Reducing military units brainstorm

[myclan]

I have seen many players complaining about late game war tedious and too many units to control. I think the main reasons for too many units are:
1. They are too easy to be killed or severely injured, thus we need extra units to continue the war. We have to build more.
2. They just cost one-time production, and some gold per turn to maintain, both are relatively abundant in the late game. We are able to build more.

So in order to solve the problem, we can
1. Make units having more Hp than current, like 150. And in late game it can be 200, simulating better logistics to support bigger army.
2. Make units cost more production than current, especially in late game for having more Hp.

If the supply system is too controversial, I would like to discuss the reducing units suggestion first.

Let’s imagine:
Your opponent have 4 units defending.
You have 6 units in the frontline, kill their 4, with all of the 6 injured. If you are not with a huge leading in tech, they may be severely injured.
So you have to let them have a rest, continue your war with another 6 reinforcement units.
Your opponent build another 4 units to counter you, repeat the first step.

Finally, you need 12 or even 18 units to accomplish the conquering task. With 1upt, it means a lot of micromanagement and time. Reinforcement units can’t do anything for away from frontline, but also indispensable.

By rising units’ hp and production cost, the fighting between units maybe longer for harder to be killed, but the whole war maybe shorter for more difficult to regain your lost units.

Some are suggesting that make late game units much more powerful than previous units, it will make those who are temporarily falling behind desperate, and everyone will need to prioritize military science. So it will be better to just give late game units extra Hp.

It may be even better if we can change the supply system from threshold to a kind of resource.

1.The supply can be automatically gained by production and population in cities every turn, simulating we need Population and Manufacturing to supply an army.

2.It needs a large amount of supply to build an extra unit. So we can't build too many.

3.Healing costs a bit supply, and it costs the same supply to heal in enemy land, though slower healing speed than homeland, simulating worse logistics in enemy land.

4.We can run a supply project in cities to provide extra supply, simulating mobilization.

5.Supply can be sold or bought from other civilization, simulating military aid.

 

[CppMaster]

Cool! I like both ideas. The 2nd one is similar to Endless Space 2, so it could be looked up for a reference.

 

[azum4roll]

We don't and shouldn't tie everything to production. The proposed supply is just another layer of production that's placed into the military bucket, in addition to the production spent to train units.

 

[myclan]

We don't and shouldn't tie everything to production. The proposed supply is just another layer of production that's placed into the military bucket, in addition to the production spent to train units.

Considering war not only costs production, but also lives of people and lots of gold, the supply project could be food+production+gold conversion. Hence, the cities running supply project not only stop growing, but also provide no gold to the whole empire.

And because units have their maintenance cost, and supply is provided by production and population in cities normally, they cost more than production only.

 

[azum4roll]

This is confusing. You're proposing a supply sink on healing but supply is still a cap? Doesn't it reach 0 if you heal too much?

 

[fiskeboller]

I like your ideas a lot. Have previously posted that there should be a bigger penalty of healing.

Exploiting the free healing system is in my opinion the single most important reason why humans outperform the AI. And why we need so many bonuses etc for the AI to make it interesting. The game would be so much better with a more even balance militarily between AI and human. The balance fixes between units/techs/policies are peanuts in comparison. Many people here has done a great job at improving the tactical AI, but there are limits two how far they can push the engine.

If we can improve the unit clutter late game in addition that would be awesome. I thought some time that the ideal way would be to have a finer military grid compared to the main terrain grid, but that's more an idea for a future game.

I am not so worried if late game units are improved. Not a big issue that the game eventually ends if someone is way ahead in tech and units.

 

[myclan]

This is confusing. You're proposing a supply sink on healing but supply is still a cap? Doesn't it reach 0 if you heal too much?

Yes, so supply is no more just a cap, but a resource you need to produce and consume. It will reach 0 if too many units are injured in the war. Then you have to stop the costly war for a while, or run the supply project in some of your cities.

Instead of just one-time production and some gold per turn, you need more to keep your army going forward.

 

[Heinz_Guderian]

Paradox games such as Hearts of Iron (yes I have of course played that, that is the reason for my nickname) uses manpower as a resource, it sounds similar to what you are suggesting. It is an interesting idea, not sure what I think about it yet though but this kind of brainstorming is never bad at least.

