More Military Units Than Citizens

[adkjake]

Is there a mod that makes this impossible, as a civ may have more units than the number of citizens (23 citizens in 3 cities but 50 units) i know there are other numbers but it doesnt make sense

[Damsteri]

That doesn't make sense, since city size value is not a linear indicator of amount of citizen in the city. City of size 1 city has 1,000 citizen (value from demographics), size 2 city has 6,000 citizen, size 3 city has 21,000 and so on. For example you would need 21 size 1 cities to have same actual population as one size 3 city. Number in the city banner is just a size "class", not actual population. So, you can't compare those values in the city banner to anything, like amount of units.

23 citizen in three cities... that could be for example cities with sizes 10, 7 and 6, which would be actual population of 630,000 + 232,000 + 150,000 which is around one million citizen (value in demographics[forums.civfanatics.com]). Let's assume that one unit in the game represents a division size unit (there is no indication in the game about the actual size). So, 50 units would be something like 50 * 10,000 = 50,000 men. Could a civilization which has population of one million have an active army of 50,000 men? Active army that's 5.0% from total population, is that possible? It would be possible at (global) wartime easily and one country is currently very close, North Korea has active army of 4.74% of their total population based on this[en.wikipedia.org].

I would even say that Civ V is quite accurate on numbers, but you need to remember that unit sizes must be different on different eras, not fixed 10,000 that I used. One warrior unit is definately not representing 10,000 clubmen. This is not a real military simulation, everything is simplified. There are other games that go much deeper on that.

[Damsteri]

One more thing... there is one limiting factor for units in the game, unit supply. It's quite high and most players don't even know it. It's maximum number of units that a civilization can supply, any extra unit (civililian or military) will yield 10% production penalty each (max 70%).

Supply is counted as base supply + number of cities * city supply + total population * population supply. Base and city supply values are smaller on higher difficulty levels.

For a prince level game supply for 3 cities with total population would be 5 + 3*2 + 23*½ = 22 (link) for human player. So, human player couldn't have army of 50 units without huge penalties, only 22 units. AI on the other hand could have, because AI has bonuses. Prince level AI could have 31 units, Immortal 36 and Deity 44 without penalties with those cities (difficulty level modifiers[www.civfanatics.com]).

So, 50 units sounds strange in supply-wise, because the game prevents a civ to use an army that big with that small population. Even though real population values would be realistic, like I mentioned in the last post.

[Gronmor]

There is an actual value for soldiers, though! In the Demographic sections! I took a pic to show an exemple:

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/859481060615500971/D479407BD252DCCCB5D2CAFD2EBCD4CAC96389F7/

As you may or may not know, when you move the cursor above one of the stats in the Demographics section, it shows you what that number actually represents. For exemple, in the pic above, I would have 4,330,000 of Land. But if you move the cursor above it, it would specify that it's actually 4,330,000 km^2 of land, the specific unit of measurement.

Now, if you apply that to the "Soldiers" data, well, as you can see in the pic above, the Demographics data says I actually have 236,516 SOLDIERS. They don't call it "Military Might" or some vague unit of data, they actively say that's the exact amount of soldiers I have in this game! Now compare it to my population, which I have 50,815,000 in this game, and basically, my army represents a mere 0.47% of my total population! And I was actually going for a Domination Victory in this game, too (albeit at a relatively low difficulty level, plus I already had a ton of cities conquered, as you can see on the map, which could easily create a raise in population number).

Anyway, the point is, I think it's pretty hard for the number of soldiers to raise above the number of citizens you have in your cities!

Moreover, I once played this game where I've built a ton of soldiers, as a way to prepare for an invasion! I've built so much that the game told me my Production stat would be droping! So there is already a consequence put in place in cases where you build too much soldiers! ^_^

(EDIT: Although now I'm curious. How much actual soldiers do each different type of units actually represents? I might have to do some research on that; it could be fun! ^_^
(EDIT2: I've just read somewhere that health and promotions affect the number of soldiers... Which I kinda find weird but understandable, the health part: When you're healing your soldiers, what, are soldiers having babies and then get ready for battle? Or more likely they are getting reinforcements from the cities, but in that case soldiers should heal more slowly the further away they are from your cities, right? But anyway, the problematic part here is promotions: I could just choose to ignore that one, sure, but it would be relatively interesting to learn even more about what size of army each promotion represents... So much research to do! LOL )

[Damsteri]

Ah... I really didn't remember that the value in demographics was labeled as "soldiers".

It's still the military might value, which is calculated in rather strange way, including the amount of gold that civilization has (I think that this thread has some good assumptions[forums.civfanatics.com]). One problem is that when you start a new game and found your capital, population in the demographics is 1,000 (for size 1 city), but your sole warrior is shown as 9,798 soldiers. That's unrealistic, so the value can't be actual soldiers, even though labeled as such.

[Gronmor]

Originally posted by Damsteri:

Ah... I really didn't remember that the value in demographics was labeled as "soldiers".

