Too Many Military Units (Back to Civ III)

[mrt144]

I remenber someone had a sig that went

To kill stuff you need 2 things
1) More stuff
2) Better stuff

Which in Civ is sort of true. Forget about collatorate damage, you usually either need twice as much units or be more advance. This is why I like Medieval Total War 2 quite alot. A small army with the the same weopens can defeat a much larger one if the army is commaded properly

do we have time to play out all those battles?

 

[MarkM]

This is a interesting thread, very interesting points OP. I actually had not thought about the linear maintenance. You are right it makes sense it should go up > linearly, just like cities (some function of pop might make even more sense intuitively, but I have to reject that idea because all it does is reinforce the advantage a larger civ has, they can have a larger military for cheaper, so for play balance issues I'd strongly reject it) .

You can rationalize non-linear unit cost growth from a realistic POV (which we are seeing in the US today): there will always tend to be some x% of pop that will volunteer becsue it appeals to them, another y% because of the career/$ more than the combat/life itself. But each additional unit you need to recruit beyond x+y, you have to entice with larger and larger bonuses. Just notice the reenlistment bonuses in US tody, some of them go up to $100k, also note how much they have to pay contractors.

 

[Unthinking Pain]

Someone above pointed it out, but I'd like to reiterate, that pushing the battles to smaller numbers of units will make everything much more prone to Luck. With building massive armies, the building strategy is much more likely to play out to a result of the stronger army winning.

The overall result, IMO, is that you MUST put effort into reconning potential enemies, because you need to always know that they are building up massive armies. Waiting until war breaks out to find out how many units you're facing should = lose in a strategy game.

 

[hvevo]

I don't really understand why people complain that huge armies result in long rounds. Of course the rounds last a long time if you haven't ticked Quick Battles options on. Personally, I've never been keen on animated battles in Civ4, and I've used the Quick Battles options since the release of the game.

 

[Hescumet]

A lot of good points here. I've been thinking for a long time that the ammount of units in the mid-end game should be reduced.

Another solution could be to increase production cost of units. Specialy in mid to late game where this is more of a problem. Also i think these units would need higher strenght to compensate fore this.

This seems like the simplest solution. If we then add non linear unit costs the game is even balanced again (that is needed otherwise modern armies equally effective with now 70 units instead of 100 become cheaper to maintain!). I liked the following rationale for non linear costs:

You can rationalize non-linear unit cost growth from a realistic POV (which we are seeing in the US today): there will always tend to be some x% of pop that will volunteer becsue it appeals to them, another y% because of the career/$ more than the combat/life itself. But each additional unit you need to recruit beyond x+y, you have to entice with larger and larger bonuses. Just notice the reenlistment bonuses in US tody, some of them go up to $100k, also note how much they have to pay contractors.

Then there is the randomness point. That is true, the proposed solution would increase randomness a bit. But then, why should battles in the later ages be less random than in the early-game, what is the rationale for this current situation?

I guess "the solution" would be to not overdue the scaling and the increase in production costs. If we reduce the average modern-day army from 100 units to 70 units that does not increase the randomness a lot and people who like huge stacks will still be OK, while for the rest it will feel less tiresome...

I'll just call Sid (or whoever is in charge there now) to get to his Computer, I want to see it changed in 2 hours at the latest!

 

[colony]

This is a interesting thread, very interesting points OP. I actually had not thought about the linear maintenance. You are right it makes sense it should go up > linearly, just like cities (some function of pop might make even more sense intuitively, but I have to reject that idea because all it does is reinforce the advantage a larger civ has, they can have a larger military for cheaper, so for play balance issues I'd strongly reject it) .

Perhaps free supply could increase with certain techs or reaching a new Era, instead of with pop like it does now. This combined with non-linear maintenance would remove the advantage a big civ would have, but then you might just end up making wars a bit too hard to ever be worthwhile, and that would be much worse than having too many units IMO.

I'd be interested to see what happened if civic costs went up non-linearly (I assume it's either very hard or impossible to mod that though) too, and if it meant inflation could be reduced, but that's getting a bit OT.

 

[Yakk]

First, you get 1 free unit per city, plus sqrt(total population size).

Up to sqrt(total population size) costs 1 gp each.
This doubles every sqrt(total population size).

This means a larger empire can maintain a larger army.

If you have 20 size 20 cities:
sqrt(400) = 20.
20+20 = 40 free units.
next 20 units cost 1 gp each (total 20 gpt)
next 20 units cost 2 gp each (total 60 gpt)
next 20 units cost 4 gp each (total 140 gpt)
next 20 units cost 8 gp each (total 300 gpt)
next 20 units cost 16 gp each (total 620 gpt)
next 20 units cost 32 gp each (total 1260 gpt)

Would that work?

