Unit upkeep

[The Pianist]

Is there a way of working out what the maintenance for units are? Am I missing something completely obvious? I dont mean the economic overview either.

 

[player1 fanatic]

I second this question.

 

[malitano]

Is there a chart somewhere?

 

[dfn]

Nobody knows yet, exactly.

The maintenance per unit depends on the number of units you have and what era you are in. Also, it is done in pairs, so sometimes you need to delete 2 units to see an increase in GPT. The cost goes up as you progress in the game.

 

[tibbles]

Whatever it is, IMO it's way way too high.

I shouldn't save 10g/turn by deleting a captured worker and having to hold a military of like 4 units while the AI has 50 without issue.

 

[Teodosio]

Whatever it is, IMO it's way way too high.
I shouldn't save 10g/turn by deleting a captured worker and having to hold a military of like 4 units while the AI has 50 without issue.

It's not too high; actually I find upkeep to be well balanced since it allows you to keep a decent sized army both in ancient ages and in modern ages (when your gold-producing capacity is far higher). You can manage that IF you properly develop your economy.

In my current game, emperor, large map and late modern era, I pay around 400gpt upkeep and I have around 70 units. That is, each unit has around 6gpt upkeep.
I can field a decent army with good naval and air support.
If upkeep were lower I think I could have built so many units that I would not have known where to put them!

Just focus on gold production and you will be fine

The only issue I am having with upkeep is that it increases with pairs of units.

 

[snoochems]

Unit costs, I believe are too high.

Even worse is the fact that you pay for workers and great people too. And it is a sizable amount.

I have a lot of trouble just with killing those annoying barbarian units (in the modern era ffs) while I'm at war, simply because I can not afford to defend my borders.

Units should cost less if they're stationed at home (sleeping?) or when you are not at war etc.

 

[player1 fanatic]

The biggest issue here is not just that upkeep is costly, but that AI gets discount on it, at almost every difficulty level, so can have huge army and be deluded that bulling human player is good strategy.

And it's not, due to bad tactical AI (human player units are essentially more worth then those controlled by AI).

 

[pi-r8]

It's not too high; actually I find upkeep to be well balanced since it allows you to keep a decent sized army both in ancient ages and in modern ages (when your gold-producing capacity is far higher). You can manage that IF you properly develop your economy.

In my current game, emperor, large map and late modern era, I pay around 400gpt upkeep and I have around 70 units. That is, each unit has around 6gpt upkeep.
I can field a decent army with good naval and air support.
If upkeep were lower I think I could have built so many units that I would not have known where to put them!

Just focus on gold production and you will be fine

The only issue I am having with upkeep is that it increases with pairs of units.

Yeah I'd agree with this. If I start to build so many units that upkeep cost is a big issue, they get so crowded that most of the units arent really doing anything, just taking up space in the back.
The AI needs a big discout though, since they have no idea when to stop building or delete units. If they didn't get a discount they'd be going broke from a horde of warriors.

 

[delra]

Aside from difficulty, upkeep depends solely on number of units. Every 2nd unit you add to the army moves you to next upkeep cost level. So if you can't afford an army, disband some workers or boats.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

The problem with unit upkeep is not that it is too high, its that it is

1. opaque
2. calculated in a very wierd way
3. apparently dependent only on time, rather than unit type

Ideally Unit Maintenance would equal
Unit Hammer Cost / X
where X is ~50
(The only change I would make is that obsolete units should have the same cost maintenance as what they upgrade to)

 

[duxup]

The cost isn't the issue IMO, it is just that we can't get the information we need to make decisions about it.


It is so weird that in combat they chose to give us all the info.... but unit maintenance nothing.

 

[Daniel D]

Figuring out the mechanics for this is next on my Civ to-do list, but I've been too busy to properly test for it lately. To be fair, we don't really know if the calculation is weird or not since we don't know what the calculation is yet. I think the variables include difficulty, game speed, game turn, and number of units, but there may be more to it.

 

[tibbles]

Yeah, I guess that's my main complaint when I say high cost. Midgame and later I may giftaway my army during peacetime to 3-4 units to save on expenses, but I could afford a 20 unit army if I wanted to. 6g or whatever isn't too bad for a top of the line modern unit. But the same 6g for a worker or warrior garrison is silly. And it always makes the AI with its mass of units regard you as militarily weak.

What I dislike is a city state gifting you a unit on the other side of the map. You either give it away or pay huge maintenance while it slowly winds it's way around all the AI units clogging the map back to your territory. I got a Great Artist like this once where I think it actually cost me more in maintenance than I made in the 4 turn GA he produced.

 

[number51]

I don't think we need the complete unit upkeep formula spelled out for us (somebody will do this eventually).

Right now it is just this mystery number that happens to be killing my current game. We need some basic info on this very soon. In the mean time I'll keep killing off old units even after I made moves to lower the cost to upgrade.

 

[LDiCesare]

The cost has been explained in other threads to be number of units / 2 (round down) * inflation.
The problem is inflation is nowhere visible so you have to compute it out of the military advisor screen. For instance, I have 12 units (half of which are workers) and pay 35 gold, so the inflation is 35/6, or about 6. Disbanding 2 workers would give me around 6 gold back. There's probably some rounding up or down somewhere and some fractions, since I'd expect 36. Note this means workers cost a helluva lot.

 

[Teodosio]

The cost has been explained in other threads to be number of units / 2 (round down) * inflation.
The problem is inflation is nowhere visible so you have to compute it out of the military advisor screen. For instance, I have 12 units (half of which are workers) and pay 35 gold, so the inflation is 35/6, or about 6. Disbanding 2 workers would give me around 6 gold back. There's probably some rounding up or down somewhere and some fractions, since I'd expect 36. Note this means workers cost a helluva lot.

To clarify upkeep only two simple things would be needed:

1. upkeep to increase for each unit and not by pairs;
2. a simple tooltip over upkeep that says "you are paying 'x' for each unit

Then everytthing will be fine.
Let's hope Firexis is hearing!

 

[KrikkitTwo]

A civilopedia entry regarding inflation would be necessary too.

Even then it is an annoying, clunky concept.

 

[Celevin]

I would love to change unit maintenance to be a percentage of total unit cost. That would stop slingshotters in their tracks...

 

[evanbgood]

The cost isn't the issue IMO, it is just that we can't get the information we need to make decisions about it.


It is so weird that in combat they chose to give us all the info.... but unit maintenance nothing.

My thoughts exactly. It's difficult to say something is too high or too low when you have no idea what it is in the first place.

Idealy, a non-aggressive civ would be able to get a small military without going broke. That's what I liked about Civ IV's "free" units, making massive armies expensive and tiny armies nearly free. Knowing this stuff would also make autocrasy a more interesting tree.