Volunteers for a research team

[Canadian_Patriot]

Hello.

I'm considering putting together a team to try and give each era of the game a closer look, more specifically, the units of the era.

Despite some flaws, I think that this game has a lot of very innovative ideas and concepts that could allow it to be the best of the bunch. Unfortunately, I feel that the selection of units is a little sparse. My own area of greatest knowledge, and also interest, is the modern era. Military matters have always fascinated me, and I've spent a good deal of time studying various units and formations.

What I'm hoping is that I'll get a learned volunteer for each era. Ancient history has never really interested me, but I'm sure some out there study it with a passion equal to my own for the 20th Century and now the early 21st.

If interested and willing to help, please post here or email me at Matt1701_E@hotmail.com, being sure to mention which era you know best. No credentials are required, of course, simply a love for military history and a few useful books at home is all we're going to need.

If all goes well, we might be able to suggest some units that could be added to the various eras, helping to flesh out the game and making it a richer, more enjoyable experience.

Thanks a lot for reading, and I hope we can work together.

Matt

[Harlan]

I'm willing to throw in my two cents, but my involvement would partly depend on what you're envisioning. Its no good to have units in the game if there's no time to use them before they're obsolete already. I think the game has a good balance now - the problem is the industrial age typically comes hundreds of years too early. Slow the settings so that it comes more in line with real history, and then you have more time for more units.

Even then though, its easy to go overboard on having more units. I would tend to be more conservative and only add units that are absolutely key. One way though to have lots of new units without cluttering things up too much would be give each civ a second unique unit.

You also are limited by what the graphics available are, no?

By the way, my historical interests range mostly from ancient up to start of Renaissance, with an interest in WW2 times as well.

[zulu9812]

Count me in; I know a fair bit (read: a lot) about ancient-age military (chinese, greek, roman). However, I think what the game really needs is a smoother transition from Middle Ages to Modern, particularly the sea and air units. Still, I'd be happy to help - let me know what you need.

[Colonel Kraken]

I agree with Harlan, and I have geared my own personal mod to that end. I have a great book on the history of warfare which I have used considerably to allow me the understanding of warfare through the ages --where to place military units in history and how strong to have them.

I would love to help, especially Ancient through Middle Ages.

E-mail me at: Work (where I spend most of my time) or at Home.

[Lemmy]

hmm, if it's ever possible to add future eras, i'm willing to do that one
or you extend the modern era...but that would screw up the advisor screen

[Canadian_Patriot]

Thanks for your replies.

My main concern is the lack of naval units in all eras. I find the concept of your first ship coming with map making fairly silly. I have a hard time envisioning a bunch of ancients standing on a beach, shaking their heads, sighing, and walking away, just because they don't have a map. Any early units, even a raft or a canoe, would speed exploration.

I agree with Harlan that the main area of expansion should be more in the Middle Ages. The modern age is in fairly good shape in terms of ground units, but I feel a few more ships and planes might be in order.

Matt

[Harlan]

I'm not saying necessarily that Middle Ages is the biggest need (though I could see some must haves there, like Crossbowman and Trebuchet). My point was that if you increase tech costs across the board say 50%, then all ages are gonna come later, and you have room for more units generally. Since everyone seems to finish so many hundreds of years earlier than real history, this is a good thing to do anyways. Of course if you're gonna add more units, you'd probably want to add new techs that go with them in some cases (so maybe some tech increase, plus some new ones).

With ships, the new patch ability to have different movement rates in the different naval terrain types allows lots of neat possibilities. For instance, if you give Sea 2 movement, you could have a very early ship that moves 2 and can only hug the coast. Then a slightly later one that moves 3, and so can move 1 tile into Sea and still come back alive, and so on. Later ships would treat all terrain as roads. Some mod packs are already doing this.

[zulu9812]

What about giving civs LOTS of unique units which replace the standard ones. That way you get lots of individualistic civs, rather than the somewhat bland ones at the moment. Of course, there need to be graphics to go along with this...lol

[ALPHA WOLF 64]

Harlan,
i think the reason all civ games tend to run too fast is that the games dont force a "dark ages". The amount of technology lost after Rome fell is amazing. I started reading more about Rome and it seems that things the Romans did werent done again for 1000-1300 years later. Imagine where we'd be right now if Rome had had more competent leaders instead of so much corruption.

[Bane Star]

Count Me in, I've researched the Rise of man from Caveman to the Iron ages, including many sub cultures, I love the Middleages and Medi-eval times, but agree that without the scenario of the Darkages and the Gothic Age (not the 1800 gothic age or the goth's of today) its sort of hard to get alot of the timelines following earth correctly/similarly

Maybe with some sort of scenario/event If corruption exisits at a given point at any point in the game, then a dark ages even happens where the palace is destroyed, all cash is lost, all troops in the capital are disbanded and the last 10 inventions are lost.

This would be effective (and pretty harsh ) but would be realistic, and would allow the middle ages to evists as they did on Earth.

[Bane Star]

Originally posted by Canadian_Patriot
Thanks for your replies.