 

[vodlaian]

God forbid that a game be challenging. I guess people these days only care about "PWWWNING".

 

[meatwad4289]

every game i play i play with HUNDREDS of MILITARY UNITS. First game I played of Civ4 ran EXTREMELY Slow towards the end becuase i had over 500 Mech infantry 200 Modern Armor, and 150 ICBMs, plus countless ships, the only thing i didnt build up was airforce.

Frist game of BtS towards the end (finished with diplo victory) I had 300 infantry and 100 tanks. 60 Tactical nukes 25 icbdms, 150 Destroyers 40 Battle ships. And I was still upset my military wasnt larger.

 

[Zhahz]

I think having scaling military costs is a great idea - similar to how city costs ramp up. It's kind of silly to be able to create ridiculously huge armies with no real penalty.

I could see tying the formula to how many cities you have and how many troops you already have. I guess the current formula must already do this to some extent but the costs should ramp up much more drastically as your army size gets up to larger and then ludicrous sizes.

 

[Roland Johansen]

I would just like to see the units combine into armies that really fight together. Artillery supporting the infantry and infantry protecting the artillery. Armor attacking the opposing units in the enemy stack and facing of against the defending enemy infantry and enemy armor that is protecting their own artillery and so forth. One battle between 12 units on both sides that you can watch if you wish (optionally, you can switch watching it off to increase the speed of the game). If you're moving 10 armies instead of 120 units, then it suddenly becomes a lot more manageable.

And with enough units, the randomness of combat wouldn't be important. The great plans still work because a random unlucky loss is compensated by a random lucky victory. With a hundred units on both sides, it isn't luck that will dominate who will win. It's the experience of the units, the terrain, the technology level of the units, the number of units and the composition of the stacks. The victorious army of 12 units would also suffer significant losses itself, maybe throw in some retreating for the losing army so that even they have some units left.

 

[polypheus]

There are lots of ideas on how to better balance the military aspect of the game. I personally like my mercenary idea but it is too complex for a patch and would need serious modding (if it can even be done there). Other ideas like a whole new combat system we won't see until Civ5.

It seems the easiest solution that could be patched would be to have military forces have a non-linear cost. This would enforce reasonable optimally sized militaries. This is what could be easily implemented.

Another idea would be for military units to cost a pop point. That would also have the same effect but be very easy to mod and would obviously limit army sizes. It also makes perfect sense. Military units are people after all, not machines you can just build regardless of your population size.

 

[Lurking Liu]

Not to sound snarky or anything, but I think you may be playing the wrong game. This is Civ 4, not Sim City.

Until relatively recently in human history, you had to have an army large enough to discourage an attack. You didn't necessarily have to have one large enough to conquer all your neighbors, but that was desirable. Between roughly 5,000 BC and 1920, pacifism was the exception, not the rule. Even then, the Swiss are the world's most famous neutral nation, and, incidentally, has one of the world's most highly trained, best equipped armies.

So, moral of the story, build an army that can hold off your opponent (not difficult, since defense holds the advantage over offense--Terrain is your friend) and continue along your merry way.

 

[Setis]

Why does axe rush work? Because with 1-2 pop2/3 cities, you could build a dozen or so axeman. IMHO that makes no sense and is completely unrealistic. An ancient era where your military population is several times larger than your civilian one???

This...is....SPARTA!

 

[polypheus]

Not to sound snarky or anything, but I think you may be playing the wrong game. This is Civ 4, not Sim City.

Until relatively recently in human history, you had to have an army large enough to discourage an attack. You didn't necessarily have to have one large enough to conquer all your neighbors, but that was desirable. Between roughly 5,000 BC and 1920, pacifism was the exception, not the rule. Even then, the Swiss are the world's most famous neutral nation, and, incidentally, has one of the world's most highly trained, best equipped armies.

So, moral of the story, build an army that can hold off your opponent (not difficult, since defense holds the advantage over offense--Terrain is your friend) and continue along your merry way.

Saying that we shouldn't need to or have to deal with hundreds of units is hardly saying that Civ4 should be like "Sim City". What exactly is the point of allowing for and having to manage so many units? You could have just as many wars whether you have a stacks of 12 units vs stacks of 120 units. You're not getting anything more gameplay-wise from having 120 units vs 12 units. You just have more units to build and manage and hogging CPU power and memory. It just clogs up the game without adding anything to it.

