The problem of micromanaging quite a lot of unit designs

GalCiv2 had an 'upgrade' button which gave you a selection of ships to upgrade to, a price for each, and an option to upgrade all ships of that class.  Could have done with an 'upgrade all in this fleet' option too though

I would think the easiest way to maintain some reasonable realism might work like this:

1.  Check your inventory for supplies of manufactured plate mail

2. Click 'upgrade' on the units you want to upgrade for the plate mail you have in inventory

3.  Wait a little while for the plate mail to reach them.  If they are in a city you own, it is very quick, if they are on your border near a road, it takes a little longer, if they are deep in the wilderness then it takes a while.  Units across an ocean or surrouned by enemy ZoC in enemy land would not be eligible for upgrade.

(2 1/2.  Like in Hearts of Iron, perhaps you could click a box to prioritize the upgrades of units for future production of plate mail so the 1 - 3 process happens automatically)

I'm thinking we should have an upgrade manager screen. Say you learn to make new plate armor. Bring up the update manager, and select your new plate armor item.

The screen would then show a list of *all* units that can be upgraded, what it will cost for each one, and what the stat change would be. You can then select which ones you want to upgrade (or all of them), hit the button, and the game will go to work churning out armor and upgrading them. That would let you upgrade things with a minimum of hassle.

It also works for weapons too, so you could upgrade iron swords to +1 steel swords across your entire empire with a few mouse clicks (even if it actually takes many turns to complete).

For some reason all the manual upgrading in MoO2 never bothered me. I could see how it would be bothersome, but I loved having all that control.

I agree with the OP.  I think this will be a problem.  That's why in other threads I've advocated spliting unit conscription & training from equiping.  Unit conscription and training should be purely time based that can be improved with buildings, leaders, higher population, prestige, etc.  The equip/upgrade interface should be simple.  Warehoused goods on one side and units on the other.  Simply drag and drop equipment on the units you want to equip.  If you replace leather with plate mail the leather is returned to the warehouse immediatly.  That way there is no micromanagement of unit designs or obsolete unit designs.  It's all equipment based and experienced units are easy to upgrade.  Just my $0.02

Something like what I suggested doesn't take away any control. It just puts a better UI on top of it, so you can manage things easily.

You could upgrade ships in GalCiv, but to do it you had to find the ship, bring up the menu, go to upgrade, and pick how you wanted to do it. With a lot of ships scattered all over the map, it got tedious.

With a good empire-wide UI for it, you could accomplish the same thing in just a few clicks.

I've updated the OP to include Frogboy's quote.  I believe it is relevant to this discussion.

As seen in the OP, there are 20 stacks of swordsmen I that I don't want to have them upgrade.  So "Upgrade all" does not work.


If my understanding of Frogboy's quote is correct, there is no local inventory of Plate Mail at all.  There is no warehoused Manufactured Goods like Plate mail.  That means, those in the far away wilderness will get the plate mail at the same time as those garrisoned in your city (if they are not across ocean or in enemy ZOC)

Do you mean my Swordsmen I design in the Unit Design screen will no longer reflect the fact that some of them are having Plate now?   Some of them will have the Plate, some will not.   If the Unit Design of Swordsmen I does not change, next time I produce a new one, it will be equipped with the outdated Leather...

I am not saying your suggestions are bad.  I thought of these possibilities be4 I've posted.  I just find each of them has its weakness, and hope the hive mind can provide good insight or Frogboy  will chime in.   I am one of those who find it tedious to upgrade ships in GalCiv2.   I've not played the expansion, so I don't know if there is any micromanagement improvement in this aspect.

I have a suggestion "Design based equipment upgrade".  In the Unit Design screen, add a button called "Create a new design based on the current one".  You create a new unit design Swordsmen II (Plate), based on Swordsmen I (leather).   You update individual stack in "Upgrade manager screen" using this new design.

However, using this method is still tedious.  You might end up having 10 designs of Swordsmen I to X.  When you get yourself a new sword later, you have to update 10 designs and go to the "Upgrade Manager" to determine which stack use to use whch design.

Any better idea?

Well, the upgrade manager was aimed at existing units, yeah. Right now to upgrade a design, you'd go into the unit designer, pick Swordsman I, hit "upgrade", change the armor, and call it Swordsman II.

You could probably do that all in one shot, but its not as straightforward when changing types of gear. Upgrading from Plate to +1 Plate is pretty easy, but do you actually want all your leather wearing unit designs to switch to plate? Not necessarily. Designing a UI to handle that is where things kind of fall over.

well, there is also the cost effectiveness to consider.

My shock-troopers (in massive numbers)will always recieve minimal training and low-quality armor

while my elite shock troops (in small numbers)will have greater training and higher attack.

Meanwhile Fieldsmen (in large numbers) will have decent/good training and good defense (little attack)

Most of my artillery support will have no-training, no-armor, yet high-end ranged weapons.

And then my flankers ... will have best training, best weapons, and best armor. In smallest numbers but used to precision effectiveness.

 

er, as related to topic, only the best equipment will belong to the flankers, and of course best missile will go to missile troops, but everything else will only get their upgrade once I deem it cost effective to do so (when I don't need the numbers being pumped out)

There is no global storage, either. There is no storage at all in Elemental. To train a unit with plate armor, you'll need the resources, appropriate facilities (presumably) and time. No stockpiling, nothing.

This, at the moment, is by far my biggest point of contention; while I don't think it will single-handedly turn the game into a "console game" (after all, this economy system is still more complex than a lot of those found in other successful strategy games), I think it's a big mistake.

I'm interested to see how units will upgrade, because I can't really think of a good way to do it.

