Civ4 Units

[Kramerman]

I thihk most any land unit should be allowed to mkae amphibious attacks, albeit with terrible penalties (or defense gets great postiive modifiers against noo amphibious units) Then marine units have an almost entirely, if not entirely reduced penalty on amphibious attacks

[Kramerman]

on UUs, i htink they are a great idea, but it kinda sucked when you got your UU right off the bat (and then you watch as it goes obsolete for the rest of the game) or didnt get it till the modern age. What they may consider doing is making each civ 2 UUs in differnt ages to alleviate this, if not a UU for each age if possible.

Also, I love flavor units! I dont like how zulu have white spearmen, and chinese have european looking frigates. I love in some mods for PtW that gave the different culture groups their individual (but equal) unit of the same type. For example there was the New world spearmen that looked indian, arab spearmen that had arab features, european spearmen, meditereanian spermen (that looked greek, roman, carthage like), and african spermen (that look like american spearmen but had black skin). All these basic spearmen have the same stats, mind you, but they just look different.

and flavor units would not necessarily apply to evry unit either. A basic tank is a basic tank is a basic tank, right?

also! More units! again i point to th Double your PLeasure mod. They did an awesome job with incorporating new units where there were 'gaps', but not sooo many units that there were pointless ones

[Kramerman]

ok, and another thing!


units should have variable attack and/or defense defense depending on what they are fighting! they use to have this with pikemen, who had a bonus to defense agains horse units. that was a great idea, but should be expanded in civ4.

for example, archery units should have a higher attack against infantry than they do against cavalry and like games of old, pikemen should defend and/or attack higher against horse units (knights, horsemen, cavlry, dragoons, etc), tanks should get bonus against certain infantry, but other infantry like mech of AT infantry should not have quite as much or a disadvantage at all.

They could get as detailed as having a different attack/defense against specific units. such as horsemen have no advantage attacking warriors or swordsmen, but against spearmen or pikemen they have a disadvantage (greater with pikemen)

i dont know, these are just rough ideas, but somethin like this would greatly enhance combat, i believe

[Kramerman]

and here is a radicla combat idea in general i posted in hte radical ideas thread, but ill repost here:

this is a Hearts of Iron-esque idea for a system.

I propose a system were civs build leaders much more readily (have some sort of military academy improvement or small wonder, that can but upgraded thru tht ages thus producing better leaders to begin with, and produsing leaders that can feild larger armies to begin with too), so that most military units could act as an army if wanted. and leaders have a certain skill and rank. The higher the skill of the leader (relative to the apposing leader), the higher combat modifer it gets, and the higher rank the more units it can have stacked (so there is a limit to the amount you can have stacked, simulating the difficulty of effectively commanding many different units at once... it may be possible to stack more than this, perhaps, but with culumulative penalties for each additional unit or something like that maybe). You can promote leaders at will, but at a large reduction of their 'skill points' that they have accumulated thru battles (when they win battles, depending on how well hte victory or something like that they can a certain amount of skill points. perhaps getting skills even if they lost if it was a pyhric victory for the enemy) simulatiing the higher level of skill needed by a leader to cooridnate more units.

moral bonuses and penalties, ontop of the existing terrain combat modifiers, as well as flanking modifiers (if you are attackin a unit form multiple side you should get a bonus modifeir to attacks or damage dealt or somethn) and many other types of combat modifiers need to be included in whatever comabt system they decide on using.

The units in a stack should not fight one at a time like armies do in civ 3, but should be combined in their attacks somehow, perhaps like in ctp2, but i am unfamiliar with how exactly that works (ive neve rplayed CtP).

also, players should maybe have a choice to let their leaders do their battles, or they should be allowed to actual manipulate their armies in battles, in a simple tactical display. So if i had a stack of 3 tanks and a artillery and vie to take control of the army that engages an enemy in the desert, i shoudl go to a screen of a desert battle field (randomly gernerated for each tile at map generation, but each tile should have the same tactical map for the whole game) where i can deploy my forces accordingly behind sand dunes and what not in a battle against the enemy, and units on high ground could get bonuses and all that stuff. in otherwards, you could deply your units in the army to best tactically fight the enemy army who would be trying to do they same.

these battles could take place turn based or RT im not sure which would be better or not. i played an old WWII game that had this feature im talking about, as well as the Heroes of might and magic series, and its battles were turn based whcih was fine.

