UNITS (ver1.0): Hosted by JT

[Trachmyr]

...and war discontent can also be tracked per city.

[Shining1]

Unit support should cost money, as in real life, and thus would be supported on a civilisation wide basis. It would also make massive military campaigns harder to run without any basic infrastructure - no bad thing. Finally, the desperate search for cash to pay soliders was one of the cool things about medieval europe - it would be amusing to include it in Civ as well.

Unpaid units would then either disband OR mutiny, turning into barbarians, depending upon the stability/type of government or the police rating or whatever.

The CtP type units should NOT be included. They present two problems with a civ type game:

1) Unrealism: The bad kind of unrealism, where suspension of disbelief gets stretched too far. CivIII will always have a good deal that is not 100% true to nature, but Lawyers and televangelists go too far. They don't exist as a political tool in the real world.

2) Countermeasures: CTP required too much work on covering for every possible kind of attack on every possible city - it became unworkable. Special ability units should be very limited in scope - the bulk of them should focus on assisting units and home cities. Only spys/probe teams are a realistic choice for offensive special abilities.

[Fugi the Great]

I also like the instant retalitation idea, since thats what would happen in real life. I'm just wondering how one would make instant retaliation work, both limited or fullscale, since this is a turn based game. If you have early warning sensors up, and the computer calculates that the incoming missile is targeting your missile silo, does the missile in your silo automatically launch to its preprogrammed target? I'm just wondering because, I do not play multiplayer, so its just me against the computer. So when my turn is up, and have to go and relieve a little bladder pressure, what will I see when I return? All my cities in flames, or just one of mine and several of someone elses, even potential enemies I was not a war with because it was preprogrammed to go there? When do you tell the computer to retaliate and to whom? Is there an intelligence network and general (military ai governor) directing which missiles get launched and to where and how many? Do missiles only getted launched when the computer knows I'm in front of the screen watching the carnage?

Should have different range missiles, depending on your level of technology. Russia and US can lob missiles to any corner of the globe they want now, but even if Iraq suddenly gets nukes tomorrow, their long range missiles still won't travel that far (relatively speaking of course).

Nuclear war is supposed to be something to avoid, because its messy and harms the planet. So make it a nice radioactive mess that becomes no mans land for ## years, no one can airdrop in unless they are special units made for surviving radioactive enviroments. Or maybe let them airdrop in an make them take some serious damage every turn they are in the nuclear wasteland, when they are dead, the city reverts to the original owner. Too many nukes going off will cause a nuclear winter. Make sure the computer UNDERSTANDS this, this is not just two men seeing how far they can throw a grenade, this is millions of innocent people getting slaughtered. I personally don't like nukes or even Planetbusters, using them just destroys people that could be made subjects of the empire to make it stronger.

[Koyaanisqatsi]

No! Those *()&# ~@!^& )#@& @*!~ )&#% @!*^ !@(&*^ #@%)(*^ @()*@Q$ unconventional CTP units can't be allowed to )(*)&@# !~@^&%# CivIII!

Save us from the Corporate Branch!

(Or was that over the top? Sorry. I really don't like them.)

[This message has been edited by Bell (edited May 19, 1999).]

[the Octopus]

If a civ is the sole possessor of a technology, and it has never been used in combat before, any units that use that technology should get some bonus (+25% ?) to their attack rating in the first year it is used, to represent a "first time on the battlefield" effect. This is because the enemies haven't had time to develop strategies to mitigate the effects of the new technology. For example, the first person to use chemical weapons would find them incredibly effective, but the second time they were used they wouldn't be as great because gas masks had been issued to the enemy troops...


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CIV3-THE MASTER LIST-TECHNOLOGY "THREAD MASTER"

[Txurce]

JT,
What about issues re "old" units -- like the spy? It's too powerful, due to two reasons:

1) there's no defense against unit bribery, and only major cash accumulation against city bribery (the counterspy defense is negligible)

2) it's too easy to demand tribute, and so raise the cash that makes the spy so powerful

I've suggested addressing the second point in the Diplomacy section, but the first point needs a counter-intelligence solution as well.

