Reduce city population when military unit is built!

[polymths]

quote: Originally posted by ajbera on 05-15-2001 10:08 PM That possibility was actually secondary to my original point, and while more realistic, would be a pain in the arse. The primary concept only costs food when the unit is under construction.

Ooops, sorry! I re-read your post and understand now! Yes you did say "while the unit was built" which I missed completely!

Actually then your idea would be merely a variantion of the idea that I have been advocating. You say that for each turn that a unit is being built, there is a bushel cost while I have said that at the moment the unit is completed there is a one time bushel cost.

I do support your idea that the bushel cost could be spread out over the many turns it takes to build the unit but the only problem with that is that the bushel cost would depend on your productivity which I'm not sure makes sense.

For example, if you have a very productive city and it costs, say 5 turns to build a unit, and there's a 2 bushel/turn cost, then the total cost is 10 bushels. But if you have a city that is very unproductive and it takes 20 turns to build a unit, then the total bushel cost would be 40 bushels.

Not sure whether that makes sense or not.

Certainly if we are to view bushels as fractions of a full population point (which is certainly valid since once the bushel fills, a whole new population point is added so each bushel could be thought of as incremental increases to the population), then I think a one-time bushel cost makes more sense than a turn-by-turn bushel cost.

[Lung]

I think we've strayed from the concept of what the food represents. Costing bushells while unit production is occurring is saying that military units eat more food than other citizens, which is ridiculous. Also, the total food cost of a unit would depend on the city's production, which is absurd.

The idea of having a one-off bushell cost is to reflect a proportion of the total population separated for military service, hopefully only temporarily. If they fight and die, they are lost. If they get disbanded e.g. after a war, then as repatriated soldiers they add back the population. Of course, this requires some tweaking, as larger cities would be less affected by x number of bushells being lost. However, my original idea was that population only be affected by militia units.

Militia units were an idea i used from an old Civ2 scenario. However, in order to make it more realistic, i suggested that they could be very cheap to build, but the downside was that they would cost food and have perhaps half the strength of professional soldiers. They would be like fanatics, but could be used by any govt type. So, if you were desperate, you could build heaps of Militia, but in doing so lose much of your population. This is closer to reality too in that modern armies are full of minimal numbers of highly trained soldiers, while your representation of population is in your army reserves, or conscripts. If your country was invaded now, would many civilians bear arms to defend your country? Well, probably not, but in principle they would

It's just another route to victory and an important addition to gameplay options.

[Adm.Naismith]

quote: Originally posted by polymths on 05-15-2001 02:04 PM Admiral: I still think, though, that Theben's bushel idea is the most straightforward. Whenever you build a unit, there is a "bushel cost". It could be all from one city or spread out amongst cities. Obviously if bushels goes to zero, the population point is lowered and the "bushel debt" paid at a full bushel box at one lower population point. I am somewhat surprised that there is no support for this idea since I really see nothing wrong with it!

Sorry, I don't agree with "bushel" proposal. As I said in my mentioned post, I started my proposal because actual CIV and SMAC model only related units support to shields (hence production), given a "free support bonus" for some political (social) choice (CIV fundamentalist, or SMAC social engineer support bonus).

This model never reproduce the whole bad effect of waging wars.
The reduction of working population (because men were in army) was a major factor of old army limits.

Limited support was related to number of workers available (excess of production was very limited, so slaves were used to improve things a bit).

You understand, the problem isn't at the moment of Unit building, that "bushel reduction" model address, but last all life of unit!
If you're at army you can't produce anything.

Never mind, Firaxis seems has already chosen to switch to a model of Normal, Peace, Alert state, changing support cost (money and shields?) all around the nation. Let's hope it'll be enough.

[polymths]

quote: Originally posted by Adm.Naismith on 05-16-2001 03:48 AM Sorry, I don't agree with "bushel" proposal. As I said in my mentioned post, I started my proposal because actual CIV and SMAC model only related units support to shields (hence production), given a "free support bonus" for some political (social) choice (CIV fundamentalist, or SMAC social engineer support bonus). This model never reproduce the whole bad effect of waging wars. The reduction of working population (because men were in army) was a major factor of old army limits. Limited support was related to number of workers available (excess of production was very limited, so slaves were used to improve things a bit). You understand, the problem isn't at the moment of Unit building, that "bushel reduction" model address, but last all life of unit! If you're at army you can't produce anything. Never mind, Firaxis seems has already chosen to switch to a model of Normal, Peace, Alert state, changing support cost (money and shields?) all around the nation. Let's hope it'll be enough.

