Raising costs of army maintenance

[konradcabral]

Hi guys,

I always thought a little weird the way Civ IV treats armies and its maintenance. We just need to build as more units as we can, and bang! We have an eternal army. No need to worry about feeding and/or paying my soldiers. Let them fortify my capital for two millennia! And just give some coins to transform clubs in automatic weapons (or triremes in destroyers ). History shows us big armies losing to smaller ones, because the owner of the bigger one just hadn't the money or the food necessary to maintain it. None of this happens in Civ IV. Because of this I jumped joyfully when Zappara decided to give some advanced units an extra maintenance cost. But I need more!

Actually, all of this I'm talking about is simulated in the game, with 4 variables (at least I think they are just 4), showed in the Financial Advisor:
- Unit Cost (X gold): "the amount of money spent on unit upkeep" and Free support for Y units;
- Unit Supply (Z gold): "the amount of money spent on units in enemy territory" and free supply for K units.

But these costs generally are way too low! How many times did you worried about them? How many times did you LOOK AT them? How many times did you delete some unit (disband your army)?

I've been trying to learn some XML, and I'm willing to make this raising costs my first attempt of a mod. But I didn't find those variables in the XML files or in the Modding Wiki Forum. Are they XML at all? Where are they?

So, anyone agrees with me? Anyone would like to see this implemented?

Cheers,

Konrad

 

[Jabarto]

I don't know if it's possible to change unit support costs without modifying the civics and/or difficulty levels, but if you find a way, let me know. I agree with you to an extent and would like to add this to my modmod.

 

[vincentz]

Hi guys,

I always thought a little weird the way Civ IV treats armies and its maintenance. We just need to build as more units as we can, and bang! We have an eternal army. No need to worry about feeding and/or paying my soldiers. Let them fortify my capital for two millennia! And just give some coins to transform clubs in automatic weapons (or triremes in destroyers ). History shows us big armies losing to smaller ones, because the owner of the bigger one just hadn't the money or the food necessary to maintain it. None of this happens in Civ IV. Because of this I jumped joyfully when Zappara decided to give some advanced units an extra maintenance cost. But I need more!

Actually, all of this I'm talking about is simulated in the game, with 4 variables (at least I think they are just 4), showed in the Financial Advisor:
- Unit Cost (X gold): "the amount of money spent on unit upkeep" and Free support for Y units;
- Unit Supply (Z gold): "the amount of money spent on units in enemy territory" and free supply for K units.

But these costs generally are way too low! How many times did you worried about them? How many times did you LOOK AT them? How many times did you delete some unit (disband your army)?

I've been trying to learn some XML, and I'm willing to make this raising costs my first attempt of a mod. But I didn't find those variables in the XML files or in the Modding Wiki Forum. Are they XML at all? Where are they?

So, anyone agrees with me? Anyone would like to see this implemented?

Cheers,

Konrad

Have you seen the size of AI armies in ROM? It would completely cripple the AI's progress with a huge military budget, while the human player is better at organizing, keeping nonthreathened cities at a minimum defense and having taskforces run around doing the dirty work. I just played a game where 1 AI had over 30 triremes alone. Add 1 gold for each of those and the research rate (since it was rather early in the game) would go down to 10-20%. The result : The human player plays target practice on AI triremes with nuclear subs.

 

[konradcabral]

Have you seen the size of AI armies in ROM? It would completely cripple the AI's progress with a huge military budget, while the human player is better at organizing, keeping nonthreathened cities at a minimum defense and having taskforces run around doing the dirty work. I just played a game where 1 AI had over 30 triremes alone. Add 1 gold for each of those and the research rate (since it was rather early in the game) would go down to 10-20%. The result : The human player plays target practice on AI triremes with nuclear subs.

Even if we use parameters that already exist, like the ones I mentioned?

Even with these values being so damn low, I think the AI can "see" and manage that properly the way it is now, right? If we rise them, maybe the AI could live with that too. If I discover where these variables are, I will test it.

 

[vincentz]

Even if we use parameters that already exist, like the ones I mentioned?

