Clash of Civilizations - "The Big Picture"

[alms66]

I originally looked for an existing thread to post this into, but the more I looked the more I realized that there were very few "big picture" threads for Clash. There are a near infinite amount of subjects with a near infinite amount of detail spread across hundreds of threads, but there are practically zero threads that tie any of these subjects and all this detail together in any sort of "big picture" way. Therefore I created this new thread for such discussions. Topics here will and should vary widely as this is the place we'll discuss all the various intertwining of models and features and their impacts on the game experience itself. Therefore, in any reply you post to a topic, please include the title of that topic as your title and please include a title for any topic you post.

[alms66]

Bigger Isn't Better

Few threads regarding scale in Clash exist, and those that do don't really address what is a root problem in all Civ-like games to date: bigger isn't better. Now I'm not talking about the fact that Belgium has a stronger economy than the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the fact that Belgium has more infrastructure, more stability, and more technology than the DRC, or anything like that, what I'm talking about is the fact that map sizes have increased since civ1 (civ4 is an exception), unit count has increased, building count has increased, etc, with each new version. But, why is this needed or is it even needed? This was one of the most fundamental questions that I tackled and that drove the design of EIT, and I'd like to lay my thoughts on the matter out in hopes that they might have some impact on Clash.

Back when I started design on EIT, putting population on every tile was still a fairly untested concept (I like to think that Clash has proved it works well to the alt-civ public), and I was somewhat fascinated by the notion that a nation in the modern age could be composed of a single tile. I was determined to have it not only possible, but probable that at least a few such nations would exist in almost every game. I also decided early on that I wanted to have a real-world scenario ship with the game that had all real-world nations as of the year 2000, and that all random games would end with a similar number of nations – approximately 200. So, we created a map with a tile scaled to one of the smallest nations on Earth, built the remainder of the map at that scale. Sizes were fudged a little bit, of course, due to the tiled map, but all-in-all it was very impressive and fun, and quite realistic. This left us with a map that had a good realistic feeling of scale and the remainder of the game was built to fit this map.

So, that solved the scale of the map, but what about units – do we really need 100 types of units? It turned out that the answer was no. Think about it for a minute, what's the difference between a pikeman and a stone-age man carrying a spear? The armor technology has advanced some and the spear (polearm) had advanced some, but essentially both are men armed with polearms (polearmsmen). This same logic can be applied to all units from men mounted on horseback armed for melee (horsemen) to men armed with bows (archers) to men on horseback armed with bows (mounted archers), from the ancient age to the modern age, on land and on sea. There was a single major change throughout the history of mankind that had any major impact on the types of units that were available – that was the airplane. It created a whole new class of unit types that didn't exist previously. Using this logic, an infantryman today isn't a seperate type of unit, he's an archer – armed with a gun (ranged weapon). Now it would be a bit strange to display that to the player, so such unit types have their name and graphics display change with increases in technology to keep pace with the times, but all the while they are really the same unit types throughout the game. IIRC, this will keep the number of unit types under 25.

I don't know how infrastructure (buildings) are supposed to work in Clash, so until the day I do, I'll save that for later. But the basic premise of "bigger isn't better" should also apply to what we try to put into the game ultimately. Just because we can model every individual on the face of the planet as a single object with it's own thoughts, desires and emoitions (assuming we could do such a thing) doesn't mean that we should – because doing so would add nothing to a game at this strategic level. Anything that does not affect the player, cannot be seen by the player, or cannot be affected by the player has no part in the game – it may as well not be there if one of these three is true.
*As I type this in from the paper in front of me (that paragraph was, mostly, part of EIT's design notes), I just wanted to note that this is the underlying reason I dislike the current economy in the game more and more each day. From the player's perspective – other than ordering units to be built and other strange things that really aren't a part of the economy model but are apparently so in Clash, it might as well not be there because you can't get information from it that's of any use, and you can't have any effect on it or at least none you can see. It seems more like a series of random events that either add or subtract from your treasury than any sort of economic simulation I've ever encountered before. Now, this may change somewhat once a proper interface is finally done for it, but by then I fear it'll be too late from my perspective, I'll be screaming for it's head on a platter by then.*

[Traian]

Re: Bigger isn't Better

alms, generally I agree. One thing that utterly annoyed me in civ games was that the bigger the map the more difficult it was to believe what was going on, due to the slowness of movement (like ships taking centuries to cross the mediteranean, and that sort of thing).

Wars could go on for millennia this way due to the slowness of movement as civ never had a system where turn increments would adjust with map size. Because of this I only played civ II on small and medium maps for that more 'real world' feel, even though movement time was still ludicrous in ancient times (you can't exactly replicate the deeds of Alexander, and that sort of thing!)

The way I see it in general is the bigger the map the smaller the turn increments...(assuming we're dealing with an 'earth' map I suppose...a player might want to play on a giant planet but since I always play on an earth map if I can I havn't thought much about that).