My main concern is the lack of naval units in all eras. I find the concept of your first ship coming with map making fairly silly. I have a hard time envisioning a bunch of ancients standing on a beach, shaking their heads, sighing, and walking away, just because they don't have a map. Any early units, even a raft or a canoe, would speed exploration.

Matt

I'm pretty sure that the reasoning behind this, Is that while your people may have 'knowledge' of the surrounding area, your player view screen is somewhat of a Map, and therefore you can only start to Map the unknown world (for your eyes) when you have map making, Realistically, you should only ever be able to see what troops are able to see until the invention of map making when the fog of war effect would come into play

[Canadian_Patriot]

^ Interesting thoughts about the map making. That had never crossed my mind.

As for dark ages, I've felt for some time that technology should require some level of research to maintain. If you set your science rate to zero, you should start to LOSE advances, just the way you do if your treasury reaches zero. Bridge building might be a very old concept, but how many of us can build a bridge?

Matt

[Harlan]

I think the idea of losing techs is great, but isn't likely to happen with Firaxis. So the only solution is pretend that tech growth was fairly steady, instead of big classical age surge followed by a loss. Anyways, when it came to military technology, not much was lost, except knowledge of the crossbow and some seige engines in the West.

A long time ago I started planning a general mod for CTP, that would have had some more units. I'll post what my ideas were then here (slightly modified to the Civ3 context), to start discussion on individual units rolling. This ignores unique units, which is a whole different discussion, I think. Ages are broken down in more detail than the Civ3 categories to better show the different waves of upgrades:

Ancient age current (4000 BC to 1000 BC):
Settler
Worker
Scout
Warrior
Spearman
Archer
Chariot

add:
Cargo Ship (defenseless, slow moving ship)

Classical age current (1000 BC to 500 AD):
Horseman
Catapult
Swordsman
Galley (rename to Trireme)

add:
Seige Tower (like Catapult, but more powerful and expensive)
Horse Archer (weak esp. on defense, but faster than Horseman, barbarians would use this alot)
Cataphract (intermediate step between Horseman and Knight)

Medieval age current (500 to 1500):
Explorer (this unit needs to be changed alot to be at all useful)
Pikeman
Longbowman
Knight
Cannon
Caravel

add:
Crossbowman (Archer upgrade, okay at both offense and defense - between Pikeman which is all defense, and Longbowman, which is all offense)
Trebuchet (improved Catapult)
Galley (same move as Trireme, but stronger on offense and defense)

Renaissance age current (1500 - 1800):
Musketman
Cavalry
Galleon
Privateer
Frigate

add:
Dragoons (between Knight and Cavalry)
Artillery (earlier than before)
Field Artillery (weaker than Artillery, but faster moving)
Ship of the Line (late era)

Industrial age current (1800 - 1900):
Rifleman
Cavalry
Howitzer (Artillery renamed)
Ironclad
Infantry (late in the era)

add:
Partisans (nation not showing, but weak)

WW1 age current (1900 - 1930):
Tank
Fighter
Bomber
Battleship
Submarine
Destroyer
Transport

add:
Machine Gunners (intermediate Infantry and Mech Infantry, not really replaced by Mech Infantry, which moves faster and costs more)

WW2 age current (1930 - 1960) current:
Paratrooper
Carrier
Marines
Mech Infantry
Nuke
Jet Fighter

add:
Jet Bomber
Cruiser (stronger Destroyer)
Heavy Tank (intermediate Tank and Modern Armor)

Computer age (1960 - 2000) current:
Helicopter
Radar Artillery (which I'd prefer to call Self Propelled Gun)
Cruise Missile (change to Missile, limited range)
ICBM
Stealth Fighter
Stealth Bomber
Nuclear Sub
AEGIS Cruiser
Modern Armor

add:
Hi-tech Infantry
Attack Helicopter
Cruise Missile (much greater/ unlimited range)

I count 49 standard Civ3 units. This would add 19 more - an increase of 38%. Slow the rate of change down by 50% or more, and there's room for these.

What do people think?

[Canadian_Patriot]

Well done, Harlan.

I have a few notes written out on naval warfare, which I'm flipping through now. Below is a possible transition from industrial naval units to modern. Not all are necessary, but this is a logical system.

Battleship -> No modern equivilent
Battle cruiser -> Nuclear powered cruiser
Cruiser -> Missile cruiser
Destroyer -> Missile destroyer
Frigate-> Missile frigate (Perhaps the most dramatic increase)
Corvette-> ASW Escort
U-Boat style sub -> Nuclear powered sub
Carrier - > Super Carrier, Nimitz-Class style, nuclear powered

A lot of ships, obviously, but I feel modern naval combat was abstracted far too much.

Matt

[Harlan]

Matt,
Why would someone want to build all those different types of naval units? Meaning, in Civ3 terms, how would a Corvette differ from a Frigate, Destroyer, and so on? Given one only has attack, defense, movement, and a few special abilities to play with, its hard to see why players would want to make all of these different types. Maybe you can explain, cos I don't know much about some of these. What's tougher is that naval warfare and naval stuff isn't so important in Civ3 in the first place. I just played a game to the 1800s without building one ship.

I think you need to cut back, though more upgrades of different types is good.