Units, Upgrade tree, Combat, Healing and Equipment

[Knasp]

Could you give me an example of use ?

Fair point! I guess I'm thinking primarily about units with secondary weapons and/or equipment and reasoning about how Desirability could be used to impact equipment changes.

I guess the prime example are Skirmisher units, which were using a ranged weapon as their primary weapon, but they were often also carrying a secondary melee weapon/armour. Like the (Javelinmen) "Peltasts" mentioned in the disucssion. The type of melee weapon isn't necessarily prioritised, meaning that they don't need to acquire the best swords or armour. Skirmishers can instead generally(?) have equal desirability for all melee weapons (or otherwise prefer lighter/cheaper ones) compared to the melee infantry line, where the primary weapon is more important.

Another example would be units of melee infantry that used a mix of swords, maces, axes and so on, where each of those weapons had their uses, and at least didn't necessarily exclude the others. I know this clashes with the standard Weapon-based Unit types, but could potentially be used later on.

Then there is the use of Bow/Javelin for Chariots and Mounted skirmishers, and Slings for foot Skirmishers, which might come down to personal preferences/training/economy rather than distinct and solid combat advantages.

There are the Pike-and-shot units which would mix muskets and crossbows. Until muskets improved and crossbow use faded because of the extra training needed.

A modern combat example, where I could envision Desirability to be used, is to increase the Desirability of AT weapons for the Melee/Skirmisher line, when they start encountering tanks. But if you're still encountering mostly soft targets, then that could maintain or increase desirability for Anti-personnel weapons. Desirability for better armour or armoured vehicles could be increased when you take a lot of damage, etc.

So I was thinking that modifiable Desirability could in a sense be the result of your playstyle and circumstances. If you're building a lot of Artillators and Archers, then the Civ would likely specialise in archery. Maybe that would give extra promotions to Archer units and extra Science for improved bow technology. But the focus on archery could also increase the desire of your soldiers to use bows, even when they might be better off using other weapons. Just a thought. You could have policy cards (maybe in separate Equipment policy slots) which modify the Desirability for certain Equipment combinations, etc.

Considering that production, stocking and supplying of equipment is a vital part of the mod, I'm thinking that changing the requesting and supplying behaviour through Desirability could potentially save/stop equipment from being issued and used unnecessarily.

 

[Gedemon]

That means, Unit Cap/War Weariness, like most things related to the Unit Cap and Maintenance, can be modified by other factors, like Social Policies, Government Type, Civics, Technology, and so on.

If there were two lines of Social Policies (spanned on multiple eras) for this, do you have any idea for possible names ?

- a line of policies to raise the total % of population that can be drafted at a global production cost
- a line of policies to reduce the effect of war weariness on the number of personnel that can be recruited each turn from population

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

If there were two lines of Social Policies (spanned on multiple eras) for this, do you have any idea for possible names ?

- a line of policies to raise the total % of population that can be drafted at a global production cost
- a line of policies to reduce the effect of war weariness on the number of personnel that can be recruited each turn from population

A bunch of them are already in the game, but somewhat mis-used:
(titles of Policies already in the game in Italics)
To raise a greater percentage of the population:
Conscription - (Classical Era)
Foedal Oath - (Medieval Era)
Levee en Masse - (Industrial Era)
Duty and Honor - (Modern Era)
Your Country Calls! - (Modern Era)

To reduce War Weariness:
God Wills It! - (Medieval Era)
The Last Ditch - (Renaissance Era)
Defense of the Motherland - (Modern Era) - and I'd really like to see this renamed 'For the Motherland!' or even 'Za Rodina!'
Martial Law - (Modern Era)
Patriotic War - (Modern Era)

Of course, 'War Weariness' is very subject to the way the war is going: take an enemy city, destroy X number of enemy units in a turn, and War Weariness vanishes in the 'Glow of Victory'. Lose a city, lose X units in a single turn, and War Weariness is likely to increase dramatically. Even in modern totalitarian societies controlling access to information, it is impossible to keep major defeats a secret for long and they can seriously effect civilian morale: Nazi Germany experienced a real drop in civilian morale after the defeats at Moscow in 1941-42 and Stalingrad in 1942-43, and morale in Stalin's Soviet Union became very shaken after the initial defeats in the early summer of 1942.

 

[Gedemon]

Moderator Action: copied the 2 posts above from this thread for reference

 

[Gedemon]

Working on the Logistic limitation ATM.

Here are a few screenshots

Spoiler Effect of total population and army size on recruitment :

Spoiler Personnel required in cities for logistic support :

Spoiler Added logistic Cost in unit's tooltip... :

Spoiler ... and in the production tooltip :

 

[Gedemon]

I've also added a new very cheap building called "Recruitment Centre" that is available in cities (that have enough personnel and equipment to create an unit with at least 50% health) under threat of barbarians (in the 6 plots around the city) or when you are at war, which create a melee unit the following turn, requisitioning all the personnel and equipment for that unit (that you still have to pay for) from the city.

