EC3 New Idea #39 - Recruitment System

[korn469]

by The diplomat

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</font>problem: in civ2 ans SMAC, war is unbalanced. The current model acts as if you had an infinite amount of population for unit building. You can continue building units, getting them killed, just build more, your cities are completely unaffected. I can wage war as long as I want, and my cities keep growing.
solution: some type of "recruitment system" for building units. Either reduce a city's population appropriately when a unit it is supporting, is destroyed, or implement a system where you only build the weapons and then take some population to form the unit.

solves problem by doing two major things:
- pop is now tied into unit building so losing troops will mean pop loss at home.
- loss of pop will affect economy and industry etc... so affects of war are modeled. (post-war rebuilding)

bottom line: the main ressource in waging war is population and this needs to be modeled.

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[korn469]

the diplomat

you are completely right, however if every unit took one population point i think you'd have too many population points tied up in your army

have you ever thought about each unit costing food to build? if each unit cosed one food it would equal about half of a population unit, it would slow down your civ's growth and would not be as drastic of a change as making each unit take a population point to build

korn469

[The diplomat]

first, thanks for posting my idea.

I know that a full pop point for each unit might be too much, that is why it could be a half a pop point for one unit or something else. I used the word "apropriately" in my post because the actual details would indeed have to be worked. That is also why my proposal was not very specific. I think Firaxis can work out the little details. I just wanted to call attention to something that needs to be changed.
As to support cost, I agree with you completely. I do think that military units should require food and gold (the actual gold amount should be reasonable)as well as shields for support. However, I think that military units should require LESS food for support than a standard citizen. ( the food support should be reasonable) After all, troops often eat rations. It would solve the problem you bring up, that we don't want to make raising an army too difficult. I agree that the details should be such that recruitment is balanced. Since raising and maintaining an army would be harder, a good idea to counterbalance would be to allow the player to buy military units from other civs as mercenary armies that would have little support cost. This would allow civs that have money but can't support large armies to raise larger armies.

I hope I adressed the issues you brought up.

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No permanent enemies, no permanent friends.

[Grier]

On a historical note the biggest war ever (ww1) caused only a small blip on the growth of world population. The way civ2 is I dont think you ever realy get a war thats on scale with WW1 or WW2, so I dont think population loss is an issue.

[The Joker]

In modern times it is true that wars don't take away much population. But ww2 did kill more than 5 milllion, which is a lot.

In ancient times, however, wars could easily kill a very large portion of the population. Wars like the pelloponesian war killed 100.1000s of people, out of a total population in Greece of perhabs 2 million. That can surely be felt.

More important, also in modern wars, is the large amount of people (all men in the working age) that are used for soldies, but aren't killed. This is a HUGE part of the population, meaning that production, food production (in ancient times almost allways causing food shortages which caused peasant revolts which could often lead to civil wars) and trade (including science) are all set more or less on hold. This could often be catastrophic for a civ, some times making it collaps just a few years after winning a large war.

I think the best way to make a new recruitment model is to have cities consist of a real population, in stead of the heads. This way each unit could need a certain amount of population, which would be drawn from the city when building the unit. I am aware that this is a large revolution for the game, and that it would need a new way of dividing the world into squares etc. I say: No squares! Give us an analogue map. This, besides from working with a spherical world, would give whole new ways of moving units, irrigating the soil etc.

[The diplomat]

You made some great comments, the Joker!
I would really like "real" population instead of "heads" too.

Grier: would you like to be able to wage large wars on the scale of WW1 or 2 in civ3 with relative ease?
I think the beauty of a recruitment system is that not just it implements the affect of war on the population (pop loss as well as pop unavailable for civilian use because they are off at war) but you can raise huge armies, and move them around the map with ease. For example, let's say that you are a very large empire that can support raising 5 million soldiers. Then do it, and you could move all 5 million around the map as one "unit". You can truly have epic battles!
Also, combined arms is easier. For example, raise 100 soldiers with guns, 10 helicopters and 50 tanks and make them one "unit". You could move them around the map as one "unit"(ie, you only have one icon on the map that represents them all).

A recruitment system makes war come to life (pardon the expression!). It would be up to the player how much of the population to send off to war, and which segment of the population do I draw my army from. Do I raise my army from the unemployed thus putting them to some use, from farmers, reducing food production, or maybe from disgruntled workers, thus avoiding a city riot maybe? Do I raise a small elite army which if killed off won't seriously affect my overall population or do I throw huge massive armies at the enemy in epic battles(like the Soviet Union during WW2) but which will seriously affect my overall population if they get massacred?


