Grafix for Military Units

[Druid2]

Greetings. The Imperium wants YOU

I think we're close enuf to start the design work on the grafix for the military units.

We will *not* be having dozens and dozens of individual units scattered around the board, remember.

The basic "unit" that will be on the map is an Army Group, Navy Fleet, Air Wing and maybe Space Troop. Each of those units will represent from one to scores of individual military "elements" [I'm avoiding the word "unit" as it's too unclear. "Elements" are a part of a "Task Force". There are 4 kinds of TF.]

So we'll need those 4 basic TF type grafix: Army, Navy, Air, Space. In different stages of military sohpistication, of course. As the Civ goes from Primitive tech level to HyperModern, the grafix should change. I dont understand all the civ-tech-level stages yet, so I can only guess:

--Primitive [spears,clubs]
--Classic [Roman, Greek, Egyptian era]
--Medieval [Bows, Knights, Shamurai]
--Napoleonic [Muskets]
--Early Modern [Rifle, Tank, Biplane]
--Modern [Assault Rifle, Tank, Jet]
--HyperModern [Stealth craft, satellite weapons]

That's 7.. x 4 TF types = 28 icons. Too much?

The only place I can think of for individual element icons is on the Build Screen [when you select what to build, or rather to "encourage" your cooperative citizens to build for you ], or when you list all the constituent elements of a TF, or when you list all the "mothballed" units at a city or mil.base.

So, I'm not sure if they will even be needed. There's going to be an enormous number of different possible elements to design, after all. Maybe just a name and description would do? Or a symbol: crossed swords, wings, a gun, etc.

[Mark_Everson]

First my regrets on the 'verbal diarhea' nature of this post, but I wanted to get some things across quickly so I've grabbed bits of text from here and there... Hope its readable.

On the question of Individual Unit (phalanx, etc.) graphics, a design-a-unit system, and also tactical combat, there's already been a lot of discussion. Two of the biggest proponents for these issues are temporarily out of service, so I think I need to present a bit of their views (they also more-or-less convinced me that these are good things). Dominique is on vacation returning tomorrow, and can soon speak for himself. F_Smith had a v. busy stretch at work and is off to JavaOne, so we won't be hearing again from him for probably another week. However they are both committed to the Clash project long-term.

A ways back we were discussing the merits of a system where you can design individual units depending on your tech level etc. I don't know if you have scoped out those threads. Much of the discussion is in
apolyton.net/forums/Forum21/HTML/000038.html about 2/3 of the way down
the thread. If you have the time look it over, because its a lot clearer than my presentation below. There are also other good discussions in older threads that I have not looked up yet.

We as a group certainly need to take a position soon about these ideas soon. I am leaning towards them because of both the strategic aspects and the graphical advantages of the system Dominique (I think) proposed. A build-a-unit system (both graphically and characteristics-wise) would also tie in Very strongly if we decide to tack on a tactical combat system later.

Build-a-Unit:
Its not Only the graphix I'm talking about. (Although that is a worthwhile part of it) The idea would be to start with guys and you'd add things to make a unit. E.g. add a horse and bow (if you have tech for them individually and used together) you get horse archers. (and you get the pix too, using whatever style armor etc you might want) If you take guys and springfield rifles you'd get a pre-wwI rifle unit. Add tactical doctrine to the mix and you have each units fighting effectiveness, field mobility, shock attack value, etc. If we can do a good job in evaluating each piece added to the bare 'soldier' (whose quality also changes with lifestyle education and culture if we want to get that detailed) you open the field to an almost infinite number of reasonably realistic units. (which would then go into your TFs) This is a help for people who want, say, light horse, when only heavy horse (knights) might normally be available. I think we discussed the concept more thoroughly in the thread I referred to...

Unit display, and a 'battle box':
The idea was to have a graphical representation, say a battle line, of a selected unit. This provides some relatively cheap (in terms of processing time) eye candy, and makes it a lot easier for the player to see just What is in Lee's 3rd army. This view would be made by putting together the figure for the individual units that make up the TF. The Real bonus for making all these units up only comes when/if we do a tac combat add-on where you clearly need all the unit graphics and individual unit characteristics are more important. Also, many in the group, including myself, are 'aesthetically challenged'. However, a large part of our potential market is not. Since we aren't going the mutimedia, marching troops, or crap like that, I think we need some semi-unique graphical features to help bridge that gap. Kull had a good suggestion of actually showing a battle that the player want's to see. I think this would just be in Civ2 'see explosion on hit unit' fashion, but I don't know for sure because we havent discussed it in detail.