Spoiler Recruitment centre :

 

[Gedemon]

the
'military manpower' in modern (post-Industrial Era) terms is usually considered to be no more than about 10% of the total opopulation, or men between the ages of 18 and 45.

What % would you suggest for the other (earlier) eras ?

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

What % would you suggest for the other (earlier) eras ?

Since very few societies took censuses and the numbers of men even in individual battles is frequently Wild Guesses on the part of some chronicler who wasn't there, it's hard to come up with 'hard' figures. Here are some indicators, though:

1. The Roman Empire had a population of at least 50,000,000, and possibly as much as 100,000,000, but the Roman military, even counting barbarian auxiliaries, never exceeded 500,000. That means, even with a fairly sophisticated infrastructure and very good 'industrial' base to provide weapons and equipment (they had virtual factories n northern Italy turning out legionary armor and weapon) they barely mobilized 1% of the total population.
2. In 9th - 11th century CE Saxon England, every 5 families was supposed to provide one infantryman for the Fyrd, equipped with a shield and spear - no armor, no metalworking-heavy swords or helmets, and of course a 'family' has to be considered to be at least 4 - 7 men, women and children each. That's about 20%, but it was only from families that worked land (admittedly, the majority of the population at the time), and not particularly well equipped, and they could only be 'called up' for a maximum of 60 days a year (which is why Harold's Army at Hastings was missing most of the Great Fyrd - he had to send them home)
3. In the High Years of the French Empire 1805 - 1811, Napoleon had upwards of 1,000,000 men in uniform out of a French population of a little less than 30,000,000. However, a large percentage of the troops were not French: the total included units raised from Dutch, Belgian, German, and Italian populations under French control, and the 500,000 man force that went into Russia in 1812 was only about half French: it also included just over 150,000 Austrian and Prussian 'allied' troops plus contingents of Germans, Poles, Dutch, etc. And, of course, the total was not sustainable: by 1813 a combination of war weariness and economic strains at home were making it very difficult to get any more troops out of France, and 'draft dodging' was reaching the point where 2 out of every 3 men called up failed to report.
4. The population of the Athenian Demes in the classical period (around 450 BCE) has been estimated at just under 500,000 (and this may be wildly off: the Athenians even when they did count people, never counted slaves and women!). Athens never put more than 10,000 hoplites into the field, but at its height her navy had a little over 200 ships with about 45,000 crewmen. Of course, 'crewmen' were mostly rowers who didn't have to provide any equipment, while a hoplite had to provide his own armor, spear, helmet, and shield.

Overall, then, and this is based on few hard figures and a lot of 'SWAG" ("Scientific Wild-A** Guessing") I would estimate that most Ancient to Renaissance Era societies could regularly put 1% of the total population into the military, but possibly as many as 6 - 10% IF they didn't have to be well-equipped - no fancy metalwork, swords, armor, etc - And the higher figures could not be kept away from the economy for more than a fraction of the year unless Someone Else was providing food for the rest of the population - Athen's navy was being fed with imported grain from the Greek cities along the Black Sea coast and North Africa, for example.

Moderator Action: again, copied the 2 posts above from this thread for reference

 

[myclan]

I think for the 1upt(but limitted stacking) mechanism, it is very important to define who will take the defense, especially for interception.
In my CiV WWII game I just found out that the heavy fighter(+100% VS bomber) is of no use because it will intercept a coming not-bomber-plane instead even if I already have a fighter(+33% VS Air unit), and when the bomber actually came, a normal fighter will be intercepting instead

 

[Gedemon]

I think for the 1upt(but limitted stacking) mechanism, it is very important to define who will take the defense, especially for interception.

We'll need the source code for that.

 

[Gedemon]

Modified a bit the Units tree, next step is to have a closer look at what units model are available exactly to link them to the tree.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mQNOtoJSzJ4VpavSq_yzdhqw6fDQRlfFoQoRzpJ92rI/edit?usp=sharing

Some line have double entries (for example the MELEE line for your standing army with Phalanx/Heavy Phalanx under Heroic Warrior/Swordsman) to allows some units availability even if you don't have some "specialized" industries (ie not enough "Swords" equipment types but enough "Spears" equipment types)

edit: some units models will be shared (like spearman) but with different formation types (and different stats) to reflect if they are conscripts or standing army.

