AspiringScholar
Prince
Ah, but they're not mutually exclusive! The bonus experience from a great general allows your super unit to get the most out of its doctrine. Also, it's important to note that when a doctrine expires, that just means that no new units can get the benefit from it. Your existing units get to keep the promotions they already have, which can lead to fun things like mechanized infantry with archery training if you are careful and somewhat lucky.
In terms of General utilization, the melee and later gunpowder traditions are automatic for me as it's just such a huge force multiplier for all of the irregulars I build. I also always have one or two held back for the medic passive until Medicine is researched. From there I like 0-2 more traditions, 2-4 doctrines (over the course of the whole game), and then the rest become super soldiers (ideally with Leadership, the relevant tradition, and 3 levels of their chosen doctrine!). Added up, that's a whole lot of generals, which is one reason I'm all about those raging barbarians giving me early points.
Ah, I actually did not know that units constructed while the doctrine was in effect retain the bonus! That does change my thinking. It was my impression that their possession of each trait was contingent upon the doctrine being in effect. This feature really adds something to the strategic side of warfare, not even just the units and stack composition themselves, but an empire-wide "stamp" of military specialization. Increasingly I get the impression that this mod is just too good overall to be free, lol.
Ok, well I'm still going to indulge some wishful thinking along the lines of military strategy and propose a hopefully very simple and easily-implemented suggestion. The somewhat recent discussion around the role of manpower in military capacity touched upon the existing mechanic of supply limit having been revised slightly to more closely correlate with population, to represent roughly a nation's support limit from its stock of fighting age men. The way that irregulars draw in food and in production spend potential growth on units is a nice extra touch of complexity here, but I have a suggestion which should model population as a positive correlation with unit production more thoroughly and comprehensively:
Make a universal "building" exist in each city (much as they do if one has a doctrine or tradition, which as templates for their respective effects are nevertheless functionally "buildings"), Local Manpower. What it could do, is apply, say, a 2% modifier towards military unit production for every population unit the city has, that way large population centers are naturally more capable of fielding units than more rural or unpopulated cities. I suspect (but am still totally guessing) that the underline code for mechanics contingent upon population size is already there on the basis of unhealthiness and unhappiness, and perhaps if it exists exclusively and only for these, then using "it's too crowded" or unhealthiness "from population" as the inputs would work as well. Finally, since it would exist by default in every single city, there should be no AI coding involved in adding it. It could potentially even be included as a default tradition which every civ gets automatically.
What do you think of this idea? Is the base code already there for it? Would it enhance the gameplay in anyone else's opinion? With scaling unit costs in play alongside significant population-cap constraints for much of the early game, this shouldn't encourage any snowballing to my mind. So... Walter, would you please generously bear this request in mind and possibly make an exception for your no new content intent, since I think this one isn't much of a stretch and would model something really depth-enhancing?