Unit Workshop and Civ

[Inverse Icarus]

how feasible/relevent do you honestly think a unit workshop is to the civ series?

in the beginning of the game, i can see several "chasis", namely horseback, man, and catapult.

how could we equip them as to promote diversity?

weapon:

• stick (warrior)
• spear
• bow and arrow
• sword
• mace
• musket
• ...

armor:

• none
• leather (light weight / flexible) for archers
• chainmail
• full plate armor
• ...

accessories (unit can have 1):

• sheild (perhaps varying types? ups defense
• uh... dagger? or something? allows a retalitory attack when defending, or something
• ...

in my dream game, combined arms would play a much larger role, but even then i cant see diversifying the troops that closely (daggers? wtf was i thinking?)

but it would be interesting to see how battles turned out when a more wealthy / productive civ can give their swordsmen shields.

[DrSpike]

The unit workshop is in principle a good idea IMO.......though the AI has to use it far better than it did in SMAC.

[Inverse Icarus]

i was also thinking, that with the new resource system, parts could be resource dependent. like, say, bronze for a shield.

[Leland]

I find the concept of a unit being one guy with a weapon somewhat silly... it's more akin to an RPG where you equip your "guys" and care for them individually, rather than a strategy game where you deal with armies and large groups of people. In SMAC it works to some extent because one can imagine the units being small, specialized forces, but in a historical setting it's just wrong.

So, maybe the unit workshop in civ could be implemented not as adding shields, weapons, hats, etc. but just assigning "mini-units" like spearmen, settlers, and uh, shield dudes into a larger group. But then again, is that so different from just doing away with the workshop and stacking units together?

[The diplomat]

Originally posted by Leland
So, maybe the unit workshop in civ could be implemented not as adding shields, weapons, hats, etc. but just assigning "mini-units" like spearmen, settlers, and uh, shield dudes into a larger group.

This is a very intriguing idea. Basically, it would be an army workshop, and a unit on a map would be an army composed of different military types. For example, the player would go to the army workshop and create a unit made of 3 light infantry, 2 cavalry and 1 catapult. The unit would have a certain costs based on the composition and att/def/mov stats based on the composition. The player could give the unit a name like "Infantry Legion". So instead of building individual units, the player would build these composite units.

I really really like the concept. Of course, since the units now represent large armies, combat should not be to the death. Instead, combat would automatically end after a certain number of rounds or until one army is completely destroyed whichever came first.

Originally posted by Leland
But then again, is that so different from just doing away with the workshop and stacking units together?

Yes. Such a army workshop would make stacking obsolete and it would tremendous simplify war management. The player would no longer need to build tons of units and then worry about moving them or stacking them or what not. The player would simply design an "army" unit. Now the player would only have 1 unit instead of several. So things would be much simplified. In fact, since a unit would now represent such a large army, I would forbid stacking, ie a unit would never be allowed to move in the same square as another unit at the same time.

I really like where this is going.

[Immortal Wombat]

I don't.

It increases micromanagement, makes control of units harder to work, and doesn't substanatially alter gameplay beyond annoying the human when they can't move a couple of archers from one army to another.

An army shouldn't have to be built in one city - most cities shouldn't be able to build a whole army. The ability to use more than one city to build up your military is the whole core concept to having a military civilisation.

[The diplomat]

Originally posted by Immortal Wombat
I don't.

It increases micromanagement, makes control of units harder to work, and doesn't substanatially alter gameplay beyond annoying the human when they can't move a couple of archers from one army to another.

Are you talking about a SMAC style unit workshop or the Army workshop idea that Leland and I mentionned? If you are talking about the army workshop idea, I don't agree.

An army workshop means 1 unit instead of potentially 5 or 6 units. Less units would reduce micromanagement and improve unit control!
An army workshop would alter gameplay because it would add a stronger element of combined arms. For example, the player could design an army that is well suited to defend against cavalry but it might be poorer against archers.