It's still the military might value, which is calculated in rather strange way, including the amount of gold that civilization has (I think that this thread has some good assumptions[forums.civfanatics.com]). One problem is that when you start a new game and found your capital, population in the demographics is 1,000 (for size 1 city), but your sole warrior is shown as 9,798 soldiers. That's unrealistic, so the value can't be actual soldiers, even though labeled as such.

That is weird indeed. Although most cities would reach 3 Citizens (21,000 population) really quickly most of the time, making the value much more accetable, especcially in those troubled times where barbarians were everywhere! ^_^ lol Maybe it's just flawed like that at the begining of the game but reaches accetable numbers relatively quickly, so it's not a big deal? Or maybe one could say that, because the civilization is brand new, some warriors choose to not be completely affiliated with a civilization, to remain independant, but to still fight for that country when needed, or something?

I dunno... We're trying to make sense into a game involving people who lives forever! But it's still fun to speculate somehow!

[adkjake]

i mean each unit should count as 1/4 of a citizen or somthing

[Gronmor]

Originally posted by adkjake:

i mean each unit should count as 1/4 of a citizen or somthing

So... you need to have a 4-citizen city to build just one soldier unit? 8 in order to have 2? At a 30-citizen city, you only have 7 units of soldiers?

And I mean, sure, you have more cities than that but, ultimately, I don't see this working very well. Besides, as both Damsteri and myself pointed out, there IS already a point in your number of soldiers where you're heavily impacted if you have too much soldiers (and according to Damsteri, the math to determine that point takes into account the number of cities AND the number of citizens. So you already have your wish in the game! ;) )

[adkjake]

no every citizen makes 2 soldiers maybe

[Damsteri]

Originally posted by Gronmor:

I dunno... We're trying to make sense into a game involving people who lives forever! But it's still fun to speculate somehow!

Yep, don't take this discussion too seriously. I think that most values in demographics are just converted from the value range used by the game to a value range that can be understoodt by a human. For example population value in demographics is not used anywhere else, I think. Inner calculations work with the city size value, which is smaller than real population value and easier for computer to handle with lower amount of memory. Military might value in demographics (or "soldiers") is the exception, it's the actual value that is used by AI to compare army sizes when making decisions.

[Phil khajeets]

Why?
Game already punishes you enough with unit penalty and amount of gold units take in each turn

[Jugulador]

Old topic, yet: In my current game, Israel have (according to Info Addict) 85,000 habitants but 115,585 soldiers. I had a war againt them capturing all their territory but one size 2 city... in some dozens of turns they spam seven more cities (we both have 8 and other civs less than that) and their army goes from zero to 115,585 soldiers being the third larger (I have 179,444, being now the larger, with 8,412,000 being the second population after the Ottomans, that have 40 milion plus magically born folks). Difficulty Prince

It's the second time that I see this kind of artificial recovery. It's impossible to build an army that big with no requirements in so short time. Don't happen not even in the harder difficulties.

So, anyone knows how does handicap REALLY works in Civ5? I'm not talking about the official chart, but the hidden handicaps?

EDIT: There past 63 turns since they lost the war that basically zeroed their civ (ended with them becoming my vassal). I't impossible to raise that civ again in so little time.

Cheers!

[knighttemplar1960]

Originally posted by Jugulador:

Old topic, yet: In my current game, Israel have (according to Info Addict) 85,000 habitants but 115,585 soldiers. I had a war againt them capturing all their territory but one size 2 city... in some dozens of turns they spam seven more cities (we both have 8 and other civs less than that) and their army goes from zero to 115,585 soldiers being the third larger (I have 179,444, being now the larger, with 8,412,000 being the second population after the Ottomans, that have 40 milion plus magically born folks). Difficulty Prince

It's the second time that I see this kind of artificial recovery. It's impossible to build an army that big with no requirements in so short time. Don't happen not even in the harder difficulties.

So, anyone knows how does handicap REALLY works in Civ5? I'm not talking about the official chart, but the hidden handicaps?

EDIT: There past 63 turns since they lost the war that basically zeroed their civ (ended with them becoming my vassal). I't impossible to raise that civ again in so little time.

Cheers!

When the game first came out limits were tied to economics but it became very easy to destroy a civ through economics instead of military. It was easier to destroy a civ through economics than military. The devs tried several ways to fix this but couldn't do it so they decoupled economics for AI civs. There is also a supply mechanic in the game but unless you've played Germany with raging barbarians you've probably never been affected by it. When you get to a point where you have more units than you cities can supply your cities suffer a production penalty.

The developers consider Prince difficulty to be equivalent to the AI for an average player BUT the AI isn't playing as if it was on Prince. It plays as if it were a human playing Chieftain and its gets all the tech and production bonuses that go along with that. That means the AI pays much less than you do to produce units, produces them faster than you can, doesn't have to pay gold maintenance costs on them so they never disband, and can still use gold to instantly purchase units if they have the funds available. They can easily build an insanely large army in 2-3 turns and its costs them nothing to maintain it. The science and production penalties are pretty much offset by the science and production bonuses they get. This forces you to use terrain and promotions to counter their advantages since they can easily out produce you by as much as 3x.

[Charlie]

This thread was quite old before the recent post, so we're locking it to prevent confusion.