As with units, I have been trying to equate units into neat categories as you mentioned for a while but the more I learn about actual warfare the harder I find this - I'll have a go at some categorizing and tell me what you think...consider the types of units:

MELEE (fights close hand to hand)
SKIRMISH (fights in open order, melee and missile atack)
RANGED (fights from distance, missile attack)
MOUNTED (horseback, manuevres well, hits weak spot)

ARTILLERY (really just siege engines, not for field)

Now traditionally, at the onset of battle, the RANGED and SKIRMISH troops will pepper the enemy a bit to soften his troops up and mess with their cohesion. Then the MELEE troops clash.

MELEE troops hold the line - the two groups of fighting infantry bash and slash at eachother and try to beat the cohesion from eachother's ranks.

MOUNTED troops stand by and look for the weakest point, and then charge preferably into a flank, rolling up the line and (hopefully) sending the whole enemy army into a rout, finally the mounted troops chase down and kill or round up routers.

This went on in some form or other until the first guns began replacing bows and crossbows, so there would be a changeover there
>>> ARCHER graphic swapped for MUSKET graphic

But then the problem comes about regarding archers being used at the same time during the transitional phase, and armies employing both. You would have to get a choice of what to use - both have the same battlefield function but very different 'features' ARCHERS would be more expensive but faster reloaders etc while MUSKETS would be cheaper but longer reload etc etc

Things are still relatively simple at this stage because war still works roughly along the lines of the above model...but then the bayonette comes into use and all infantry get guns - infantry is now a term for a man with a gun and bayonette who holds the line in the MELEE way and softens enemy troops - he is in fact a combination of MELEE and RANGED...Now who gets replaced?

MELEE
RANGED(MUSKET)
SKIRMISH
MOUNTED

Do we combine the above two after the invention of the bayonette?

REGULAR INFANTRY
SKIRMISH INFANTRY
MOUNTED

Maybe that would work, but then that annoying old problem comes back up with examples of post bayonette invention battles using some purely MELEE troops due to lack of money to give them all guns. Maybe MELEE stays?

MELEE
REGULAR INFANTRY
SKIRMISH
MOUNTED

The ability to make cheap rifled breach loaders would make REGULAR INFANTRY totally lethal to MELEE and more and more dangerous to MOUNTED troops. When the machine gun appears we may need a new unit for it - a type of field artillery maybe. Machine guns drove MOUNTED and MELEE off the field permanently and forced REGULAR INFANTRY to act more like SKIRMISHERS, running around and dodging for cover and finally led to the vast trench networks of the 1st world war. Tanks then had to be invented to take the place of MOUNTED men.

MELEE (obsolete but still available)
REGULAR INFANTRY (skirmishers)
SKIRMISH (guerilla fighters)
MOUNTED (armour)

the post WW1 list

RIFLEMEN
GUERILLAS
ARMOUR

Artillery is another story. It's real story begins not with siege engines like catapults etc but when cannons were invented to replace these. Cannons were made better and better until by rennaissance times they were not only used in sieges but also put in ships and on the battlefield. You then got a split:

SIEGE CANNONS (big)
FIELD CANNONS (small)

Then you get the MORTAR (predeccessor of the howitzer)

The gattling gun was invented in the latter 19th century and used as a type of anti infantry artillery - we need this in the game so it can evolve into the machine gun that caused the trench warfare of WW1 that led to the tank warfare of WW2 which in turn led to heavy emphasis on air power and attack helicopters etc in the post war world.

Whenever I try to simplify things into categories I get overwhelmed when I reach the 20th century! Here's a possible list...

RIFLEMEN (do we equip them with machine gun etc?)
GUERRILLAS (same as above)
ARMOUR

GUN ARTILLERY
ROCKET ARTILLERY
CRUISE MISSILE
NUCLEAR MISSILE

FIGHTER PLANE
BOMBER PLANE

BATTLESHIP (decendant of galley perhaps)
SUBMARINE
AIRCRAFT CARRIER
TRANSPORT

Do we have a destroyer as in civ, or could the battleship handle subs?

Anyway I'll leave it at that. Things get twisted around a lot in history making it hard to keep categories of units securely in their boxes!

[Lord God Jinnai]

Originally posted by alms66
Bigger Isn't BetterBack when I started design on EIT, putting population on every tile was still a fairly untested concept (I like to think that Clash has proved it works well to the alt-civ public), and I was somewhat fascinated by the notion that a nation in the modern age could be composed of a single tile. I was determined to have it not only possible, but probable that at least a few such nations would exist in almost every game. I also decided early on that I wanted to have a real-world scenario ship with the game that had all real-world nations as of the year 2000, and that all random games would end with a similar number of nations � approximately 200. So, we created a map with a tile scaled to one of the smallest nations on Earth, built the remainder of the map at that scale. Sizes were fudged a little bit, of course, due to the tiled map, but all-in-all it was very impressive and fun, and quite realistic. This left us with a map that had a good realistic feeling of scale and the remainder of the game was built to fit this map.

Well i don't agree with the premise, ie that each game should end with similar types of nations.

