Your military

[chiefpaco]

Just wondered, as I can't find this already discussed:

Why don't the "people" units (e.g. swordsmen, riflemen, infantry, archers, etc) come as a sacrifice to your population? Where do they come from? Are they like stormtroopers or robots or something produced from your civ3 factory? Just seems a bit odd is all.

Perhaps they didn't think that making one would be a big enough hit on your pop? Did they have food support in prev Civ games? (I haven't played Civ2 & Civ1 was many years away for me).

Maybe all those units ought to be drafted and stuff like artillery & tanks & bombers have to be produced?

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Tone: I don't think this is a bug. I'm not demanding a patch. Just thinking aloud here and trying to get conversation going, and bored.

 

[Moulton]

Looks like an all volunteer army.
Units are produced... using shields, which represent labor and materials. Maybe you could think the peple volumteer, and the factories produce their equipment. they are not ready to send to war until equipped and trained.

 

[Ironikinit]

A pretty good point. For some reason, workers and settlers take population from the city that builds them, but military units don't, unless drafted.

One could say that the military units are mercenaries, not from the city, and that the shields reflect the effort it takes to hire them, but it's not much of an rationale.

 

[IronicWarrior19]

Originally posted by chiefpaco
Why don't the "people" units (e.g. swordsmen, riflemen, infantry, archers, etc) come as a sacrifice to your population? Where do they come from? Are they like stormtroopers or robots or something produced from your civ3 factory? Just seems a bit odd is all.

Perhaps they didn't think that making one would be a big enough hit on your pop? Did they have food support in prev Civ games? (I haven't played Civ2 & Civ1 was many years away for me).

Settlers were the only units in Civ2 to require food support. It seems likely to me that the idea is the number of people in the unit is quite small compared to the total population of the city that produced them, so the hit on population is minimal. Early on for example, a warrior unit won't consist of that many people, at least not enough to put a dent in a city that starts off at 10,000 population, whereas workers consist of much larger numbers of slaves etc. but with no combat experience or weapons. Also it's an issue of game mechanics, imagine if a warrior took away one pop point, you'd find it really difficult to explore early on, and fighting wars would be almost impossible. I prefer it the way it is right now, and it seems ok.

 

[simwiz2]

I think that population should be represented by people, not "units" of 10000 people each. That way a warrior could cost 2000 people, while a worker costs 10000, and a settler 20000. Then military units could cost people, and make it more important not to lose them or have them damaged (they would cost people to heal).