[Freddz]

Tech upgrades: Think of how much a tank improves in design after just a few years, it could go over several stages, including improvements in speed, hit points and power. I think these upgrades in most cases should be automatical or at least in pop-ups to reduce micromanagement

An extension to tech upgrades: Tactics can improve units after time(or a technology has been discovered??) has passed. Troops with long spears, become phalanxes are a historical example, but it has probably happened to almost every troop type. I think tactics upgrades should occur if you produce certain unit types a lot, that would numerize player tactics a lot if well balanced.

Unconventional units:

I 'pretty much' disagree with some of you. For example Shining makes a couple of good points but misses the big picture: The impact of Slavery and Religion throughout history has been HUGE HUGE HUGE. Any true civilization sequel should include Relious and Slavery impact in some way.

The early unconventional units in CTP were great: slaver and cleric. The rest pretty much sucked(I liked corperate branch okay, subneural ad had an interesting idea, infector was cool but spies should be able to do that). Also, those units added interest in the early game.

BUT, I was thinking that maybe those units(at least slaver) could be incorporated in governments instead. The Roman empire's greatness came from slavery. Most(I think about 70%) citizens were slaves in Rome. This government type could have interesting twitches. Consider the huge effectivity of such a nation, but also the possible downsides: slave rebellions,if opponents takes a city they can enlist slave volenteers to their army. As knowledge increases, these kingdoms should falter and become more disliked both at home and abroad.

My absolute favorite unit in CTP was the cleric, pretty damn funny to use, especially in Multiplayer games. Maybe this one should be included(I can't find a good government type to incoorporate the influences in - yet).

There should be a city improvement or two that help defend against unconventional units, some government form should have better protection against them(fascism for example)

These issues are unit related, and I would hate to spread them all out in the forum(but I will post some of this under governments).

[Freddz]

I see there is a suggestion religion will be incorporated under governments. Sorry.

[willko]

okay this post may seem somewhat rambling but it addresses a topic that hasn't been probed too deeply yet:

transports & transportation of units in general.

1)
it seems in civ2 that the "transport" unit was paradoxically too big and at the same time too small for its britches (after all, how does the same unit theoretically carry 8 armor divisions while balking at carrying more than 8 spies?). while my suggestion may slightly complicate matters, i think it's reasonable to have some sort of unit "size" rating when considering possible transportability. infantry units would have a value of 1, while armor/mechanized/cavalry would have a value of 2. that way if we use the civ2 transport as our example, a carrying capacity of 8 would allow 8 marines, but only 4 armor.

simple, no?

think of it as a trick stolen from starcraft, if you must. but don't let the tinge of real-time-strategy innovation ruin this idea for you die-hard tbs-ers. i think this idea would work well in the general feel of the civ series.

2)
there is also a balancing issue for transportation of troops and arms in general to consider. just for example, should a different total transportational "allowance" be given to a carrier unit which should theoretically hold much more than the civ2 unit allows? think of the support divisions possibly found on the modern aircraft carrier: cruise missiles, harrier and conventional jets, helicopters, a small complement of marines, etc.

i personally feel a carrier group should be able to carry a certain amount of cruise missiles without affecting the status of its total transportation allowance (i.e. a carrier unit should always be allowed to hold x cruise/nuclear missiles irregardless of the amount of fighters/bombers/copters onboard). maybe missiles should just be a different "type" of transportable unit that aren't held into account when calculating a transport's given load. again, this raises play-balancing questions about the potential strength of the aircraft carrier unit (but i thought them sort of underpowered as it was in civ2). on the other hand, more than one or possibly two marines units shouldn't be found on a carrier because it isn't simply a personnel carrier. see where the "sizing" of a unit would come in handy?

3)
graphically, it could be as simple as this: when loading a transport, a little pop-up screen could come up (or appears in the general interface window) which shows the space in the transport's "hold" for the units queueing up to get onboard. when a unit is "loaded," the "contents" screen will show a unit icon representing the loaded unit and the size of this icon would be proportional to the amount of "hold-space" the bugger is filling up. see? so even if an infantry unit is only size one on a transport, but maybe size two on a carrier, you could swing it graphically and not have to worry about doing some kooky arithmetic to figure out the best way of loading up a transportational unit. just look to see how much space remains.

