The draft is a powerful action which converts population directly into military units.
Conditions for Drafting
When a civilization has the tech Nationalism, it can run the Nationhood civic. Nationhood is a Legal civic; running it precludes Bureaucracy, Vassalage, and Free Speech.
In Nationhood, a civ can draft from each city it owns if all of these conditions hold:
- The city is not in Resistance or Anarchy.
- The city has at least 10% of the civ's culture.
- The city has enough pop so that after drafting, it is at least 5 pop.
- The city has not already drafted this turn.
- The civ has not already drafted N units this turn, empire-wide. N depends on the map size: N=1/2/3/3/4/5 for duel/tiny/small/standard/large/huge.
How to Draft
To draft, you just select the city (or cities), and click the Draft button. The effect is immediate: population is lost and anger incurred, and the drafted unit appears and can move in that same turn.
Effects of Drafting
When a civ drafts a unit in a city, the city loses population but creates a new military unit. The unit a civ drafts is completely determined by its tech; there is no choice as there is when building units. The drafted unit will be the highest unit on the draftable units table below, which the civ has the tech to build, and (for units requiring resources), that the city has the resources for. (A civ gets a unique unit if it is based on the drafted unit.) Note that only Macemen and Axemen (and their UUs) require resources.
| Unit | Pop | Hammers |
|---|---|---|
| Mech Infantry | 3 | 200 |
| Infantry | 2 | 140 |
| Rifleman | 1 | 110 |
| SAM Infantry | 2 | 150 |
| Musketman | 1 | 80 |
| Maceman | 1 | 70 |
| Axeman | 1 | 35 |
| Warrior | 1 | 15 |
The drafted unit gets half of the experience it would get if built normally in that city; fractions round down. Other than that it is completely normal. Drafted units are full strength, and get any free promotions they would otherwise get. A drafted unit can move and fight immediately.
The population cost to the city varies according to the unit, as shown in the table. (The hammer cost of the units on normal speed is shown in the table only for reference purposes -- hammer cost has no impact whatsoever on drafting.) In addition to the loss of population, the city is subject to temporary unhappiness of +3 unhappy for a while. (This unhappiness shows in the tooltip for a city as "Hell no, we won't go!") The duration of draft unhappiness depends on the game speed: on fast/normal/epic/marathon it is 7/10/15/30 turns.