Once military units reduce city population, the totally unrealistic tactic of building military units and treating them like rounds of ammunition will be removed. Instead of being able to essentially build a military that is literally more than 100% of the total population, you can only build a military out of the existing population. So when that armor unit is killed, its not seen as the lost of a piece of machine but of actual people that you had to draft from the city to man that tank brigade/division/whatever.

Like settlers, military units can rejoin the cities if you don't need them to wage war or after a war has ended. This simulates the effect of "bringing the boys home" after a war.

1) If you build 6-10 units (depending on unit type), in a single city, then the population should drop by 1 (resulting in a drop in happiness in that city). Every unit built in this city above that will continue to reduce happiness. Conscription should allow you to build 1-2 extra units in the city before happiness and population drop. The main purpose of this would be to force the player to spread his unit construction over a number of cities.
2) Having more than 4 units in a city should cause happiness to drop. Though this should be mitigated somewhat by the construction of barracks. Allies should only be able to store about 2 units in your cities before happiness drops (look at Okinawa!) This is mostly to prevent players producing units ad-infinitum and storing them in a convenient city until they are needed!
3) Armies outside your city should contribute to a drop in regional happiness. Though this would be mostly offset if you are currently at war.
4) When a unit suffers more than about 50% damage. The city the unit originated from should suffer a drop in happiness (as well as causing a drop in regional happiness). If the unit is routed or destroyed, the happiness drop is greater still. Happiness can be partially restored if the unit is brought back to one of your cities and disbanded (as suggested by Polymths). Of course the more units that suffer heavy casualties, the more unhappy cities you get, and the more unhappy your civilization becomes. This would force players to consider their forces as more than just Cannon-Fodder and consider potential casualties before engaging in combat. It might also force a player to negotiate a peace with an enemy simply to avoid a revolution at home (a la Vietnam!)
5) An Advance like "Propaganda" should reduce some of the happiness losses caused by the above factors (particularly war casualties), to reflect the impact of "Positive News Stories from the Front Lines!" Additionally, war victories would increase the happiness of your civilization (and partially offset any of the unhappiness caused by the above factors)
6) Conscription would exacerbate the happiness effects of war casualties and units outside of cities. Lastly, certain government types (Fascist/Military Dictatorship) should be able to almost completely offset many of the causes of unhappiness mentioned above (especially with Propaganda!)
Anyway, that's "my 2 cents worth" again. I hope to hear some comments in the not too distant future.

Yours,

Call To Power was not a favorite among most Civers, but I felt it was more realistic than previous Sid Meier games. In CTP, the allocation table of a town's population is very realistic. In Civ3, a similar concept could be implemented. Having the groups, Laborers, Farmers, Merchants(businessmen after the corporation), Public works, Military, Caravans(shipping and freight later) and Entertainers.

[Another thing about combat - I hate how the size of one's army is only directly dependent upon production, not population. If I have a small civ that happens to own mineral-rich land, then I can build a huge army - but where did all the soldiers come from? It's much easier for China to field an army of 10 million than for France to. People are just as critical a resource for war as the metal used to fashion the guns.

I think that there should be a "cap" on the number of units a civ can build, determined by the civ's population, some sort of "threat factor" (determined by how much other civs dislike you, and how powerful those civs are), and cultural points (if this is my motherland, I'm going to defend it!). Maybe one could also factor in propaganda, or religious fanaticism. This, along with the production limitations of a civ, would determine how large an army the civ could field.]

Although it doesn't actually remove any population from the cities as I would prefer, it does have the benefit that it doesn't require any change to the Civ1/Civ2 "population head" model and it does limit the size of the military to the actually number of people in the empire.

I would settle for this. And it is extremely easy to implement so there are no excuses in that regard.

I certainly hope that some thought goes into connection size of military with size of populaton and also culture and govt.