Originally posted by Immortal Wombat
An army shouldn't have to be built in one city - most cities shouldn't be able to build a whole army. The ability to use more than one city to build up your military is the whole core concept to having a military civilisation.

Just because the army is created in the city doesn't mean that the city built the whole thing on its own. Civ3's strategic ressources idea where several cities share the same ressource, is IMO, a good abstraction of what you are talking about.
I would point out that the Great Pyramids were a collaborative effort, yet civ has a single city build the whole thing which is completely unrealistic.
The game does require some abstraction since it purports to represent a 6000 year old civilization!

The army workshop does not mean that a single city is building the entire army. It just abstracts collaboration through trade and ressource sharing instead of forcing the player to literally build each unit separately and then combine then manually. That's the unecessary micromanagement!

Last, shouldn't the player be rewarded if they do manage to have a city large enough to build an entire army? I think the player should be better rewarded for having a few large cities rather than just have lots and lots of small cities. After all, many ancient civilizations rose to glory because of one or two large prosperous cities. Ancient Egypt or ancient Babylon did not bedome world powers by founding lots of small cities all over the place! They became world powers because they managed to develop cities into large enough cities with enough wealth and population to dominate their neighbors which afterwards allowed them to spread and settle lots of new cities. But they needed the large and prosperous cities first in order to kick things off.

Frankly, if I may digree for a moment, I think the early game should encourage the player that chooses to build up 1 or 2 cities into large ones, just as much as it encourages the player that chooses to spread like a plague with tons of cities.

[Urban Ranger]

Youngsun and I worked out a Unit Workshop for Civ 3. It should still be in the archives somewhere.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Leland
I find the concept of a unit being one guy with a weapon somewhat silly... it's more akin to an RPG where you equip your "guys" and care for them individually, rather than a strategy game where you deal with armies and large groups of people. In SMAC it works to some extent because one can imagine the units being small, specialized forces, but in a historical setting it's just wrong.

You are talking about a Civ game. Sure, nowadays we have combined arms tactics, which by the way is very poorly represented, but for most of the history a group of soldiers would have the same weapon. Roman Legions all used the same melee weapons. US Civil War infantry soldiers relied on rifles.

[Lemmy]

For example, the player would go to the army workshop and create a unit made of 3 light infantry, 2 cavalry and 1 catapult. The unit would have a certain costs based on the composition and att/def/mov stats based on the composition. The player could give the unit a name like "Infantry Legion". So instead of building individual units, the player would build these composite units.

This reminds of a RTS game called Kohan: Immortal Soevereigns.
It's a bit RoN-ish, where it combines TBS thingies with RTS gameplay, and the army system there was the best ever in an RTS IMO.

Each army could have 1 leader, 2 flank units, and 4 frontline units.
The leader and flank units could give bonusses to the entire army, for example there this horse unit that gave +10% to speed, add 2 of them as flank and all your units had a 21% increase in speed.

I like this idea, perhaps have both a unit workshop and an army workshop?
In the unit workshop you design your units, and in the army workshop you can use those designed unit to create your armies.

[The diplomat]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Sure, nowadays we have combined arms tactics, which by the way is very poorly represented, but for most of the history a group of soldiers would have the same weapon. Roman Legions all used the same melee weapons. US Civil War infantry soldiers relied on rifles.

You are talking about a particular category of soldier. Of course infantry would have the same weapons. But armies even in the days of Rome or before were very diverse. A Roman army wasn't just made up of Romans legions. It would also have cavalry, archers, catapults and even what we today would call "combat engineers". At the battle of Alesia, Ceasar had his engineers that were with his army create extensive trenches and other traps in order to lay siege against the Gaul leader Vercingetorix. My point is that the Romans had "combined arms" too in a way, since their armies had infantry (legions) but also cavalry, archers and siege weapons.
Alexander the Great's Army was incredibly diverse. It had light infantry, heavy infantry (infantry with armor and more weapons), cavalry, siege weapons, even elephants later in the campaigns. The Greeks used rather elaborate combined arms tactics, whereby cavalry would outflank while the infantry pushed ahead etc...
A Union army had more than just infanry soldiers. They would have an artillery regiment, a cavalry regiment etc...

