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For when a real scenerio editor comes out
...ideas for Tactical scenerios.
Well, I know that this might be premature, since there is no scenerio making ability in Civ3 equal to Civ2, but by laying out these ideas, i might get feedback on them.
To start, I make the assumptions that There will be an events editor and the ability to place cities, edit them, and so forth- thus the ability to create scenerios like in Civ2.
Now, with that set, lets say I want to create a scenerio about Stalingrad, which will be my case example. While the Battle of Stalingrad was huge, some of the notions of civ, like expanding by making more cities and so forth, don't make much sense, since this is basically a tactical scenerio. I would imagine one with a smaller map than Nemo's "Second Front", lets say covering only the city of Stalingrad and its environs, so more like the map one would get in a war game.
I believe that many of the inbuilt feature of Civ3 would allow us to make this sort of scenerio in a far more accurate and interesting way than Civ2 ever could. The Four big concepts would be Bombardment, terrain, Culture, Resources.
Bombardment:
The most fundamental change in the combat system has been ranged attacks, and it is this change that allows us to make the most realisitc depictions of units. First, in modern combat, most units have ranged attack (I will make exceptions later), so that every unit will have tha ability to bombard. So, lets takee riflemen from the two armies. We can give them a range of 1, and a low RF, so that these types of units could engage in long firefights, which each side damaging the other. We also give them A/D values, which would be their ability for hand to hand. So, if a wehrmacht platoon wants to destroy some Red Army conscripts, they can engage the conscripts in a firefight, weaken them, and then move for the kill. BY manipulating RF, Range, and A/D values, a huge plethora of units can be made and distinguished.
For example, lets divide machineguns from mortars. Both can be made vulnerable to capture, first of all. The machinegun could be given Low bombardment values, short range, High RF. This means that it will not do much damage to units well defended- becuase of low Bombardment value, but units in the open it could devastate. Now, give the mortar, longer range, higher Bombardment value, but low RF. Thus, while machineguns are great for close in, defensive actions, where the enemy may need to expose themselves, mortars are great to soften enemy positions from a distance. A unit without bombard may be a flamethrower, which has a very short range and is used mainly to clear out bunkers. We give it a VERY high Attack value, low defense. Pieces of armor could also be manipulated. We can give them good range, high bombardment value, good RF, but give them low Defense values for close in, thus making them vulnerable to close-in infatry. This way, tanks become great, fast offensive unist (which they are) but lousy for defending ground from attack (whic is also true). In short, with 4 values to choose (Bombardment strenght, Range, RF, and A/D values) the amount of specialization for units will be huge.
One big problem then, becomes long-range artillery and airstrikes. As of now, range is too small, and I doubt that it will ever be long enought to accurately do planes in such a scenerio with air-units. The same for long-range artillery. The inablity to kill with bombardment also makes this hard to simulate well. This is where ICBM's come in. The ICBM unit (a nuclear unit) has two chracterisitcs, it can strike anywhere, and it can kill in a large area (polution will be dealt with later). The endless range then, is great for simulating a sort of attack than can fall anywhere within the map, as an airstrike or long-range artillery would be capbale of in such a situation. We can base these units from the HQ, which is from where you will call such attacks. Now, the nuclear ability is great. It can be our way of simulating a devastating bombardment (we can remove nuclear and keep ICBM, giving you bombardment anywhere without killing ability), and since units will survive, and polution is a non-issue, it fits. This sort of massive attack can be used to soften strong positions, and it also forces players not to mass all their unist in a few squares, which is both unrealisitc anyway, and tactically foolish. Thus, with ICBM abilties, we can strike anywhere, anytime in the battlefiled,depending if you have bombardment available. Also, SDI becomes our sort of AA defense, since it couls stop airstrikes in specific areas (this is of course slightly problematic since in theory it also stops artillery barrages, which makes no sense, but this is one of the needed tarde-offs.)
Terrain: The 'wheeled' characterisitc becomes crucial. In Civ2, you could not stop tanks from rolling thrught the middle of a built up area. Well, here we can. Just make all the buildings mountains and jungles, and make sure there are no roads, except for a very few ones. Thus, Tanks are stuck to roads, which can be any other terrain. . This means that in open fields armor is crucial, but once you start getting into built up sections, they are very vulnerable to attack. By making the city jungle, it also allows us to set up strongpoints , which I will talk about in culture. Pollution could be made to look like flames, so that it becomes just a cosmetic issue, and if anyone wants, a firefighter unit could be made to 'put the flames out'. Terrain designed to slow units down could be made, to represent something like barbed wire, or the issue of minefields in nemo's Red Front. Finally, units could be given the ability to create fortresses, which would be treated as deeper digging in.