Kull Said recently:
And possibly also to appear in a "Battle Box" showing the various elements of each combatant army? Otherwise, will combat consist solely of "Chinese oblong marker goes into battle against Russian oblong marker. Chinese marker wins."? If so, I can hear the yawns now!

I replied:
Yeah, that's the idea! Although people can optionally turn the battle box off. Or only go back to the battle after suffering a surprising loss to see what happened. Like I said this stuff doesn't need to work for the first alpha versions, but it should be there eventually. And there seems to be substantial interest in a tactical sub-system. I think this is especially valid in Clash, where there should be relatively fewer battles (but sharper and more important) than in Civ2.

Tactical combat sub-system:
I think most people at least know what this is. You fight a big battle on a finer scale of terrain with individual units. I won't say any more in detail here.

Clearly there are Big resource/design issues involved here and we need to talk this one through and arrive at some sort of concensus.

-Mark

[This message has been edited by Mark_Everson (edited June 05, 1999).]

[Dominique]

So, we will have 2 totally independent sets of unit gfx:

1) The unit (task force) representations on the map. These will, according to your above outline, only show the epch and the overall type... I'd put this even further: Let's have just ONE image per domain (land, sea, air) and epoch, so whatever units your task force consists of, you see the same icon. This is the only feasble way - how could one show the "type" of a task force if in fact it consists of several unit types? So the icon will only reveal

a) the unit domain
b) the epoch
c) (if I have it my way) the player it belongs to by having specially colored parts and / or a flag / coat of arms.

Let's call these images TFIs (Task Force Icons).

On the other hand, we will have graphical representations of all possible unit types - a kind of puzzle box, indeed. Let's call them CUGs (Customizable Unit Graphics).

The CUG should consist of 3 areas:

a) the soldier (including armor / weapon)
b) optionally: the mount (lateron: vessel)
c) optionally: additional equipment (e.g. sappeur tools)

We will not be able to combine all possible elements in one picture - this would be too complicated, and, while certainly pretty, not very good to recognize. While it is a LOT of work to draw two sets of graphical elements for foot and mounted soldiers, it is absolutely acceptable to reduce this work by simply adding a horse standing behind a foot soldier to make him a rider - it's more flexible, too.

Summary:

The TFI only indicates that there IS a TF of a certain player at a given position on the map (maybe it shows some kind of power bar, too). For any further information, the player has to look at the "unit window", which should normally show the overall stats of the TF and a list of units it consists of. Only if the player actively clicks on one of these unit entries, the detail image (CUG) is shown... ideally with the terrain of the tile the TF is in as background.

All this, of course, excludes any tactical screen gfx - these, I'm afraid, would consume LOTS of time and work, indeed...

Ah, yes, there would be some differences in the graphical presentation of TFI / GUC:

TFI

- small (tile size)
- depends on TF domain / epoch
- shows player color / flag / coat of arms
(- nice but maybe too much work: shows clothing typical for player's culture)


CUG

- medium-sized (unit window size)
- independent of domain / epoch
- shows player color / flag / coat of arms
(- nice, but maybe too much work: has customizable parts / colors)


And, while not directly related to the graphics, one more idea: I don't like numbers in a game at all... but like many other players, I like statistics, maps and time tables, so it would be nice to have a "unit screen" with a detailed unit history, e.g.

1425 Unit created in Berlin
1437 Took part in the siege of Moscow
1478 Heavy losses in the battle of Austerlitz

The difference between these and other numbers is that here the numbers add to the atmosphere by creating artificial history, while in most other cases they rip the illusion from the game and give a look at game mechanisms.



[This message has been edited by Dominique (edited June 07, 1999).]

[Druid2]

Dom....

Sounds like a good plan to me, but one thing occurs to me. Might not matter, so I'll just throw it out there, and see what you and others think:

There'd be no prob having a single ICON for the TFI, different by epoc, most of the time.

A TF at sea is obviously navy, one on land is obviously army.. except that air TF could finish it's turn over land or sea .. I'm thinking that it would be nice to be able to tell them apart by looks alone. So I'm coming back to suggesting a different TFI for each domain (Ground, Air, Sea)

Maybe just crossed swords, wings or a boat. or somthing, I dunno.

