New national wonder idea - unit upgrader

[marvinkosh]

I think this needs to be looked at from two angles.

First of all, if a unit has a lot of XP that it has gained, then it seems safe to assume that if you're considering an upgrade then it is as opposed to simply retiring that unit and building a new one.

So then, if that unit lost just a few XP (more if it has to be upgraded through several stages) in retraining then it would still have enough left to make it worthwhile to upgrade.

However, that retraining would have to take some time. And, depending again on the differences between original unit and upgraded unit, some hammers - for example, those vehicles that your mobile infantry have learned how to use aren't free.

IMO the opportunity cost here is that the city which could be producing a new unit is instead busy with retraining and retooling a unit which will temporarily be out of action.

In MOO2 btw, if you had a ready design for a ship type, you could upgrade without going to the design screen. Fastest upgrades ever

[Yosho]

Originally posted by drsparnum
They're all tiresome but I think something needs to be changed. Refitting units MOO2 style could be the most tiresome, since I seem to get alot more units in civ than I had ships in MOO2, as a general rule. Still, anything would be an improvement.

(shrug) It wouldn't really be any more tiresome then building units normally is now.

[marvinkosh]

Oh, there is a way to upgrade all your units of a type at once. If you wait for the upgrade button's tooltip you'll see that holding ALT while pressing the button will accomplish this task. However, I haven't actually tried it.

[Willem]

Originally posted by drsparnum
What about a button (probably in the military screen) that lets you upgrade all your units en masse. So you could go there and see your 7 cavalry units and click a button to upgrade them all to gunships in one fell swoop.

That already exists. Just press the Alt key while your clicking on the upgrade button for that unit type. If you roll over the button with the Alt key pressed, it will also tell you how much it will cost you.

[BigFree]

I like the way it is now. The costs should be nearly prohibitive to uprade a Warrior to Infantry. Prune your units every 20 or so turns. Find out the cost for having all of your units and disband the obsolete ones to give yourself more income if you are over the support limit.

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

You will recall that in Civ2, units upgraded via Leo's lost veteran status... that isn't really desirable in Civ4...

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by drsparnum
They're all tiresome but I think something needs to be changed. Refitting units MOO2 style could be the most tiresome, since I seem to get alot more units in civ than I had ships in MOO2, as a general rule. Still, anything would be an improvement.

You probably want to refit promoted units to keep the experience.

Originally posted by drsparnum
What would be fair and convient (although not terribly realisitic) would be to give you hammers for destroying units.

Done - in Alpha Centauri

[The keeper]

You would have to only have the hammers go for other units.


Or the new strategy would be to build a bunch of warriors - Then disband them all while constructing a wonder to speed the production along.

[samspock]

How about this idea: Have a building you can put in a city that has a Barracks called a Training Center. Any units in the city will gain x amount of upgrade points per turn. When it reaches the number needed for the next upgrade you can chose to upgrade it for free or wait until the next unit. That way you can pick and chose what you want to do with it at the right time and not bother with it until you need it.

To balance things out an upgrade point should cost something like a gold per turn per unit so you would have to be rather careful where you build this. What that would result in when you go to upgrade a unit with gold you are simply buying ugrade points.

[OssomTossom]

Originally posted by The keeper
You would have to only have the hammers go for other units.


Or the new strategy would be to build a bunch of warriors - Then disband them all while constructing a wonder to speed the production along.

Well, it would be nice if something like that (or akin to the caravan-ploy in Civ2) were implemented. There should be some way for your civ to help building the wonder by making other cities produce something to help it.

Maybe something like this: You can build a caravan-type unit, but only when you are building a wonder. When the caravan is built, you must choose what wonder it is supposed to assist building, and then when the caravan arrives maybe half of the shields that went into building it are given to the project.

Or maybe it would just be a feature for each city: Help build wonder X in city Y, and then half (or third or whatever, but I guess all the shields would be too much, unless the city only makes one or two shields to begin with) that cities production would be added.

Maybe it would be possible to put something like this for all buildings in a city - then you could make city X help low-shield city Y get it's library done before it's too late (if you're not running slavery nor democracy).

[Willem]

Originally posted by OssomTossom

Well, it would be nice if something like that (or akin to the caravan-ploy in Civ2) were implemented. There should be some way for your civ to help building the wonder by making other cities produce something to help it.

The reason the Caravan was dropped after Civ2 was that it was an exploit that the AI didn't know how to use. I for one don't want to see things like that which make the game too easy for the human player to win. I think the way it is now is just fine, there's no need for any cheat mechanism.

[Nikolai]

Caravans was a great thing. I don't care if some people call it an exploit, everything is becoming that sooner or later it seems. I care for having fun, and caravans was no unfun element for me.

[OssomTossom]

Originally posted by Willem


The reason the Caravan was dropped after Civ2 was that it was an exploit that the AI didn't know how to use. I for one don't want to see things like that which make the game too easy for the human player to win. I think the way it is now is just fine, there's no need for any cheat mechanism.

Yes, but wasn't that because the AI didn't realize it could build a squillion caravans (when not doing anything else) and then get a wonder in one turn?

After all, you can do this with units - make one city churn out soldiers for defense of all other cities (esp. for the commerce-rich but hammer-poor). I think it would make sense to have something similar for buildings.

[Willem]

Originally posted by OssomTossom
I think it would make sense to have something similar for buildings.

Why? You already have chopping, what more do you want? Or you can play an Industrious civ and run nothing but Engineers in your cities. How easy should it be to build a Wonder? Most of them don't really add that much to your empire anyway, so what's the need to churn them out even more quickly?

[drsparnum]

1. In MOO2 the upgrading was tiresome for me because, although you could tell your planet to upgrade a dozen ships and prep your queue to do so, those ships in the queue were out of action. If at a later point (but before all the upgrades were done), you needed those ships in a war you couldn't get them back until they were upgraded. Clicking on them deleted them....although I suppose that could be changed easily and then I'd have no prob with it.

QUOTE:
There should be some way for your civ to help building the wonder by making other cities produce something to help it.


If you're running universal suffrage you could have the helper city build wealth, which will help give you gold towards the eventual buying of the wonder. I know it is limited (gotta have that civic going and decide if it really is cost effective), but it is something.