"Unit Workshop" Module List

[Mihai]

Congratulation Youngsun !
Excellent idea and a LOT of work. You didn't leave me anything to add. J

I love the workshop because it gives a plus to strategy : if you are under attack you can quickly build some cheap/weak units to defend yourself. In case that you plan an invasion, you can prepare in time an attack force consisting of more expensive/stronger units. And beside that it adds more subtlety to the scissors/paper/stone system (cavalry/archers/pikemen or battleship/distroyer/submarine). This way a single military tech could give you the victory on the battlefield. Two tech = almost total strategic victory (Mongols had fast horses and the composite bow and that allowed them to conquer half of Eurasia; Alexander the Great had phalanx and his genius ).

Seriously, the limitation of overconquer should came from the others aspects of the game (economic = high cost of keeping a huge army, social = unhappyness of conquered city => garnison needed, diplomatic = all others payers allied against you etc).

However your idea for combat screen is too complex. Actually what you try to do is to include a whole separate game : The Operational Art of War I&II (or Steel Panthers maybe? - I didn't play it yet). I think that's too much for Civ3. Maybe in Civ4.

Phalanx vs. Tanks? If modern armor negates ancient attack then that is the answer.
Phalanx vs. GIs? Well...in WWI infantry attack against machine guns over and over again with huge casualty. In 1879 at Isandlwana 30000 zulus armed only with spears and leather shields wiped out 5000 british armed with the-most-modern-at-the-time breech loader rifle. In conclusion, size does matter.

The LASS system of Matthew Hayden is good and should be used.

[Matthew Hayden]

Well, the reaction seems to be positive so far, so,
on to the rest eh!

I've got several ideas for a few unique and different helicopters.
Med Evac helicopter, (Huey?)

Hitpoints=10-Fairly generous defensive capabilities
Firepower=5-armed only with basic machine-gun type weapons.
Evasion=5-not a very fast hunk o' junk

L A S S

A 10 8 10 0
R 0 4 0 0
D 10 8 10 0 Transports two infantry, restores one infantry unit to fuul health in it's stack every turn, thats why its a Med Evac chopper, eh.

By the way, thanks for the feedback Youngson, your National Arsenal and Organision Workshop ideas are awesome, spectacular even!

Firaxis, you'd better be listening!!!

C-Ya all soon!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Youngsun]

Mihai Thanks.

You can suggest more if you got any and don't hide them from me

quote: However your idea for combat screen is too complex. Actually what you try to do is to include a whole separate game : The Operational Art of War I&II (or Steel Panthers maybe?- I didn't play it yet). I think that's too much for Civ3. Maybe in Civ4.

The combat model I put above is based on Colonisation style believe or not. And that was enhanced little bit to accomodate "stacked combat" & "combined arms concepts" so nothing is too complex here

Matthew how's it going?

Med Evac helicopter? Medical? Evacuation?

quote: Transports two infantry, restores one infantry unit to fuul health in it's stack every turn, thats why its a Med Evac chopper, eh

You mean two infantry units? in civII term perhaps?

I'm very glad you liked the "arsenal" & "organisation workshop".

[Matthew Hayden]

By the way, as far as I know, there won't be any Unit Workshop! Sob, Weep, Sob! Weep! SOB!! WEEP!!
Oh well, I guess you can't have everything. The new units on the Firaxis website do look promising though.


Spotter Helicopter; (Gazzelle?)

Uses an advanced laser rangefinder to aid combat helicopters in order to increase the 'one shot kill' potential of their ordinance.
In game terms, this would translate into an increased attack value against any and all ground or sea units attacked by a stack containing one of these spotters.
To prevent abuse of this ability, it is not cumulative.

///////L A S S

/////A 0 0 0 0
/////R 0 0 0 0
/////D 6 0 6 0

The forward slashes are to stop the lines getting screwed up like they did in my previous posts.

I shan't be able to post anything else until saturday,
to much damned School work!!

[Matthew Hayden]

Is there anybody out there!!

Youngson, Darkcloud, Technoophile, where r u!!


House Carl

Big strong mediaeval fella with a twenty-foot long sword. Used during the Hundred-Years-War against the French by the English. Combined with the mighty Longbowmen and Knights of England, these guys often played a major role in the destruction of French armies many times bigger than their own forces.

////////L A S S

//////A 4 0 0 0 First unit with 4 attack
//////R 0 0 0 0
//////D 3 0 0 0

[DarkCloud]

Matthew- about the LASS plan, where is the movement point section?