It would also be good to be able to tell the approx size [order of magnitude] of the TF by looking at the TFI, as well as a status bar (% of healthy). One easy way to do this that comes to mind is to just put one or more boxes around the TFI as it gets larger.

........

on your created history:
I like this. It'll be even better by using the unit's name.

1483 "The King's Own" fought at Austerlitz
926 "Eric's Viking Raiders" sacked London

[This message has been edited by Druid2 (edited June 08, 1999).]

[Dominique]

Druid2,

maybe I haven't expressed my thoughts properly (don't forget, I'm no native speaker):

Yes, certainly the TFI should reflect the domain of the TF, so even over land, you's sea an airplane icon for a force of jet fighters.

And you are right, adding an optional unit name would be even better. I remember playing "Bloodbowl" (by Citadel), a fantasy football game (you play with teams of dwarves, orcs, elves...), where after several weeks of playing a league the player (read: tin miniatures) statistics became almost more entertaining than the actual matches.


[This message has been edited by Dominique (edited June 08, 1999).]

[Blade Runner]

Idea for the TF strength.
Can we use the color to show to the user the TF strength?
IE A weak TF very light green a strong dark green. The color can show not only the numbers of all units, but the health level too. IE a dark green TF after the battle can be green or light green depend on the casulties. In the time beeing the TF can get dark green again. (or blue or red or ...)
We can count a kind of altogether strength to adding all the civs all TF together. This can be a kind of counting point. We can divide with the numbers of the all TF's an we get the average TF strength. The TF will get the color code compare with this average value.

Blade Runner

[Dominique]

Problem with the color is: We have to show the player color already in the TFI, so this might get messed up, I'm afraid. The player should be able to identify units on a casual glance alone, and THEN see their relative strengths.

Hm... what about the following: Position units on a pedstial, a simple (rectangular / cylindrical) box, the color of which denominates which civ it belongs to, the height showing the (realtive) power?

I think we agree that a "realistic" map won't be feasable anyway, so this might come in handy. It furthermore resolves the otherwise existing need for animations - you see, today players take animations as nothing special, but if we DON'T do them, we might look inferior. By placing units on boxes, we have a very simple reason to leave out the anims - a warrior on a moving pedestial doesn't have to walk, after all.

[Mark_Everson]

Dominique:

Hah, you've finally discovered something that aesthetically revolts even me . I don't think the pedestal is such a good idea.

I do like the history too. With a good person to write scripts there could even be a short description of each battle available. If you structure it right with about 30 descriptive sentences with wildcards for names you would never have two 5-sentence battle descriptions that were the same.

All:

Here's a thought I've been toying with...
How about do the unit's Size (2D Area) by its power. Biggest in the local area would be slightly oversized (fill a tile). Area of the unit would indicate the approximate power. So a unit 1/9th as strong as our big unit would be 1/3 as tall. There would obviously have to be a cutoff for minimum size displayed. So you Immediately Know who the big armies are, and can See whether an advancing army is a threat (if your scouts have assessed it correctly). If the army figure really looks like an army the scaling will give it about the right footprint on the map too using this way.

[Dominique]

Mark,

I'm sorry? "Revolting"??? Erm...



...

As for the idea with the different size:

Yes, I thought about that one, too - but forget about it.

a) people can't really recognize size differences that easily (color coding is MUCH more recognizable)

b) It's extremely difficult (if feasable at all!) to do nice gfx which STAY nice after zooming.

c) Imagine you have 1 lonely hunter and a TF consisting of 10 armoured divisions... how tiny should the hunter possibly be? How huge the tanks?

The idea SOUNDS intuitive, but, given the practical problems, isn't (sadly so).

The idea with the cylinder could be certainly improved, though: One could make the cylinder semi-transparent to allow a look on the terrain underneath. And on a tileless map presentation, maybe the HEIGHT shows the power of the unit, while the WIDTH of the column shows the effective are of influence.

While I always advocate anything that improves the illusion of "looking on a miniature world", I always turn any power indicators in every game ON (if possible). "Understand everything at a glance" is the key, I think.

Btw. Mark, if you wonder where the difference between width / height of the cylinder and your proposal of icon size is: It is much easier for the human eye to recognize little differences in the dimensions of regular bodies than of some cutout shapes (e.g. a musceteer image).


[This message has been edited by Dominique (edited June 08, 1999).]