Originally posted by alms66
Bigger Isn't BetterSo, that solved the scale of the map, but what about units � do we really need 100 types of units? It turned out that the answer was no. Think about it for a minute, what's the difference between a pikeman and a stone-age man carrying a spear? The armor technology has advanced some and the spear (polearm) had advanced some, but essentially both are men armed with polearms (polearmsmen). This same logic can be applied to all units from men mounted on horseback armed for melee (horsemen) to men armed with bows (archers) to men on horseback armed with bows (mounted archers), from the ancient age to the modern age, on land and on sea. There was a single major change throughout the history of mankind that had any major impact on the types of units that were available � that was the airplane. It created a whole new class of unit types that didn't exist previously. Using this logic, an infantryman today isn't a seperate type of unit, he's an archer � armed with a gun (ranged weapon). Now it would be a bit strange to display that to the player, so such unit types have their name and graphics display change with increases in technology to keep pace with the times, but all the while they are really the same unit types throughout the game. IIRC, this will keep the number of unit types under 25.

You have a good idea here, but your in danger of oversimplification.

I'd have to see these 25 unit types and what they represent.

However airplanes weren't the only thing to bring into being a whole new class of weapons that were never thought of before.

Biological weapons were not concieved of in the early days. Societies did not have that kind of link. The same with chemical agent attacks. While they could destroy farmland early on by salting it (something that also wasn't learned right away), figuring out what types of chemicals affected people negatively was different.

Also gunpowder brought into play the idea of bombs which was a new concept since explosives like that didn't exist before. You couldn't do that kind of widespread damage with anything remotely similat to it. Alchemy fire and the like weren't explosive.

There are some others two i'd contend with...

Originally posted by alms66
Bigger Isn't BetterI don't know how infrastructure (buildings) are supposed to work in Clash, so until the day I do, I'll save that for later. But the basic premise of "bigger isn't better" should also apply to what we try to put into the game ultimately. Just because we can model every individual on the face of the planet as a single object with it's own thoughts, desires and emoitions (assuming we could do such a thing) doesn't mean that we should � because doing so would add nothing to a game at this strategic level. Anything that does not affect the player, cannot be seen by the player, or cannot be affected by the player has no part in the game � it may as well not be there if one of these three is true.
*As I type this in from the paper in front of me (that paragraph was, mostly, part of EIT's design notes), I just wanted to note that this is the underlying reason I dislike the current economy in the game more and more each day. From the player's perspective � other than ordering units to be built and other strange things that really aren't a part of the economy model but are apparently so in Clash, it might as well not be there because you can't get information from it that's of any use, and you can't have any effect on it or at least none you can see. It seems more like a series of random events that either add or subtract from your treasury than any sort of economic simulation I've ever encountered before. Now, this may change somewhat once a proper interface is finally done for it, but by then I fear it'll be too late from my perspective, I'll be screaming for it's head on a platter by then.*

I believe infrastructure is suppose to be relatively abstract except for the wonders.

[alms66]

Traian,

I'll leave the part of unit movement rates alone for now, since that's a different topic. As for the rest of your post, I think you're trying to blend a strategic view and a tactical view of the battlefield together, which just isn't going to work. Some of your comments are far too strategic and others are far too tactical for a game like this, IMO.

As for the less than 25 unit types (I thought it was less than 20, but didn’t want to oversell it before), and bear in mind that this is a reduction of civ units... here's the list:
Polearmsman (spearman, pikeman)
Horseman (horseman, cavalry)
Bowman (archer, musketeer, infantry)
Mobile Platform (chariot, tank)
Artillery (catapult, trebuchet, cannon)
Melleeman (warrior, axeman, swordsman)

As for naval units:
Warship (primarily an attack/defense role)
Troop Transport (primarily a personnel transport)
Equipment Transport (primarily an equipment transport)
Submarine (really just a warship than can submerge, but…)

As for aerial units:
Bomber
Fighter
Gunship
Troop Transport
Equipment Transport
Strategic Missile

To be honest, I don’t think such a drastic reduction is possible for Clash, given the military model is much more detailed than what I did for EIT, but I thought I’d post this stuff anyway, just to help get people thinking a little bit outside the box. If someone wants a complete map of civX units mapped to this list, I can provide it, I just didn’t feel like going to the trouble at the moment.

Originally posted by Lord God Jinnai
Well i don't agree with the premise, ie that each game should end with similar types of nations.

I said, “with similar number of nations”, not similar types, though I wanted to ensure the possibility of their being 1 tile nations in existence in the modern world. We all know that 1 city civs don’t survive that long in civ – that’s what I wanted to change.

Originally posted by Lord God Jinnai
However airplanes weren't the only thing to bring into being a whole new class of weapons that were never thought of before.

Biological weapons were not concieved of in the early days. Societies did not have that kind of link. The same with chemical agent attacks. While they could destroy farmland early on by salting it (something that also wasn't learned right away), figuring out what types of chemicals affected people negatively was different.

See above, this is a reduction of civ units – biological and chemical weapons don’t make a showing in civ, also see below as I feel these have the same problem.

Originally posted by Lord God Jinnai
Also gunpowder brought into play the idea of bombs which was a new concept since explosives like that didn't exist before. You couldn't do that kind of widespread damage with anything remotely similat to it. Alchemy fire and the like weren't explosive.

Too tactical, IMO, for a game like this, though Clash may end up going that far. At this scale, it doesn’t really matter how the damage was done, so much as modeling that damage was done.