Even with these values being so damn low, I think the AI can "see" and manage that properly the way it is now, right? If we rise them, maybe the AI could live with that too. If I discover where these variables are, I will test it.

they are in ...\Civilization4\Beyond the Sword\Mods\Rise of Mankind\Assets\XML\GlobalDefines.xml
and can be made modular by being copied together with CIV4GlobalDefinesSchema.xml into
...\Civilization4\Beyond the Sword\Mods\Rise of Mankind\Assets\Modules\Balance\<younameit>
renamed like this : <younameit>_GlobalDefines.xml and <younameit>_CIV4GlobalDefinesSchema.xml

the beginning of the GlobalDefines.xml looks like this

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!-- edited with XMLSPY v2004 rel. 2 U (http://www.xmlspy.com) by Tim McCracken (Firaxis Games) -->
<!-- Sid Meier's Civilization 4 -->
<!-- Copyright Firaxis Games 2005 -->
<!-- -->
<!-- Global Defines -->
<Civ4Defines xmlns="x-schema:CIV4GlobalDefinesSchema.xml">

change it to this : <Civ4Defines xmlns="x-schema:<younameit>_CIV4GlobalDefinesSchema.xml">

(Off course <younameit> is without the brackets )

Since all the definitions are already there, it is compatible with savegames, thus being able to enable/disable the mod to check the difference in economy quickly.

the definitions look like this :

<Define>
<DefineName>INITIAL_BASE_FREE_UNITS</DefineName>
<iDefineIntVal>4</iDefineIntVal>
</Define>
<Define>
<DefineName>INITIAL_BASE_FREE_MILITARY_UNITS</DefineName>
<iDefineIntVal>2</iDefineIntVal>
</Define>
<Define>
<DefineName>INITIAL_FREE_UNITS_POPULATION_PERCENT</DefineName>
<iDefineIntVal>24</iDefineIntVal>
</Define>
<Define>
<DefineName>INITIAL_FREE_MILITARY_UNITS_POPULATION_PERCENT</DefineName>
<iDefineIntVal>12</iDefineIntVal>
</Define>
<Define>
<DefineName>INITIAL_GOLD_PER_UNIT</DefineName>
<iDefineIntVal>1</iDefineIntVal>
</Define>
<Define>
<DefineName>INITIAL_FREE_OUTSIDE_UNITS</DefineName>
<iDefineIntVal>4</iDefineIntVal>
</Define>
<Define>
<DefineName>INITIAL_OUTSIDE_UNIT_GOLD_PERCENT</DefineName>
<iDefineIntVal>50</iDefineIntVal>
</Define>

But... I have to disagree that the AI are doing ok with their economy as it is in 2.7.
In 2.5 and 2.6 they were quite competent, until the breaking point (for me it was late renaissance/early industrialism) then they would "stop" their exponential expansion while I would continue, therefore making me the only superpower. At that point it was VERY easy expanding with superior military and strong economy. I think my next mod is going to be a balance mod where I want to make it difficult to maintain, control and expand a huge empire thus actually being able to use the huge work zappara puts in the transhuman era. If however you can find a good balance with extra unit cost, I would love to implement it as the idea is really good.

 

[tmgandscar]

I partially agree wit this post
yes smaller armies have beaten much larger armies but usually they had better generals leading them, usually leaders of equal ability larger armies usually win
the higher maintenance costs usually do a good job of limiting a human army in ROM but if You play on diety like me you will come across AI massive armies with vassals and techs ahead of you, which might upset builder types but history actually has benefited and glorified conquerers more than builders, ie Romans, Mongols, Egyptians, Persians, were all conquerers with large armies that managed to supply them with thriving economies while they conquer which go hand in hand the key to winning at civ. Culture and building might be noble ways to win but pre modern era were not nearly as important in history as military sucesss.
besides upgrading on 2.7test gets real expensive in the modern era, if you do not believe me play diety, marathon, agg. AI with Shaka, Gilgamesh and ragnar and see what kind of an army they bring to a fight and believe me Shaka will have more vassals than you count and unless you are real good a huge tech lead, you will wish army maintenance was cheaper

 

[konradcabral]

But... I have to disagree that the AI are doing ok with their economy as it is in 2.7.

Yes, but this is because of the changes that RoM brought. I totally agree with your sight, as I am one of the advocates of better balanced late eras, specially in wealth and research boni.

My point was that the variables are still there, and they are already counted in the AI's decision making. My doubts about the raising costs working or no are: will the AI delete / disband units when it's needed? Will it stop producing units when the economy can't support it? Will it focus wealth when at war? I'll try to answer these questions.

Unfortunately, today I'm going to travel, without my notebook and CIV IV. When I come back in the monday, probably Zap will be near to launch the 2.7 3.19 compatible version. Then I'll make the tests.

Oh, by the way, thanks for the XML lesson.