[Dominique]

Hmmm... disk... wel,, yes, sure, but since I haven't given up the concept of tileless movement yet, I'd rather reserve the diameter (i.e. the width of the disk) for showing which area is controlled / occupied by a unit. Wait - how about having a global switch that regulates which data are shown by the disk? This way one could easily see all important information.

Btw., if we talk about "disk", it's more a coloured circle, isn't it? No height, I mean.

And you wouldn't need any masks at all for that - simply draw the circle first and the icon (TFI) afterwards.

But still, I'd propose the cylindrical version at least OPTIONALLY - you have only that many dimensions, after all (color adds one), and sometimes it IS essential to see 2-dimensional data at the same time.

The "nimbus" thing isn't feasable, I'm afraid - not technically (very easy, indeed, just one computer-generated mask more), but visually. You won't see much with that, and you absolutely won't be able to deduct any value from it. Furthermore, it looks "holy" or "demonlike" very easily...

[Mark_Everson]

Dominique:

I think the disk size with two settings could work. It could have a thickness, though personally I would like to see it be small.

For most units, if you think about it, the size (terrain the real unit covers in km^2) is roughly equivalent to the power (since dispersion increases with tech). You could possibly also just show both power and ZOD (can't remember the new name) as two different-colored disks. The ZOD would almost always be larger than the 'power' one because of the area-power relationship above. Only for an excellent army that fights much better than its size, would you need to switch between the two settings. You'd always want one disk to be some neutral color like silver so the colors wouldn't clash.

[Theben]

Forgive my butting in but I'd like to suggest some variants:

Translucent disk or (short) column, that becomes more opaque as the unit/stack(?) becomes more powerful

Brightly colored disk/column that becomes darker as unit becomes more powerful, assuming that no 2 nations have the same basic color

disk with a numerical value approximately representing the strength of the unit/stack, from, say, 1-99+ (yeah, I know, no numbers, but it's still a suggestion)

Regarding width for area of influence (ZOC's, yes?) why not just have the terrain in the affected area be shaded noticeably darker? Overlapping areas of a player's ZOC's (and allies) would be the same shade, unless you are planning to incorporate additional effects for stronger ZOC's, in which case the expansive 'disks' would have darker shades at overlapping zones (obviously not too dark at any point so a player cannot recognize the terrain itself). Would work with both tileless movement and a hex map (please no squares).

Druid, Dominique:

I also like the idea of naming units, but considering the number of units likely to be in any game I'd limit them to only a player's best trained and/or most experienced units. This also lets people know that when they see a unit called "The King's Own" or some such they may have a problem on their hands. Reserved for special occasions, this would add more flavor, IMHO.

[Richard_III]

Another buttinski--

Why not just use standard military symbols for ‘task forces.’ For instance an infantry division is represented by a rectangle with visible diagonals with “XX” above. A brigade has only one X. A corps, three , etc. A cavalry unit has only one diagonal. An armored unit has a sort of flattened oval. Thus one may indicate both the general type of units found in the task force as well as its strength. It is also very low end graphically speaking. Moreover, you would be using an already existing system immediately recognizable to any wargamer/military person.

Just a random thought.

[Theben]

Richard III,
You mean like Tactics II and 3rd Reich? I agree it would be recognizable, but I also think it would lack the 'eye-candy' necessary to hold people's interest.

[Druid2]

The "standard" symbols work ok for modern times, with a single class of component elements. Our TF are going to be combined arms units, tho.. with army, armor, air cav, arty, some commandos, etc...

Also, I wonder what the symbol would be for a
"bunch of horsemen with sabres accompanied by foot archery"

---

from the Clash Lexicon

ZOC = Zone of Control. Not used in Clash. It implies that units cannot pass thru enemy ZOC, untrue for this game.

ZOD = Zone of Detection. Radius around the center of a Task Force in which enemy TF's *MAY* be detected, and if detected *may* be engaged for combat.

ZOD was felt to be an ugly word, and so is replaced by "Recon Zone" or RZ if one must "acronymize"

.....[the foregoing enlightening reading was provided by your Friendly Druid]....

[This message has been edited by Druid2 (edited June 09, 1999).]

[Blade Runner]

Dominique,

I mean the player's color has different color deep:

1. Player,
Strong TF: Dark Red
Weak TF: Light Red

2. Player
Strong TF: Dark Blue
Weak TF: Light Blue

.
.
.