[Mikael84]

Originally posted by alms66
Bigger Isn't Better

Back when I started design on EIT, putting population on every tile was still a fairly untested concept (I like to think that Clash has proved it works well to the alt-civ public), and I was somewhat fascinated by the notion that a nation in the modern age could be composed of a single tile. I was determined to have it not only possible, but probable that at least a few such nations would exist in almost every game. I also decided early on that I wanted to have a real-world scenario ship with the game that had all real-world nations as of the year 2000, and that all random games would end with a similar number of nations � approximately 200. So, we created a map with a tile scaled to one of the smallest nations on Earth, built the remainder of the map at that scale. Sizes were fudged a little bit, of course, due to the tiled map, but all-in-all it was very impressive and fun, and quite realistic. This left us with a map that had a good realistic feeling of scale and the remainder of the game was built to fit this map.

So, that solved the scale of the map, but what about units � do we really need 100 types of units? It turned out that the answer was no. Think about it for a minute, what's the difference between a pikeman and a stone-age man carrying a spear? The armor technology has advanced some and the spear (polearm) had advanced some, but essentially both are men armed with polearms (polearmsmen). This same logic can be applied to all units from men mounted on horseback armed for melee (horsemen) to men armed with bows (archers) to men on horseback armed with bows (mounted archers), from the ancient age to the modern age, on land and on sea. There was a single major change throughout the history of mankind that had any major impact on the types of units that were available � that was the airplane. It created a whole new class of unit types that didn't exist previously. Using this logic, an infantryman today isn't a seperate type of unit, he's an archer � armed with a gun (ranged weapon). Now it would be a bit strange to display that to the player, so such unit types have their name and graphics display change with increases in technology to keep pace with the times, but all the while they are really the same unit types throughout the game. IIRC, this will keep the number of unit types under 25.

Hey,
I'm kinda new here, was a bit active on this forum about 5 years ago, making a comeback of sorts...
Anyway, my observations:

- the main problem in Civ with small civs' survivability has everything to do with the over-aggressive and simplistic AI... Change the AI, and smaller civs would be entirely viable, although maybe not so fun to play with.
- your premise is that what the player should end up controlling is a State, in the modern sense of the word. I believe that in Civ, the idea is that you are not controlling States but rather civilizations.
- I agree overall with your point about bigger not being better. I even think you're not going far enough with your ideas on military units. Seriously, at the strategic level, I don't think the differences between polearmsmen, archers, and mounted archers are very relevant.

[Traian]

Originally posted by alms66
Traian,

I'll leave the part of unit movement rates alone for now, since that's a different topic. As for the rest of your post, I think you're trying to blend a strategic view and a tactical view of the battlefield together, which just isn't going to work. Some of your comments are far too strategic and others are far too tactical for a game like this, IMO.

As for the less than 25 unit types (I thought it was less than 20, but didn’t want to oversell it before), and bear in mind that this is a reduction of civ units... here's the list:
Polearmsman (spearman, pikeman)
Horseman (horseman, cavalry)
Bowman (archer, musketeer, infantry)
Mobile Platform (chariot, tank)
Artillery (catapult, trebuchet, cannon)
Melleeman (warrior, axeman, swordsman)

As for naval units:
Warship (primarily an attack/defense role)
Troop Transport (primarily a personnel transport)
Equipment Transport (primarily an equipment transport)
Submarine (really just a warship than can submerge, but…)

As for aerial units:
Bomber
Fighter
Gunship
Troop Transport
Equipment Transport
Strategic Missile

To be honest, I don’t think such a drastic reduction is possible for Clash, given the military model is much more detailed than what I did for EIT, but I thought I’d post this stuff anyway, just to help get people thinking a little bit outside the box. If someone wants a complete map of civX units mapped to this list, I can provide it, I just didn’t feel like going to the trouble at the moment.

alms, IMO this level of tactics and strategy must be made to work together for a game of this nature to be truelly representative of the greatness of history. Almost all of the most awe inspiring stories from at least pre-industrial history feature as an important element tactical details of some sort or other. What would the story of Alexander the Great be without the description of how he led his army in fighting the epic battles at Issus and Guagamela? Or Hannibal at Cannae, or Caesar at Pharsalus? I want to watch the evolution of new concepts like when the English used massed ranks of longbowmen at Crecy in the 100 years war bringing the flower of French kinghthood down in bloody ruin.

Thee way battles were fought and won (or lost) has become a fascinating and romantic part of the human story and deserves some tactical detail.

If Clash is going to be so detailed in the way governments are run, and have hundereds of separate characters having hunderds of different occupations then the military side of things - a major part of the story of our past - must be given an acceptable amount of detail. I will continue trying to simplify my model though as I agree that nothing should be unneccessarily complex. I appologise I've run out of time. Will finish this discussion later.

So long

[alms66]

Originally posted by Mikael84
- the main problem in Civ with small civs' survivability has everything to do with the over-aggressive and simplistic AI... Change the AI, and smaller civs would be entirely viable, although maybe not so fun to play with.
- your premise is that what the player should end up controlling is a State, in the modern sense of the word. I believe that in Civ, the idea is that you are not controlling States but rather civilizations.
- I agree overall with your point about bigger not being better. I even think you're not going far enough with your ideas on military units. Seriously, at the strategic level, I don't think the differences between polearmsmen, archers, and mounted archers are very relevant.

