombraz]

The production cost for units is definitely an issue for the AI, mostly considering that the AI need to replace units more than the player since we are pretty good at keeping our units alive but I honestly don't see it as an issue for the player. Civ VI give a lot of emphasis to specializing cities and planning. A few cities with good productions, an encampment and the right policy will pop out units fast. In a bad city it will take an eternity to produce a unit but you won't do it in bad cities. I like to attack on several fronts, so I'm always building more units into I end up with way more than I need, production times is only high if all my cities are crap and I didn't do much to improve it. On top of that, we get way too much gold in Civ VI and there's chop, so you can pop out an army in no time if you want to...

I think the problem with it being better to upgrade units early have more to do with the fact we don't lose said units than with production cost. It's too easy to keep your initial army alive because AI, so unless you like to attack in several fronts and build "carpets of doom", there isn't much reason to build more units if you rarely lose older ones.

 

[Sagax]

It’s not just units, it’s everything that requires hammers - most notably in the late game.

IMO just lower the curve a bit for later eras. The current production cost ramp feels too steep and gets out of whack as the time progresses. Doesn’t help that Industrial zones have been a mess ever since the nerf.

 

[mitsho]

Maybe it'd be worth to test how the game would be if all units could only be bought and not produced. Reading this thread I'm thinking whether civ7 really needs production as a yield? What do we really get out of it. Having to make. A. Choice what to build x turns in advance? And it does hamper the AI a lot.

Just brainstorming here, not opinions, by the way.

 

[Infixo]

Actually teaching the AI about right choices for what to build is one of the easier parts when it comes to AI. It is a typical min-max problem, so computers are really good at solving it. Just take a look at Vox Populi - valuation procedures and choices the AI makes are insanely good. The sad part is that it was done by modders, not Firaxis.

 

[acluewithout]

Disclaimer. It’s been a very long since I played into the late game.

But I always felt the production curve was maybe intended to drive people to use gold late game to purchase units rather than hammers. What do people think? Does that fit?

I used to find I was Swimming in gold late game, but that other than buying the odd Redcoat, most of my gold went on buildings or maybe GP. Maybe the odd builder.

I’m not sure my gold theory is right though, given unit production cards and hammers from tier 3 Governments - or are all your hammers meant to go on projects by that point.

 

[Trav'ling Canuck]

Maybe it'd be worth to test how the game would be if all units could only be bought and not produced. Reading this thread I'm thinking whether civ7 really needs production as a yield? What do we really get out of it. Having to make. A. Choice what to build x turns in advance? And it does hamper the AI a lot.

This is the type of "out of the box" thinking I hope the development team engages in prior to Civ 7.

On the time scale of Civ, why should buildings or military units take many turns to complete after the technology to create them is known? The change from Workers to Builders cut through this with improvements by making Farms, Mines, etc. "insta-builds".

While we don't know the details of it yet, I could see the new resource system being extended to basic production in Civ 7. One you stockpile enough hammers, gold, etc., then you "insta-build" a building or unit that requires those resources. Wonders would then take on special significance as something you need to commit to and complete over multiple turns.