Probably we can use 8 different color to show the different for the users. We can also put this color code table somwhere on the screen.

Blade Runner

[Rebel]

Druid

What is represented by the military symbols that Richard mentioned ie modern army, is the dominant type of unit in the army, fe an armored division's symbol looks like the track of a tank or bulldozer, but is actually a combined arms unit that includes tanks (primary), mech infantry, artillery, helicopters, and support units ie supply,maint, clerks,cooks,etc. If the TFI indicates the PRIMARY type of unit, ie foot,cavalry,cannon, it shouldn't be a problem to tell what kind of army it is.

What we might want to do, since it looks like we are going to allow custom units is to work along Druid's line and allow multiple types of armies or navies in each era, depending on what the player wants to emphasize.
Ancient Age
a.Amy: Foot, med defense,med offense slow.
Horse,low defense,hi offense,fast
Archer, low defense,hi offense,slow

Etc, etc,

Rebel

[Richard_III]

Theban-
Yes, Tactics II and Third Reich used (reasonably) standard symbology. Ugly, yes, but it also probides a very clear representation of the type and strength of units contained therein. The fancy units can go on the battle screen.

Druid2-
As Rebel indicates, the symbol used is determined by the primary component of the unit. Nearly all modern units of brigade size are combined arms yet use one symbol. In much the same way, any 'icon' used to represent a TF is also only an approximation of the TFs contents.

Oh well, I suppose this suggestion just shows up my own bias in Civ type games -- conquest or bust.

[Dominique]

Seems the "GFX Duke" is called for...

Some basic things:

When showing ANY value on a TFI (Task Force Icon) (be it power, size, which player's army, ZOC etc.), a singe value needs one "dimension".

Dimensions can be:

- width (of what's-o'-ever)
- height (same)
- (depth) not easily feasable on a 2D projection, so forget it
- color (shade)
- color intensity / brightness

There are other methods, as well, namely

- numbers
- symbols

I think we all agree that it's not a good idea to glue too many numbers / letters to a single unit (personally, I don't want to see ANY numbers on the map).

If we try to use dimensions to visualize relative values, we should keep in mind how suitable dimensions are:

- unidirectional dimensions are VERY easy to interpret (e.g. length of bars, height of flag)

- bidirectional dimensions (areas) are harder to recognize if exact information is called for, but gives a good idea on a first glance. Try it - you will see that it's much easier for you to estimate an exact length than an area.

- 3D-information is bad for exact information, but very good for the casual glance (even better than 2D).

- color is a VERY strong indicator... that's why I don't want to see differently coloured bars as power inicators. Colors should show the empire of the unit, nothing else.

- color intensity is VERY,VERY hard to recognize. The fact alone that many 256-color gif images seem to be "true color" prooves that. While the human eye CAN distinguish millions of colors, it must see them next to each other to see a difference. You'll find it VERY hard to distinguish more than, say, 8 brightness levels.

- Transparency is even wors, since you can't concentrate on one color, but look at a pattern shining through.

Many games rely on the good ol' color bar (e.g. CIV, CtP etc.) - that's not a good idea in a game that tries to be "realistic", since the differences may become too huge. How long must a tank division's bar be in relation to a platoon of snipers, let alone a single scout?

What's left are symbols - but I won't have tactical / strategical symbols. These are for the hardcore gamer and scare away many "fun gamers" - AND they have to be "read" instead of "casually glanced at". Furthermore, it's outright ugly

So, after much thinking, I suppose, maybe we should try to do what Mark proposed: Enlarging / reducing the size of the TFI as power indicator and draw a translucent disc (in player color) to show the ZOC / the occupied area (I prefer ZOC). However, a more exact value should be shown as soon as the mouse touches the TFI.

But, Mark, if you don't like the cylinders / boxes, then be warned: Drawing differnt-sized icons has the same effect of turning a "landscape" into a "statistics table"...

[Mark_Everson]

Dominique:

Thank you for the tutorial (seriously). If we just let the height of the units vary by a factor of two I think we can get most of the important information out without things looking too bad. Full size: one of the larger TFs around; half size: usually a single-unit TF; 3/4 size: the full size one should beat it every time, and it should beat the half-size one every time. If this ends up not looking good we could just vary the length of a flag by a factor of two, and leave the unit size unchanged.

Your thoughts?