 

[nekokon]

Enemy civ can just pump out more units with their boosted production bonuses and not care about healing or cap whatsoever, and with more hp the frontline is gonna get stuck even harder and war becomes more tedious as the result.

Need to be clear that it's not "too many units to control" makes late game war boring, but the lack of meaningful control/micromanagement that does. You can have only 5 battleships against 1 city, but if its defense and healing is too big you'd have to repeat the same hit and run action for 50 turns that's tedious; on the other hand, you can have a full screen of units, but only take 4 5 well-placed nukes to clear out in a few turns, that's a lot better gameplay-wise.

 

[Stalker0]

There are ways to link supply and healing together but in a way that doesn't dramatically change the system.

You can do a simple: An injured unit costs 2 supply.
'
So having a lot of injured units eats into your supply, representing the "healing resources" that go into fixing them. Now you could try to make the cost only occur while they are actually healing, but I'm guessing that would be a lot more work and checks (could be wrong).

 

[CppMaster]

Now you could try to make the cost only occur while they are actually healing, but I'm guessing that would be a lot more work and checks (could be wrong).

Or the cost occur if a unit was healed last turn. Might be an ok approximation.

 

[Tekamthi]

Yes, so supply is no more just a cap, but a resource you need to produce and consume

This is an interesting take, reminds me of an idea I've sketched out previously for more strategic resources (I was exploring overhauling the timbermod for VP, alas time has never allowed me to finish) -- I think your concept is distinct from the similar idea I posted re supply in the way you describe consumption; my description in the other thread is really just about trading the existing supply cap, here you suggest taking this further.

Where I've thought of similar before, we'd use the existing strategic system, it already affects healing and whatnot: however this resource would not exist on the map, it would be something produceable that the player can stockpile. If unit is lost, or as suggested here if it heals etc., the resource total would decrement and you'd have to build back the resource and the unit separately.

The big issue I struggled with on this kind of concept, is how to handle trading? If it's traded like a strategic resource, this is more like a lease for 100 turns -- whereas we would want this style of consumable resource to be traded more like a commodity, just a transactional number the way gold (but not gpt) is traded now. With the existing strategic trading mechanism, if a consumable resource all gets consumed and then the deal expires, what happens? Someone goes into negative supply? Now we get into weird math game and not so much an abstraction of reality. I think these concerns may be solvable but take some careful thought.

On googling this topic in past few days I came across a food supply mod on steam; haven't played it yet but might be worth checking out, very topical in any case

 

[azum4roll]

There's always a cost to healing. Number of turns spent in the war, which is both game time (a game has limited turns) and War Weariness (which reduces supply).

Your proposal suggests that supply from buildings and population can be exhausted, but both of these are limited resources. While War Weariness can be recovered as long as you end the war (which again costs game turns).

 

[Tekamthi]

I don't think it's been brought up yet in this thread, but I am particularly fond of the idea of having supply/maintenance costs increase the further away a unit is.

To throw out some specifics for sake of discussion, let's use distance to capital as the computation as it's simple and easy to understand. Unit up to 7-8 tiles away from capital costs about the same as now, and from there increases, say costs double by the time we're in the 20 plots from capital range.

This would have some natural built-in balance for small vs large empire, end encourage more time limited military excursions rather than just parking units in any old place around the map

Healing costs a bit supply, and it costs the same supply to heal in enemy land, though slower healing speed than homeland, simulating worse logistics in enemy land.

could we just restrict healing to accomplish something similar -- say healing could only occur adjacent to friendly cities at full HP and a select number of other plots (roads? forts? citadels? towns?); we're not consuming supply via a new system but nonetheless simulating some kind of logistics regime for healing, and resulting in diminished ability to focus forces in one region

alternatively, and i'm getting a little creative here, I admit -- what if all healing consumed a civilian unit of some kind, like healing supply is an actual unit that can be easily acquired but not so easily moved to the front line. Think of the great admiral ability to heal units (I havent even owned a great admiral in several versions of the mod now spanning many months -- at least it used to be able to do this); we change things up so all/most healing occurs through this kind of mechanism

 

[hokath]

If there are too many units then the solution is to make them cost more supply (or reduce sources of supply).
I am strongly against adding additional mechanics like manpower.

 

[Phosphoraptor]

Im gonna copy my idea from the main proposal workshop thread as something that still keeps the supply mechanic.

