That was close. One tragedy avoided.

Staying with defined units is only a shortcut for some design and development trouble.
Yes, we can have personal unit added tweaking txt and gif, but how many players will bother to use this feature? Only a regular flow of units, coming for free from the Firaxis Download site, will make this useful to a large number of players.

BTW, in real life military units are usually "upgrade" of previus existing units, and often mix&match of previus shields, weapons, etc. just adding something new (and a new tactic to better use it).

We should need some program limit to avoid silly mix (eg. longbow on a tank) but we would have more flexibility and a more interesting unit development.
To avoid much micromgmt we can still have predefined "key units" as legion, dragoon, paratrooper, etc. so uninterested players can live with them without much hassle.
Never mind, this has been discarded (and of course the first bunch of unit displayed was already an hint of "no workshop" feature) and we must live with it.
Making a poll about it is a bit "nonsense", IMHO, given the only answer pro workshop is "I want it": it's only a "make a rant" engine

The problem with "Unit Workshops" are that every unit feels inherently the same to each other. They look the same (save a few features) and aren't unique.

To try and have a system that would allow for unique graphics for every tech. advance in the workshop would be quite a task.

Lets just hope they do the units well.

Despite that, I feel that CIV3 should of used the unit workshop... not as it was in SMAC, but an improved version that gives you true choices, not simply a way to upgrade. If the "componets" in SMAC actually did diffrent things, as well as give disadvantages not just clear improvements, it would of been much better.

For example, in CIV3 your ancient infantry units could of had the choice of weapons:

Mace: High CRUSHING Damage, poor armor penetration, cheap, slow "rate of fire", poor defense

Sword: Good Damage, Fair armor penetration, Expensive, moderate "rate of fire", moderate defense

Polearm: Excelent Damage, Good armor penetration, Moderate cost, very slow "rate of fire", good defense, reduces unit's movement

Compound Bow: Good PIERCING Damage, Fair armor penetration, moderate expense, Ranged Attack, Slow rate of fire

etc.

For armors:

Leathers: no speed reduction, low cost, low protection
Scale: some speed reduction, moderate cost, moderate protection
Chain: some speed reduction, High cost, low protection vs. PIERCING damage, Moderate protection vs. Crush, High protection vs. others
Plate: Major speed reduction, Very High Cost, High Protection but reduces defense! (vision is restricted)
etc.

Plus: Shields/Mounts/Barding/back-up weapons (not all archers were wimps in melee, and knights carried a lance & a sword)/Special Trainging (formations/sappers/etc.)

See, if CIV3 used a workshop similar to this, you would have real choices and then could customize troops to fit your play style/vision of your nation (plus you would get a lot more than cookie cutter)

and ofcourse tech would be restricted on certain chassis, so there wouldn't be pikes on F-15's!

Still we should have, for every "chassis", a mix of available armour/weapon/special skill or tactic, each with strong points and weakness.

At the change of era some combo will become obsolete - e.g no chain armour available for marine -

I don't think we need ten armour each era; we should have (I don't care for proper name, I'm letting room for historic expert here):
no or light armour,
medium armour,
heavy armour

short weapon (dagger, sword)
long weapon (pike)
long range weapon (bow)

and so on.

On modern time you can have available armour changed in
flak jacket
kevlar/compound jacket

The difference with CIV II defined unit type are:
- that you can have more smooth transition, making components available step by step on the whole tech tree
- that you must balance more carefully enhancement over limits (e.g. heavy armour will better protect but slow your troop, too), while in CIV II (and in SMAC II, building cost apart) the last discovered is probably the best of all existing units.
If you look carefully at SMAC manual you can see Firaxis tried to add different effects to every armour/weapon (some are effective against some kind of weapons only), but they discarded the whole thing during beta test (too complex? too buggy? only heaven knows).

Unit workshop should be replaced by "Formation (stack) order" as someone suggested, but I'm not sure to like taking care of that tactical detail before every battle: I mean, is more like football (soccer) tactics, you must change them according to enemy you are facing.

Well, I suppose this let us with the only hope Firaxis will give us enough different Units effective in the same time period, i.e. not only one defense and one attacker unit good for every age.

Wait a minute! If there is any way represent stockpiling arms and recuriting combat personnel, unitworkshop may not be a necessity.

I find SMAC unitworkshop quite uninspiring and boring and there were a lot to improve(the potential was limitless)but Firaxis gave verdict not based on their poor perfomance in SMAC and blaming unitworkshop itself as scape goat? come on!

People don't like unitworkshop why? It was Firaxis's poor design, uninspiring graphics and cumbersome interface with so many useless prototype things! not because unitworkshop was fundamentally bad.

There are so many to represent unitworkshop but Firaxis pursue only one choice which is

1.design a unit
2.unit type produced: prototype
3.produce a unit based on prototype
4.make variation of the unit: editing of prototype
5.produce a unit

This way produces problems of frustration from people since we are restricted to produce unit based on prototype and every type should be managed. how inconvenient!

so is there any alternative to that? sure!

1.produce predefined weapons such as rifles
2.stockpile them
3.recruite men
4.make a unit by mixing a weapons and men
5.done!

There are no prototype or type to manage every time and no need to upgrade unit type. Just produce and mix! That's all and every time(likely to be war time)you make a unit for your custom need.

1) SMAC's unit workshop may have added a fair degree of tactical depth and variety that was missing in the civs, but graphically, it was pretty uninspiring.

2a) Being the game designs gods we are, there is NO WAY a unit workshop could possibly be done in a more inspiring way than we did it in SMAC.
-OR- (your choice)
2b) Being the game design sluggards we are, there is NO WAY that if we were going to use a unit workshop, we would pass up the opportunity to reuse the code from SMAC.

quote: Originally posted by shimmin on 02-14-2001 07:28 AM3) Therefore, we won't have a unit workshop. Besides, as long as the units look really cool, no one will care that there's more or less no way to be innovative with your military tactics. Aren't eye candy and mod packs so much more important than game depth anyway?

Actually, I think they realized that unit workshops were the real eye candy. I'm glad they diodn't resort to them and stayed with basic units. I am glad they did not sacrafice the very game depth you speak of for frivolous unit templates and the limited and unrealistic scope of unit workshops. And tactics will probably be actually quite innovative, now that we know the AI will actually be able to use the units (I was afraid of the AI ineptitude in SMAC). I think the only people who will be un-innovative are the ones who will not buy Civ3 just because they'd rather mope about unit workshops. Firaxis is not lazy or does it have delusions of grandeur; maybe they just know what they are doing.

quote: Originally posted by cyclotron7 on 02-12-2001 03:44 PM Okay, that may be interesting (ooh! My marines have wilderness survival training!) but what use is it? How will all this junk and doctrine and stuff affect the game at all? This sounds like an RPG, not Civ! If it has no use, there is no reason to tack additional meaningless details onto CivIII.

What a well thought out response

All these different trainings and doctrines of course will give units various abilities.

Right now, the Civ model is unrealistic. Think about it, putting a unit in the middle of nowhere, and it is going to suffer various sorts of ill consequences such as loss of morale, combat strength, and so forth. When you put a bunch of men in a jungle and they will suffer. If your unit has Wilderness Survival, though, it will suffer less.

Doctrines are meant to give units special abilties. What would a skirmisher unit do? Perhaps, say, hit-and-run raids instead of all-out combat?

If you just bother to think about this a little bit, the answers should come to you. After all, it is not that hard.