The number of units (i.e. the size of the military) that one could build is way too unrealistic (unless all those tanks, planes, subs, battleships are supposed to be robotically controlled) in proportion to the population.

quote: Originally posted by SoulAssassin on 05-12-2001 11:09 AM I think its time to get rid of the stupid head icons anyways... we're talking about change here people.

I too would prefer that a more refined population model would be implemented. The "population head" model does have limitations.

However, even if this model is being kept. some kind of connection between population and number of units allowed to be built is still possible. And even with the Civ1/Civ2 model, you could still lose population realistically if this is done using a running total of losses.

The best model that was mentioned was one in which you had allocated (a la Taxmen, Scientists, etc.) soldiers and that this would determine the limit of your armed forces. This makes sense and forces you to allocate manpower. Even better that would be a "running total" of units lost and every time you exceeded a certain number, a "soldier population head" is lost. (Say every ten units or such). This system (not my original idea) would be extremely realistic, would solve a lot of problem and would require absolutely no change to the "population head" model except that there would now be an extra "soldier" head.

Every unit has a specific # of "bushels"; or each unit could have the same number for simplicity's sake. When a unit dies, the city it's from suffers the loss of that number of "bushels" in its growth box, representing pop loss. If that number drops the city below zero in the box, it loses a pop point. Additionally, the bushel loss causes some unhappiness.

Damaged units could cause a smaller loss of "bushels".

However, on points 1) and 2) I do stand corrected. Firstly, only troops outside of your borders should cause unhappiness to your population (which would give an instant advantage to fighting a war on home-turf!) As for military units and population, I concede that my idea was not very realistic. So I thought why not borrow an idea from CtP. In their city screen, you could select the proportion of a cities population that would be scientists, merchants and labourers etc. So why not have the same thing for miltary units? Obviously it would NOT be a 1 to 1 ratio, but would give an upward limit to the number of units you could build, as well as giving significant bonuses to populous nations (this number would not just represent actual enlistments, but would also represent ancillary personel-such as weapon makers, ship builders etc.) The maximum number you could set would obviously depend on you level of mobilization, and the advance "Conscription" may even allow you to draw units from your labourer and scientist population, for example.
If you were to move a very large number of units out of your borders, then you should probably have some population drop spread out across some of your cities (but this would really only be for troop movements on the scale of that seen in America, Britain and Australia during WWII)
Also, to avoid boring micro-management. The city screen I mentioned above should be reproduced in a regional interface.
As for all of my remaining ideas, I stand by them fully, and would be glad to hear any contructive comments (good or bad) about them, and the changes I've made in this post.

Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker.

quote: Originally posted by The_Aussie_Lurker on 05-13-2001 07:25 PM Firstly I'd like to say that I can take constructive criticism as well as the next person (if anything, it helps to stimulate new ideas). What I don't like, however, is someone simply telling me that my ideas are CRAP without giving me a justification.

If you're referring to AHorse, don't take it personally. He doesn't like the idea of unit reduction at all, and tends to be more of the strategist player than a realist.

Yes, it's true that the heads system made things easier to manage in large cities, but guess what, large cities are NOT easy to manage! Overpopulation is a serious problem in modern society, and also in ancient ones. Recall the case of Rome's mobs and also Paris' mobs. So far the largest city-centres/regions are about 30 mil - pretty much the pop of my country in total! That's do-able in a linear scale, but just harder to keep track of everyone - but so what? Micromanage only if you want to. Delegate if you must, but accept the fact of life, if you want something done right, you've got to do it yourself. If you don't want to, delegate and accept a possibly poorer result. Sometimes tweaking every little thing just isn't worth your time.

If you want a tactical game of combat without civilians, play Starcraft. Civ is about all aspects of society and MOST rulers spend the VAST majority of their time taking care of daily business (internally) - not running off to war. If that's what you want to do fine, but you should accept the consequences of war, including loss of pop.

