New Unit Production Idea

[sir_schwick]

in the UET 2nd Edition thread, rcoutme suggested an idea that there be more unit producing improvements. His idea was that there would be tank factories and such that spat out units every few turns, but cost a lot in gold upkeep. My idea begin at this, but expands the concept to almost all parts of armies.

Throughout history there would be facilities that can regularily train and produce certain types of units. To keep people from just making a bunch of cities to make the units, there would be a limiting factors. Instead of miantenance, which just rewards gold producing powers, lets use the natural limiting factor that armies use. Any civ up to size forty cities can have 10 of a particular unit producing building. To get the 11th and so on, you must have 4 cities per building. There would nto be a unique building for each unit, but rather you could take one turn to retool what the building produces, with each building being able to certain units.
Ancient Barracks = Archers, Spearmen, Skrimishers, Swordsmen, Chariots, Horsemen
Construction Yard = Catapult
Medieval Barracks = Longbows, Med Inf, Knights, Musketmen
Metal Works = Cannon, Artillery
Barracks = Riflemen, Infantry
Modern Barracks = Marines, TOW Infantry
Armour Barracks = Tanks, Mechanized Infantry, Radar Artillery
Special Forces Center = Paratroopers
Plane Plant = Fighter, Bomber
Aerospace Complex = Jet Fighter, Stealth Fighter, Stealth Bomber, Cruise Missle
Harbour = Galley, Caravel
Port = Galleon, Frigate, Ironclad
Shipyard = Destroyer, Battleship, Transport, Cruiser, AEGIS Cruiser, Submarine
Nuclear Research Center = Tactical Nukes, ICBMs

If you build addtional units besides the generated ones, they will take away population points, since these facilities took the population gradually. You can also close plants, but they take 1 turn to reopen. Mobilization doubles the rate at which units are produced, but halves culture and casued more WW.

 

[Trade-peror]

Amazing! I had this general idea in mind for the UET II, although I have not yet had time to state it (since it is more of a branch than the fundamental economic core of the UET II), but you and rcoutme had already sensed it coming!

 

[rcoutme]

This would work for me except for one caveat: you can not take away from the player the ability to make more buildings and build more units! Instead there needs to be further penalties. It could be that each "Combat Structure" in excess of the allowed limit causes an unhappiness throughout the empire, or causes lost shields or something, but a nation that has to go to total war will. Also, I believe that producing the base unit (be it spearmen in ancient times or infantry in modern times) would not require a "Combat Structure", otherwise conscription during wartime would not be allowed and I believe that it is vital to the game mechanics (and I like drafting guys anyways )

 

[sir_schwick]

The main purpose of limiting buildings is to keep players from using pop rushing and ICS to generate 30+ Swordsmen a turn by 2000 BC. But that is probably not the best solution. A decent limiting factor may be a one food per turn drain by each building. The main idea behidn the limiting was that for most of the game nations had roughly the same unit production ability and would have to win with proper application. Once you started to get 44+ cities, you coudl slowly win out. Conscription and hurried training might help too.

Conscription would still be useable and encourage, but its still conscripts versus trained troops.

 

[Diogenes183]

Another thing to consider is that producing military units in reality is supported by two completely seperate processes: training and production. In other words, infantry do not get trained at a gun factory. Production of arms can only occur in very specific locations while training facilities are more flexible. You could have certain cities produce certain classes of arms which are stored in a federal civ level pool and used by others cities that produce (train) the units. Producing units would cost some small amount of production and some arms from the arms pool. In this way, producing units would be like a pipelined two stage process. A player would have to anticipate bottlenecks for certain types of arms. To keep complexity down, there would be only between 8 to 10 different classes of arms throughout all of history. Some units would require multiple types of arms. Ex. - Training a Knight costs = 10 Shields + 10 Armor units + 10 Midevel Arms units + 10 War Horse units. So training a Knight costs a few sheilds and 3 different types of arms.

Also, arms can be bought and sold to other civilizations.

Getting back on the topic for specific buildings for enhancing the production of specific unit classes... there could be specific building to enhance either training of units or the production of certain types of arms.

 

[dguichar]

Ex. - Training a Knight costs = 10 Shields + 10 Armor units + 10 Midevel Arms units + 10 War Horse units. So training a Knight costs a few sheilds and 3 different types of arms.

You have found a follower... that's what i always have thought: military training separate from building construction. I'll also add the global food system of Master of Magic (all the extra food, much like extra gold, was considered a pool to feed your armies).

About the military buildings, i guess ancient ones should be prerequistes to modern ones.

David

 

[Diogenes183]

You have found a follower... that's what i always have thought: military training separate from building construction. I'll also add the global food system of Master of Magic (all the extra food, much like extra gold, was considered a pool to feed your armies).

About the military buildings, i guess ancient ones should be prerequistes to modern ones.
David

Awesome! Thank you.

Also I was thinking that for the sake of simplicity there would only be 3 different arms pools active at any given level of tech development, although 10 or so during the entire course of the game.

Also, back on the building thing, here some units that would boost production of arms:
* Blacksmith = boosts production of Armor units and Midevel Arms units by 50%.
* Horse Farm = boosts production of War Horse units by 50%.