Military operations

[Stuff2]

I know that i have already presented this idea before. But i still think it would be a better alternative than stupid military generals aimlessly moving around half of your units.

Instead of having 'real' units u have a lot of men and alot of war equippment. U take some of the trained men (for simplicity let's say that they always are counted in hundreds; 100, 200 etc)And u give them military tasks.
A task will always eventually come to an end, when the job is done or when the war is over or after xx turns.
Here u can also have tasks that starts with certian events. "If China declares war then send 5000 infantry men to Delhi".
It can be very useful to know the future plans of an enemy. If u are lucky your spy may lead u straight to an opponents 'military operations window'.

[OrangeSfwr]

I like the idea of your spies seeing other civs military operation plans.

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[Hawkman142]

good ideas, leader rarly have complete control of all of their units.

[MidKnight Lament]

Was this the idea that meant you lost tile-by-tile control of your units?

- MKL

[general_charles]

I think it is a good idea, but maybe the game should concentrate more on support, not only shields but other stuff as well, munitions, food, links to the main land/cities for the wounded, etc... This support thing could be well defended by your idea, you could assign boats, airplanes and troops to guard your links with the main land without having to micromanage their every move.

[Earthling7]

No offence, but I think this would make the military model way too complex. If you want a military simulation that is as real as a bullet in the head, go for panzer general or something.

I think the beauty of the Civ games is the simplicity in which the complex world is presented. Adding too much for the sake of realism will surely kill gameplay.

I think the only thing that needs to be modified is the ballte system and possibly that building military units will require populatuion as well as recourses.

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[Steve Clark]

I agree with Earthling7, as a wargamer, I definitely don't want Civ to become one. It works beautifully as an abstracted, civilization-building strategy game. Let's not lose sight of that and turn Civ3 into something that it's not.

That goes for many of the suggestions appearing recently. Civ2 works well on its own even though it doesn't have the trade details of Imperialism (as I've read), the battle details of the Talonsoft games, the historical city-building models of Pharaoh, etc. or the exploration details of Conquest of the New World. Those games (plus more like them) all have one thing in common - they are not Civilization.

[general_charles]

I do agree that the point of civ is not to make a realistic war game, there are other great games for this, but is it realistic to have military units the way they were, is it realistic that when you had 10 riflemen in one square and you get attacked by 1 musketeer that gets lucky and kills you, how can you say that it actually killed the nine others by doing nothing???
I think that an idea that was brought up and which consists on giving a goal to your army is quite good, for example, you are germany and you attack the russians, just say: "take Stalingrad", what else could Hitler do to make sure his troops did succeed???
However, to compensate this lack of control of your troops, you should be able to control how your troops get reinforcement, fuel, munitions, etc...

[Stuff2]

earthling...

This idea is not only "for the sake of realism". My thought with it was mostly to avoid some problems that really irritates me in civ2. These problems are:

- Having so many units that u cant keep track of all of them.
- Have so many units that u keep forget the specific units role in your military strategy. "Was this unit supposed to be in the attack of Berlin or was it supposed to defend the fortress outside Moscow?"
- Ai-units just moving around with no purpose and just use alot of computerpower.
- Not being able to coordinate battleplans (well u can in smac but it's still not good enough)
- No window where u can control all your military operations.
- Not being able to spy on other civs military plans and operation.
- No realism in units moving 100 km in 20 years. (Sure u could make increase units movements rate ten times but that would only lead to too much micromanegement)
- A unit entering a city will always attack it.

There are also some advantages that I see in my idea:

- It's easy to link military operation with your economy. Every operation will cost u money and resources.
- U can control all your empires military operations from one window, not having to scroll around on the entire map.
- If you are a peaceloving player you don't have to spend half of your time building units or moving units.

Not forget all the other reasons i've already posted.

[Stuff2]

quote: Originally posted by MidKnight Lament on 05-01-2000 07:57 PM Was this the idea that meant you lost tile-by-tile control of your units? - MKL

Yep. It was. But i'm not impossible. tile-by-tile control can be included as an option for those who feel that the military units will desert if they don't watch them closely enough and guide them every step of the way ;-)

[Grier]

I think its a great idea, but it wouldnt be civ. Nuff said.

[Stuff2]

I have developed my idea some. I've tried to incorporate the recruiment also.

I'll try to explain it even though my english isn't very good.

First:
- We have men
- We have equippment
- We have money
- We have training facilities (maybe, not necessarily but training will take longer time without it)

Step two: We pay money
equipp the men and train them...voila: They are now ready to beacome a part of your army.

Step three: Once a military operation is needed u grab a bunch of soldiers and form them into a unit. Different kinds of soldiers cannot be formed into one unit. For example riflemen and archers cannot exist in the same unit. several units can be a part of same military operations. If u don't like the military operation window there is a feature that make your unit alive on the screen being able to control that way.

When an unit on the 'field' has lost men u can always grab some new men to replace those that have disappeared. This "reinforce" option is always presented whenever needed (after battles).

Since people always die (if not beacouse of war then beacouse of old age) i suggest that your army will always decrease which means that in order to upkeep an standing army you have to make new recruitment all the time.

Beacouse of the ease and speed you can mobilize an army (maybe 2 to 10 years depending on infrastructure and money invested) it's not needed to always have an giant standing army. If u find out that an oppnent is mobilizing an army you can be pretty sure that war is going to break out(maybe not with you but you can never be too sure).

[Par4]

I like the idea. I like being able to lower the amount of active units during times of peace thus lowering costs and support. But I agree with Grier it doesn't seem like civ, the army idea has alot of ideas the same as this but is more like civ.

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[MidKnight Lament]

There's some good idea in there, but I'm more stuck on what these "missions" are. To date you haven't gone into much detail there.

Ok, here's an example. I want to take an enemy city with a variety of units (or armies or whatever). I want to gather them from a bunch of different cities, railroad them to a central point where I can gather my forces. I want a main force to head straight to the enemy city via the fastest terrain possible, with a couple of more mobile units flanking on either side, to make sure enemy units from other cities can't get in to help defend the enemy city. I want these mobile units to kill any settlers on sight, but otherwise they should fortify to cut off enemy units using their ZOCs. The main force should bombard until the city is able to be taken with infantry.

That's a rather long example, but not all that uncommon for a game of Civ. How would you go about doing this with missions? How many missions would you use in that example? How much would you be relying on the units to do what you want? I want to be able to move my armies in that sort of detail (and much more). Are missions going to make this easier or harder?

- MKL

[Youngsun]

Stuff2

quote: First: - We have men - We have equippment - We have money - We have training facilities (maybe, not necessarily but training will take longer time without it)

This is exactly what I wanted for a long time!

"Men" will be provided by extracting some portion of your population I guess.

Equipments? are they just weapons or whole bunch of other things like ammunitions or other equipments like trucks for motorised infantry or horses for cavalry?

For "training facilities", I reckon these should be vital for producing bulk of modern army.(especially for air force and navy. army too!)

Army mobilisation should be dealt with on national level and all the conscripted soldiers should be fed and paid by the national government not a individual parent city.

"military operation window" I don't understand this. what have you in mind?