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No permanent enemies, no permanent friends.

[korn469]

having a real population is nice and all and so are the other ideas, but i don't think they will be in civ3...

plus what is the difference between an armor unit with 10 attack and a unit that has

18,762 enlisted men and officers
158 tanks
241 APCs
300 jeeps
32 attack helicopters
124 heavy trucks
2 bulldozers

yeah those are alot of nice details but without tactical combat it wouldn't matter much...and if there was tactical combat and all of this other stuff i think the amount of micromanagement would be hell or the amount of automation would basically take away many of your desisions as a player and make it a civ3 civilation simulation program

korn469

[The diplomat]

<center><table width=80%><tr><td><font color=000080 face="Verdana" size=2><font size="1">quote:
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</font><font size=1>Originally posted by korn469 on 03-03-2000 10:52 AM</font>
what is the difference between an armor unit with 10 attack and a unit that has

18,762 enlisted men and officers
158 tanks
241 APCs
300 jeeps
32 attack helicopters
124 heavy trucks
2 bulldozers

yeah those are alot of nice details but without tactical combat it wouldn't matter much
korn469
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Combined arms would be more advantageous because it would combine the statistics from each component. So, for example, 1000 men + 20 tanks might be stronger than 3000 men by themselves because the tanks would add attack points to the 1000 men. Also, using your example, the 124 heavy trucks and 2 bulldozers would allow the "unit" to fortify faster for example, than a "unit" with just pure military components.(so added abilities too)

Recruitment can work without "real" population. Colonization, after all, uses a "head" system like civ2 and yet has recruitment. (disclaimer: The fact that I use Colonization as an example here does not mean that I want civ3 to be like Colonization!)

Last, I don't want tactical combat either because it would add too much micromanagement. I want recruitment with strategic combat only.



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No permanent enemies, no permanent friends.

[Youngsun]

Has anyone played War in Russia before?

That game handles many battles with detailed information of army formation like;

3rd Pz corp-
12 pz division PzII:140 Pz38t:150
34 Pz division PzIIIH:80 PzIVD:45
25 motorised: 80 Inf squad 35 AT-gun 22 flak gun 45 Field Artillery 20 recons
303 Stub bttn: 40 StuB
404 Flak bttn: 30 flak gun

One corp can be represented as a unit in the map. The Battles are absolutely enormous but the game does not deal with battles at tactical level. It is purely strategic.
Sure you have all the details of each weapons such as Stub has Attack:6 Armor:7 or Bf109E has Dogfight:20 cannon:5 range:15,etc. But they affect battle as a bonus. Thus when I move 7pz corp and 101 Inf corp to enemy 302 Inf corp with some air support, first air combat is resolved then bombers bomb the site and all the units which are battle ready will attack the enemy unit. All of these will be done within less than one second if I changed the setup to the fastest.(Too many units to take care of)

With detailed info. of specific weapons, we can still simulate the combat at strategic level.

[Seeker]

Sounds like the "Operational Art of War".

I prefer something in between that high level of command and civ2 simplicity...maybe Panzer General style?

[The diplomat]

FINAL DRAFT

The idea of the recruitment system is that you build a unit by building only the weapons and using a certain population to create the unit.
to make recruitment work properly, I suggest using the "x10 system" for population where pop is multiplied by a factor of 10. ( "real" population instead of "heads" would be ideal but it would require too many changes in the other areas of civ3 and probably won't make it into civ3, so I think that the "x10" system" is therefore preferable).

recruitment would work in the following way:
let's say we have a city of pop 20. (what use to be pop 2 under the current civ2 model). The player would set the production queue to a certain weapon say "tanks". A certain number of tanks would be produced every turn depending on the city's industrial capacity. When you have enough tanks for 1 pop to use, you could take 1 pop away from whatever it is doing and make it into a "tank unit". (notice that it's only 1/20th of the pop, that is why a x10 model for pop is needed) If that same city also produced guns for example, you could combine both (1 pop as infantry and 1 pop as tanks) into one single unit that would be called an "army" and would be composed of the corresponding infantry and tanks together.
NOTE: If you disband the unit, the pop would return to work but you would keep the weapons, so you could reconstitute your army by simply rerecruiting your pop. This is a big change from civ2 where disbanding a unit is more final.

