Advice needed

Training, the older soldiers should be able to bestow knowledge to new soldiers. This could give the buff of earning experience faster. Hard to say if this applies to your game but its a good way to handle soldiers that have managed to dodge the old meat grinder.

Training, the older soldiers should be able to bestow knowledge to new soldiers. This could give the buff of earning experience faster. Hard to say if this applies to your game but its a good way to handle soldiers that have managed to dodge the old meat grinder.

Yes that's a good idea. Older soldiers who have battle experience would become instructors and pass on the experience to the new soldiers so training would be better.

When you let normal game characters die. It's more logic sense a soldier will die also. Some people won't mind if they don't but I'm pretty sure 2/5th of the players do mind.

So you want to make a world simulation. Every country has other laws. For example we aren't forced to go to the army. In some other countries you are forced to.
Meaning that country will have more soldiers and better trained. Because they sometimes need to join the military at their 16's.
Are you going to work with kings & queens? Marketing, business, factories, farms, etc?

A world simulation game can be quite huge.

But back to the point.
- Let the 'game years' go very slow, so they don't die the first 5 minutes.
- The military needs technology. Try to balance the soldiers <-> Technology. The better the technology, the more stronger your army will be.
- In real life some countries have a million+ soldiers. So you need to make it possible a player also can get that amount of soldiers in a game-life.
- Also balance the intelligence and damage of a soldier. If a soldier go to the military from a young age, his intelligence is less.
- You can do all sorts of things with the soldiers. Working with experience, intell, damage, technology, economics will "make" your game. So don't only look at the soldiers in a world simulation.

~EngineProgrammer

When you let normal game characters die. It's more logic sense a soldier will die also. Some people won't mind if they don't but I'm pretty sure 2/5th of the players do mind.

So you want to make a world simulation. Every country has other laws. For example we aren't forced to go to the army. In some other countries you are forced to.
Meaning that country will have more soldiers and better trained. Because they sometimes need to join the military at their 16's.
Are you going to work with kings & queens? Marketing, business, factories, farms, etc?

A world simulation game can be quite huge.

But back to the point.
- Let the 'game years' go very slow, so they don't die the first 5 minutes.
- The military needs technology. Try to balance the soldiers <-> Technology. The better the technology, the more stronger your army will be.
- In real life some countries have a million+ soldiers. So you need to make it possible a player also can get that amount of soldiers in a game-life.
- Also balance the intelligence and damage of a soldier. If a soldier go to the military from a young age, his intelligence is less.
- You can do all sorts of things with the soldiers. Working with experience, intell, damage, technology, economics will "make" your game. So don't only look at the soldiers in a world simulation.

~EngineProgrammer

Excellent points. So I will let soldiers age like normal. As the population grows then the player will be able to recruit more.

One other option is to automate your army replenishment. It's a realistic solution you'd expect an organized army to maintain: The soldiers themselves might die or retire, but are immediately replaced by conscripts from your general population. That way the player can always expect to have the army they intended to, (resources permitting,) but your population system remains intact.

It's also an incentive for the player to use their army occasionally, otherwise they keep paying for soldiers that died without giving you an inch of land. And what good is that if you're not getting your money's worth?

One other option is to automate your army replenishment. It's a realistic solution you'd expect an organized army to maintain: The soldiers themselves might die or retire, but are immediately replaced by conscripts from your general population. That way the player can always expect to have the army they intended to, (resources permitting,) but your population system remains intact.

It's also an incentive for the player to use their army occasionally, otherwise they keep paying for soldiers that died without giving you an inch of land. And what good is that if you're not getting your money's worth?

Yes I did have that in mind. The player will be able to introduce conscription.

Another option is to again go for the real-world realistic scenario, a child follows in a father's footsteps. So every game tick there is a chance the total amount of soldiers will go down, or up (the upper limit could be set by the player in terms of a budget, so their army's upkeep doesn't get unexpectedly high). This could work with each profession, so that they all more or less stay the same, with still some fluctuations.

The player could then have abilities like "Advertise Military", and in that way people join the army on their own. Something like that, so the player can direct how many people are working where indirectly...

Not sure what the rest of your game is, the above idea might be too different!

P.

What I am worried about is if the soldiers live and die like ordinary people then the players army might die of old age before they are ready to attack.

Well, in a real-life situation, it's not like everyone drops dead the second they turn 60 or 70.
Why not do some sort of tiered system, e.g. each soldier has a 1/500 chance to die every year after 60, a 1/100 chance every year after 70, 1/50 chance after 80, etc.

Well, in a real-life situation, it's not like everyone drops dead the second they turn 60 or 70.

If we talk real-life, they also won't stay in the army till' they're 60 or 70. Maybe some of them stay as instructors and teachers, but most will be either dead, invalid or back home at those ages.

@codeman: Since you've said you're striving for as much authenticity as possible and and liked the idea of dying and recruiting, I've thought about this one, taking it a little further:
Generally speaking, you have an army-pool that has been discussed before and a population-pool. Of course you're not able recruit more soldiers than the total number of people with the required age (and evtl. gender) in your population. But what effect does it have if you recruit every male from 16 to 50 into your army? The birthrate will drop drastically since soldiers, at least in the case of war, but less significantly even in times of peace, don't tend to start a family. Therefore the player might be able to whip up a gigantic army and take over quite a bit of land, but in the year's that follow his working population as well as the size of his army will shrink rapidly, making him an easy target.
It's just another layer of strategy, but I think it could be quite interesting since some players might consider this and manage their army sustainably while others could take a gambit, planning to rely on the colonies workforce after they have taken them over.

[quote name='willpowered' timestamp='1349234810' post='4986262']
Well, in a real-life situation, it's not like everyone drops dead the second they turn 60 or 70.

If we talk real-life, they also won't stay in the army till' they're 60 or 70. Maybe some of them stay as instructors and teachers, but most will be either dead, invalid or back home at those ages.

@codeman: Since you've said you're striving for as much authenticity as possible and and liked the idea of dying and recruiting, I've thought about this one, taking it a little further:
Generally speaking, you have an army-pool that has been discussed before and a population-pool. Of course you're not able recruit more soldiers than the total number of people with the required age (and evtl. gender) in your population. But what effect does it have if you recruit every male from 16 to 50 into your army? The birthrate will drop drastically since soldiers, at least in the case of war, but less significantly even in times of peace, don't tend to start a family. Therefore the player might be able to whip up a gigantic army and take over quite a bit of land, but in the year's that follow his working population as well as the size of his army will shrink rapidly, making him an easy target.
It's just another layer of strategy, but I think it could be quite interesting since some players might consider this and manage their army sustainably while others could take a gambit, planning to rely on the colonies workforce after they have taken them over.
[/quote]

Good points.

Thanks everyone.

Need some more advice in another topic of mine:
http://www.gamedev.net/topic/632308-ageing-people/

Thanks everyone.

Need some more advice in another topic of mine:
http://www.gamedev.n...-ageing-people/

Hello,

I don't know if there is an actual forum-rule for this, but please refrain cross-advertising your threads. All (or at least the most) of us check our inboxes on a regular basis to see exactly if such questions as yours have arisen, and they're cluttered enough as is already. I for example have already answered to your new question, but I'm not sure whether I had done so, had I read this here first.

bw,
Tobl