You're right, the AI is to blame for the lack of small civs. You're also right about State vs. Civilization - that's also a problem for small civs, since there's technically no such thing as a small civilization. I can understand the argument that I haven't gone far enough, but the only way to make it any "simpler" would be to have something like this (for land units anyway):

Melee
Ranged
Artillery

But, the thing about doing that is that most people can't get drawn into that lack of detail, so I tried to keep a little bit of that. Towards the end of EIT, I was slowly being talked out of this "lean military" view, due to just that.

Originally posted by Traian
If Clash is going to be so detailed in the way governments are run, and have hundereds of separate characters having hunderds of different occupations then the military side of things - a major part of the story of our past - must be given an acceptable amount of detail. I will continue trying to simplify my model though as I agree that nothing should be unneccessarily complex. I appologise I've run out of time. Will finish this discussion later.

Well, there are many other areas of Clash where "fat" can be cut as well, it's just a matter of getting the right butcher behind the knife.

[Mikael84]

Originally posted by alms66
You're right, the AI is to blame for the lack of small civs. You're also right about State vs. Civilization - that's also a problem for small civs, since there's technically no such thing as a small civilization. I can understand the argument that I haven't gone far enough, but the only way to make it any "simpler" would be to have something like this (for land units anyway):

Melee
Ranged
Artillery

But, the thing about doing that is that most people can't get drawn into that lack of detail, so I tried to keep a little bit of that. Towards the end of EIT, I was slowly being talked out of this "lean military" view, due to just that.

I think this highlights another problem with the Civ series: it is so utterly boring outside of the military side of things, that people get "addicted" to the military aspect of the game. This is why you see new units, new "special units", all kinds of new details related to military modelization in every Civ game. It is also probably the reason why some people are afraid of streamlining this part of the game, as you pointed out...

The real challenge is to make Clash so interesting (I want to say "realistic") in every aspect of the game, that people won't really care if the military model is (rightly) simplified. I like to think of Caesar III as a great example of a game that managed to be great fun while keeping the military/expansionist logic almost irrelevant.

[Lord God Jinnai]

Originally posted by alms66
I can understand the argument that I haven't gone far enough, but the only way to make it any "simpler" would be to have something like this (for land units anyway):

Melee
Ranged
Artillery

But, the thing about doing that is that most people can't get drawn into that lack of detail, so I tried to keep a little bit of that. Towards the end of EIT, I was slowly being talked out of this "lean military" view, due to just that.

We have a discussion similar in nature in the Europa Unversalis forum, about the minimum troop types needed for that era. Here is what a majority of the members came up with:

Sea:
Small Costal Ships (Galleys)
Ocean-Faring Transports (Barge)
Small Ocean-Faring Attack ships (Sloop)
Large Ocean-Faring Attack ships (Galleon)

Land:
Light Melee (pikemen)
Heavy Melee (infantry)
Light Mounted (Cavalry)
Heavy Mounted (Knights)
Short Ranged (Archers)
Long Ranged (Canons)

The were very few that we found that would not conform to these standards. Most notably, mongolian horse-archers (short-ranged + light mounted).

Since this didn't deal with modern warfare, planes were not dealt with, but i think those could be divided into bombers and fighters and maybe helicopters.

However the mongilan example shows the need to be able to make exceptions to the rule or else you'll have to have too many unit types or no possibility for historic units to appear.

[Traian]

It's a very tricky situation. I agree with the view that too many games claiming to deal with civilization building in general are way too military heavy, neglecting things like trade networks, social engineering, internal politics and the like. I don't however belive the answer is to just cut military detail down to the same level.

When I think about what makes me want to play a game like civilization, one of the key factors seems to be the role playing factor and the way each game tells a new story, some so good I have to write them down.

Care should be taken not to oversimplify to the point that immersion aspects are removed. I want to feel like a real king fighting to secure power, or eat sleep and fight with a group of soldiers in a bloody war, or follow traders setting sail for new lands, or rise to become a disturbed dictator attempting to create my own personal utopia...to play a game that gives you the opportunity to imagine the stories taking place as a result of your actions is a priceless experience IMO and the closer a game comes to getting a set of rules that would make the vast majority of history 'possible' in the game world the better.

Chess is an example of an almost perfectly simplified game where things are almost 100% 'abstract'. I have always played chess and greatly enjoy it, but I do not play chess for the same reasons I play a game like civilization. Chess cannot reveal stories and fascinate me like a history book the way a good game of civ can because chess is not about people and their interactions with their environments and eachother. I know it's an extreme example, but I use it to illustrate my worry that too much concentration on simplification in an attempt to 'neaten things up' might be dangerous and end up defeating the whole point of a game like this.

I suppose it matters not if one looks at the game from the surface as almost a board with pieces like chess but personally I'd rather play chess than something more complex if they both gave me the same feelings.

[Lord God Jinnai]

Well, i would go through and decide what basic unit types you want. I gave some examples we came up with elsewhere and try to see what you can't fit into those molds easily.

FE: Submarines might need to be looked at. Underwater warfare was not possible in middle-ages. Mongolian Horse-archers another.