 

[vincentz]

I partially agree wit this post
yes smaller armies have beaten much larger armies but usually they had better generals leading them, usually leaders of equal ability larger armies usually win
the higher maintenance costs usually do a good job of limiting a human army in ROM but if You play on diety like me you will come across AI massive armies with vassals and techs ahead of you, which might upset builder types but history actually has benefited and glorified conquerers more than builders, ie Romans, Mongols, Egyptians, Persians, were all conquerers with large armies that managed to supply them with thriving economies while they conquer which go hand in hand the key to winning at civ. Culture and building might be noble ways to win but pre modern era were not nearly as important in history as military sucesss.
besides upgrading on 2.7test gets real expensive in the modern era, if you do not believe me play diety, marathon, agg. AI with Shaka, Gilgamesh and ragnar and see what kind of an army they bring to a fight and believe me Shaka will have more vassals than you count and unless you are real good a huge tech lead, you will wish army maintenance was cheaper

I completely agrees with you that real life civs with big armies usually "get the job done", and expansive civs like mongols/persians/romans etc had great empires... once... but no more. Their empires crumbled. The problem however as I see it, is that if army maintenance was higher, the forementioned huge armies will cripple the AI's ability to develop.
About deity : Yes, I think I have to play deity now. In vanilla I played prince/monarch. In 2.5 it was a struggle on monarch, same in 2.6. In 2.7test2 I play emperor and it seems like I'm playing noble. I'm usually way ahead of the AI by the end of the classical era. I can ofcourse only speak for myself on that behalf, but I think it would be nice to have some difficulty levels "above" for when I get better.
My biggest concern, and it is not a new concern, it has been there since civ1, is that at one point I just get so much better than the AI so I sweep entire continents by a couple of turns. Then the game starts to be boring, and I usually win a conquest victory.
The mod that I will try to make, is a gamebalance where it might be easy to conquerer parts of the world, but it will be hell to keep it under control. If you look at modern day real life warfare you'll see a couple of civil wars and some occupations. Even the greatest military power on the earth have severe problems against a "few" guerillas hiding in caves. I want to try to recreate/simulate modern history/diplomacy and add more difficulties to the genocide my games usually end up with.

 

[Abraxis]

I think there are going to be some consequences here you need to consider.

Assuming the AI is smart enough to have a smaller army instead of a weaker economy. If the maintenance costs are raised 300% for example, everyone should have an army exactly 33% the size of the army they would have under the current system. Making each individual unit, strategically worth 300% more than they're worth under the current system. The factor of the decreased quantity will be offset exactly by the the increase in quality. Sorta like how a ratio of 4:2 and 2:1 are the same, just with a smaller sum.

Now looking at the effects of smaller armies.

The differences you would see are shorter, more decisive and less predictable battles.

With the current system for example, say you each have armies of 100 units, for the sake of the argument lets say each unit in your army has a %70 chance to win against each of theirs. When the battle is over, you can assume you will be left with 70 units to their 30. You might actually end up with 75 units left to their 25, but that is only a 7% margin of error.
With fewer units though, lets say 33 vs 33, same odds. you fight the battle and have 23 to their 7 units. Now with the same margin of error of five units that leaves the battle at 28 to 2, now those 5 units are 15% of the total army. It may not seem like much of a difference, and i did simplify it for the sake of argument, but because there are fewer battles, the statistical anomalies will be more critical, making wars in general harder to predict and the margin of error will play a much higher role in everything.

This could result in a better chance for smaller nations to take on bigger nations as going to war would be more like playing Russian roulette, but it could also really throw off the game's balance since a controlled balance depends on predictability. 3 rounds of roulette betting on black you might win every time (1:0), 100 on the other hand and you will be much closer to 1:2 which is what any programmer would need to assume when considering all these percentages for balance purposes.

The smaller armies will also make grand strategy more... strategic (balancing defense vs offense will be tougher.), which might not be so good for the AI since they take the brute force approach to everything to compensate for their lack of creativity.

That being said.
At best, I think I would love to play a game like that. Seeing tiny New Zealand get lucky and take out the majority of the U.S.A's army then take a large chunk of their land, totally turning the tables. It would be much more exciting I think. Though it might also frustrate some players if it happens to them.
At worst you would see chaos, areas of conflict where every city in the region is owned by a different nation constantly changing hands because attackers keep getting lucky and taking out the more powerful defenders.

but.

But these costs generally are way too low! How many times did you worried about them? How many times did you LOOK AT them? How many times did you delete some unit (disband your army)?

I disband armies all the time, and I do keep a very close eye on my maintenance/supply costs... does no one else? What difficulty do you play on?!

Edit: Also, you might run into problems with the revolutions mod, I'm not sure how much the quantity of troops in a city matters for keeping the peace, but if it's balanced for how many troops the AI currently keeps in it's cities, you might have to edit that, and anything else that depends on the current size of the AI armies.

 

[zup]

I play on Noble. I never disband because I cannot afford to. I lose too many units in combat already. I don't want to disband either.