If I were the only one who didn't like the cylinder, I wouldn't worry so much. But I think many wouldn't

RIII: I'm with Dominique, the standard symbols are too ugly even for me!

[Druid2]

I think a standard size unit would be ok, with various size flags. The color of the flag fill could indicate health. The outline color of the TFI is Civ owner. The size of the 'halo' that surrounds the TF is the Recon Zone.

Remember that there may be other units in the 'halo' so it has to be transparent.

[Mark_Everson]

Dominique:

Revolting Also when you get to WWII-type combat the units will possibly be close together and so something that can push the figure up high will lead to overlapping with adjacent ones.

How about some kind of 'nimbus' outlining the TF graphic? Say, in the player's color. and use the width of the outline (between figure proper and terrain) to give the power of the unit. Hmmm you'd need a lot of masks wouldn't you...

I kind of like your idea of transparency though. can we put something just 'under' the unit, but partly transparent, so it looks 'underground'? Or maybe if we can work with just a disk rather than a cylinder I wouldn't find it so disquieting.

[Mark_Everson]

Thought this could use some prominence since we're trying to work out different graphics specs soon.

Just as a side-note, what I'm doing in my demo version is just putting a rectangle as the TF, and filling up the UL corner of the rectangle with a bold color to represent the TF power. The area in the corner is the fraction of the bigger rectangle's area proportional to the TFs power vs A max-power TF for the age. If the diagram comes out right it will show the UL rectangle to be about 1/3 of the length and height of the big rectangle. So if a High-Powered TF for the age had a power of 100, this TF would have one of about 11 (~ 100 x 1/3 x1/3). In the Real graphical version we could put a box like this Under the TF grafix. Comments?

________________
|XXXX|..........|
|XXXX|..........|
|..................|
|..................|
|..................|

Paul: Power = TF Strength

[This message has been edited by Mark_Everson (edited September 17, 1999).]

[Paul Crocker]

Mark: When you say "power" are you referring to size, or are you talking about the strength of the unit (they're not the same thing IMO...)

Another option would be to use a horizontal bar at the bottom of the icon. I kind of liked the idea that was brought up in other threads that proposed using flags. Sure, it would be a little more difficult to distinguish between somewhat similarly-sized units, but that's real life!

[Mark_Everson]

Since we're talking about this area again I thought I'd bring this back up top.

Paul: Sorry I never got back to you! Yes power means attack power right now. It has nothing directly to do with manpower or combat 'footprint' as it spreads over the terrain at combat dispersion.

[Doc Dee]

I guess this is the best place for this discussion (unless we want a new thread to keep the size down)
So I think there's been a general agreement on TFs as more-or-less standard air/land/sea indicaters, changed for each techlevel. As i understand it (forgive me if I'm now out of date) but the techlevels for advances have gone, but they can remain militarily.

The modifications I'd suggest are
(1) distinguish cavalry/mobile TFs from slower ones (foot, artillery)
(2) Combined air/naval units (ie a carrier group) should be different from conventional naval groups of the same era.
(3) there should be a cheap, special unit for each era (SCOUT!) which has longer LOS and enables a player to learn what elements make up another players TF (but NOT the injury status).

This would involve
Maybe a primitive 'horde'
3 icons for ancient units (Sea, Infantry, Cav) - trireme, Phalanx, Cavalry
3 icons for medieval - Galleon, pikemen, knights
3 icons for renaissance/early industrial - Ironclad(?), musketeer, cavalry(pistol type)
4 icons for early modern (Sea, inf, tank, air) - Battleship, rifleman, tank, biplane (looks cool!)
6 icons for ultra-modern (sea, carrier, inf, tank, air, missile) - AEGIS cruiser, carrier, marine, modern tank, jet-fighter, cruise missile

Some other unit if we have spy satellites (I think we should). But probably no space combat.

So: I make that 22 icons
BTW the examples for each icon are for appearance only - I don't think the actual unit techs have been finalised yet. Plus I'm a fan of the idea of personalized units eg the 4th light cavalry, kings own dragoons etc. These would appear in the TF detail panel

To indicate TF strength, I like the idea of unit size=strength. So 0.5, 1, 1.5 probably gives enough casual info (you need scouts for detail).

And now back to unit-civ ID. Earlier in this thread, it was suggested that there could be a 'spotlight' of colour around each unit indicating the ZOC (dim and almost transparent) Any thoughts for and against? I'll try and get an example up to show what it would look like.