It then becomes a matter of styling units for culture and techlevel available of the area (which is different imo than the max techlevel of your cix).

So you could go from a spearman -> pikeman without changing anything but eyecandy. The player feels more emersed and you haven't had to developing whole new unit stats as those are just based on the techlevel.

[Traian]

Okay here's a basic list:

Spearmen (all shaft weapons)
Shock Troops (for swords, axes, maces etc)
Ranged (slings, bows, crossbows, guns etc)

Skirmish (?) Tricky - I'd like to put them with shock troops as a light shock infantry that throws short ranged missiles. In truth they're a mix between shock and ranged.

Shock Cavalry
Ranged Cavalry (mongols, parthians, spanish jinettes)

Ranged Siege Engine (catapult, trebuchet etc)
Tower Siege Engine (maybe?)
Battering Siege Engine (maybe?)

Galley

That's about it for ancient unit types. Will add more another time.

[alms66]

Originally posted by Lord God Jinnai
It then becomes a matter of styling units for culture and techlevel available of the area (which is different imo than the max techlevel of your cix).

So you could go from a spearman -> pikeman without changing anything but eyecandy. The player feels more emersed and you haven't had to developing whole new unit stats as those are just based on the techlevel.

That's exactly correct, just to clarify. These unit type names we're talking about are design data, not what the player sees in-game. To the player, there will be dozens of types of units, but to the game, there will only be these few. By changing the names based on culture and technology and varying the attack/defense/mobility based on technology, you can effectively have an infinite number of different units in-game.

[Lord God Jinnai]

True, but you must have enough base number of unit types to work with otherwise you'll end up with things outside the historic makeup. You must also consider, to some extent, furturisitc and fantasical games could be played as well. But as i said, earlier, id haveto see your list to know if it'll likely be robust enough.

[Traian]

One problem is that 'fundamental' unit types change over time, so until guns really take off 'spearmen' for example can just change in name, stats and cosmetically (pikeman, halberdier etc) but then what does the spearman change to? Musketman? That's a ranged unit, and so would be in the 'archer' family.The 'spearman' family is totally obsolete and stops evolving at around the point guns start comming into heavy use. Shock troops (swords, axes, maces etc) would also stop evolving around this point or earlier.

SPEARMEN----------0----------1000AD-------
SHOCK---------------0---------1000AD------
RANGED-------------0----------1000AD------------2000AD---
SKIRMISH-----------0----------1000AD------------2000AD---

At a certain point the game has to recognize that 'ranged' is no longer a distinction for infantry, as guns eventually cause all of them tobe ranged.

My suggestion is that once the bayonette is implemented the old infantry classes are grayed out as obsolete - this is asort of new military level which can last till the 21st century.

OLD BASIC INFANTRY UNITS

SPEARMEN
SHOCK TROOPS
RANGED
SKIRMISH

NEW BASIC INFANTRY UNITS

REGULARS
NON REGULARS

or perhaps

ASSAULT INFANTRY
DEFENSIVE INFANTRY
NON REGULAR INFANTRY

Still need to think things through more for the new list.

[Traian]

Heres a new list of the basic root unit types as I would have them. This only deals with infantry for the moment, but will expand:

MOB
A highly disorganized group with varied weapons -common in pre-historic times and in civil unrest etc (the peasants are revolting!!!)

SPEARMEN
A group of men armed mainly with pole arm weapons like spears, pikes or halberds etc.

SHOCK TROOPS
A group of men armed mainly with close up fighting weapons like clubs, axes or swords etc.

SKIRMISH TROOPS
A semi independent loosely ordered group of men armed with easy to use contemporary ranged weapons (in other words skirmishers early on might have javelins, but later on use assault rifles). This troop type will give us our partisans, irregulars and militias of later warfare.

RANGED TROOPS
A group of men armed mainly with ranged weapons like throwing spears/javelins, bows, crossbows, slings, primitive guns etc.

TERCIO
A rigid group of men armed with a mixture of polearm weapons and ranged (generally gunpowder) weapons

REGIMENTAL INFANTRY (or just INFANTRY)
A disciplined group of men armed with contemporary mass produced firearms and other weapons that become available in time (machine guns; grenades; anti tank etc) To this basic category belongs all 'regular' infantry types from napoleonic massed flintlock battalions to the infantry squads we see on CNN.

I'm exploring the 'mixing' of weapons types in entirely new 'groups' for example the 'TERCIO' which consisted of pikemen and muskets. Alternatively the 'TERCIO' could be dropped and absorbed into
'REGIMENTAL INFANTRY' as the 'unit type' was only prominent for about 200 - 250 years.

The way I see it, you would create as many sub unit types as you want and name them using sliders and selections in a 'unit creation' panel. So to create a roman cohort you would select:

UNIT TYPE: shock infantry
TIGHT FORMATION <----0------------> LOOSE FORMATION
SOLDIER FUNCTIONS:uniform
PRIMARY WEAPON: sword
SECONDARY WEAPON: Javelin
PROTECTION <-----------0---------------> MOBILITY
UNIT SIZE: medium

This would create a reasonably well protected (armour; shield) but mobile soldier with the ability to use a javelin and sword in combat. But to create a unit that resembles a roman cohort, filled with tough legionaries there would still be more to do... you would now go to a general military panel which governs overall army policy:

SERVICE: professional [set only for 'cohort' unit]
TRAINING AND DISCIPLINE: harsh

etc etc etc

Thats the basic idea...

another example; for a WWII american infantry unit...