 

[Killzerslaul]

Not sure how well this fits the implemented codebase or if its been considered already (i did skim the thread) but I think there would be something to be gained from implementing more specific categories of personnel.

ie. you have a "cavalrymen", "infantry", "skirmishers, "archers" etc. Personnel pool. These would represent more elite soldiers, either with professional training or equivalent resulting from extensive cultural tradition/relevant occupational experience. There would still be generic "basic personnel" who could fill any role. An army composed entirely of specialised elites might be ~30% stronger - possibly certain troop types (horse archers stand out) would vary more extremely or even only be possible to fill with elites.

Converting basic personnel into appropriate elites would be time consuming and expensive - the preserve of rich, well-organised empires that shouldn't be common until after the renaissance.

For most empires at most points of the game this simply wouldn't be practical - they would rely on cultural and social institutions that produce the desired personnel makeup without state investment. Particularly most forms of nobility would generate elite troops somehow; as would unstable and fractious tribal systems. Occupations like hunting, merchant sailing and nomadic herding are associated with more militarily useful skills so the recruitment from that part of the population would be partly elites.

I think it is fairly valuable to historicity and gameplay. It's a needed boost to Civ's lacking ability to depict superior military power as something distinct from more general wealth and development. and it's a healthy increase to the diversity of armies and conflicts from empire to empire and game to game as culture and geography could make the optimal army more situational and not dictated by a meta

 

[Gedemon]

Not sure how well this fits the implemented codebase or if its been considered already (i did skim the thread) but I think there would be something to be gained from implementing more specific categories of personnel.

ie. you have a "cavalrymen", "infantry", "skirmishers, "archers" etc. Personnel pool. These would represent more elite soldiers, either with professional training or equivalent resulting from extensive cultural tradition/relevant occupational experience. There would still be generic "basic personnel" who could fill any role. An army composed entirely of specialised elites might be ~30% stronger - possibly certain troop types (horse archers stand out) would vary more extremely or even only be possible to fill with elites.

Converting basic personnel into appropriate elites would be time consuming and expensive - the preserve of rich, well-organised empires that shouldn't be common until after the renaissance.

For most empires at most points of the game this simply wouldn't be practical - they would rely on cultural and social institutions that produce the desired personnel makeup without state investment. Particularly most forms of nobility would generate elite troops somehow; as would unstable and fractious tribal systems. Occupations like hunting, merchant sailing and nomadic herding are associated with more militarily useful skills so the recruitment from that part of the population would be partly elites.

I think it is fairly valuable to historicity and gameplay. It's a needed boost to Civ's lacking ability to depict superior military power as something distinct from more general wealth and development. and it's a healthy increase to the diversity of armies and conflicts from empire to empire and game to game as culture and geography could make the optimal army more situational and not dictated by a meta

We've had some posts about that from @Knasp and @dunkleosteus IIRC, but maybe not in this specific thread.

IMO it perfectly fit with the logistic support mechanism described a few posts above where each "promotion class" could require a different support value than the base support.

I mean we actually have a "personnel" total value from all cities representing the support for your units, and at this moment there is a very simple ratio that is applied to represent different specialization for "Skirmishers" or "Naval" personnel with less personnel from the global "pool" available for those promotion classes.

This is an early version, the expanded version should represent more clearly those specializations, and be dependent of your buildings / policies / techs / military experience / population classes...

It's already used for limiting the production of units based on their promotion class, but also for the availability of "recruits", for which I still need to implement the possibility of recruiting troops from the upper class (ie nobility)

 

[Killzerslaul]

oh I see, my bad for not reading through the spoilers. Didn't realise the logistic support is already divided by troop type. This makes a lot of sense, much cleaner way of approaching it than having 8 separate Personnel pools.

 

[chrisgatt7]

COMBAT : new healing mechanism with supply lines, introducing Morale value for units

Those who have played with R.E.D. WWII are familiar with the healing mechanism using supply lines, but it has been slightly modified.

Any fighting units will require multiple components (Personnel, Horses, Vehicles, Materiel) affected at different positions in the unit:

• Front Line : combat ready, units HP are restored only if there is enough reserve to move to front line for all required components
• Reserve : ready to reinforce front line, that's where reinforcements from cities, healed personnel and repaired Vehicles are affected first
• Rear : that's where the food (and other resources, except Materiel which is either used in front line or available for reinforcement in reserve) are stocked, it's also the position for the wounded personnel and damaged vehicles

Spoiler Warrior composition :

Here you can see a Warrior composition, it requires 2000 personnel and 30 materiel in front line to be at full "combat" health, the reserve values are the unit's base value, they have not been drained yet.