[Lord God Jinnai]

I think the idea is overall good...some minor changes I'd like to see, mainly based on the fact that i'd like some more oriental or neutral character icons used for earlier periods since i think this will have TOO much of a western style atmosphere and if its a civ type game it shouldn't IMO.

Also civs that can use stealthy technologies and tactics should make their units invisable if the opponent doesn't see them.

3 icons for ancient units (Sea, Infantry, Cav) - trireme, Phalanx, Cavalry

Pretty good...no real changes here

3 icons for medieval - Galleon, pikemen, knights

Well add Samari if ur using knights for those civs that follow a more oriental type path...not too much more work, but these wouldn't use horses either. Also maybe add ninjas/spy for single units (there are many cases where a single unit is sent for infiltration rather than a group)...also a pic of a sloop might be useful since during this time there were two types of ships, the galleons being the war ones and sloops being used more for merchanteering, but the roles could be reversed.

3 icons for renaissance/early industrial - Ironclad(?), musketeer, cavalry(pistol type)

Use the galleon unless they've developed the appropriate technologies. Also gunpowder may not have been invented by this time as apposed to other items.

4 icons for early modern (Sea, inf, tank, air) - Battleship, rifleman, tank, biplane (looks cool!)

No real prob here that i can see.

6 icons for ultra-modern (sea, carrier, inf, tank, air, missile) - AEGIS cruiser, carrier, marine, modern tank, jet-fighter, cruise missile

also if u have a fighter plane u SHOULD have a bomber otherwise make it a generic plane.


In conlusion i think on the whole its good, i just think u shouldn't leave out the oriental advances in military esp since they will be in my tech model.

[Mark_Everson]

I was about to raise the point about not being too eurocentric in the units too. For some TFs we might need as many as three versions IMO. European, middle-eastern or indian, and oriental of some type.

Of course the first priority is to get one TF icon from each age starting with the earliest. Then we can get some Real graphics in the demos.

Perhaps we do need a light infantry unit... But I'd say lets see how we like playing with your good limited suggestions first. This is one area where I think we don't need to exhaustively plan ahead.

Cya,

Mark

[johnmcd]

The arguments here may have been finished off somewhere else, so I’m sorry if this is in the wrong place. I think scaling units to show power would be ugly in a very big way. The resolution one must work with when drawing Civ II units is quite extreme. If or when you look at a Civ II unit at 200% it looks very stupid. Equally, drawing a unit at twice the resolution and shrinking it doesn’t work either. You end up with badly defined edges, blurs instead of points of light and smudges instead of hollows of shadow. You could certainly de two icons, one large one small, but that really doesn’t provide much extra information. I would think a five point scale would be the minimum and that is starting to head towards quite a bit of work. Further to this it might be possible to Add different layers according to what was actually added to the TF.

What I would propose instead is the use of a basic TF icon, a couple of men, maybe a siege engine or whatever. Then, when it is made more powerful another layer is placed on it, perhaps a horse that would stand at the back, or to the side. There could easily be a dozen such layers that would slowly build up to give a nice portrayal of a growing force. This would also avoid my second objection to the scaling theory. In AC the infantry are different sizes depending on whether or not they are using hand weapons or one or those ridiculous tractors-with-a-gun-on. I hate that, they are all men, and they should all be the same size. I don’t insist that they be drawn to the same scale as grav ships, just that they are drawn on the same scale as each other. I find it very upsetting visually, and I would be disappointed if this ‘mistake’ were to be repeated in Clash.

This is also on the general Graphics thread, where there is some discussion of it, so post on either. Thanks.

[This message has been edited by johnmcd (edited November 19, 1999).]

[alms66]

I think this is the same point Mark was trying to make but I'll add something.
You count 22 icons for the European units, we could also do 22 for middle-eastern and 22 for Oriental, just to give the icons a little more flavor. The middle-eastern would dress the part(Face veils and such), as would the Oriental(with the Samauri look and stuff). That's a total of 66 icons.
These could be tied to their civs (Chinese,Mongols, and Japanese use Oriental while Egypt uses Middle-eastern, and European units are used by those countries).
Only one problem I see, What about the Native Americans, would that be another 22, and the "Barbarians" 22 more?, and the Jungle tribes of South Africa 22 again? I think it would be really cool to do, but obviously alot more work.