 

[vincentz]

I'm way to cheap to dispand units. "What! throw away a perfectly good warrior, no way! I'd rather spend 1000 gold on upgrading him to a rifleman".

Seriously, thats what I do. I know its a terrible strategy, but the money usually comes from conquering or selling maps/techs.

 

[darkyxinhow]

Although ur original post makes perfect sense, accomplishing so would ruin AI in RoM.

Btw: a fellow brazilian That's kinda rare in here

 

[konradcabral]

That being said.
At best, I think I would love to play a game like that. Seeing tiny New Zealand get lucky and take out the majority of the U.S.A's army then take a large chunk of their land, totally turning the tables. It would be much more exciting I think. Though it might also frustrate some players if it happens to them.
At worst you would see chaos, areas of conflict where every city in the region is owned by a different nation constantly changing hands because attackers keep getting lucky and taking out the more powerful defenders.

Yes, you got exactly the spirit.

I disband armies all the time, and I do keep a very close eye on my maintenance/supply costs... does no one else? What difficulty do you play on?!

I never disband armies, because it makes no significant difference in my economy. The last game I won was a Monarch. I don't raise the level because the early eras are hard enough, but as vincentz said, if I survive it, I tend to overcome the AI in the Renaissance / Industrial. Correcting, one time I had to delete units, when I had a major rev in the classical. Lost the game, started another one...

Edit: Also, you might run into problems with the revolutions mod, I'm not sure how much the quantity of troops in a city matters for keeping the peace, but if it's balanced for how many troops the AI currently keeps in it's cities, you might have to edit that, and anything else that depends on the current size of the AI armies.

Coincidently, I had already thought about that. A correcting measure could be enabling the "We demand military protection" only for greater cities, let's say 5 to 8 pop. Do you guys know how to do it?

Although ur original post makes perfect sense, accomplishing so would ruin AI in RoM.

Btw: a fellow brazilian That's kinda rare in here

Nós já discutimos sobre isso lá em cima, meu raciocínio foi baseado em que as variáveis já são contabilizadas pela IA, e caso as aumentássemos, talvez ela consiga lidar com essa nova realidade. Talvez...

 

[konradcabral]

Today I made some important progresses at this minimod. But the unhappiness created by the absence of military protection will be a serious obstacle to its success. One more time I looked and looked for it, but I didn't find it. How can I enable this insatisfaction only for 5 pop greater cities? Is it XML?

 

[Sarkyn]

I am a builder type and I disband armies all the time.

I think managing with "less" is the only way to win against the AI at higher levels, who invariably throw Stacks-of_doom at you regularly.

I always specialise one major production city with Great Generals for the +2 xp, and then at any point in which the Unit-producer city can make better units than I am currently fielding at the borders, I under go a replacement regime.

The builder city produces new units, and when they reach their appropriate border/enemy front line, the one that they are replacing is disbanded to keep costs down. The border cities are thus defended with the best possible stacks, while the inner cities are defended by the bare minimum. There is always a highly mobile response force ready to move to whichever frontier is current being plagued, and it's able to get there in time because the enemy land is generally well spied upon

Just my 2c. I thought you might like to hear another play style.

My level of play is Monarch and higher... Monarch is usually won too early for me, but I have yet to crack the levels above it to any consistent level

 

[DRJ]

I usually don't disband armies and rather spend some gold to upgrade the troops in front cities when I need to
(In non-front cities I usually tend to keep warriors until infantry is there- to prevent paratroopers attacks [btw. has anybody ever seen AI attack with paratroopers?!!!]).

This has several positive effects vs AI: they 'think' I have a weaker army then I really have cause I can build/upgrade a number of troops to much better troops if I only spend a few turns of gold @ 100%, which then would raise my troop account effectively, opposed to prior numbers which seduced the enemy to attack me (Can someone code the AI to calculate this somehow? Like AI thinks player has a certain potential army size of units=size of potential maximum upgradeable units army size diverted by 3turns max gold+amount of gold available in civ as treasury + 50% of world (all civs)-wide available tradeable gold. A few other factors might be needed as well...)
Further, aside the 2-3 elite city defenders in front-cities I use to keep several emergeny squads in forts in between those 2-4 front-cities to hold off the main AI attacking stack
- at least as long as the main troop-stacks arrive -
or even beat/reduce it so the then arriving fast units from further away like warlords or cavalry take the offensive defender part...

The lack of strategic enemy infiltration is still disappointing to a tactician like me - anyhow, much better AI needed, stack attacks very, very predictable and thus not so challenging at all...!!!

 

[konradcabral]

You can found the minimod I made regarding this subject here.

Enjoy.