Combined Arms have of course changed over the centuries, but it has existed for longer than you may think. It has existed for thousands of years. Read about battles in Ancient Greece, Rome etc... and you will see rather complex combined arms tactics.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by The diplomat
You are talking about a particular category of soldier. Of course infantry would have the same weapons. But armies even in the days of Rome or before were very diverse. A Roman army wasn't just made up of Romans legions. It would also have cavalry, archers, catapults and even what we today would call "combat engineers".

That's why different units are for.

Originally posted by The diplomat
A Union army had more than just infanry soldiers. They would have an artillery regiment, a cavalry regiment etc...

You mean cannons.

Combined arms tactics usually refer to how different units can be used to complement each other to achieve results greater than using one type of units alone. Therefore, it is doubtful that cavalry + infantry works better than cavalry alone. The only problem was infantry was far cheaper than cavalry and thus formed the backbone of armies.

[The diplomat]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Combined arms tactics usually refer to how different units can be used to complement each other to achieve results greater than using one type of units alone.

Yes, and I believe that there are many examples that can be found from ancient warfare to illustrate it. For example, take the battle of Leuctra in 371 BC between the Spartans and the Thebans. (My source is the book "Warfare in the classical world " by John Warry, an excellent read that I highly recommend)
The Spartans had 10000 hoplites, 1000 cavalry and 1100 peltasts (infantry armed with javelins). The Thebans had 6500 hoplites, 1500 cavalry and 1000 peltasts. The Thebans won the battle despite the Spartans having superior numbers and training. Here is a quote from the book on the turning point of the battle:

"On the Theban left wing the cavalry drive back the Spartan cavalry and Pelopidas and the Sacred Band reinforce this attack. While the Theban cavalry prevents outflanking, the Theban phalanx crashes into the Spartan."

I think this quote clearly shows that combined arms was at work here, and that different units complemented each other for a greater result than if they had fought individually.

Now here is the difference between the current civ system versus a army workshop system:
In the civ system, this battle would be represented by each side having a stack of a bunch of units. One side would have say 10 hoplites units, 1 cavalry unit and 2 archer unit (closest civ unit to a peltast). The other side would probably have 7 hoplite units, 2 cavalry units and 1 archer unit. One player woud attack each unit at a time.
In the army workshop system, each side would only have 1 unit that would represent the total army (hoplite+cavalry+archer). The 1 unit would have att/def/mov points that would represent the effect of having the combined army. You would have only 1 fight that would not be to the death, but each unit would end the battle with a certain amount of damage.

So, I think the army workshop system would give the player great flexibility in designing their army and it would greatly simplify things. In the example above, the player would only have 1 unit and 1 fight instead of 10 units and 10 fights.

[Immortal Wombat]

And where would the completed unit appear once it has been completed by many cities?

[Immortal Wombat]

Originally posted by The diplomat
Now here is the difference between the current civ system versus a army workshop system:
In the civ system, this battle would be represented by each side having a stack of a bunch of units. One side would have say 10 hoplites units, 1 cavalry unit and 2 archer unit (closest civ unit to a peltast). The other side would probably have 7 hoplite units, 2 cavalry units and 1 archer unit. One player woud attack each unit at a time.
In the army workshop system, each side would only have 1 unit that would represent the total army (hoplite+cavalry+archer). The 1 unit would have att/def/mov points that would represent the effect of having the combined army. You would have only 1 fight that would not be to the death, but each unit would end the battle with a certain amount of damage.

Also, this can be overcome in a mutually beneficial manner by the CtP-style stacking system, where all the stack fights at once as an army, but can be disassembled and reassembled at will.