Unit Evolution is COOL in Civ IV!!

[LordGek]

Hey Gang,

While using most of the same units as the previous Civ games, upgrade paths and how the units match up against each other seems new and frigging clever!

I like how the simple warrior of ancient times gives way to a wide array of more advanced melee units with the whole range of archers on a totally different track BUT all of them can upgrade to the rifleman or machinegunner. Its as if right when the whole rock-paper-scissors nature of pre-industrial combat gets to its height they all simply give way to the age of gunpowder (even those mighty castle walls offer no protection from this new threat).

Its as if once the whole gunpowder era gets going those with the guns become Indiana Jones vs. that master swordsman in the first Indiana Jones movie (sure the advantage isn't that big, but it seems to bring at least a temporary end to the whole bother of trying to find the right "anti-units" to whatever your enemy is whipping up).

This is, of course, only a temporary siplification since the whole rock-paper-scissors stuff opens up again once we get into the modern units.

[Sarxis]

Rise of Nations was essentially of the same school (though RTS) when it came to this. Up until gunpowder, archers killed heavy infantry, which killed the slinger type skirmishers, which took out the archers, etc. But the upgrade paths funneled at gunpowder, and then opened back up after into the modern eras (machine gunners mowed down regular infantry).

[aspvv]

Well the system in the raise of nation was pretty cool, but in the RTS environment it was really difficult to utilize the different groups of units effectively, the best I could do was just build a mixed force and order it to attacker, I could never master the interface to be able to exploit the different advantages of the units. In civ IV on the other hand that is not the problem.