This is the whole idea of opportunity cost, you can do this or that, but you can't have it both ways. Decisions with consequences make the game interesting. Otherwise what's the point, whatever you do you'll succeed.

quote: Originally posted by Theben on 05-13-2001 04:29 AM I think that there should be no effect until a unit dies, and then the city pop takes a small hit, as well as a small hit in happiness for x# of turns. As for pop loss w/ population heads, how about: Every unit has a specific # of "bushels"; or each unit could have the same number for simplicity's sake. When a unit dies, the city it's from suffers the loss of that number of "bushels" in its growth box, representing pop loss. If that number drops the city below zero in the box, it loses a pop point. Additionally, the bushel loss causes some unhappiness. Damaged units could cause a smaller loss of "bushels".

A great idea and extremely simple to implement! I forgot all about bushels!
Bushels are the key to modeling population at a finer level!
Great insight Theben!!!

Okay everyone, how about this!

Everytime you build a unit, a small number of bushels are automatically deducted (based on the unit of course). Thus if you build too many units at once, eventually the bushel number will drop below zero causing a population point loss. (But it would of cause take several units to do this).

Even if you don't build enough units to make the bushel count go to zero, it would still have the same effect as population reduction because now your city's civilian popuation grows much more slowly.

You should be able to disband the unit to add back in the bushels you lost when the unit was created.

Again thanks to Theben for making this breakthrough insight!

So if you a unit costs say 6 bushels, and you have six cities, it could be spread out so that each city only loses a bushel.

I really hope this bushels idea catches on and can be implemented!

It solves every objection that I've seen thus far!
1. Solves loss of too much population due to loss of a whole population point problem. Bushels, in effect, are treated as population point fractions!

2. If bushel loss is spread out, solves the problem that although the equipment may be built in one city, you draft soldiers from all over the country.

quote: Originally posted by The_Aussie_Lurker on 05-13-2001 07:25 PM Firstly I'd like to say that I can take constructive criticism as well as the next person (if anything, it helps to stimulate new ideas). What I don't like, however, is someone simply telling me that my ideas are CRAP without giving me a justification.

This linking reducing pop to military units idea is so crapulous that it defies rebuttal. You would have to be an idiot even to entertain the idea. You can't argue with idiots.

------------------
Founder, Dear Leader and Great Helmsman of PROT -the People's Republic Off Topic www.delphi.com/prot1/

quote: Originally posted by Alexander's Horse on 05-14-2001 10:44 PM This linking reducing pop to military units idea is so crapulous that it defies rebuttal. You would have to be an idiot even to entertain the idea. You can't argue with idiots.

Spoken like a true troll, Dear Helmsman.

quote: Originally posted by Roman on 05-11-2001 07:27 AM Someone on those forums once posted an idea that just like citizens in cities can be turned into scientists, tax collectors and entertainers, you should also be able to convert them into "soldiers". One such soldier could than provide manpower for lets say 3 millitary units. While the units exist, the "soldier" citizen would be completely unproductive. If the units died - the citizen would dissapear and the city would loose population.

Thanks for remenbering Roman. It was debated (also) in thread A new specialist: soldier I started last March.
It's a quite long thread, with some debate and different proposal from different Apolytoner (of course all worth of attention, Alexander's Horse didn't posted poisoned opinion there ).

Just to quote part of starting post, to warm up:

quote: When a war was lost, lot of valid people was lost too (killed or enslaved); this introduced the need to ransom valid men back from enemy, when possible. When bloody wars ended, often looser civilization lost "ground" (halted the development) for a generation or two. In Civ or SMAC we have the silly opposite effect: if one unit is killed you GAIN productivity , because the support shield become free! One of the opposition to any proposal to relate army to population, was that this will make complex for Firaxis changing population numbers, enough to match 1 point of population reduction with number of soldiers needed to arms a military unit. If Firaxis will radically change the supporting model, my proposal will be meaningless, but if they decide to keep the city-unit 1 to 1 relation I suppose we can debate my idea. I propose a little change in City support of army, introducing a new specialist: soldier. Similary to entertainer use to reduce unhappyness, a soldier specialist simulate the people (and food, money and production) needed to keep up an army. As for entertainer, its effect can cover more than one unit, and change by technology advance (e.g. advanced, more mechanized troops can need less soldiers, to model different needs of modern units vs old units). It must be an automated specialist, i.e. the player can't modify the number of dedicated soldier specialist: they are taken by working population as military units are built (e.g. one soldier specialist support two units). The number of soldier can change only if other advance (or city facility) change the soldier/supported units rate. If units are reassigned or disbanded, soldier specialist must turn back as common workers (people back to home), if units are killed, soldier specialist disappear (population lost).

