Good morning ladies and gentlemen!
I am currently reading Iulius Caesar's Commentarii de Bello Gallico and while reading it I had an interesting idea for a mod (since I have no experience with modding at all, I have no idea if this is actually possible). When Caesar's army was attacked by Gauls while building their camp Caesar told one of his Legati to tell his legion that they will get high rewards for fighting bravely.
So I had the idea to add adjustable unit upkeep costs in three stages, adjustable via a slider in the army information screen, just like taxes. The three stages would all have different effects on the unit, also their could be a check box you can click on before going into battle to promise your units rewards.
The three stages:
1. Crisis (minus 50% upkeed costs)
This is an option to survive financial shortages without dissolving your armies. It will reduce your armies moral and integrity. However this option is not thought as a long term solution as the penalties will increase with every turn, even affecting the combat skills and cause desertion and revolting.
It would be nice if the penalties are dependent on your treasury and income so when you are very rich and have a huge income but only want to save money, the penalties will be much harder. Same goes if only one army receives less money but all others don't, they will realise this and lose more moral or even revolt.
A revolt could look as following: First you lose men by desertion and the next turn a rebel army appears with units of the deserting ones. These units will not be at full power, but will get reinforcements if the army loses more man due to desertion.
2. Normal
This will not affect upkeep costs or unit stats.
Exceptions:
All other armies are getting generous payments, this will lower the morale and integrity of the army with normal paychecks and eventually cause revolting.
The army was payed generously for a long time so getting them back to normal payments will cause a slight moral and integrity penalty, but these will fade as the army gets used to normal payments again.
3. Generous (plus 50% upkeep costs)
This will increase your armies morale and reinforcement rate, but the bonuses will decrease over a few turns when the units get used to it. It is thought as a small reward after a battle.
Rewards
This option is independent from the upkeep costs adjustments. It can be activated via a check box in the post battle screen (like night attacks). If you activate this you promise your units high rewards for a victory. This will give your units increased morale and increased attack damage, melee defence and rate of fire (not increased armour, shield, ammunition or battle speed, this would be unrealistic).
For a normal battle or a siege defence the reward would be that your units get all the taken prisoners to sell them or take them as slaves and a bonus payment after your victory of a turn worth of the armies upkeep costs.
For a siege battle you promise you army to loot or sack the city.
If you win the battle you will get a screen asking you if you want to pay the rewards. If you do, your army will get a small XP bonus for the fought battle (I don't know if this is actually possible) and increased reinforcement rates for two or three turns (in a siege attack you have to loot or sack the city to 'pay' the rewards and your army will get 50% of the money and all the slaves).
But if you do not pay the rewards your army will suffer heavily from desertion and revolt against you and other armies will hear of this and receive integrity and morale penalties.
I hope my idea is understandable, English is not my native language so if you have problems understanding what I mean, I am happy to answer your questions.
Tell me what you think about it and if you are a modder, tell me if this is even possible (if it isn't it would be something I want to see in a future TW).
Kind regards
Wuktrio