The major improvements that I believe recruitment brings to civ3 are:

1) as in History, population itself would be the primary ressource to building an army. Building the weapons is not enough! Raising an army now has an effect on your city, since that pop is unavailable to work in the city, and if it is killed off in combat that pop is lost. This makes war more authentic! This makes raising an army more interesting as well as making war more balanced. Long protracted wars will be more difficult. In civ2 you could basically wage war from the beginning of the game to the end.

2) war planning is simpler and more interesting. Instead of dozens of units wondering around the map, recruitment gives the player "armies" which can be moved around. For example, I could have my entire military force split into three "armies". Now the player only has three units to move. Also, it would have a more authentic feeling of being an general. You would move Army I ( composed of X infantry, Y tanks, Z artillery) to the South toward Gedansk, as you move Army II, around Leningrad to capture Smolensk, for example. There is a sense of military planning.

Final comments:
1)support costs (food+gold+shields) should be reduced (especially food) in a way that is balanced and that does not make raising an army too difficult.
2)building weapons would take less time than building the equivalent unit in civ2. This solves the famous problem of a warrior taking 200 years to build. As you could build a warrior unit in one turn.



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No permanent enemies, no permanent friends.

[Deathwalker]

Also could you not also take into account the different types of soldiers like conscripts or volunteers also in world war 2 you had as a empire had more units lost the types of soldiers went from people aged 18 to 40 moved to old age pensioner or schools kids. Berlin was defend by old men and children the had used there supply of fighting men, Russians also lost 28 million people so this also must have had an effect. You could link this to either time or city growth for when good solider become available to fight, also a government could choose the way it got them like volunteers or conscripts. One last point Civ 1 and 2 never showed the effect on a cities when fighting took place in it, Stalingrad and Berlin lost most of the people as they fled the fighting this would also have an effect wouldn’t it?

[The diplomat]

deathwalker:
The differences between a conscript and a volunteer army can be represented. I don't think civ3 can (or should) introduce age of the population as it would make things too complicated. It would also be really hard to program properly. But here is how I would implement the idea:
Consript vs. volunteer could be a SE choice where:

conscript would let you raise a larger army (you can draft everybody even those you are not too excited about fighting) than a volunteer army but a volunteer army would fight much better and would retreat less (since everybody volunteered, they are more determined to fight)
The player would have to make a quantity vs. quality decision.

I agree completely with your observation that battles that took place in a city inflicted a lot of damage that civ1 and 2 did not adress. How about every turn that a battle occurs in a city, the city improvements would take a certain amount of damage. I think that would accurately represent the effect of street to street fighting.
Thanks for your imput and suggestions.

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No permanent enemies, no permanent friends.
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by The diplomat (edited March 16, 2000).]</font>

I think you are all talking about a "modern" recruiting system, which in History appeared roughly at the sixteenth century, and which involved paying and maintaining your soldiers (it's been said in this forum that units should cost a certain amount of food and gold, which I think it's great).

But what about ancient and medieval warfare? I can think of two more systems: mercenaries and Feudalism.

Mercenaries should work as it's easy to imagine. They don't need support from the city but need to get paid, and surely well.
They're foreigners, so this means they come from another civ (they shouldn't just appear from the air). My idea is that they should leave their own land, looking for wars
to fight in. So units no more needed by a civ, could choose keep on fighting for foreign powers, instead of coming home again (this has happened many times... I can think of John Hawkwood, captain of the White Company, who after fighting in the Hundred Years War, came into Italy and fought for Florence against other cities.

Feudalism should need this form of government (or at least this knowledge) in order to work. People is forced to support his lord
in time of war, so they don't cost nothing at all.

[S. Kroeze]

I am really sorry that this idea, simple but brilliant, didn't make it on the candidate list. This proposal of the Diplomat could have solved many current problems, first of all the idiotic situation of the warrior taking 250 years to be build. It certainly wasn't the quality of the idea, nor its presentation that caused this unhappy defeat!

(of course I am glad that my ideas made it, but this idea certainly deserved better treatment! I am sad because of it....)

[The diplomat]

Thanks so much S. Kroeze for those very kind words!
Of course, I am a little sad that my idea lost (maybe people thought it involved too much micro-management? or maybe it apeared too "radical"?)but, I am glad for the ideas that did make the cut. They are good ideas that will greatly improve civ3.
Congratulations S. Kroeze on your ideas getting in, especially "Domestic Politics". I voted for it. It is an idea that is so essential to making civ3 great. And it will make the game a lot of fun.