Well the point of the "bushel cost model" is to simulate the drafting of men needed to man the tank unit or whatever. Of course if you build too many units, population would decrease (or at the very least stay stagnant). But this model does NOT model support in any way.

I do now see the difference between the "bushel model" and the "soldier specialist model"

With the "soldier specialist model" you are in fact modeling the drafting of soldiers and continued manpower support because the "soldier specialist" is not a one-time cost but a continuing cost. And population loss in the "soldier specialist model" is reflected in that if a certain number of units die, then the population point is permanently lost.

The "bushel model" is simpler to implement and that is its main strength but the "soldier specialist" model is good as well!

But I do hope that there is some connection between population and the size of your army in Civ3 instead of the implicit "military units are unmanned robots" model.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

This post also appears in the "Bushels for population" thread, but I thought I'd include it here, as it also touches on some of the issues put forward in this thread. As always peoples opinions or suggestions are always welcome.


Hi Guys,

I've been thinking that, if Firaxis are going to make all other resources
regional (ie accessible to all connected cities), then why not bushels?
With that in mind how about this idea: You have a regional interface
that shows all of the resources available to your Civ, including Bushels
Also on this screen you could have the total number of population "Points" in your civ, with a number of toggle switches underneath for allocating
"Specialists" (Labourers, Merchants, scientists, capitalists and soldiers
etc.) Basically, each specialist costs a certain number of bushels/"pop. point". At first, these specialists will be spread evenly throughout your cities, but you can move specialists around through the city screens (for
example: if you have a Wonder you wish to build quickly, you can move
your labourers from other cities into the one building the Wonder!
Additionally, specialists in a city can be captured (or killed) by an enemy if the city is taken (and you lose any bushels you spent to purchase
them).
The excecption to this is Soldiers, as the number allocated represents a
Potential only!! I've already discussed in an earlier post how the
allocation of population points to the military should work, but the
number of units you can build/Pop. point should be based on a "Bushel
Cost" for each unit (as suggested by Polymths). Infantry units would
cost the most bushels, whereas cannons and naval units etc. would cost
the least. Missiles would have no bushel cost. As has already been said,
destroyed units would lead to the loss of the allocated "Bushels"
A special military unit that could be constructed is the "Militia". This unit costs the same bushels as infantry, but has no ongoing gold cost.
Additionally, they have a higher attack/defense and morale rating than
similar non-specialist infantry of the era, so long as they are within the city of their origin (to reflect the "Home Gaurd" mind-set)
Anyway, I know a lot of this stuff has already been covered in other
posts, but I just had to put my views forward, based on what I've read.
Thankyou,
The_Aussie_Lurker

[polymths]

Whatever Firaxis does to connect population size to armed forces size would be welcomed. I don't know if it is being considered even at this late stage but anything is better than the "infinite robot army" model that is currently used.

Some kind of "war fatigue" effect would also be welcomed based on casualties, length of war, etc.

It seems almost everyone supports the inclusion of these concepts for added gameplay, depth, and realism and they just don't seem that difficult to implement!

[Alinestra Covelia]

It would be nice to be able to tie the civilian populace to the military strength of a civilization, especially as Germany's present day demographics will show the tremendous loss of young adult males roundabout 1941-45 as a result of the Second World War. War can have a very profound impact on a culture's population, and if Firaxis can come up with a way of sidestepping the obvious implementational problems, I'd welcome an optional representation of depopulation.

Perhaps in the earlier turns of the game, no population decrease would be noticed since each turn is roundabout a generation anyway. However, when you get to the single-year turns, then the effects would almost certainly be noticeable.

This would also open up a further military generation of drone war machines controlled from afar (which the US military have already acknowledged as a future possibility, given that aircraft performance are improving past the threshold of human pilot tolerance) which would require no population support at all. (And also require all barracks and other training facs to be made obsolete.)

[Maccabee2]

I like the bushel idea. Reduction of population growth rate or in extreme ccases, decrease in population, is an idea whose time has come.
I still have one question. Why haven't the forum deities censored Alexander's Horse's whatever? At least in this string, his posts were all flame and short on logic. Is that how he got to so high a title? Flaming others ideas in short, little posts?