Project to reduce Supply but increase unit CS and costs:
- Several civ wide one time projects that unlock from Renaissance Era onwards. 1 per era from techs like Navigation, Mil Sci etc.
- Each project reduces supply, increases unit and city CS, increases unit cost and maintenance.
- Supply decrease uses +% supply penalty from tech, CS uses generic +% CS, costs affect production, gold and maintenance
- Numbers increase for each project to counter diminishing returns
- Less efficient repeatable version for warmongers to fine tune their supply numbers. Unlocked with 1st project.
- Projects cost as much as NW and can only be built by 1 city (like VC projects)

The one time projects help widen late game CS differences but will reduce supply less, while repeatables affect supply more.

This system for exchanging supply for CS ties it with building projects so you can choose how much you want.

 

[Tekamthi]

This system for exchanging supply for CS ties it with building projects so you can choose how much you want.

I particularly like the ability to build new supply -- I'm not sure I share the full vision here but that bit could probably be broadly useful.

Once you've built a few levels of this CS bonus, could it be reversed if you found you were running out of supply?

 

[Stalker0]

I'm not a fan of retooling supply for other purposes. Its simply unncessary. Supply serves a simple and important function....to cap the amount of units in the game. If that is not working...than supply should be lowered. Its that simple. now there are some devils in those details, we need to keep things good for tall for example....but we don't need to revamp supply imo, it doesn't serve its function because at certain points in the game its simply too plentiful.

 

[Phosphoraptor]

I particularly like the ability to build new supply -- I'm not sure I share the full vision here but that bit could probably be broadly useful.

Once you've built a few levels of this CS bonus, could it be reversed if you found you were running out of supply?

I forgot about that! Yes you can also do a very cheap project to remove the effects of the repeatables 1 at a time.

You’re not building new supply so much as exchanging supply for CS so if you dont want to micro a massive carpet you can instead play with fewer units that have more CS.

 

[Tekamthi]

.Healing costs a bit supply, and it costs the same supply to heal in enemy land, though slower healing speed than homeland, simulating worse logistics in enemy land.

could we just restrict healing to accomplish something similar -- say healing could only occur adjacent to friendly cities at full HP and a select number of other plots (roads? forts? citadels? towns?); we're not consuming supply via a new system but nonetheless simulating some kind of logistics regime for healing, and resulting in diminished ability to focus forces in one region

alternatively, and i'm getting a little creative here, I admit -- what if all healing consumed a civilian unit of some kind, like healing supply is an actual unit that can be easily acquired but not so easily moved to the front line. Think of the great admiral ability to heal units (I havent even owned a great admiral in several versions of the mod now spanning many months -- at least it used to be able to do this); we change things up so all/most healing occurs through this kind of mechanism

I stayed up too late last night, inspired to see what is possible here. Very experimental as far as gameplay goes, and tbh not sure it'll really work for full game, especially for the AI who will be blind to all of this, but I've mocked up a modmod that I'm interested in playtesting. This is a database-only mod, if you're wondering why I did something one way and not another, it's probably cuz this is what database allows currently:

- All normal healing is disabled for land units. (-5 in enemy, -10 in neutral, -15 in friendly)
- there are 3 promos that re-enable healing: food supply, resource supply, materiel supply.
- each do 5 hp per turn healing for plot and adjacent (functionally identical to medic promo healing bonus), each is temporary duration (10 turns). To get the current +15 hp per turn in friendly, unit must heal in same plot as or adjacent to all 3 promos; 2 nearby promos will only do +10 per turn, etc. Enemy vs neutral vs friendly land doesn't matter, just these promos
- healing promos are gained from moving unit through a plot with an improvement -- food supply promo gained from farms/pastures, resource supply from mines/lumbermills, materiel supply from village/towns/manufactory.
- land military units AND some civilians (workers primarily) can gain the healing promos. ie send a force on foreign attack, it will have healing enabled for 10 turns after it leaves your territory - to continue healing after 10 turns away, at least some units will have to tag up in owned improved plots to restart 10 turn timer OR workers will have to be sent to the front line, carrying these same promos
- forts and citadels provide additional healing bonus per turn

I'll probably start a game with this today, if anyone interested in test-driving with me, let me know here.

edit: I've posted a copy in the modmod sub