Disbanding Units ?

[Hellboy]

danm said:
I'd be for this if it bumped unrest in the province they were in on dismissal.

unemployed soldiers tend to make naughty citizens.

It really WOULD be nice for the softer-hearted pretenders out there to have a way to stand down forces short of mass murder )

I very, very much want to see a disband troops ability.

However, at least for me, the whole purpose of the disband troops ability would be lost (or at least reduced) if it also increased unrest in a province. The whole point of a disband troops feature (to me) is to reduce mm. Since it is always feasible to get your useless troops killed off, and since doing so always involves some trivial/tedious work to do so, it matches the very definition of micromanagement. If unrest were increased, then whenever I disbanded troops I would then have to micromanage the province back to 0 unrest (since I don't use autotax).

So, I would certainly be for a disband troops feature with no side effects.

Adding pop back to the province sounds nice, but it does allow you to recruit lots of militia in one province (which you don't pay for in population) then add pop to that province or some other province. The net effect is that you can pay cash in order to grow population. Could be an unbalancing result.

[TirAsleen]

Disbanding units would certainly help the annyoing freespawn problem some nations like panagea and LE Ryleh do have as well.

Or LE Ermor when you get the "Zealot" Event. No hassle to think about strategies to kill your own troops anymore.

[mathusalem]

I think disbanding units may become independant and attack the province where they are disband

[Sombre]

As far as I'm concerned all that is needed is disbanding for all troops with no other consequences. They just disappear, for good. No need to make it more complicated than that.

If people then don't want to use it, well they can play the game as before. It would solve some other problems, such as too many freespawn to manage, militia mobs which are effectively useless etc. If people don't want to be able to disband sacreds or nationals or summons or whatever, they can just not do it - no need to limit a potentially useful option for everyone else.

I'm convinced that this should be in the game and while it's not of the very highest priority, it's a pretty basic feature that almost every other strategy game has.

[Gandalf Parker]

Id be willing to see disappearing disbanding.

I could see it also turn into PD or population. Probably better as population since it will vastly affect the game with certain nations that get free units. Tien chi, Pangaea, Ermor. Of course the game might have to treat undead and magical differently.

I think it might also be interesting, and less imbalancing, if it was an event. If you have too many troops in a province and they are starving or commanderless then maybe they should revolt.

Another fun thing to get rid of excess troops would be to have it that you must assign them to a commmander, and then give the commander an order "release from service". That would put them into the mercenary queue (if there is room for it). It would become another strategy thing to the game. Like discards in a card game. Not only would you have to decide that you dont need it but you would have to consider if the other players might make good use of it. It also would fit well with the fact that both the need to get rid of such units, and the lack of mercs, occur in late game.

[Taqwus]

Minimally -- disbanded troops should have a chance of increasing unrest proportional to existing unrest and distance from home, and inversely proportional to the rest of the garrison.

You don't suddenly employ a band of soldiers far from home, where banditry and so forth is rife, and without other soldiers to keep them in line, during a war, and expect everything to be hunky-dory. That's the sort of thing that contributes to brigandage if not outright rebellion.

[Dedas]

If disbanding sends people back to the province as "population", recruiting should "take" them from the "population". This is not in the game though.

[mivayan]

Or have disbanding cost 1/5 of their recruit price, equal to 3 turns of upkeep.

[Sombre]

Why do people want to complicate it? It's purely a gameplay option; it doesn't need to be entirely realistic or cause some potentially abusable or newbie-confusing side effects.

Needing a commander to do it, or having to spend money to do it,... that's just going to encourage people to kill them off in inventive ways instead of disbanding (which is rather ridiculous) or increase the level of micromanaging, which is partly what a disband button would be there to reduce.

[Hellboy]

Sombre said:
Why do people want to complicate it? It's purely a gameplay option; it doesn't need to be entirely realistic or cause some potentially abusable or newbie-confusing side effects.

Needing a commander to do it, or having to spend money to do it,... that's just going to encourage people to kill them off in inventive ways instead of disbanding (which is rather ridiculous) or increase the level of micromanaging, which is partly what a disband button would be there to reduce.

I agree completely!

I appreciate all the detail that exists in Dominions, but this is not the place to add yet more detail, that will only result in keeping the micromanagement at the same level, or actually in increasing the micromanagement.

To paraphrase: "Microomanagement? just say no!"