Units must NOT fully recover

[Che Guava]

Fachy: Not a bad idea, and there is certainly some good reasons behind it (soldiers don't come back to life after a sufficient rest period!), but I think this is just one of the things that you just have to accept in a game in order to make it playable, silly as it may be! I mean, if you rally sent a band of warriors accross the continent in search of new civilizations, they'd likely be dead about 3 tiles outside of your city (considering how fast times goes in the ancient ages), but putting that in the game wold just make it no fun!

Having said that, I do think that there should be certain conditions for unit recovery, and on e of those should be access to the resources that are required to build them: i.e. horseman cannot fully recover in a city (or a tile without a road to a city) that doesn't have access to horses, swordsman/iron, musketmen/saltpeter. I think this might meet some of your concerns about spontaneous regernation, as well as creating a crude supply-line...

 

[mitsho]

@Fachy, no certainly not, because that would be raising an entirely new army, e.g. legio. You would have to have new officers, they need to be taught how to lead an army, you need a ritual to 'found' the new unit, and you need new weapons, flags, trumpets, ... that's an entirely different thing.

But you can always recruit some more men to fill some lost ranks up. And, even if this feature isn't historical, it's a gameplay issue and needs to be this way, because the other way, luck gets a too big issue in winning, and just think of all the nuissance if you cannot heal a unit, A lost unit is then better than a 1 hp unit, because latter costs maintenance!

m

 

[10Seven]

Fachy:
Having said that, I do think that there should be certain conditions for unit recovery, and on e of those should be access to the resources that are required to build them: i.e. horseman cannot fully recover in a city (or a tile without a road to a city) that doesn't have access to horses, swordsman/iron, musketmen/saltpeter. I think this might meet some of your concerns about spontaneous regernation, as well as creating a crude supply-line...

Thus, representing a unit's ability to resupply over distance - restricted by road/rail connection and enemy interdiction.

Should be a fairly easy system to add...

 

[Chose]

i think units should reheal. they have too. it would not be fun at all. i think of it like this u can get new people in the turn that is take to reheal your men. if u have a barracks that they give u new men cuz the barracks restors your lost men.

if u get too technical then.... units ever 60 years (witch is like 1 turn in bc) would die of old age. witch will never happen. So small thing like that u just gotta deal with

 

[apatheist]

A unit's health represents multiple things. It represents the number of troops, the health of those troops, their morale, and the continuity of their tradition. That's why it's possible to rebuild a unit that was almost dead while still keeping it elite, for example. The unit's health encompasses enough things that you can't say that a unit that's down to 1/5 lost too many men to recover, because it could be they lost all of their ammo, but none of their soldiers, or they lost the will to fight, etc. Also, you have to imagine that there are always soldiers rotating in and out of the unit. A Swordsman stationed on the front line for 5 50-year turns is obviously not composed of the same individuals the whole time. There are enough different things that get folded into this single concept that it should be treated as a gameplay element abstracting over many real-world things. In other words, as long as it works as a gameplay element, don't worry about the real world.

 

[Fachy]

Che Read my white-fonted paragraph about turns. I tried to explain that a turn on the tactical map could equal to 1 day or several days at most, unless a turn of research which equals several years. You don't walk from a town to another in 3 centuries right? So the turns thing is ok (for the lack of any better solution), yet the regeneration is still a problem for me

mitsho and others What does shields or hammers represent in the game? Why does it cost a number of shields to build a unit? That's right, it represents efforts made in training men and manufacturing their weapons. Now with some of your men dead, and some of your equipment destroyed, how will you make up for that without training men or manufacturing weapons??

Addressing the maintenance issue, in case units wouldn't completely heal, you should be able to disband them for shields to make new untis (that would represent re-organizing your men into new formed legions)

Chose Please read this post fully it will answer your 50-yr turn point and the illogic of having men for free from a barracks (I'm assuing you didn't read the previous posts coz I spoke about both points in them!)

Apathiest It's totally unrealistic that a troop lost 4/5 its ability to fight (assuming that be in their ammo, morale, etc) WITHOUT losing significant amount of men! And I didn't say units shouldn't recover at all, I just said they shouldn't fully recover, to represent the number of actually dead soldiers and/or destroyed equipment

A turn on tactical battle isn't 50 yrs darn it! Please read what I said in white font on the previous pages, this idea's driving me crazy!

 

[Kyriakos]

why not? they are fighting for 50 years, and wars last for millenia
that reminds me of a war that lasted 1000 years, between me (possibly i was Greece, or France, i dont remember, it happened 13 years ago!) and the chinese (i remember them) in civ1!
Ofcourse it all started due to the annoying civ1 AI fondness of moving all of their phalanx around the city of an ally, possibly so as to protect it, but then it didnt allow me to move anything out, so i thought that i could start a war for just a few turns

 

[SuperBeaverInc.]

I don't like the idea. Losing large parts of your army during battle through HP and not being able to recover them would annoy players. They want to attract new players, not discourage people.

 

[Superkrest]

APATHEIST is right...this concept is too specific for the civ unit idea. the units repersent soo much that this concept would ignore..i think on the other hand that re-suppling hurt units should not only take time..but money...but to say they cant re-heal?,,,id be super bumbed out if my elite cavalry took a victory with only one hit point to spare, and they could never heal from the shock...i think it would be the oppisite...units that have almost been wipped out but pulled of defeats are glorified for ever. i dont think damage should effect moral. to be honest..the only way i think moral should be done is if your forces are outdated compared to the AIs...but the problem there is the AI never upgrades...so there moral would always suck.