This should also be the same for naval engagements. I should be able to make my fleet formations in blue water battles or hide my firgate waiting in ambush in the lagoon waiting for the enemy man-o-war thats coming by looking for it.

however, if you dont want to, you can just have your battles taken care of by your leaders (genrals or admirals, cuse if your like me youll have a bazillion battles and it may be tiresome and time consuming having to control everyone. you may also suck and may just want your uber leader youve got to take care of it for you .

i dont know, i have a million ideas floating in my head, and they are pretty radical. you classic civ types may not care for em much, but this is in my opinon a way to make civ an even better game. The combat system has always been one of the weaker elemnts of the game for me.

[Kramerman]

another idea!

you should be able to send expiditonary forces to your allies that either you or they can control (your choice).

as well as be able to 'sell' or 'rent' units to civs for either a lump sum or per turn cost as mercanry units. likewise you could hire babraian mercenaries or mercs from another civ. how they would handle their identity i dont know. perhaps you could make barbarian mercs as units without a nationality so you could use them without going to war.

also! you should be able to put your units into an allies cities. more than once i watched an important ally fall because i couldnt send my defensive units to help protect their cities. also i have been helping allies fight in their land and i have not been able to use their cities' barracks to heal my units in one turn, which was detremental. this should be fixed

[Kramerman]

Sn00py had a great idea in another thread about custom building your units, perhaps similar to how they did it in SMAC. he can say his idea better than i can, but i think this would be a great feature.

Originally posted by Sn00py IN ANOTHER THREAD

Unit Creating in Civ4 would be a huge feature to add, but it could be the very thing Civ needs in order to be spiced up the way Civ4 needs to be.

Imagine it, when you get a new tech, or you are going to war, and you need to design a new unit for your new war, then you simply go into the barracks window or whatever,


1st select human/vehicle/aircraft/ship

2nd you select its armor, you could select anything from bronze to steel or titanium, all depending on your tech, and you could select its thickness. The thicker it is, the heaver it is.

3rd you select its offensive weapons, obviously what you get depends on the techs you have, some are light, some are heavy, some are weak, some are strong, each with their own advantages and disadvantages with themselves and against opponent units.

finally, if its a vehicle or aircraft, you select its engine type, or if its a sail ship, you select how many sails it has (I dunno! SOMETHING!).

And then once all this is done, the game calculates everything together, and tells you what terrains it can and or can't go over (coz maybe its too heavy, etc) how fast it can go, how far it can go, its offense and defense strength and of course, its costs.


With this idea, I could make a frigate type unit, with an Aircraft Carriers engine equipped with Cruise Missiles and 2 SAMS on it. Something like this would result in an extremely slow unit and an extremely costly one too!

and depending on the features of the unit (mounted, foot, motorized, armor type, weapon type, etc ) it will calculate its stats against particular other units.

for example, a mounted spearman with light bronze armor would have a fast movement (on a horse and lightly armored so light), would be effective against sword infantry, horse units and foot archers, and it would be penalized against camel units, elephant units, or spear using units of anykind.

thats just somethn off the top of my head, but that would be aphenomenal system... very complicated, especially if it had to make the cultural specific parts of the unit you made. oh well, i think it would be neat

[Kramerman]

perhaps in the modern era there should be some sort of unit, like a 'preditor dorn' or somthing that owuld allow an army to not only scout ahead and around itself (thru the fog of war) but also allow it to take a peak at a cities defense (get a partial or full view depending on randomness and other factors). or maybe a satelite unit could do this. i heard Conquest had satelite unit, but i dunno what its capabilities are

[Jaguar]

I think we need to cut down on the number of units. I've gotten to games where there are 500+ units on the map at once. I think the decision of spearman or warrior to defend is more interesting than the decision of 4 spearmen or 3.

Cutting down on units also speeds up in-between-turn times.

[Elias]

I like the Idea of being able to design you own unit and I talked earlier on this thread about units being better aginst other units and I love that Idea. id like to see some sort of flanking or attacking from several spots at once. allowing a unit to patrol would not take away all other units ability to a fast strike because you will have to be guarding you whole boreder mabey more then one and you not going to be able to take out an entire invading army from just one point on the battlefield!!

