Hi

Im doing a large-scale strategy game where you build cities and train armies from those cities (think toal war meets mega-lo-mania). I want a gameplay element like "army population" or "unit support" similar to those given from supply depots in starcraft or farms in warcraft. But i already have farms as a type of resource income. What would make sense?

I was thinking something like "barracks" each supporting 3 regiments of soldiers in the field, but barracks are very accociated with the actual creation of units in games (and i need that gameplay element as well since i need to train soldiers in some building in my cities).

Maybe cottages/houses to support units in the field? Could that make sence? What other ideas could you come up with?

Thanks!

how about farms producing the food needed to keep your units in fighting condition?

If you are a tad more cynic, make it more realistic, and have farms on the map ready to be raided. You cannot raid a farm too often (else the farmer will just pack his stuff and leave), or maybe you can only raid it once (because medieval soldiers weren't known to be nice to farmers they raided, they often killed/raped the inhabitants of the farm).

Other than that, you can have castles/outposts as supply depots... besides guarding an important road or pass, and sometimes giving shelter in case of an attack, that is actually what most of them were built for. To support an army passing through with food and other supplies.

Not bad points, but i need them to be "buildings" or something similar INSIDE of the settlements (cities/castles). And preferable something than can be added several times to a settlement.

military camp - hey you gotta house them and store those supplies somewhere right?

each camp can support X units. this would be the equivalent of a "base" unit in a wargame. different types of units might require different bases. with army, navy, and air being typical choices. . for a medieval setting, a simple army camp should do just fine. you can't recruit unless you have the bases.

Honestly farms make the most sense on supporting a population.

There are a few things to remedy this:

• Remove farms as an income and make them only apply to population.
• Make farms both a source of income and a source of population. A farm can choose to have its production be applied to your overall population OR a farm can choose to have its production applied to the city's income.

If it has to be a building, go with grain silos? or maybe warehouses? Or going the non food supply route: Armories? Or Smithies?

Houses would make sense, that's what Age of Empires does after all. I think it's also fine to have other buildings such as farms or barracks double as population buildings. Battle for Middle Earth 2 for example did that with their resource buildings (they're called farms for the human faction, the others factions' buildings are called different things but they're otherwise identical) each resource building you built also increased the population cap, so most of the time the player wouldn't have to worry about increasing the population cap because you were going to build the farm structures anyway.

I think the same kind of thing would make sense if applied to barracks or other military structures, so each barracks, fort or castle (or whatever other relevant structures you have) could provide supply in addition to being a production structure or whatever else it does. It could even work where any kinds of civilian buildings you control count as supply buildings. The soldiers you recruit were probably already living in the city and if they weren't, it wouldn't be unusual in a medieval setting for the civilian population to be forced to feed and house the soldiers anyway.

House?

I was thinking something like "barracks" each supporting 3 regiments of soldiers in the field, but barracks are very accociated with the actual creation of units in games (and i need that gameplay element as well since i need to train soldiers in some building in my cities).

Why not merge supply with creation?

Barracks might be associated with "creating units" in RTS:es, but barracks really just means a place where soldiers live and train.

And a barrack has a limited capacity of how many soldiers fit inside.

So... You build a barrack, that lets you create X soldiers. You create them at the barracks, but when the barracks is full, you need to build another barrack.