soemthing they should really add in diplomacy...

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

OK, I have a few ideas on how to combat the 'exploit factor' of Unit Trading.

The first, and most important (in my opinion, at least ) is to introduce the concept of 'Unit Obsolesence' into the game. That is to say that, like Wonders (and hopefully Small Wonders/Improvements in C3:C ), certain units should become 'obsolete' after a certain tech is achieved!! Such units might have a -25% reduction in their Attack/Defense (and Bombardment) strengths, and would lose any special abilities (like terraforming, Amphibious Assault and enslavement). Most important, though, is that they would no longer appear as available, for trading, in the Diplomacy screen!

Second of all, you would only be able to trade units that are currently in a city, and there would be a MAXIMUM range over which you could trade the units! If the civ you're trading with does not have any cities in range, then the trade CANNOT occur. This range would increase in each age!

Third of all, you would ONLY be able to trade units to Civs that are connected up to yours via your trade network!!!
As I see it, this would not ONLY eliminate the possibility of 'fobbing off' your obsolete units onto your so-called 'Ally', but would also prevent the awful 'unit teleportation' that occured in Civ2!

EDIT: you could also have a simple 'value' formula for the AI, which is based on the units tech level, how many resources are needed to build it, how many of the unit the AI has, how many of that unit YOU have, it's maintainence value, its production cost, and it's attack/defense strength!

Ultimately, though, I want Unit trading as a way of opening up both my strategic and diplomatic options-not to exploit the AI. If other people want to do the latter, then I tend to feel that they really just cheat themselves!! Why should the rest of us suffer for it?

Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker.

[Elias]

Yeah you should be able to do more for the 3rd world civs.
espically when you dont want to go to war with another
super power.

[G'Kar]

Originally posted by Traelin

One can always find a rare exception to the rule (like the one you mentioned), but in 99.9% of the cases you will not find a country's organized army acting as mercs. It just doesn't happen (or shall I say, it very, very rarely happens).

The percentage of cases where a country's organized army are acting as mercs in 3rd party conflicts is much higher than 0.1%.

The Soviets did this left and right. There were USSR "volunteer" pilots flying for Syria and possibly Egypt. The USSR (to their credit) was also fond of sending East German "volunteers" to fight in the conflicts in Angola and Mozambique. And, of course, there were Soviet pilots flying in the Korean conflict as well.

[Elias]

The U.S also gave F-14s to Iran during the Iran Iraq War.
And the U.S suplied afganastan during the USSR invasion.

[Traelin]

Originally posted by The_Aussie_Lurker
OK, I have a few ideas on how to combat the 'exploit factor' of Unit Trading.

The first, and most important (in my opinion, at least ) is to introduce the concept of 'Unit Obsolesence' into the game. That is to say that, like Wonders (and hopefully Small Wonders/Improvements in C3:C ), certain units should become 'obsolete' after a certain tech is achieved!! Such units might have a -25% reduction in their Attack/Defense (and Bombardment) strengths, and would lose any special abilities (like terraforming, Amphibious Assault and enslavement). Most important, though, is that they would no longer appear as available, for trading, in the Diplomacy screen!

This is indirectly done by the significant differences in the A/D/M values of current units vs. obsolete ones. Hence, I really don't see a need in implementing this.

Originally posted by The_Aussie_Lurker
Second of all, you would only be able to trade units that are currently in a city, and there would be a MAXIMUM range over which you could trade the units! If the civ you're trading with does not have any cities in range, then the trade CANNOT occur. This range would increase in each age!

Nah, I don't see a reason to do this either. It doesn't matter where our units are stationed before we trade them. In today's world, we can ship tanks from anywhere to the customer that is willing to buy them.

Originally posted by The_Aussie_Lurker
Third of all, you would ONLY be able to trade units to Civs that are connected up to yours via your trade network!!!
As I see it, this would not ONLY eliminate the possibility of 'fobbing off' your obsolete units onto your so-called 'Ally', but would also prevent the awful 'unit teleportation' that occured in Civ2!

This already exists. You can't trade much of anything to a Civ that isn't connected to your trade network. And you'll generally (read: generally) find that all Civs have connections to your trade network by the late Industrial/Modern eras.

Originally posted by The_Aussie_Lurker
Ultimately, though, I want Unit trading as a way of opening up both my strategic and diplomatic options-not to exploit the AI. If other people want to do the latter, then I tend to feel that they really just cheat themselves!! Why should the rest of us suffer for it?

Agreed.

[Traelin]

Originally posted by Defcon5


The percentage of cases where a country's organized army are acting as mercs in 3rd party conflicts is much higher than 0.1%.

The Soviets did this left and right. There were USSR "volunteer" pilots flying for Syria and possibly Egypt. The USSR (to their credit) was also fond of sending East German "volunteers" to fight in the conflicts in Angola and Mozambique. And, of course, there were Soviet pilots flying in the Korean conflict as well.

I used 99.9% as a figurative percentage. In no way will we ever know the real percentages. What you'll usually find is one of the two following cases:

1. An alliance, such as the one in the American Revolution between the French and Americans, pits a third nation's soldiers against a common enemy. Ironically, the closest thing you'll ever find in history to hired mercs was the Brits and the Hessians, which did take place in the American Revolution.

2. The sales of arms from one nation to another. But these are objects, not humans.

Since Civ3 is not based on a detailed political model, it gets to be a bit hairy if you're trying to emulate "pseudo-alliances", such as CIA operations in South America. Things must be kept on an abstract level in Civ3. Hence my argument for NOT implementing the trading of units, but instead the sales of non-obsolete units.

