Firaxis off on the wrong foot

[Willem]

One thing that has popped into my head with this discussion is a new unit attribute, Movement Range. Meaning that a Warrior can only go so many squares away from a City or a Fortress, it can't just meander willy nilly across the continent as it can now. This would bring in the concept of supply lines, something that has been woefully lacking in Civ games since the beginning. It would also make Fortresses much more useful in the game, since they would act be acting as supply depots.

This could also introduce new type of units that can extend the range of units in a stack, such as Wagons, Pack Horses, Supply Trucks etc. If any of these types of units are included in a stack, then the range is doubled, or tripled etc. Loss of those units means a chance of starvation of units or material cannibalization until they return within range of a supply source.

I think we could into soe interesting strategic elements with a concept like this. As it's always stood with these games, Tanks etc. have infinite ammo and fuel. That doesn't seem right.

[ThePlagueRat]

Great idea!

You should post it here as well :

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=104079

[Jaybe]

Willem, the only problem with such layers of complication (which I would be QUITE at home with), is that it would narrow the market so much.

If they had a game where you could add on layers of complexity as OPTIONS, that would probably work with the marketing dept. We could end up paying as much or more than the basic game for this expansion pack due to the narrowed market, and if conceptually well done I would pay.

Old manual wargames (before computers) often had Basic rules and Advanced rules.

[Alex]

Originally posted by ThePlagueRat
Colonization II is under development too. Some dude in a forum said they would make it RTS with the 3D engine from Warcraft.

OMG WE SHOULD ALL BURN FIRAXIS OFFICES DOWN!! THEY HAVE TO BE SEVERELY PUNISHED FOR SUCH AN HERESY!!!!

[Willem]

Originally posted by Jaybe
Willem, the only problem with such layers of complication (which I would be QUITE at home with), is that it would narrow the market so much.

If they had a game where you could add on layers of complexity as OPTIONS, that would probably work with the marketing dept. We could end up paying as much or more than the basic game for this expansion pack due to the narrowed market, and if conceptually well done I would pay.

Old manual wargames (before computers) often had Basic rules and Advanced rules.

If it was done right, it wouldn't necessarily have to make things overly complicated. You wouldn't have to actually manage your supply lines, they would just operate in the background. Plus any modifications like that would certainly have to be moddable in case someone didn't like the way it was done.

In thinking about this I'm reminded of Master of Orion. In that game you have various types of fuel cells that extend the range of your ships, plus an extended fuel cell to give an even greater range. I don't see why something similar couldn't be done with Civ, treating a stack of units as an equivalent to ships in MoO.

And it wouldn't necessarily mean that you couldn't send your forces off across the continent to some far off enemy city. It's just that by doing so, you stand the risk of your units losing hitpoints along the way, sort of like Galleys now stand the risk of sinking in Oceans.

And some units could devolve. For instance, a Knight happens to be riding a perfectly good food source. If it got down below one hit point, it would lose it's mount and continue on as a Medieval Infantry, with almost full hit points. So you might start your trek with a stack of 10 Knights, but arrive at the enemy city with a bunch of half-starved Medieval Infantry that only have a portion of their full hit points. With a little bit of luck on the attack rolls, that might just be enough to capture that city, and secure a new supply source, allowing for reinforcements to be brought in with little loss along the way.

[Fosse]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
Imagine, in the early game you are given only a very rough roster of, say, 40x40. You are able to explore, to grab land and place very rough tile improvements. In this phase, you found the centers of your provinces, or let's say in terms of the US, your states.
...
Then, at some point in the game, the granularity doubles. Each tile is split in four (2x2), making it a 80x80 map. Your cities and first tile improvements remain, but the regions they cover double in size (or in terms of area, grow fourfold). Now, you can found smaller, secondary cities between the primaries, say, the centers of your "counties" in terms of the US.

...

Now it's my turn to say someone misunderstood Jesse.

Ralph, I'm pretty sure that this isn't quite right either. While it does seem Jesse is suggesting a map that doubles in size like you say, I believe his idea would have your original land maintain its exact dimensions. So where before your map represented 100% of the world, it know represents 50% of the known world. Instead of "zooming in" on your empire, you would effectivly "zoom out" on the whole world.


I see the idea as being able to give the different stages of the game a neat flavor, and a sense of real discovery... but it seems hard to implement well. What if a Civ starts on the corner of Map 1... when he gets to Map 2 he'll have very odd boundries....


Okay... everybody get to work on finding out how I misconstrued the post!

[Kuciwalker]

That seems like it would only be possible to implement in a scenario.

[Harovan]

I didn't misunderstand Jesses rambling, but whilst thinking what the heck would be the point of a scalalable map, I had this other idea.

[UnityScoutChopper]

I mentioned an idea entirely the same in principle (a little different in the details) to Willem's here or on CFC a while back. Needless to say, I strongly agree with Willem's idea ;-). The only part I might ditch is the horse-eating knights. That sounds a bit creepy.

USC

[Willem]

Originally posted by UnityScoutChopper
I mentioned an idea entirely the same in principle (a little different in the details) to Willem's here or on CFC a while back. Needless to say, I strongly agree with Willem's idea ;-). The only part I might ditch is the horse-eating knights. That sounds a bit creepy.

USC

Since I was being somewhat off topic, I created a new thread discussing these ideas. I've expanded on them quite a bit as well.

Supply Line Ideas

[dworkin]

Look on the bright side.

It could be a RPG

Or worse Civiliation as a FPS.

'You are Grog, you must battle through the successive ages of history to prvent the launch of a spaceship in 2050 AD."

[ThePlagueRat]

An RPG ? hmmm...

Did you ever play the Kita Katana-scenario in CTP2 ?
It was a story battle (boxtexts) where you went through a map fighting and getting some companions to find and fight a camp with badguys... You more HPs and better stats as you went along... Quite fun with that army system actually.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by dworkin
Look on the bright side.

It could be a RPG

Or worse Civiliation as a FPS.

'You are Grog, you must battle through the successive ages of history to prvent the launch of a spaceship in 2050 AD."

Unfortunately, there'd be balance problems. Everyone would try and camp where the Anti-Tank Spear loads.

[Peter Triggs]

Did you ever play the Kita Katana-scenario in CTP2 ?
It was a story battle (boxtexts) where you went through a map fighting and getting some companions to find and fight a camp with badguys... You more HPs and better stats as you went along... Quite fun with that army system actually.

I think you're referring to the 'Magnificent Samurai' scenario. It was put in to show how modifiable CTP2 could be: anyone who mastered the scripting language SLIC could write their own scenarios like that. Or do lots of other things with the game.

[ThePlagueRat]

Perhaps I should get to know SLIC then...
I do have programming education so I guess I should use it for something nice.