"Unit Supply" - how does it work?

[jpinard]

I looked in the manul and did a search for supply in the CVivpedia, but as usual it came up with nothing.

So I see supply in the miltary tab and have no idea where it comes from, how you create more, what affect it has on anything etc. Can someone please enlighten me? Thanks!

 

[Raethwyn]

I think you're talking about the Naval promotion called "Supply". It lets your ships heal outside of friendly territory.

 

[winthrowe]

it's a separate soft cap on number of units, independent of gold upkeep. It decreases production for units for each supply unit over limit your are. The only time it was an issue was when I went on an early rush and built far more units than really necessary, without expanding.

 

[Raethwyn]

Ah, you meant Unit Supply lol. Each time you build a unit i.e. Worker, Warrior, Trireme, Great Scientist, it uses up 1 of your Unit Supply. Unit Supply goes up as you get more cities and/or population. If you build more units than your empire can support, you'll see an exclamation ! mark to the right of your strategic resources in the top of the screen. When you mouse over it you can see your current unit production penalty.

 

[jpinard]

What's the math behind it? Is it 1:1 per cities & residents?

When you say decreases production, does that mean it just takes long to build over-capped supply units? Or do they preforming worse in the field. A negative supply penalty?

And to think, I thought it was a real-life supply system for military units... so they had t have so much supply the further they went from home This implementation is cheap and pretty sucky.

 

[Raethwyn]

What's the math behind it? Is it 1:1 per cities & residents?

When you say decreases production, does that mean it just takes long to build over-capped supply units? Or do they preforming worse in the field. A negative supply penalty?

And to think, I thought it was a real-life supply system for military units... so they had t have so much supply the further they went from home This implementation is cheap and pretty sucky.

Quick version:

-Total Supply = BaseSupply + Cities*2 + Population/2

-Deficit starts when In Use # is greater than Total Supply #

-Production penalty in all cities = -10% per point of Deficit up to a cap of -70%

-Gold Purchasing is -not- affected

-Production Buildings (Forge, Workshop) and Social Policies will negate the Production penalty up to the building or SPs production bonus.

-Puppet cities will increase your Total Supply

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I did a test game on Emperor setting with Future Era start.

Your Total Supply = BaseSupply + Cities*2 + Population/2

When the In Use number is greater than your Total Supply, then you have a Supply Deficit. This deficit is indicated by a red dot with a white exclamation point in it that is to the right of your strategic resources at the top of the screen. Each point of Supply Deficit = -10% Production in each of your Cities, no matter what they're building, up to a maximum of -70% Production penalty.

Even Puppet Cities count toward your Total Supply, so a warmonger can just keep churning units out as long as they keep making puppet cities. You could spam Guided Missiles in the modern era if you wanted hehe. Also, if you do get a deficit then you can counter it by having production buildings like a Forge or Workshop, or a SP like Order which gives +25% for Buildings. A Workshop will negate up to a Deficit of 2 (-20% Production penalty) but only when producing buildings. The gold cost of purchasing units remains the same, so if you buy almost everything you won't care about deficits.

As far as the concept of supply that you thought it might be at first, I think they tried to simulate a real life supply system by having units heal more in your cities and friendly territory, and heal less away from home. This is too easy to get around with medic units (especially that dirty Khan UU) so it doesn't adequately represent logistics problems that normally come with distant wars in enemy territory. Oh well, maybe you can come up with a fun way to simulate it better. If you can, suggest it

 

[jpinard]

Holy cow, how did you figure all that out? There is like zero official documentation on it anywhere I can find.

Thanks a ton for writing all this up. I never would have drawn that kind conclusion based on the brief synopsis.

 

[winthrowe]

Holy cow, how did you figure all that out? There is like zero official documentation on it anywhere I can find.

Thanks a ton for writing all this up. I never would have drawn that kind conclusion based on the brief synopsis.

my guess, he used firetuner, the debug tool where you can spawn units, grant free techs, basically do whatever you need to test the game, theoretically, if that's your interest. I just booted it up once and said, "Wow, that's a lot of tabs, I'd rather play".

Maybe it was just some saves/advanced starts and extra math. I've not needed to care enough about it to bother working out the mechanics in detail.

 

[hellboy909]

It's like magnets. No one knows.

 

[Slowpoke]

Anyways, math aside, you'll never run out of supply unless you're doing a one city challenge or deliberately amassing a huge army just for the sake of it :/ I wish puppets didn't count, as horse rushers might actually run out of supply.

 

[Raethwyn]

my guess, he used firetuner, the debug tool where you can spawn units, grant free techs, basically do whatever you need to test the game, theoretically, if that's your interest. I just booted it up once and said, "Wow, that's a lot of tabs, I'd rather play".

Maybe it was just some saves/advanced starts and extra math. I've not needed to care enough about it to bother working out the mechanics in detail.

I just started a new game in the future era and only built one city, then spammed guided missiles until I hit deficit of greater than 7 lol. The math was pretty straightforward since the game tells you where your supply numbers are coming from on the economic overview screen. I used all of the missiles and one of the Mech Inf. to puppet a nearby CS. Since a workshop is automatically built in that era, I noticed it was bringing my production back up to base when I was at 2 deficit. When I sold the workshop, production went down 20%.

 

[winthrowe]

Anyways, math aside, you'll never run out of supply unless you're doing a one city challenge or deliberately amassing a huge army just for the sake of it :/ I wish puppets didn't count, as horse rushers might actually run out of supply.

puppets not counting and applying to gold purchase, as well as different supply values could make it an interesting mechanic. As is, it seems to mostly duplicate unit maintenance.