[Traelin]

Originally posted by Elias
The U.S also gave F-14s to Iran during the Iran Iraq War.
And the U.S suplied afganastan during the USSR invasion.

My point exactly. We gave them arms, not humans. It's not like we're lending them our troops to die. Read my most recent post where I explain my opinions on the abstraction of Civ3.

[Gramphos]

The fact is that units in Civ3 represent both humans and materials, so you can't split a tank into some foot soldiers and an object. It's a combination. Just like you can't unmount horse units. So trading units in Civ3 would be giving away your people, and should therefore give you war werriness. Also the nationality of any transfered unit should be retained, (at least until it has been with the other nation for longer that with its home nation).

This gives you some problems as: "What would happen if units of your nationality were ordered to attack your cities?" Would they refuse?

That is why the merc system is more useful. It could also somehow be seen as UN operations...

Oh, and another example of unit lending: Sweden has lended an advanced radar system for tracking artellery fire with high precision to UK (I think it was) during the Iraq invasion and later to Canada (IIRC). This is as Ericsson will take about six years to build these systems ordered by the countries, and while they are being built Sweden has decided to lend them of our own equipment.

[Traelin]

Originally posted by Gramphos
The fact is that units in Civ3 represent both humans and materials, so you can't split a tank into some foot soldiers and an object. It's a combination. Just like you can't unmount horse units. So trading units in Civ3 would be giving away your people, and should therefore give you war werriness. Also the nationality of any transfered unit should be retained, (at least until it has been with the other nation for longer that with its home nation).

Why should the nationality of a sold unit be retained? The Soviets didn't directly attack us because we armed the Afghans and because the equipment was American, they attacked the Afghans using the equipment. sure, the equipment was BUILT in America, but that's about all the identity you could associate with it. Like I said before, selling units or giving them away makes more sense than trading them.

Originally posted by Gramphos
This gives you some problems as: "What would happen if units of your nationality were ordered to attack your cities?" Would they refuse?

Why over-complicate a relatively simple process by adding these types of problems?

Originally posted by Gramphos
That is why the merc system is more useful. It could also somehow be seen as UN operations...

Oh, and another example of unit lending: Sweden has lended an advanced radar system for tracking artellery fire with high precision to UK (I think it was) during the Iraq invasion and later to Canada (IIRC). This is as Ericsson will take about six years to build these systems ordered by the countries, and while they are being built Sweden has decided to lend them of our own equipment.

Again, the process of selling/giving units is being way way over-complicated for Civ3. If you abstract what you just said, it still amounts to nothing more than a sale of weapons. The system is being temporarily lended until the sale and construction process is complete. Just abstract that as a sale.

[G'Kar]

Originally posted by Traelin
Hence my argument for NOT implementing the trading of units, but instead the sales of non-obsolete units.

I actually agree with this. Although units typically represent men and materiel a unit sale should be understood as a simple transfer of hardware.

[Gramphos]

Well, I think that only capturabale units shall be sellable as these have the equipment status, while other units are both soldiers and equipment, and as you all say you don't give away soldiers.

[Traelin]

Originally posted by Gramphos
Well, I think that only capturabale units shall be sellable as these have the equipment status, while other units are both soldiers and equipment, and as you all say you don't give away soldiers.

One thing I think I need to be clear on is that I support unit trading, but not unit-unit trading. Each unit will have a particular value, as does a technology. So I think it should be possible if one wanted to trade 50 tanks for Nationalism, or something like that. Of course, I really like Tiberius' suggestion that units acquired in a deal should be maintenance-free, or maybe 1/2 price.

I kinda see what you're saying, Gramphos. But my thoughts are starting to lie more along the lines of not looking at units as people at all. Because if we start looking at them as "Private Ryan" of battalion such and such, it gets messy. Then we wouldn't be able to trade Marines or similar units, because they are in essence human beings. It's a lot easier to simply ban unit-unit trading, whilst allowing unit-other materiel trading, unit gifts, and unit sales.

[Elias]

Maby sell them previously built equipment wich allows you to
upgrade your existing units to better ones.Example afganastan
we sell them stingers there units are upgraded they get to keep the units use them on us during the invasion of afganastan.this also works with the F-14s.

[MoonWolf]

Make it simple...

Guys, it doesn't have to be as complicated as mentioned here! First, I won't really say that units=people in Civ3. When you build a unit (except settler and worker), you don't loose or bind any population to that unit. You can loose 50 infantry units in a battlefield massacre and your pop stays the same. This way, unit trading can be considered mainly equipment/ help to make that unit available to the AI/other human if MP.

To prevent "cheating" or exploiting when handlig AI trade like mentioned above, 2 "checks" can be made:

1) The tech level of the unit can't be lower than the current tech level of the AI. If the AI can build riflemen and you have some musketeers to get rid if, the trade is impossible.

2) If the first "check" says ok, the expenses of the upkeep will be calculated using the same formula as the AI does for gold per turn trades. If the upkeep of these units will cost 8 gold per turn, the game checks it againts the AI's current economy. If the AI can afford it, the gift is accepted (or maybe the AI can suggest a lower number of units)

It should though be possible to give away/ trade newer units than the current tech level as I think it adds some realism. I don't think North-Korea was able to build those MiGs during the Korean war (the country was mainly a farm land, poorly developed). However, the science boost as we saw in Civ2 shouldn't be there, or at least have a very low chance to appear depending on the number of new units and the size of your empire.

Also, unit trading can be an optional feature, available in the editor (maybe also be unit specific; some units can be traded, some can't) as leathal bombardments are.

[Jaybe]

Next thing you know, they'll be asking for 8 Tanks. 5 turns later, they will be asking for 8 MORE (to replace the 8 they already lost)!