Well, right now a production time for the equipment is a factor in unit production. Why not go back to that? If you're upgrading 10 units to plate armor, the nearest town to those units should have its production switched to making that armor (so if it adds 1 turn to the unit to make plate armor, it'd take 10 turns). Once that is done, the units in question get the new armor.

I prefer a global storage system.

However, I think the economic system will become whatever its going to become, and frankly I hold no point of contention ... merely preferance. One flaw of the Global Resource system is that you could make the elite troops, perhaps only in one location at a time ... but it could be ANYWHERE .... although I would hope the size of the barracks would determine how fast the units can be trained/equipped? anywho ... regardless of anything to do with economy or unit-creation, I will now focus on Upgrading already existing UNITS (as opposed to unit designs)

For wooden spearmen out in the field, wearing No armor or cloth armors, and I want to upgrade to Leather armors and Iron spears ... should go to a city, and select the type they want to upgrade, and click upgrade, and then they will be treated like a unit under-going creation. No further training will be necessary, and they will simply be immobilized until the equipment they need is finished (unless they are attacked, which either completely disrupts the process or temporarily halts the process). This would perhaps Reward players that upgrade their units in a city of plentiful resources, while still making it possible to upgrade at practically any city.

What about upgrade caravans?  You choose to upgrade your units, and a city produces the equipment and a caravan is sent.  When it reaches them, they are upgraded.

If the econ planned has no Global storage for natural & manufactured goods, it means Plate Mail will not be manufactured until gamer request an upgrade.  X Plate Mail will be produced per Smithy, and gamer should be able to build several smithies adjusting the LOCAL production rate.

I put more thought to it in the "Design based equipment upgrade" mechanism.  This version offers more flexibility.

1.  When production of Plate Mail become possible, an "Equipment Update" screen pops up.
2.  In this screen, it will shows all the Unit designs that are capable to wear the Plate Mail.  In OP's case, it will look like this:

Design\Swordsman I: Leather
Choice A} Upgrade Leather to Plate in this design
Choice B} Add new unit design Swordsmen II, who wears Plate mail instead

Design\Calvary: Scale mail
Choice A} Upgrade Scale to Plate in this design
Choice B} Add new unit design Calvary II, who wears Plate mail instead

4.  If he choose A}, ALL existing Swordsmen I & Calvary stacks will have the Plate mail upgraded automaticaly
5.  If he choose B}, a "Troop Management" screen shows up.  It shows a list of all stacks you control.  Gamer assigns exactly which stack will (or will not) be upgraded to Swordsmen II or Calvary I.

Yes, I had the same idea a while back.  This feature will be awesome.  On top of relieving gamers from cycling to all stacks requiring the upgrade, it offers a chance for opponents stealing your Plate mail.  It does offer another dimension to the game.  Finally, stacks further away from your smithy will receive the goods later.

I do think this new version of "Design based equipment upgrade" mechanism will reduce micro, even we'll be have lots of new equipment upgrade, unit designs or high number of units.  Will you like it?  Or what is the weakness?

(Finally, I definitely dislike the idea that when I can start producing Plate Mail, ALL of my units will be automatically upgraded with it.  It will be way simpler to implement, but hopefully, Stardock will not use this shortcut.}

Right, your blacksmiths do not produce plate mail, they just change build times. The plate mail upgrade option just adds to the cost of a unit. I assume that a unit upgrade would require just the cost differential to be paid.

So just using random numbers

Soldier-Leather - 10 turns training + 1 pop
Soldier-Plate - 10 turns training + 1 pop + 10 iron

City 1 - 1 Iron/turn from automatic civ inter-trading (no local access to iron)
City 2 - 10 Iron/turn, 5 from automatic and 5 bonus from buildings (a mine for example)
City 3 - 1 Iron/turn + 50% faster training (barracks or the like)

If you build a new Soldier-Plate in city 1 it will take 20 turns, 11 turns in city 2, and 15 in city 3. If you upgrade from an existing Soldier-Leather to a Soldier-Plate you do not need to spend any training time, you are just spending the time to make the new equipment. So it would be 10 turns to upgrade in both city 1 and city 3, while only 1 turn in city 2.

At least that is how I understand the current economic model. In fact while trying to be a simple system I think such a model increases the amount of micro management you need to do. Assuming you have to be in a city (or within a few squares of it) to upgrade a unit there a simple "upgrade all" button would result in a huge variance in time. The garrison in city 2 would be done instantly while units elsewhere could be stuck for 10 turns upgrading. I don't think there would be any obvious way to display that without a list of every unit with an individual upgrade time listed next to each.

If this is the model, then I think the best way to handle it would be with such a list. On the top you would have two selection boxes, the first would allow you to filter units, the second would allow you to select the upgrade target. Once selected you would then get a list of units along with their individual upgrade times. There would be a checkbox next to each unit, you could select as many or few as you wanted and then hit upgrade. If you mouse over the cost it would give a popup with detailed information about what made up the cost (so it would list the affect of buildings or tech).

In addition to such an upgrade screen it would be nice to have the same governor AI method as GalCiv where you could change the production of a city or have all units of X type upgrade to Y or whatever. Perhaps an option to have a unit auto-move to the best upgrade city before upgrading.

Unlike GalCiv it is not as simple as just spending gold to upgrade to a new design as production is not as simple as that. With each city having a different production value for training and raw materials upgrading becomes rather complex.

 

Edited to Add:

In fact thinking about this model, in my made up example the best thing to do would be to build units of Soldier-Leather in city 3 at 5 turns a soldier, and then moving them to city 2 to upgrade to Soldier-Plate taking a single turn. So the total cost would be 6 turns, almost half the production rate of just building Soldier-Plate in city 2. Yes there is an initial delay of getting the pipeline going depending on how far apart city 2 and 3 are but once you have it going you would be getting a new unit of Soldier-Plate every 6 turns. This would come at the cost of a fair amount of micro management though.