Culture:
I mentioned strongpoints above. Well, usually in sucha scenerio, a few Cities would exist, the HQ and important buildings, which are the keys one must take. The issue of culture, or owning land, now enters the picture. The most important part of culture, from a tactical standpoint, is that you can see all within that range, so that unlike in CIV2, you can see units further than two spaces away, whic is crucial in a game with range attack. So, the 'cultural area' one side controls is the land they hold and have aline of sight within. If you want to increase this line of sight, you can build further strongpoints, with a combat settler unit. Now, the way to make this work is to let cultural expension happen very fast. So, if we make a building thats called, lets say, observer point (bad name), and you give it a culture output of 10, in one turn you can see three squares away. In 10, you can see even further, and this is assuming you don't make more buildings with very high culture output, like 20 or more. In a very shoprt time, single strongholds can secure large areas of space, and city building aquires a tactical side. The fact that city squares were made jungles comes back in, since you can make a city in jungle without having to clear the terrain-so that strongholds can be made in any square while still keeping it as built up. Also, food output of square would be very low to insure these outputs stayed small, like an output should. The only big 'city' should be HQ. A big change is that now, with nationality, we no longer have to manipulate the tech tree to give single civs a specific uits. This can now be done automatically.
Resources:
The last leg. One could theoretically set up supply bases that keep you supplied with some 'resource', ammo, oil, food stores. With commisar statiuons (airports), these supplies can go to all ouposts. But the fall of some supply depot can spell great danger, so that guarding your supplies, which is crucial in any battle, now makes sense. By removing airlift, we can keep airports simply as a way to maintain a supply chain, without having to build roads everywhere, which would be disruptive to game reality. By alowing units to upgrade to other units but only with some resource, you maintain the importance of keeping all your supply lines, the same as in building new 'aristrikes' at the HQ.
Well, those are the ideas. Any comments would be welcomed, if anyone cares to comment at all.
Well, I know that this might be premature, since there is no scenerio making ability in Civ3 equal to Civ2, but by laying out these ideas, i might get feedback on them.
To start, I make the assumptions that There will be an events editor and the ability to place cities, edit them, and so forth- thus the ability to create scenerios like in Civ2.
Now, with that set, lets say I want to create a scenerio about Stalingrad, which will be my case example. While the Battle of Stalingrad was huge, some of the notions of civ, like expanding by making more cities and so forth, don't make much sense, since this is basically a tactical scenerio. I would imagine one with a smaller map than Nemo's "Second Front", lets say covering only the city of Stalingrad and its environs, so more like the map one would get in a war game.
I believe that many of the inbuilt feature of Civ3 would allow us to make this sort of scenerio in a far more accurate and interesting way than Civ2 ever could. The Four big concepts would be Bombardment, terrain, Culture, Resources.
Bombardment:
The most fundamental change in the combat system has been ranged attacks, and it is this change that allows us to make the most realisitc depictions of units. First, in modern combat, most units have ranged attack (I will make exceptions later), so that every unit will have tha ability to bombard. So, lets takee riflemen from the two armies. We can give them a range of 1, and a low RF, so that these types of units could engage in long firefights, which each side damaging the other. We also give them A/D values, which would be their ability for hand to hand. So, if a wehrmacht platoon wants to destroy some Red Army conscripts, they can engage the conscripts in a firefight, weaken them, and then move for the kill. BY manipulating RF, Range, and A/D values, a huge plethora of units can be made and distinguished.
For example, lets divide machineguns from mortars. Both can be made vulnerable to capture, first of all. The machinegun could be given Low bombardment values, short range, High RF. This means that it will not do much damage to units well defended- becuase of low Bombardment value, but units in the open it could devastate. Now, give the mortar, longer range, higher Bombardment value, but low RF. Thus, while machineguns are great for close in, defensive actions, where the enemy may need to expose themselves, mortars are great to soften enemy positions from a distance. A unit without bombard may be a flamethrower, which has a very short range and is used mainly to clear out bunkers. We give it a VERY high Attack value, low defense. Pieces of armor could also be manipulated. We can give them good range, high bombardment value, good RF, but give them low Defense values for close in, thus making them vulnerable to close-in infatry. This way, tanks become great, fast offensive unist (which they are) but lousy for defending ground from attack (whic is also true). In short, with 4 values to choose (Bombardment strenght, Range, RF, and A/D values) the amount of specialization for units will be huge.
