Unit maintenance explained

[colony]

I would appreciate if you could check it with an endgame save (especially one not at emperor/immortal/deity level so that the D-multiplier is used). It might be some work to sum up all the population in all of your cities, but it will be a good check. Could you do that? I wouldn't be that surprised if there were still some rounding errors in the present formulas (but I hope not).

Right, I tested this on a Monarch level game (D = 0.95), as the Romans, so with an Organised civ too. Total Pop of 436, with 44 cities, and I think I've found a small error in the formulae, in that the organised modifier is applied before the difficulty level modifier (still rounded down between each step), giving:

Goverment civics:
[D * [ O * ( [ 0.05 * C (N-8) ] + [ 0.2 * C (M-1) ] ) ] ]
Legal civics:
[D * [ O * ( [ 0.05 * C (N-9) ] + [ 0.2 * C M ] ) ] ]
Labor civics:
[D * [ O * ( [ 0.05 * C (N-10) ] + [ 0.2 * C (M+1) ] ) ] ]
Economy civics:
[D * [ O * ( [ 0.05 * C (N-11) ] + [ 0.2 * C (M+2) ] ) ] ]
Religion civics:
[D * [ O * ( [ 0.05 * C (N-12) ] + [ 0.2 * C (M+3) ] ) ] ]

Example: I was using Universal Suffrage, the game gave a slightly different upkeep to what your formula would give (the game gave an upkeep of 27):

Old: [0.5 * [ 0.95 * ( [ 0.05 * 2 (436 - 8) ] + [ 0.2 * 2 (44-1) ] ) ] ] = 28

New: [0.95 * [ 0.5 * ( [ 0.05 * 2 (436 - 8) ] + [ 0.2 * 2 (44-1) ] ) ] ] = 27

So, I'm planning to write it as a joint article. Two minds can achieve more than one which we clearly showed here. It's a joint contribution to this gaming community.

Thanks

 

[Roland Johansen]

Thank you for the test and repairing the formula. That mistake didn't show itself in my tests. I should have done some tests to check the order of the D and O multiplyer, but there's only so many tests a man wants to do...

At least, we now have finally discovered the correct formula (we hope ).

I'll post it tomorrow in another thread. Now it's time to go to bed.

 

[Roland Johansen]

I edited the article with some information for modders.

 

[Roland Johansen]

I further edited the article with some information about the differences between the AI and the human player when considering unit maintenance.

Added another consequence with respect to the vassalage civic to the article.

 

[SPQR300]

How do you explain this?

0: Military unit cost for 9 units (free support for 3) I was running the defeault civilizations, it was in the very beginning of the game.

 

[Roland Johansen]

How do you explain this?

0: Military unit cost for 9 units (free support for 3) I was running the defeault civilizations, it was in the very beginning of the game.

You only have to pay military unit costs when you're using the pacificm civic (which you obviously can't be using at the start of the game), so the military unit costs are 0. It looks pretty weird to see that cost mentioned while you're not even using the pacificm civic and it is not immediately clear that it is linked to the pacificm civic. I guess the developers wanted to allow you to see what the extra costs of running the pacificm civic would be before you use it.

It can be found in the article under the section "How to read the ingame information". It says: "This military unit cost is usually 0 and will only have a positive number when you're running the pacifism civic." Maybe you were looking in the wrong section for the information that explained this fact or just missed it. Is this explanation sufficient?

 

[a4phantom]

So big cities cost more? Shoot, I've been concentrating on building up a few key cities in the belief that it was only number of cities, which made sense considering the avowed intention to penalize Civ3 style rapid expansion of undeveloped cities.

 

[Roland Johansen]

So big cities cost more? Shoot, I've been concentrating on building up a few key cities in the belief that it was only number of cities, which made sense considering the avowed intention to penalize Civ3 style rapid expansion of undeveloped cities.

You must have misunderstood a part of the information presented in this article. It's probably the section about free unit support that was not completely clear. The free unit support goes up as the population of your empire grows. This is a good thing as it means that a larger section of your military does not require support. Thus unit maintenance goes down as your population grows.

That's the reason that I made a point about "-An empire with large cities can easily support a sizable army without any unit maintenance cost.".


There are other factors that increase the maintenance of large cities. The city (distance) maintenance and civic maintenance of large cities are higher than those of smaller cities. But larger cities usually can offset those higher costs with far higher levels of income because they are using more tiles (with cottages) and because they have more lucrative trade routes. But all of that is not part of the article presented in the first post of this thread. There are articles about civic maintenance, city maintenance and trade routes which discuss those issues.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Well big cities cost more, but they also Get you a lot more.

The Most one extra citizen can cost you is
Civics 0.16 * 5 (All High level Civics)=0.8
Distance 2.5 (max Distance)=2.5
City number ... well this is capped so at some point pop doesn't matter.

so 3.3.. throw in +100% inflation (by 2050)
and in the Worst possible situation a pop unit can cost you 6.6 gold... considering that that same pop can get you ~14 Gold (full Town) its a reasonable trade

Now the Max cost of a City is
Civics =0.6*5=3
Distance=2.5*7=17.5
City Number=8

for a total of 28.5 (+100% Inflation)=57 gold

so under the worst situation, a city costs as much as 9-10 population units... which means if you have a choice between a pop unit in an existing city or one in a new city, the existing city is Much better


For each Type...in terms of contribution to direct maintenance
Distance: City=7 pop
Numbers*: City=17 pop
Civics
Low: City=5 pop
Medium: City=~4 pop
High: City=~4 pop

* and each city also increases the amount every other city pays

Of course population not only doesn't cost that much it also
1. Saves you money on unit maintenance (Cities don't do this at all)
2. Gets you money through tiles (Cities only give you one, sometimes two from the city tile)
3. Get you money through Trade Routes... it boosts the Trade Route output... although cities do contribute to that significantly, pop still helps

 

[a4phantom]

Oh. Thanks guys. And I sure wish that was the worst mistake I'd made today!

 

[MusX]

great article. thanks

 

[MusX]

no change in bts 3.17 about this? great article

 

[Roland Johansen]

no change in bts 3.17 about this? great article

Sorry for the late reaction. I have been busy moving. No changes since the article was written.

 

[AngusMcNasty]

I would like to use my very first post on this forum to thank you for this excellent information! I was playing my first Prince game with Quechas, had finished off 3 of 4 AIs, was closing in on Izzy, and then IT happened. Suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, my senses were assaulted by THE hideous sound. It was echo-y pigs from hell! "Wait, I only have 3 cities. WTF?" Then, checking the little $ button, I discover that unit maintenance and supply costs have put me in strike mode! Oh The Humanity! I started madly deleting entire herds of Quechas, but it was too late.

Anyway, this is the very information I need, exactly when I need it. Thanks!!!!!

 

[AveiMil]

Good read, thanks!