Rather than accuse people who want a more balanced game where military units numbers aren't overwhelming the game of wanting "Sim City", I think it is more reasonable to suggest people that want to spam so many units to play a pure wargame like "Intersil Empire" where cities only built military unit after military unit and do nothing else.

 

[mice]

God forbid that a game be challenging. I guess people these days only care about "PWWWNING".

For challenge I go up a level.

Polypheus' ideas are very good, but for me the issue isnt so much the big numbers in the late game, although this makes the late game war a really unattractive proposition. No for me the issue is that a mid game war starts to dominate the whole game instead of being just an integral part of your strat.

There's plenty of challenge in a builderish game which has one hard hitting war to grab land. If it's not challenging then I go up a level I dont make the short war into a long one, which is what the new bonuses have done.

 

[polypheus]

This...is....SPARTA!

Sparta was the exception not the rule. Sparta was also not exactly a prosperous well off "Civ", it was the North Korea of its time and was ultimately defeated. If you want to pursue a North Korean strategy then you should suffer North Korean like penalties otherwise the game becomes unbalanced and Civ4 degenerates into a modern version of Intersil Empire.

Spartan/North Korean strategies should usually suffer defeat with the rare victory not the other way around like it is now. That is unrealistic and hugely unbalanced.

 

[Lurking Liu]

When Greece was invaded by Italy and, later, Germany, I'm sure they complained about having to defend against 120 units with their 12 also. That's history. This is a game about creating history, and unfortunately that means war *will* happen, and it's incredibly hard to get your enemy to play by "the rules."

War is not balanced.

When I play, I aim for cultural and diplomatic victories. Often-times, I'll simply turn off everything but Time Victory and play until the game is over--or, more likely, until I'm crushed. But if I'm going for a cultural victory, then it's only natural for the AI to want to kill me: I'm winning. Setting aside the fact that it's an AI, let's assume it's a human being. If I'm winning and it wants me to not win, what's the logical solution? Is it to build twice as many units as I have and attack? Sticking its army into a meatgrinder for little gain unless they capture one of my three Renowned cities? Or is it to build ten times my military and crush the crap out of me?

Heaven forbid the AI should show some Actual Intelligence!

 

[polypheus]

When Greece was invaded by Italy and, later, Germany, I'm sure they complained about having to defend against 120 units with their 12 also. That's history. This is a game about creating history, and unfortunately that means war *will* happen, and it's incredibly hard to get your enemy to play by "the rules."

War is not balanced.!

The GAME is not balanced if it permits and allows you build hundreds of units in a game that is not a wargame. The game is not modelling a society correctly if you can build massive armies vastly out of proportion to the size of population and economy and not suffer for it like you would have in real life history.

There isn't anything harder or challenging having to build 120 units than building 12 units. If the cost structure allows you build 120 units and everyone builds 120 units then you'll build 120 units, there's nothing hard about that.

What is it that makes it more fun and challenging that the game mechanics allow you to build massive numbers of units by everyone. Its not that people who complain can't build massive armies. There's nothing to it just have more cities devote resouces to buid military units.

As for creating history, countries that built massive militaries disproportionately have failed not succeeded. Sparta failed. USSR failed. North Korea failed. There are almost no instances in history where nations built massive militaries and succeeded. But in Civ4 it is completely the opposite. Almost everyone who attempts a Sparta/North Korean strategy succeeds and thus everyone else has to adopt this same ahistorical, unrealistic strategy. It is not modelling history nor the real world correctly for this to be the case.

 

[NP300]

i mentioned in another thread that the concept of Manpower must be introduced! If each military unit costed 1 population point, I doubt we would see huge armies anymore. It´s more realistic as well...

This is very realistic. I once modded it into Civ. I'm not sure if it was Civ3 or Civ4. I found that it crippled the AI because it would keep spamming units until its cities reached population size 2 or 3. It also distorted the game in other ways; 1 population point per infantry unit was just too high a cost.

So making military units cost population points would require a major re-balancing of the game. It would probably be necessary to increase the number of population points per city, to make the population cost per unit more reasonable.

A possible solution that has not been mentioned here would be to simply double the hammer and gold support costs per unit. This is what the game does to prevent unit spam at the slower game speeds, like marathon.

In fact, one of the players complaining about this "IMS" mentioned playing in marathon. In marathon, the hammer cost of units goes up, but not quite by as much as the number of turns goes up. So you do end up with significantly more units in marathon than at other game speeds. A simple solution may be to play at epic or to modify the hammer cost multiplier for marathon speed.