UNIT TYPE: regimental infantry
TIGHT FORMATION <------------------0> LOOSE FORMATION
SOLDIER FUNCTIONS: mixed

1) PRIMARY WEAPON: assault rifle
SECONDARY WEAPON: grenades
PROTECTION <----------------------------0--> MOBILITY
RATIO: 60%

2) PRIMARY WEAPON: submachine gun
SECONDARY WEAPON: machine gun
PROTECTION <-----------------------------0> MOBILITY
RATIO: 30%

3) PRIMARY WEAPON: submachine gun
SECONDARY WEAPON: bazooka
PROTECTION <------------------------------0> MOBILITY
RATIO: 10%
UNIT SIZE: small

So now you'd have say 100 men with little more than a helmet for protection but pretty fast moving and flexible in combat. 60 or so would be riflemen, making them good for defence and combined assault operations, while the 30 machine gun soldiers add to their anti infantry defence and the 10 bazooka soldiers add to anti tank defence.

The average player would not have to go into so much detail but it would go that far for the more experienced player to experiment, and the 'historical scenario' builder can tailor units to be like their historical counterparts. The grenades, bazookas,machine guns etc may begin seeming like too much but each has adistinct function. Here are the weapon types I'd put in.

POLE ARM WEAPON (best in anti cavalry role)
Spear
Pitchfork (?)
Pike
Halberd

SHOCK WEAPON (best in anti infantry role)
Short Spear
Club
Mace (perhaps combine with club)
Axe
Sword

TRADITIONAL RANGED WEAPONS
Throwing Spear (javelin)

Simple Bow
Composite Bow
Crossbow
Longbow (tough one as yew is only found in wales)

GUNPOWDER WEAPONS
Arquebus
Matchlock
Flintlock
Breach loading rifle
Assault Rifle

submachine gun
machine gun

HEAVIER WEAPONS
grenade
bazooka
mobile mortar

All the weapons here are listed with infantry in mind but may be used by some other unit types too.

[alms66]

I suggest moving the unit-type discussions out of this thread and into a military-type thread, as it's grown far beyond what it was intended to be. It was just a small part of a much larger post on "bigger isn't always better", that has hijacked, what is supposed to be a "big picture" type thread.

[Traian]

You're right alms; I'll start up a military thread

[Lord God Jinnai]

Originally posted by Traian
One problem is that 'fundamental' unit types change over time, so until guns really take off 'spearmen' for example can just change in name, stats and cosmetically (pikeman, halberdier etc) but then what does the spearman change to? Musketman? That's a ranged unit, and so would be in the 'archer' family.The 'spearman' family is totally obsolete and stops evolving at around the point guns start comming into heavy use. Shock troops (swords, axes, maces etc) would also stop evolving around this point or earlier.

Spearmen stopped evolving yes, but shock troops continued to evolve for some time because ranged combat wasn't always as good until some time during the 19th century.

However, shock troops merged with ranged troops in a way in that they carried both firearms and learned to use melee combat. So you could say they didn't so much become obsolete as a seperation between ranged and shock blurred until it became pointless to seperate them on a troop level.

[Traian]

Agreed. You could say that in fact all of them - shock spear and ranged - mixed down into 'infantry'. I would say more specifically though that those bayonette wielding chaps from the napoleonic era were spearmen/ranged more than they were shock/ranged as they were less good at holding ground against experienced shcock troops (like scottish claymore wielding clansmen) that they were against cavalry. The main use of the bayonette was defence as opposed to offense. Thier attack was more in their ammunition weapons. The bayonettes acted as a kind of spear wall against attack.

[alms66]

Something that is desired by many Civ players today is much more realistic maps and most people agree that to achieve this you must use a plate tectonics map generator, along with climate, erosion and other models to be incorporated as the generator is run over the approximately 4 billion years of time to create a world the same age as the Earth. This type of map generation, unless extremely abstracted, however, contradicts one of the mainstays of Civ-like games – on-the-fly map generation – because they take a lot of time to run if done in a good amount of detail. Usually in Civ, when you start a game, the map is generated right there in less than 60 seconds. When you consider the fact that universities run programs to simulate plate tectonics (along with climate, erosion and other models – just assume these when I mention plate tectonics from now on) on supercomputers that run for weeks at a time before producing results, you can clearly see that 60 seconds doesn’t really do this type of simulation justice.

So, for EIT, we discussed it and decided to do something a little different. We created a tectonics model that was extremely in depth and would take much longer than 60 seconds to generate a map, but we knew players would never want to wait that long for it to generate, so we created a background application to run this model, accessible in the user’s system tray to adjust various settings, and generate maps continuously. This only increased the amount of time it took to generate a map, but it was ok, because we were going to have a hundred or so pre-generated maps installed with the game so that users could get started right away, while they would continuously be generating more maps with any available time on the computer in the background.