Once again, please read all the linked posts, because they host interesting questions and answers that fine tuned the original proposal.

It probably isn't been considered by Firaxis (it's a crap ideayou know, as Alexander's Horse underlined ), but because CIV III early screenshoots shows old style population numbers, this is my only hope to have playable relationship between population and army.

I have read those old posts. There are many fine ideas that could work and I did like the "soldier specialist" idea as well when Roman brought it up. However any idea is better than the current Civ1/Civ2, "I want my soldiers to die to free up shields" crap!

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.

Since the only resource needed to gain population is food, rather than reducing city pop when a unit is created, have the unit creation 'soak up' a portion of the city's food intake.

For instance, your city takes in 3 food per turn. You need to build a Marine unit (representing a platoon of Marines). While those Marines are being built, only 2 of the 3 food will go towards population growth each turn, while 1 will just be eliminated (representing the food needed to nourish the Marines.) So, pop growth has been retarded, simulating the human pop investment in the unit, without screwing with heads and pop points.

This idea obviously needs tweaking. Different units may siphon off different amounts of food. Instead of siphoning food every turn, it may be 1 food every 2 or more turns. And it would be nice to work a way where total food intake is also used to feed units, not just production to support them, but that's another argument.

And for future tech buffs and sci-fi scenario enthusiasts, there could be a technology path leading to robotic units that don't require food for production or maintenance. Nifty.

quote: Originally posted by ajbera on 05-15-2001 08:51 PM How about this: Since the only resource needed to gain population is food, rather than reducing city pop when a unit is created, have the unit creation 'soak up' a portion of the city's food intake. For instance, your city takes in 3 food per turn. You need to build a Marine unit (representing a platoon of Marines). While those Marines are being built, only 2 of the 3 food will go towards population growth each turn, while 1 will just be eliminated (representing the food needed to nourish the Marines.) So, pop growth has been retarded, simulating the human pop investment in the unit, without screwing with heads and pop points. This idea obviously needs tweaking. Different units may siphon off different amounts of food. Instead of siphoning food every turn, it may be 1 food every 2 or more turns. And it would be nice to work a way where total food intake is also used to feed units, not just production to support them, but that's another argument. And for future tech buffs and sci-fi scenario enthusiasts, there could be a technology path leading to robotic units that don't require food for production or maintenance. Nifty. Hope this is lucid.

Most cities may or may not have surplus food (or bushels). Your idea would be much harsher than Theben's idea of a one time cost in bushels. Your idea would be that as long as the unit was alive, there would be a bushel cost.

In Theben's idea, a unit must have a one time cost of, say 20 bushels. But in your idea, there might a 2 bushel/turn cost. But if your food surplus was exactly 2 before you built the unit, now the city cannot grow. And the longer the unit stands, the greater the bushel cost.

I believe a one-time bushel cost far better models the desired "miltary units means population is drafted for war" effect than the continuous cost model you suggest.

For whatever reason, no one has commented on this model so if there is some deficiency in it, I'd like to know as it seems to be the most realistic and the most simplist to implement!

quote: Originally posted by polymths on 05-15-2001 09:11 PM Your idea would be that as long as the unit was alive, there would be a bushel cost.

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.

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.

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

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.

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!

Hi Guys,

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

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.