[Urban Ranger]

Youngsun,

Fantastic work you have there! A few suggestions, comments, etc.:

1. Take all you have written in this thread, condense and edit all that material, whip it in a PDF file, and post a link. The advantages of this is a person can read that offline, plus you can have all your illustrations in there. It's quite daunting to go through this thread right now. Now if you could include an index in that PDE file also, that would be just great

2. Did you steal those diagrams of military hardware from PG3 or PG3D?

3. The illustrations are great but they are too wide for my screen. If you could make them narrower it would be perfect. Nitpicking, I know.

4. I think the unit workshop in SMAC has almost the perfect combination. What I think would be the best is for a unit to have, on top of the basic "frame" type: one armor slot, one movement slot, two weapons slot, two special slot, and a doctine slot.

For example:

Ancient Skimisher
Basic Frame - infantry
Movement - foot
Weapon 1 - short sword (bronze)
Weapon 2 - short bow
Armor - leather
Special 1 - wilderness survival
Special 2 - none
Doctrine - skimisher

Modern Special Force Unit
Basic Frame - infantry
Movement - foot
Weapon 1 - light arms
Weapon 2 - espionage kit
Armor - bulletproof vest
Special 1 - wilderness survival
Special 2 - combat insertion/extraction
Doctrine - special forces

[Matthew Hayden]

Good point Darkcloud, sorry I missed all those out!

Hoplite=1 MP

Tank-Buster Chopper= 7/8 MP

Spotter Chopper= 7/9 MP- almost no weapons and a
fairly decent engine.

Med Evac Chopper= 6/7 MP

House Carl= 1/2 MP

C-Y'all Soon!!!!!!

[Matthew Hayden]

Good point Darkcloud, sorry I missed all those out!

Hoplite=1 MP

Tank-Buster Chopper= 7/8 MP

Spotter Chopper= 7/9 MP- almost no weapons and a
fairly decent engine.

Med Evac Chopper= 6/7 MP

House Carl= 1/2 MP

C-Y'all Soon!!!!!!

[Matthew Hayden]

Hello!!
Where've ya'll gone!!


Darkcloud, an expansion of my last post. The reason I didn't include any MP(movement point) values for the units is that nobody knows what scale the game will operate on, that is, elevation from ground level/ distance in square miles in every tile.

[Stuff2]

Train and treat ancient men and modern men the same way and they will be just as good fighters.

People are always people. I don't think that different 'eras' should change the conscripted mens ability. It's the weapons and armoring that makes the big difference, and training ofcourse.

Maybe your civ's overall health could play a part in how good your men can be (without weapons), this will probably, but not necessarily, increase with time. With knowledge, food and hospitals e.t.c.

People in ancient times where shorter simply beacouse they usually had to survive through several periods when foodsupply was very low.

[This message has been edited by Stuff2 (edited January 23, 2001).]

[Matthew Hayden]

Stuff2, I coudn't agree more, since the game only goes back to about 4000BC anyway.

Tiger Tank

////A D R M

//L 18 16 16 3/4 Sloewd down by heavy armour*.
//A 0 8 0 0
//S 0 8 0 0
//S 0 0 0 0


*And a badly underpowered engine.

Youngsun, wher've ya gone!

Please, somebody gimme some kinda feedback on this!!

[Roman]

I guess this thread is irrelevant now that we know unit workshop will not be included in Civ3.

[Mark_Everson]

I agree with Stuff2 also, although in addition to nutrition and overall health, lifestyle makes a big difference IMO. So given equal levels of training and technology people with "harder" lives will have an advantage since they are hardier and can take more punishment on the battlefield and from the environment. (Although I'm pretty much talking about infantry here) One example of a hardly people is the Mongols, since the pastoralist lifestyle is very difficult compared to what we have nowadays. Another example of lifestyle is that people who shoot rifles every day from childhood on Will be better riflemen than city dwellers who have never seen one before military service. I think that was one of the things that gave the southern states a relative advantage in the U.S. Civil War.

On another topic...

I've followed this thread with some interest, and I think it's a shame that they're not going to have a unit workshop at least available as an option in civ 3. The Clash of Civilizations military model will have a lot of the things you have been talking about here, and could Seriously use more discussion and ideas. If you are interested in checking it out please look at the Current Clash Military Thread. We have a new military coder, Laurent, who is making serious progress, so there is the potential for you to see any good suggestions you might make actually Implemented fairly soon!

[Urban Ranger]

It's a shame that Firaxis has decided to take out one of the two major innovations from SMAC. The other one being social engineering. They should have at least included this as an option to let players who are interested to play with it.

I don't think that's a lot of additional work for little gain. There are already some players expressing utter disgust at this decision and refuse to buy the game as a result. I am not so extreme as I will evaluate the game carefully. Of course, missing the unit workshop wouldn't work out to Firaxis's favour in my case.

I understand there are players who don't like the feature, but why not include it as an option? The groundwork has been done in SMAC already.