What if producing a combat unit consumes 1 pop? (Same as settler.)
Problem is, the population going into a Settler is not the same as the population going into the military. In the classic Settler = found new city equation (example: Classical and pre-Classical Greek colonization of the Black Sea - Mediterranean littoral regions) the 'settlers' were always formed from excess population: younger sons without land or who were excess to the population required to make the city work, and their wives and families. As far as I have read, at no time in history did a bunch of people decide that they would leave good jobs and homes in one place to start over in a brand new place from scratch: they went because there were no jobs, or not enough food to feed everybody. Later, political considerations might also apply: after the failed liberal revolutions in Germany in 1830 and 1848, the USA got a large influx of (liberal) Germans fleeing the police back home, for instance.
By contrast, the military is almost always formed from those people who have a stake in the society, and therefore something to defend. The Greek Hoplites were the upper middle class of society: landowners with enough income to pay for the Hoplite panoply of arms and armor. The Roman legions were originally recruited by class only from Roman Citizens.
So, at least realistically, Population = military is not entirely accurate: the Population point includes women, children, the aged, 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. That number changes when things get extreme. As mentioned above, France was drafting 14 - 15 year old boys in 1813 and 1814, Germany was inducting Hitler Youth aged down to 15 by late 1944, and Germany and the Soviet Union had a large percentage of frontline infantry by 1944 who were over 50 years of age, normally considered too old to serve in that capacity.
Limiting total number of Units can, I think, be better done by showing the limitations in the Production caused by taking male factory and farm workers away, lie not allowing a tile/structure to be worked for every unit over the national Unit Cap, which will quickly eat into your Production and Food supplies, as extra conscription did historically.
I agree with this.
In game terms, I'd view Napoleon's armies as being far larger than France's cap at the time, i.e. significant excess resources were devoted to building an army that was much bigger than their base infrastructure. When that army was destroyed in Russia, Spain and at Leipzig, France could quickly rebuild only up to its normal cap level. That wasn't nearly enough units to deal with the combined enemies they faced (pretty much all of the rest of Europe). But if you think about the size of the armies Napoleon was able to recruit in 1814, and again on returning to France for the 1815 campaign, those armies were pretty similar in size to those fielded by France during the revolutionary wars. Agreed that many of the new recruits (especially in 1814) were teenagers, but I'd view that as a consequence of the previous overbuild, i.e. exceeding the cap over the prior decade.
Precisely. And the biggest indicator of 'War Weariness' is when the men/boys being drafted, conscripted or 'called up' refuse to show up. In Napoleon's Army at Waterloo, most infantry battalions were only a little over half their authorized strength because most of the conscripts that were supposed to fill them up never showed up: 'draft dodger' is a very old concept.
In game terms, as War Weariness increases, your Unit Cap actually goes down. Modern States with their bureaucratic infrastructure have means to combat this better than states like Napoleon's: despite widespread 'war weariness' during Vietnam, the US Army never ran out of men, and all of the nations fighting World War Two were reaching serious War Weariness/Exhaustion by late 1944, yet the only manpower shortages were caused by losses (Germany, Soviet Union) or the conflicting demands of war industry and the military (Britain, USA). All the states had enough coercive measures ready to hand to 'round up' most of the 'draft dodgers' and put them to work, in uniform, or just shoot them as examples (Germany and the Soviet Union especially: they each executed at least 30,000 of their own men for 'malingering', desertion, or dodging)
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.