So when a game was started a pre-generated map was loaded instead of creating the map on-the-fly. Once all pre-generated maps had been used, it would go back to the first map and load that one, restarting the cycle. But we tracked all this activity, and whenever a new map was ready, that newer map was loaded instead of one that’s already been used before, regardless of where you were in the cycle. So, for example, if you had maps 1-100 that shipped with the game, you’d play, in sequence, all those maps ending with map 100, at which time, assuming no new maps were generated, you’d go back and play map 1. Since new maps were slowly being generated though, if you were on the second cycle at map 67 let’s say, and map 100 was finished being generated, the next game would load map 100, then map 68 (picking up where you left off), assuming no new maps had been generated in between those games. The plan was to also release map-packs periodically, so that the users would, hopefully, never have to play the same map twice. The map files themselves were simply named for the seed number used, so users could easily trade map packs as well.

Civ4 has also shown another one of the innovations that EIT had in map generation – multiple generators that would produce various types of maps. What is described above was the standard random map generator, there were also fractal generators, flat map generators (for only a small portion of the world like the Mediterranean, the Sahara, etc.), and just plain bizarre (1-tile world generated a series of 1 tile islands, outworld generated a band of land on the edge of the flat map, etc.).

Another innovation (or at least I think it was) in map generation was one of my pet projects within the larger EIT project – the Earth-like map generator. The concept was simple – manually divide the world into a series of triangles that approximate the shape of the continents, map these triangles to an in-game map of the Earth while recording the coordinates of the points of these triangles, then use these triangle coordinates to generate a map that was always very similar to Earth in continental layout, though the details of those continents would change somewhat each time. North America and South America were single large triangles, as was the case for all continents except Asia. Asia was made up of three triangles, the eastern triangle, western triangle, and the Indian triangle.

So, starting with the triangles, a fractal algorithm was run to get the shape of the continents. Then another algorithm would take the heightmap of the Earth (pre-mapped manually) and randomize it somewhat, generating elevations for this map. Finally the climate generator would run and the generator would then determine what the final tile was to be whether it was a Desert Mountain, Desert Plain, Desert Hill or a Forested Mountain, Forested Plain, Forested Hill, etc. Civs were placed in near-historical locations and it generally had all of the good feelings of playing on an Earth map without actually knowing the map 100% beforehand.

[Lord God Jinnai]

How long did it usually take to create a map like that?

As for the length of time, some of those university models take into account things we don't have to worry about (most of the time) for map generation, such as human impact, wobble of the earth, solar activity cycles of the sun, el nino/la nina cycles and other various climate cycles, wobble of the sun and earth in its orbit, wobble of moon, etc.

There is still plent we'd need to if we want realistic map.

I mean we could take into consideration all that (except human impact) as well...

[LDiCesare]

As for map generation, I like my own version for terrain (mountains/hills/seas) which is both in Clash (though it's an early version) and for Civ IV (tectonics). I think the tectonics part is not the hardest thing to do, though tuning the number of plates can be hard. More realistic models can be used, but may take longer, as alms suggests.
The real problems I see are with climate and rivers. River generation is really hard to code. To do it right we'd need weather patterns, with winds, moisture, and estimates of where the rains fall, so decide where rivers can start and have them flow. But then again, rivers create valleys and basins and change the landscape a lot.

[alms66]

Originally posted by Lord God Jinnai
How long did it usually take to create a map like that?

If you ran it in-game it was taking about 10 minutes IIRC, but there was still room for improvement, which could have lead to increased generation times. To run it as a background application, I can't really say how long it would take because it varies on how the user is using his computer during that time, but you can figure in at least a 10-fold increase in time, or about 2-3 hours, for most.

Originally posted by LDiCesare
As for map generation, I like my own version for terrain (mountains/hills/seas) which is both in Clash (though it's an early version) and for Civ IV (tectonics). I think the tectonics part is not the hardest thing to do, though tuning the number of plates can be hard. More realistic models can be used, but may take longer, as alms suggests.
The real problems I see are with climate and rivers. River generation is really hard to code. To do it right we'd need weather patterns, with winds, moisture, and estimates of where the rains fall, so decide where rivers can start and have them flow. But then again, rivers create valleys and basins and change the landscape a lot.

I do like your version as well (at least what I've seen of it in civ4). Overall it's quite good.

As you say, the biggest problem though is with the climate (including erosion and rivers) - that's going to be the hog that eats up the most time. Erosion alone must take into account the effect of rivers, wind, rain, vegetation and animals. With climate you've got wind patterns, rain patterns, temperature, water vapor (humidity), ocean currents and the effect of terrain. In other words, there are tons of variables to track and make use of. And then, there were resources for EIT also, but the resources were not like they are in Clash. In EIT there were dozens of resources on every tile since these resources (+labor), were the backbone of the economy.

As you say with rivers, they eat away at the land causing erosion to the landscape, which is why it's fairly safe to say they can flow anywhere they want to, except up hill. They will take the path of least resistance (preferring sandy soil to granite, for instance) though, so tracking soil types will help you there. In civ4, all grasslands are the same and all plains are the same, so there's nothing to tell you which tile you should flow into. If something like the Clash ecology model were available, you would have an easier time with that.

-Edit-
Added title... I keep forgetting that and I made the rule!