Unit retirement

[ilovecurrry]

Im sure many (if not all) of you have come across this dilemma.
Youve completely conquered the enemy and so many units survived the war. they are all over the newly conquered land with not much to do.
My idea is to have sort of a temporary retirement system.
You still pay to maintain the unit, but until you call on them again, they join the city population as "Veterans" or "Soldier on leave"
That way, soldiers can go from this to this then back to this

 

[Artillis]

this is my first post so bear with me lol, but couldnt that get abused by simply building a ton of cheap units and then just have them join the city as a specialist? or am I missing something here. Maybe I just dont understand exactly what u mean by this retirement system.

 

[Vietcong]

thats not a bad idea..

if an unit is no longer requiered, or is old and not of any use vs modren units. you can "retirer" them. thay join the city thay are in and act as a ordary citiczan but if the city is taken thay make the resistants time longer, and pluss take so much health from enamy units per a turn until it reaches a limit or the city is sized completly. maby u can set them up to start upriseing, or even form gurrila units once the citys taken.

 

[flytyer]

how do you "retire" a unit and have it join the population...I have just went through and deleted my out of date units or paid the fee to upgrade them. This sounds like a much better solution. Thanks for the help!!

 

[Proteus]

From a historic context it would make sense.
The romans did so with their legions.
The veterans normally were given farmlands in provinces (often in the Provinces where the legion was stationed during most of their active duty) and they lived a peaceful life as farmers from then on.

One example: The legio XIII.
It served under Caesar during the bello gallico and was disbanded after more then a decade of fighting. The veterans got farmland in italy as a reward for their service for the roman empire.
But 4 years later the legion was reactivated by Augustus to fight against pompeius and remained in service for several hundred years.

But I agree that a system like it was proposed would be too easy to abuse.

A better system would be "Combat readiness" similar to the system in CtP 2 (but centered around units, not the whole empire):

You would have a slider with 3 positions: Retired/Demobilized/Active.
Demobilized would mean that the unit has its full combat stats but would cost the full amount of upkeep costs.
Demobilized means that the unit ist stationed in a fortress or city, cannot be moved and takes penalties on its combat stats, but costs only half of the normal upkeep costs (i.e. 0,5 gold instead of 1).
Retired would mean the same as demobilized, but the unit gets much more combat penalties and costs less upkeep than a demobilized unit.

You could set the slider only one notch up at a time and it would take 4 turns until it takes effect (so that it would take a unit 8 turns to get from retired to active)

This way you could keep many units ready in times of peace without having to pay much upkeep. But if you are too careless and keep too much units on retirement you might be at an disadvantage if an enemy tries a surprise attack.

Only problem would be to teach the AI about the right balance between retired/demobilized and active units

 

[blaugh]

And the retired units could complain about the damn kids skateboarding on the sidewalk!

 

[ilovecurrry]

Actually, the retirement system is simply where you have the units but dont want them all over the map, so you make them join the city, but instead of working or helping, they sit there, feeding off their soldiers salary, waiting for you to give them the command to bring them into action.
If the city is conquered, they will join the resistance forces

 

[Proteus]

So where´s the advantage for you, if you pay the same amount of money as if they were active?

Where´s the incentive for the player to retire them?

 

[ilovecurrry]

get them out of the way without deleting them. And they automatically upgrade themselves with 0 cost

 

[Skirmisher]

That is a hilarious signature line you got there.

 

[ilovecurrry]

Thank you
i am a smily nut, as you can tell

 

[lost_civantares]

I'm pretty sure this was posted about somewhere else in the creation and customization forums. What they came up with to have a balenced way of doing it was a one time cost when re-activated and a 1 turn wait before they could be used.

 

[Zebra 9]

Interesting idea. lost_civantares, I think that would work the best.