Unit Support Cost Idea for Firaxis

[ALPHA WOLF 64]

One of the annoying things in the game is that all units cost the same for maintenance. making units more expensive to reflect lifetime maint costs doesnt work because late in the game when units are the most expensive, I'm still pumping out MA every 2 turns, and I've seen posters talk about units every turn. Was there a reason that maint cost is uniform?

I was thinking that a balanced maint system would be fairly simple.
1) make unit costs variable;
2) allow government types to have an effect on unit cost. Say Democracy has a +1 maint modifier so all unit costs would increase by +1, whereas Fascism is -1 so their units are cheaper to maintain. Just an example here, not recommending specific values.
3) maybe allow civ attributes to affect maint costs.

Just my 2 cents for the day.

[zulu9812]

I think non-military units should be free from support costs. The idea of support costs was to stop ppl having huge militaries, not reduce a society's workforce.

[The Rook]

I agree. Making units more expensive for better units is both realistic, and I think it would speed up the end game. Civ's would have less units to move and defend with.

[The Rook]

Originally posted by zulu9812
I think non-military units should be free from support costs. The idea of support costs was to stop ppl having huge militaries, not reduce a society's workforce.

someone else brought this up in another thread. Civil employees are paid just like soldiers are. So I don't agree that the cost should be free, but if the idea was to make costs scalable, workers should be on the low end.

[Stuie]

It would be nice to have costs increase based on era. Maybe have units in the current era cost 2 instead of 1, and units of prior eras cost 1 to reflect the lowered cost of ongoing upkeep.

Or you could just have ancient units cost 0, middle ages 1, industrial 2, and modern 3.

[The Rook]

I would make it 1,2,3,4. The ancient rulers often had problems funding thier wars. The early governments give you enough free units as it is.

[WarpStorm]

Originally posted by zulu9812
I think non-military units should be free from support costs. The idea of support costs was to stop ppl having huge militaries, not reduce a society's workforce.

Oh, your tax dollars only go to support the military?

[Immortal Wombat]

Firaxis won't do this. They have an unwritten rule on using Activision's good ideas.