Military Scaling Discussion

[Tekamthi]

Well, yeah, every change also affects AI. If they produce so many units, it may be very benefitial to them to merge them, so they have a higher concentration of power.

To fill this thought out a little further, merging units would have to be restricted to units of same type. To my tastes, an 1-previous gen unit could be merged into an upgraded unit of same type, but with only 50% of hp summed in. Any merger would be a good moment to apply a temporary malus eg -10% CS for 10 turns.

How would we handle XP in this theorycraft? On a simple implementation we just add them together as well, but without giving a choice of any new promo if the resulting unit levels up. This might result in mis match between the unit level and number of promotions, to me this is no big deal but some might cry foul. In worst case you might nerf a unit if two were merged with same promos, rendering it higher level than its promo count suggests...

 

[pineappledan]

What about a temporary malus via plague ? Something like a combination of any of:

• Reduced CS (additive),
• Reduced CD (multiplicative),
• Reduced Healing,
• Reduced max health,
• Reduced movement

Also, if possible and desirable make it impossible to upgrade as long as the malus is there (or make it stack duratio

The only possible plague worth considering is a CS/RCS penalty. Reducing max HP in particular is a non-starter. When you restore the full HP of the unit the current HP stays at whatever it was before. So if a -50 HP plague expires off a unit and their max HP goes up to 100, they will still only have 50 HP and have to heal up. The end result is not much different from subtracting health from the unit directly; you've only made it impossible for them to start healing back until X turns have passed.

HP reduction on upgrade is more visible to players and better understood than plagues by the AI. Both humans and AI would handle HP reduction better. HP reduction also can be countered by medic/healing promotions, so there are ways to augment/counter damage on upgrade that don't exist for plague promotions. This is either a positive or a negative depending on your perspective, but I think that the way HP reduction would interact with things like March, Medic, the free heal action from hospitals, etc. is a point in its favour. A new plague promotion would also necessarily mean more SQL, text and new art assets that aren't needed for an HP removal.

TL;DR: Plague promotions used here would be opting to do something more difficult and complex for no reason.

Thinking a little further afield here, could we have low level units mergeable into higher level units? Just spitballing here, but consider unit A is level 5 and sits damaged to 20% HP, unit B is level 1 and has 40% HP -- could we allow B to "merge" into A so that A is now 60% HP and B is deleted? Combine with the upgrade HP loss and suddenly we have a mechanism for cleaning up the too-large armies

Unfortunately, Civ 6's army system would solve that problem, but it cannot be implemented within Civ 5 engine as far as I understand...

You can totally implement the Corps and Army system into civ 5. Here is a mod that does precisely that.

You can either do it just by adding Corps/Army promotions that do things like add %CS and max HP, or you could create entire new units in the DLL that are separate entities from their single unit counterparts with more units per tile and unique unit attributes.

I don't think VP is going to implement something as drastic as a full corps and army system after all this time. Seems like modmod territory to me.

 

[Stalker0]

If the goal is temporarily increasing the cost of upgrades, the 1 HP concept seems elegant to me. It’s obvious, sufficiently penalizing, would remove the desires to upgrade in the field Willy Nilly, would force higher tech players to spend a few more turns before they come a calling with their superior army.

Lastly there are strategic elements that a human can enjoy. It’s not just a hard 10 turn limit. If you want to arrange medic circles when you upgrade you get a boost. Build and use hospitals, get a boost. Or if you want to gamble that you need to heal to only half and go fight..you can do that.

It’s both does it’s job and let’s players use strategy to overcome the restriction, rather than simply “suck it up and take it”. All hallmarks of good design.

If you don’t think upgrading should be harder or slower that’s fair, but if you do, this seems an excellent way to do it

 

[Tekamthi]

You can totally implement the Corps and Army system into civ 5. Here is a mod that does precisely that.

You can either do it just by adding Corps/Army promotions that do things like add %CS and max HP, or you could create entire new units in the DLL that are separate entities from their single unit counterparts with more units per tile and unique unit attributes.

I don't think VP is going to implement something as drastic as a full corps and army system after all this time. Seems like modmod territory to me.

the issue is getting the AI to engage any modmod like this -- seems like either a mainbranch or not at all question -- this mod appears to apply promo that additionally buffs the unit after "merging" two together; if anything i'd suggest a debuff, and only temporary, purpose is primarily to be left with 1 unit where there were 2 before, thus reducing the carpet of units. Anyway the author suggests he wrote something to handle the AI in the comments, but does not elaborate; such a task is beyond my abilities & even concept of whats possible in lua -- will check it out, could be a viable modmod after all

edit: just DL'd it, its a well-written mod, possibly a little resource-heavy. The AI is rather simple, too simple for my tastes: it just checks unit adjacency and always merges units that can be merged -- if we had only promotion & HP addition with no other perks, it wouldnt make sense to do things this way. Anyway the AI side of things probably would be too complex, as there would be a lot of nuance and competing considerations affecting this choice

The only possible plague worth considering is a CS/RCS penalty.

there are other options that would not confound the AI -- could be done on a per-unit-line basis, ie each unit category experiences something different temporarily, mounted & armor -1 movement for 10 turns after upgrade, archer -1 range, recon -1 vision etc. CS/RCS certainly would be in such a mix, though there could be a small variety. The HP reduction is nonetheless simpler and easier for player to grasp at-a-glance, should be priority

 

[CppMaster]

I don't think VP is going to implement something as drastic as a full corps and army system after all this time. Seems like modmod territory to me.

