Mod idea - units using different resources

[star mouse]

In vanilla CIV4, Ivory is a luxury resource that also allows a player to train War Elephants. What if this idea was expanded? One could have alternative units to train in those circumstances where a crucial resource is lacking.

• Do you lack horses but have plenty of cows? Perhaps the Cow Archer is the unit for you. The Cow Archer is like a horse archer, but only has a movement of 1 and is less powerful. Can cause collateral damage. Requires access to cows.
• Do you lack oil but have plenty of coal? A steam-powered version of the Destroyer might be the answer. It's not as powerful or fast as its oil-reliant counterpart but it gets the job done against Frigates.

Other similar units can be thought up, not all of which have counterparts in the real world. Warfare sometimes exposes a lack of crucial resources, and it's usual for a country in such circumstances to do the best they can with the available resources.

[MattPilot]

Do you lack horses but have plenty of cows? Perhaps the Cow Archer is the unit for you. The Cow Archer is like a horse archer, but only has a movement of 1 and is less powerful. Can cause collateral damage. Requires access to cows.

LOL

The archer would spent most of the time trying to pull the damn cow rather than ride it. Do cows even let people ride them? And if they do, you'd be faster walking

[star mouse]

Originally posted by MattPilot
Do cows even let people ride them?

For about seven seconds in most rodeos.

Actually, here's proof that it's possible to ride a cow

Originally posted by MattPilot
And if they do, you'd be faster walking

This is why the Cow Archer has a movement speed of 1.

[Optimizer]

It's strange that you can build musketeers and battleships without any metal. Maybe you could use uranium or gold instead (both are heavier than lead...)

[rogerbacon]

LOL. Cow archers! Too funny.

I say we get everyone together and demand cow archers either be included in the next patch or else ask someone to mod a unit right away. The comic value alone would be worth it. I can see it now. Every time they attacked we could have "Mooo" sound effects and, instead of having the cows charge into battle they would slowly meander across to the enemy.

Roger Bacon

[ghen]

Thats a great idea, it seems in most of my games I'm lacking the crucial resource needed when I want to go to war.. more units are always fun

[Thedrin]

Actually I was thinking about something along these lines today.

Truthfully, what I'm interested in would be a revamp of the way combat units are researched but applying some ideas to Civ4's engine - specifically the introduction of heavier metals to early warfare.

Axemen and spearmen available from the start. No warriors.
Archers still available from archery.
Swordsmen available from bronze working or earlier.

Axemen base strength: 2
Spearmen base strength: 1.6
Archer base strength: 1.2

Connecting to copper gives axemen and spearmen 100%. If swordsmen are made available with bronze working:

New axemen strength: 4
New spearmen strength: 3.2
New archer strength: 2.4
Swordsman base strength: 4

Now attach iron and so these units recieve a 50% bonus so

Axemen: 5
Spearmen: 4
Archer: 3
Swordsman: 6

Giving the units their current values.

Others questions raised by this are what to do to promote units from, say, bronze weapons to iron? For free or at a charge? What happens if the supply of iron is cut off? Bonuses lost, will the current units be unable to heal themselves completely or will the units be able to heal while gradually losing some of the bonus until it is all gone (corresponding to, in the case of an axeman, one point of damage healed - the bonus gained from the iron resource in the first place)?

Some of the starting values seem quite weak admitedly (though in this scenario I would replace marauding wild life with old school warriors with a strength around 0.5 to 1 - still enough to put off sending out settlers).

The only early units that I wouldn't have be buildable without a prerequisite resource besides swordsmen (copper) that I can think of off the top of my head are horse based units and elephants though they could both still stand to gain a bonus from iron as well.

[Nik]

Re: Mod idea - units using different resources

Originally posted by star mouse

• Do you lack horses but have plenty of cows? Perhaps the Cow Archer is the unit for you. The Cow Archer is like a horse archer, but only has a movement of 1 and is less powerful. Can cause collateral damage. Requires access to cows.
• Do you lack oil but have plenty of coal? A steam-powered version of the Destroyer might be the answer. It's not as powerful or fast as its oil-reliant counterpart but it gets the job done against Frigates.