I also like the smaller map thing for more tatical movements of you units Lords of the realm, star wars rebelion had similar systyms of this where you could fight you battles and see why a tank was injured by a warrior!! Id like to see a more complex way of figuring out winners with (this was mentions earlier) Range Firepower Moral etc involved Example in real life during the gulf war a group of abrams spoted some Iraqui(dont know how to spell) tanks. the Abrams with there supirior range were able to take out the Iraqui tanks before the were close enough to fire a single shot. That is what makes wariors injuring a tank so unrealeastic!! they would have to charge up over a mile and still have enough people left over to attack!(sorry I have seen this happen to many times and am angerd about it)

btw Are we finaly off the topic!!

[Elias]

Btw I ment the armies topic.

Just thought id let you people know i am now the thread master for this thread.
If anyone see's an intersting post about units somewhere else please e-mail me at Thompson_@824@hotmail.com

[Elias]

All right this is all the Ideas i have so far from you guys if I forgot somthing please tell me.

CIV 4 Units


In no order of importance some Ideas for the unit systyms and what not.

1. Units having bonusus vs certin other units
3. Improved pirateing I.E Trade route pirateing and resource.
4. Being able to design you own units
6. Some change to how unit grouping works many people are arguing about this Idea.
9. Being able to target specific things with bombardment.
10. Do more with invisible units and spys
11. POW’s
14. Maby some more options on Marine Units
15. More combat multiplier based on FirePower, Speed
number of units etc.
16. More overall freedom, options and abilities

(Last Updated on augest 11,04)

[Kramerman]

all fine ideas

[Fosse]

Originally posted by Jaguar Warrior
I think we need to cut down on the number of units. I've gotten to games where there are 500+ units on the map at once. I think the decision of spearman or warrior to defend is more interesting than the decision of 4 spearmen or 3.

Cutting down on units also speeds up in-between-turn times.

This is why so many of us vehemently support organizing units into armies. You can have 500+ units on the map, but organized into a couple of dozen groups that move and fight together.

Elias..... I don't like all of those ideas! But that seems to touch on all of the discussions I recall in this thread. Good work.

[Apple_The_Man]

Re: My Opinion

Originally posted by Fosse
My dream Civ IV combat system hinges on two things: simultaneous moves and stacked combat.

Simultaneous Moves

This is important to me for several reasons, but mostly for increased realism. In real life, armies act at the same time. The Union Army didn't attack for six months out of the year, and then fortify so that the Confederates could attack for the rest of the year.

I would like my turn to be as follows:
I set my build priorities, tinker with my economy, and debate several multilateral trade treaties with my eight way alliance, which represents about 40% of the total remaining Civs.

But I'm fighting a war, so I look at the front, select my armies, and issue broad orders that are refined with conditional tactics.

For example, my 32nd Assault Division is near a critical enemy stronghold, so I order it to move to that position, and it doesn't move yet, instead simply gets an outline to show me it has orders.
Then I decide that I want to take the city very quicly, and I think that I outnumber the enemy. So I tell them Move at Full Speed - which makes them more vulnerable to enemy attack, Do Not Retreat, Accept Enemy Surrender, etc.


Now, I end my turn, everyone else issues their orders, and the Resolution phase begins. I see my units move, I see enemy units I can detect move, and I get battle reports. During the resolution I cannot interefere, and when it's over I adjust strategy appropriatly.


Advantages of this approach: AI can plan its strategy during player turn, surprises can happen, less downtime in Multiplayer mode, more realistic, and cooler.

In response to your simultainous moves....
I know exactly what you mean, and I felt the same way at first with games like Civ. But I find that it is really fine the way it is, you just have to think of each attack as a whole battle itself. The Cavalry who attacks the Cavalry is an entire battle, where the attackers have the advantage and the defenders have a disadvantage since they are not as good defending as their opponents are attacking, but they can use the hills they are on to their advantage.
Just an example.

[Fosse]

It might be "fine" the way it is... but I'd rather that the next Civ installment made it "great."

I consider Army combat to be the bigger of the two things I really want, and indeed consider it to be a prerequisite for simultaneous moves.

But in my game of games, they would both be there.