Never too late. Espionage overhauls prove that

 

[azum4roll]

Problem 1: I agree that the CS gap is too small. The later era techs seem to focus more on unlocking more unit classes rather than improving existing ones. In fact, Infantry, Mechanized Infantry and Bazooka have already been buffed and they were worse before.

Problem 2: Not a problem, as long as there aren't so many upgrade discounts.

Problem 3: Limiting supply properly solves this.

 

[epicivfreak]

I may be mistaken, as I'm only now diving into current modmods, but aren't, at least some of these things already addressed by the Unique City States mod? Can't we resolve some issues by incorporating that mod into VP?

 

[Father Antoniy]

Hi everyone.

As for my oppinion, realy the main and the urgent ptoblem now is three. The huge number of military units in the late game. I agree with someone sais earlier abount the soviet union with it's 11 million stuff army. But first of all the Civ 5 game'go the mechanic One Tile - One Unit - so with hundreed units per ary and more we've got here all the territory occupied by units. It's turns ' into some sort of puzzle game with movement of all of them. It's not realistic at all. The second point is that such a large army drops economy to default. So I guess it'll be gerat to have got some kinde of progressive supply system. I meat ther's some base "Normal" size of an army - and all over it must cost to supply progressively hihger. Though if you realy want a huge army - you anyway can build it. But it'll cost to you extremly high. Today we have a picture, that the supply limits grows up, and ALL of AI players to industrial age became unreasonable aggressive. Even if you don't have any diplomatic issues with them. It's nonscence. Some men wrote about mode on supply decreasing. I think It'l be great to integrate this mode into the game and to rule'em by the starting setting as a game regime.
Then after solving the 3rd problem it seems very iteresting point about supplying role of tanks for infantry troops. And it seems that ther supply cost of large difficult units as tacks, Large ships and planes must be increesed. For example: if Infantry unit cost is 1, then tank csupply cost mast be 3 or 4, and a carrier must costs about 10.

p.s. Sorry for mistakes, english is not my native

 

[Tekamthi]

And it seems that ther supply cost of large difficult units as tacks, Large ships and planes must be increesed. For example: if Infantry unit cost is 1, then tank csupply cost mast be 3 or 4, and a carrier must costs about 10.

In past discussion it's been suggested that the AI would be at disadvantage cuz it doesn't consider supply when selecting units, other than stopping at the cap. Ie would be worse at selecting the right unit mix for its overall force. Not sure it would be game breaking but that's probably the main concern.

It sounds like consensus is to just flat reduce supply to address problem 3, but how do you balance this for large vs small players? iirc most of the supply changes in the past have been bogged down with finding the right middle ground that does not just allow arbitrary advantages to small civ. Reducing the supply to reasonable amount for a large civ may tie the hands of the small civ.

In perfect world I'd like to have a tool to adjust supply/maintenance costs on-the-fly, ie via promotion table. Alternatively maybe spy system can be used to dynamically increase a more limited supply, ie spy kept in home cities either increase supply available (imagine this accomplished via propagandizing the public), or negate the supply consumed by units from that city etc.

Edit: linking in recent congress proposal on related topic, for further reading https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...tenance-particularly-for-large-armies.686262/

 

[CppMaster]

How about removing supply cap and increasing maintenance cost of units? Then you can have a big army as you can afford, which is natural. Do we really need those artificial limits that feels gamey?

 

[Tekamthi]

How about removing supply cap and increasing maintenance cost of units? Then you can have a big army as you can afford, which is natural. Do we really need those artificial limits that feels gamey?

I can't recall the details but a past civ game just tied the concept of "supply" to the unit's home city resources, iirc every unit ate some amount of food. If we did away with supply I'd argue we need some other constraint than simply gold, the food tie-in made for some interesting thematic value.

I'm in favor of keeping supply system in some form, however. I tend to agree with the voices here that say reducing supply will be best balance of simplicity and effectiveness at addressing OP concern (on problem 3). Depending how much supply is reduced, we will then need methods to increase it to meet situational needs: a small civ should not automatically-lose to large empire on supply constraint basis alone, though it should require considerable civ-wide effort to go toe to toe with much larger adversary.

Has community ever explored making supply into a strategic resource? Trading supply the way we can currently trade iron and coal would be one way to dynamically increase supply in a very supply-constrained ruleset. Perhaps we can also let cities produce more supply via additional means

Edit: just found this food supply mod on steam as I was googling around just now, gonna try it out

 

[Stalker0]

Problem 1: I agree that the CS gap is too small.

I think this mainly an atomic era problem. By Info era, the GDR/Modern Armor/Stealth Bombers are all quite capable of decimating an enemy in short order. They are good "closers", but I can agree that the late industrial/atomic advances are a bit light. Machine guns also have a really tough time with later era navies until bazookas come online (if they do at all), as machine guns just tickle those ships

 

[pineappledan]

But at the end, upgrade cost isn't really a problem if we get rid of the additively stacking upgrade discounts. 1 gold to upgrade everything? No please.

Problem 2: Not a problem, as long as there aren't so many upgrade discounts.

There are only 2 sources of upgrade cost reduction: Military Industrial Complex and the Imperialism Scaler. There used to be a 3rd: Pentagon, but it was removed ages ago.

2 stacking sources of cost reduction is fine. It's a chance for players to create synergy. 3+ is excessive, but we haven't had that many in a long time.

 

[azum4roll]

2 stacking sources of cost reduction is fine. It's a chance for players to create synergy. 3+ is excessive, but we haven't had that many in a long time.

I'm fine with multiplicatively stacking discounts and additively stacking bonuses. These are still synergies (see stacking WLTKD bonuses) without going overboard.