One big problem then, becomes long-range artillery and airstrikes. As of now, range is too small, and I doubt that it will ever be long enought to accurately do planes in such a scenerio with air-units. The same for long-range artillery. The inablity to kill with bombardment also makes this hard to simulate well. This is where ICBM's come in. The ICBM unit (a nuclear unit) has two chracterisitcs, it can strike anywhere, and it can kill in a large area (polution will be dealt with later). The endless range then, is great for simulating a sort of attack than can fall anywhere within the map, as an airstrike or long-range artillery would be capbale of in such a situation. We can base these units from the HQ, which is from where you will call such attacks. Now, the nuclear ability is great. It can be our way of simulating a devastating bombardment (we can remove nuclear and keep ICBM, giving you bombardment anywhere without killing ability), and since units will survive, and polution is a non-issue, it fits. This sort of massive attack can be used to soften strong positions, and it also forces players not to mass all their unist in a few squares, which is both unrealisitc anyway, and tactically foolish. Thus, with ICBM abilties, we can strike anywhere, anytime in the battlefiled,depending if you have bombardment available. Also, SDI becomes our sort of AA defense, since it couls stop airstrikes in specific areas (this is of course slightly problematic since in theory it also stops artillery barrages, which makes no sense, but this is one of the needed tarde-offs.)
Terrain: The 'wheeled' characterisitc becomes crucial. In Civ2, you could not stop tanks from rolling thrught the middle of a built up area. Well, here we can. Just make all the buildings mountains and jungles, and make sure there are no roads, except for a very few ones. Thus, Tanks are stuck to roads, which can be any other terrain. . This means that in open fields armor is crucial, but once you start getting into built up sections, they are very vulnerable to attack. By making the city jungle, it also allows us to set up strongpoints , which I will talk about in culture. Pollution could be made to look like flames, so that it becomes just a cosmetic issue, and if anyone wants, a firefighter unit could be made to 'put the flames out'. Terrain designed to slow units down could be made, to represent something like barbed wire, or the issue of minefields in nemo's Red Front. Finally, units could be given the ability to create fortresses, which would be treated as deeper digging in.
Culture:
I mentioned strongpoints above. Well, usually in sucha scenerio, a few Cities would exist, the HQ and important buildings, which are the keys one must take. The issue of culture, or owning land, now enters the picture. The most important part of culture, from a tactical standpoint, is that you can see all within that range, so that unlike in CIV2, you can see units further than two spaces away, whic is crucial in a game with range attack. So, the 'cultural area' one side controls is the land they hold and have aline of sight within. If you want to increase this line of sight, you can build further strongpoints, with a combat settler unit. Now, the way to make this work is to let cultural expension happen very fast. So, if we make a building thats called, lets say, observer point (bad name), and you give it a culture output of 10, in one turn you can see three squares away. In 10, you can see even further, and this is assuming you don't make more buildings with very high culture output, like 20 or more. In a very shoprt time, single strongholds can secure large areas of space, and city building aquires a tactical side. The fact that city squares were made jungles comes back in, since you can make a city in jungle without having to clear the terrain-so that strongholds can be made in any square while still keeping it as built up. Also, food output of square would be very low to insure these outputs stayed small, like an output should. The only big 'city' should be HQ. A big change is that now, with nationality, we no longer have to manipulate the tech tree to give single civs a specific uits. This can now be done automatically.
Resources:
The last leg. One could theoretically set up supply bases that keep you supplied with some 'resource', ammo, oil, food stores. With commisar statiuons (airports), these supplies can go to all ouposts. But the fall of some supply depot can spell great danger, so that guarding your supplies, which is crucial in any battle, now makes sense. By removing airlift, we can keep airports simply as a way to maintain a supply chain, without having to build roads everywhere, which would be disruptive to game reality. By alowing units to upgrade to other units but only with some resource, you maintain the importance of keeping all your supply lines, the same as in building new 'aristrikes' at the HQ.
Well, those are the ideas. Any comments would be welcomed, if anyone cares to comment at all.
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