You can note that this unit is linked to Cairo at 28% efficiency (this is based on distance)

If the reserve were not at full capacity, the unit would ask for reinforcement, for example if it had 500 personnel left in reserve, it would ask Cairo to send 1000 to refill it, but with that efficiency it would receive at max 280 (if Cairo have this quantity of personnel available)

Spoiler Scout composition :

You may have noted that the warrior's food stock was going down, units feed on the terrain, using the food yield of the tile they are on, and a fraction of the adjacent tiles yield (shared with other units in the area, a large army may have food problem, as limited stacking is possible between ranged and melee units)

In a desert they don't find enough food, and will require stock from the city they are linked too.

The scout have less personnel than most units and can survive almost anywhere even when they are too far to be linked to a city.

Spoiler Warrior collecting and eating food :

At the beginning of your turn, there will be a floating text above your units to show the food collected from the terrain and eaten from the stock each turn, here you can see the Warrior restoring some of its stock after leaving the desert area...

Spoiler a Warrior far from home... :

Here you can see for the first time a negative effect on an unit's morale: it's now too far from Cairo to receive any reinforcement or supply, and if it's staying in the area, it's going to have food rationing problems (which also affect morale)

The Morale value only affect a desertion rate (personnel deserting from reserve then front line) when it goes down ATM, but there are a lot of potential use (retreating or forcing another unit to retreat for example), and I also plan to combine it with a "loyalty" value when implementing the Revolutions mechanisms.

Spoiler Floating texts from combat results :

Each combat will generate multiple lines of floating text expanding the result, that particular line shows the loss in personnel from the front line of this warrior after a ranged attack by the slinger: 93 deads, 0 prisonners (not possible for a ranged attack) and 279 wounded (send to the "rear")

On a side note, I hope that custom font icons will be possible soon.

Spoiler Warrior healing floating text :

At the beginning of a player turn, his units will "heal", which in the cas of our Warrior require transfer from a bit of materiel and a lot of personnel from the reserve to the front line.

The transfer amount is limited, an unit will not completely heal in one turn from an attack of an equivalent unit.

Still the combats are longer because of this and the base values that I have tweaked: I do want them to be longer, as in R.E.D. WWII, one shoot should not be possible.

Which means you can still have some reserve but a very low "combat" health, and when that health reach 0 (no more components in front line), the unit is destroyed (and the reserve and wounded may be captured)

"Strategical retreat" is an option to consider.

A quick note about the AI, this will of course not help it, but from the R.E.D. WWII experience (I did tell you it was made to test those mechanisms, didn't I ?) it's not that bad compared to vanilla AI, we may just have to scale the difficulty. And I'd like alliance mechanisms (military or economic) to be a good balance for runaway civ/player.

So on that picture above we can see 228 personnel and 2 materiel transferred from reserve to front line. A Modern Armor would require very different ratio, including vehicles (but stick to the very first eras if you want to play test the mod, I've not coded vehicles yet)

Spoiler Melee attack result :

As you can see, during a melee attack some of the front line personnel may be captured, the Warrior has lost 77 personnel this way here.

Prisoners are sorted by nationality, they'll be converted to slave in cities (adding to the total population and so the city size) and may also be used diplomatically (nothing coded on that part yet)

Spoiler Morale is going down for the Slinger :

You can see all possible negative effect on the morale of an unit on the above picture.

Note the Arabian prisoners in the "rear" section (but do not note the typo please ), if the Warrior kill that Slinger they will be transferred back to the Warrior's reserve as personnel.

Spoiler The fate of the wounded :

Each turn, during the healing phase, some of the wounded will die and some will be healed and reintegrated in the unit's reserve. As everything else, the ratio will change by era, depending on tech, promotions, etc...

In the future, wounded will also be send back to a city if a link exist, the dead/healed ratio will be better there (also depending on era, buildings, etc...)

Small note while we're speaking of that, health will be a value used in city growth, and bad health could lead to spreading diseases.

Spoiler Warrior vs Spearmen combat result :

What is interesting to note here is the difference between the dead/captured/wounded ratio with the previous melee combat against the Slinger.

Units may have (and some already have, hence the difference) lower or higher antipersonnel values.

The Slinger has a low value, the personnel lost from front line is mostly wounded, while the Warrior and Spearmen have a normal value and the personnel lost is mostly killed.

In future updates Era difference may influence that (less dead when fighting a lower era unit, more dead when fighting a higher era unit)

I hope RED and these mods make a comeback for Civ 7, supply lines and your mods have always been my favorite.

 

[Gedemon]

we'll see when the tools are released, but ATM civ7 is even less moddable than civ6 for this kind of gameplay mod.

 

[chrisgatt7]

we'll see when the tools are released, but ATM civ7 is even less moddable than civ6 for this kind of gameplay mod.

Thank you for the reply, just understand this community loves your work and depends on you guys to make the game playable sadly lol Keep up the amazing work thank you