 

[Chose]

sorry i missed the part on the barracks. but the white i could not read until i
put the blue thing on it and u made my point. civ is too big of a game to make
everthing perfect. the years of each turn cant work perfectly same
for units fully recovering so u have to make up in your mind why its that way.
they have to be able to reheal some how. Each unit is 1 for your pop cap if u go
over u pay money. so if one of your units gose to 1\3 it still takes 1 for your
pop cap. lets say u lose 6 units to 1\3 of ther heath it would be they same
umount of people as 2 full units but u still have to pay for 6 of them it just would not work to have units not full restore. (sorry if that was confusing )

 

[Che Guava]

@chose

I don't mean to be rude at all, but what exactly are you trying to say? I can't make sense of the post you put up. Yau have to pay and lose population to restore your units? Please clarify...

 

[Chose]

yeah sorry i did not mean to post it yet i was still making changes

 

[Che Guava]

So are you saying that only one unit at a time can be healed in a city or you have to pay? I guess that mkes sense, but I'm still of the opinion that population should not come into unit recovery...

 

[Pacifist]

erm ... I think I know what Chose is talking about (Chose, please correct me if I'm wrong too)

"Each unit is 1 for your pop cap if u go
over u pay money. so if one of your units gose to 1\3 it still takes 1 for your
pop cap. lets say u lose 6 units to 1\3 of ther heath it would be they same
umount of people as 2 full units but u still have to pay for 6 of them it just would not work" -Chose

I think what's meant is the pop cap is the number of units that can be healed, you go over, you pay money. ONE pop per unit to be fully healed, any excess needs to be paid.

For the example given, 6 units each brought down to 1/3 of their health = 2 healthy units (I guess in numbers) but you still have to heal 6 units. So you have ... 1/3 + 1/3 + 1/3 + 1/3 + 1/3 + 1/3 = 6/3 = 2 units equivalent (but still have 6 units with 1/3 health each) - I'm assuming the point here is 6 units getting fully healed is better than having 2 fully healed units not requiring any healing.

Hopefully I understood correctly

Just to add, even if I've misinterpreted, I quite like the city population number as the limit to how many units can fully heal in a city per turn.

-Pacifist-
"Just trying to help"

 

[Che Guava]

My appologies. I do like that idea!

 

[sir_schwick]

My Initial Opinions:

Units should not be able to heal in the field and definitely not in enemy territory and only in Barracks or appropriate military building. Military bases, non-city harbours, and airbases would act like a barracks for healing purposes. This would force you to put large numbers of troops into invasions and possibely warning neighbors, just like RL. Strategy would have to be involved to avoid getting smacked around the first wave.

On Unit Healing:

The original organization and training of the unit required resources, so reorganizing and retraining to the original strength should as well. The portion of resources required to fix damage would not be as high as the original cost because much of that cost was initial captial rather than current capital. 10 - 20% would be good on all counts, including population if that is a unit cost in Civ IV. Whenever you repair in a city barracks, you either divert the hammers from the city, which still produces what it has been producing, or pay for the hammers like you would with city production. Units repaired at a field base just use money for repair. A little box in the window could show you 'repair productoin' so you could see what you were spending/losing.

On Experience:

We need to know more about the Civ 4 XP model before a good solution can be found here.

 

[Chose]

erm ... I think I know what Chose is talking about (Chose, please correct me if I'm wrong too)

"Each unit is 1 for your pop cap if u go
over u pay money. so if one of your units gose to 1\3 it still takes 1 for your
pop cap. lets say u lose 6 units to 1\3 of ther heath it would be they same
umount of people as 2 full units but u still have to pay for 6 of them it just would not work" -Chose

I think what's meant is the pop cap is the number of units that can be healed, you go over, you pay money. ONE pop per unit to be fully healed, any excess needs to be paid.

For the example given, 6 units each brought down to 1/3 of their health = 2 healthy units (I guess in numbers) but you still have to heal 6 units. So you have ... 1/3 + 1/3 + 1/3 + 1/3 + 1/3 + 1/3 = 6/3 = 2 units equivalent (but still have 6 units with 1/3 health each) - I'm assuming the point here is 6 units getting fully healed is better than having 2 fully healed units not requiring any healing.

Hopefully I understood correctly

Just to add, even if I've misinterpreted, I quite like the city population number as the limit to how many units can fully heal in a city per turn.

-Pacifist-
"Just trying to help"

yes thank u that is what i was trying to say

 

[Xia]

yes thank u that is what i was trying to say

really? I got a completely different message

 

[TruePurple]

We could just use the Alpha centuri method, you can't heal a unit past 80% health unless in a city (or worms in fungus)

But I get what you mean by killed people. Perhaps some people will need to be taken from a city to replenish troop numbers. Obviously you couldn't get troops from enemy cities.

 

[Xen]

this is pish, IMO. units in civ respresent exactly that units; creating a unit is the same thing as commisioning a regiment, and as a regiment goes through its duty it looses troops and recovers them by re-inforcments and new recruits being dispatched to the front lines to join up with said regiment, and replace them to fighting stregth.