'Politician' Leader Trait and negative Free Units

[cammcken]

I don't know if anyone has noticed this, because it's quite obvious once you get it. The politician trait decreases your number of maintenance-free units, which is all well and great when you are running a civic like Tribal Warfare and you have some Free Units, but in the beginning this can actually take that number into the negatives. You can be paying for units that don't exist.

Combined with the crippled generation characteristic of the Neolithic era, this becomes devastating.

I played a game as Australia and at the start I had to bring my research down to 0%. As I produced buildings I slowly raised it to 20%, 30%. I couldn't send out any scouts or hunters because I would run into deficit and they would be deleted. When I wanted to get a gatherer out I had to accumulate some surplus gold before sending it, hoping it will finish its construction before it I ran out. With such low research I was late to get the health benefits from Cooking, Herbalism, etc., so my food wasn't positive until I already had other civs' hunters milling about my borders.

In short, it was painful.

Someone needs to edit this so that the free units can't go negative.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Hmm... I though Alberts2 had limited the total # of free units to 0 at minimum long ago. Will have to take a look into that at some point soon.

 

[JosEPh_II]

I don't know if anyone has noticed this, because it's quite obvious once you get it. The politician trait decreases your number of maintenance-free units, which is all well and great when you are running a civic like Tribal Warfare and you have some Free Units, but in the beginning this can actually take that number into the negatives. You can be paying for units that don't exist.

Combined with the crippled generation characteristic of the Neolithic era, this becomes devastating.

I played a game as Australia and at the start I had to bring my research down to 0%. As I produced buildings I slowly raised it to 20%, 30%. I couldn't send out any scouts or hunters because I would run into deficit and they would be deleted. When I wanted to get a gatherer out I had to accumulate some surplus gold before sending it, hoping it will finish its construction before it I ran out. With such low research I was late to get the health benefits from Cooking, Herbalism, etc., so my food wasn't positive until I already had other civs' hunters milling about my borders.

In short, it was painful.

Someone needs to edit this so that the free units can't go negative.

It's as the author of the Traits meant it to be. The author was a Deity player and wanted everyone to play that level. And the whole Trait system has been toned down from what he originally made it. Could be worse.

Not saying there isn't a need for some tweaking or a complete overhaul. Play with a Leader that has Cruel as a Trait and then combine it with Politician or Megalomaniac, or Temperamental. Some real fun there.

JosEPh

 

[Thunderbrd]

But not as the author of the tag (myself) meant it to be... it really shouldn't create this big a problem to have a negative free unit amount - should only counter other sources of free units not create a deficit.

EDIT: Interesting. Checked the code and apparently it already IS a minimum of 0 total free units... hmm...