Actually a steam-powered version of the Destroyer is the Ironclad....

But i get the idea, anyway. Think it is good, when thinking of "what if history"

[star mouse]

Re: Re: Mod idea - units using different resources

Originally posted by Nik
Actually a steam-powered version of the Destroyer is the Ironclad....

In CIV4, the Ironclad cannot leave the coast. The unit I propose does resemble an Ironclad, but it's an Ironclad built with modern technology.

The steam-powered Destroyer would be between the Ironclad and Destroyer in strength and capabilities. I imagine its capabilities to be:
* Can move on Ocean (the Ironclad cannot)
* Slower than the Destroyer
* Weaker than the Destroyer
* Requires Iron and Coal
* Enabling Technology is the same as the one that gives the Destroyer
* Ironclad can upgrade to this unit

It might be entertaining to design a whole bunch of modern units that would exist in an alternative world where oil does not exist.

[Badtz Maru]

This is an awesome idea...I hope that the game allows enough units to allow for it, because I think the best way to do this would be to have different unit types for the various types of weaponry...for instance...

Basic Spearmen (fire hardened or stone spearheads)
Bronze Spearmen (bronze headed spears & bronze armor)
Iron Spearmen (iron headed spears & iron armor)

Some units would not have a 'Basic' option, like swordsmen, but most ancient and classical era units could have variations like this. The difference between iron and bronze would not be very large for some, like spearmen, while others like sword-based weapons would be.

Likewise, cannon were made with bronze for a long time, there might be other alternatives at later points in the game - I actually think the Cow Archer is not that bad an idea. Maybe we should add camels as a resource to use for camel-based versions of horse units - why not a camel cavalry? And we could have Ram Knights for people who only had access to the sheep resource, riding their mighty horned mounts into battle...

[1shmae1]

Re: Mod idea - units using different resources

Originally posted by star mouse
In vanilla CIV4, Ivory is a luxury resource that also allows a player to train War Elephants. What if this idea was expanded? One could have alternative units to train in those circumstances where a crucial resource is lacking.

I did something like this in my massive mod for Civ 3.

I doubled the number of units in the game but made all of the new units resource dependent -- ussually requiring a specific combination of three resources. I called my mod "The Material Dialectic" because, in a sense, the character of a civilization came to reflect its trade goods.

One of the results of this was that one rarely got in a situation where the lack of one specific trade good -- such as oil -- was disasterous. The trade goods one did have provided some compensatory unit that could stand in. I was careful that not having a resourse like oil, coal, or iron was still a major handicap -- but it ceased to be an unmitigated disaster.

Because the bonus units were resourse dependent (and I had more than doubled the number of trade goods), the game never played the same way twice. Each time, different types of units appeared.

[Junuxx]

Steam tanks!
Medieval flight units à la Da Vinci's helicopter!
Bike squads!

[rjwoer]

Do you lack horses but have plenty of cows? Perhaps the Cow Archer is the unit for you. The Cow Archer is like a horse archer, but only has a movement of 1 and is less powerful. Can cause collateral damage. Requires access to cows.

ROFL!

This thread is hilarious. I want cow archers!

[Junuxx]

I sure hope that the civs that are so unlucky to have Horses nor Cows can at least have Deer Archers...

[star mouse]

Originally posted by Junuxx
I sure hope that the civs that are so unlucky to have Horses nor Cows can at least have Deer Archers...

How about War Rams and War Pigs?

Diary from the Front - October 16
My faithful mount "Igor" was shot out from under me today. He was a faithful steed, good at terrorising the enemy with his foot-long tusks, but the enemy has horses and we're only able to ride war pigs.

Our supply line remains erratic. It can be days before supplies arrive at the front. Fortunately our slain mounts are edible so we're not going hungry for the moment.