4)
here's another suggested addition to the burgeoning list of new units (as stated previously by others): an aerial transport unit (acting as a fighter does in terms of movement out of a city -- must refuel at end of turn, but with better range, weak defense, and no attack ability). this would allow units to be dropped into the field strategically and at the cost of yet another unit in the field, it would finally allow deep penetration of new (variable!) forward units in a land-based offensive without the need to establish a railroad infrastructure to move the line along. ah, the idea of dropping a mobile armor unit right behind the front lines to shore up the attack! or the possibly suicidal behind enemy lines troop drop at the risk of losing the units to anti-air defenses! mmm.

opinions? comments? disgust? all possibly only a reply away...
/willko.

[This message has been edited by willko (edited May 20, 1999).]

[yin26]

Willko,

Is that you, man? I mean, really, is that you?

[willko]

[delurks for yin]
sorry to post a long message again, but i thought of something else that was a firestorm of minor debate...

revamp the a/d/m system???

more specifically, should firaxis get rid of the current attack rating vs. defense rating to the death combat model?

many say yes!

i say, maybe!

the attack vs. defense system, even with "firepower" and "hitpoint" ratings leads to inevitable statistical anomalies: the classical phalanx kills battleship paradox (and discovered after einstein's 1905 paper on special relativity, the recently revisited phalanx vs. bomber paradox). explained away as "drunk captain," or "pilot error," these kinds of things just can't happen. not again. oh god, not again. this will be the third, fourth or even fifth (from another perspective) generation civ game. let's get rid of this nonsense once and for all.

let's be radical.

that's right, why not abolish ye olde a/d/m and adopt a unit combat system that even grandma could love.

every unit could have an offensive value, a defensive value, hit points and morale in addition to a range value ("movement", but that's another "m").

here's the schema:

offense: this value determines the amount of damage done with a successful hit before modifiers.

defense: this value is how much less damage a unit takes from a successful hit by another unit due to armor, mobility, etc.

hit points: this value is how much damage the unit takes before it pushes up daisies.

morale: this value determines the percentage to successfully land a hit and also modifies the offensive value by a set percentage modifier. it also eventually increases with successive (successful) battles. let's say it ranges from 1 to 5 (as in smac but a less prosaic form).

range: movement points per turn.

now let's wade through an example title bout: in this corner, a rookie legion is attacking the veteran chariot in black trunks... ding ding!
"legion x" (o:4/d:2/h:10/m:1)
"chariot y" (o:4/d:1/h:10/m:4)
let's also assume that the battle is to the death (as in the coliseum of yore)...

round 1 (part a):
x attacks y.
x has a 1 in 5 chance of hitting y (due to his cruddy morale).
x luckily manages to hit y. (first blood goes to the young punk!).
x does 4 damage (+0% due to low morale) and y subtracts only 1 damage due to his defense value and gains no bonuses because he wasn't fortified at the end of the previous turn and is standing on a plains tile (next time seek some cover at the end of the turn).
x finally deals 3 damage total to y.
y has 7 hit points remaining.

round 1 (part deux):
y counterattacks x in his phase of combat (if x had managed to deal 10 hit points after modifiers and minus y's defense in the first hit, y wouldn't be counterattacking, he'd be dead).
y has a 4 in 5 chance of hitting x.
y hits (hey, you gotta like the odds).
y does 4 damage +80% due to high morale (alright, we can rescale this during beta-testing 'cause that might be a bit too high).
y actually does 7 damage and x defends 2 hit points due to his fancy roman shield.
x is also standing on a forest which gives +50% to his defense rating.
x defends an additional 1 hit point of damage.
x is down to 6 hit points.

round 2: (part one) x attacks y again...

and so on until one of them (presumably x) is dead. this favors a strongly moraled attacker and bonuses could accrue to the defender based on terrain/fortification/city walls (adding a bonus to the defense rating). the beauty is that more advanced units gain in hit points and defense to the point where even the most veteran phalanx could never have enough of an offensive rating to overcome the natural defense rating of a tank, let alone dent it's hit points enough to kill the tank before the fatal blow is returned. the escalating defense rating of the advanced units would essentially block all the damage of an inferior unit whether or not the unit scored a successful hit and the retribution strike would be so likely to kill with the first successful hit with rising offensive values. even an inexperienced tank unit (which would land a hit only 20% of the time) would eventually kill the phalanx before any hit points could _ever_ be taken off him.

additionally, stacked combat could be resolved unit vs. unit as in smac in this manner with collateral damage confered on the surviving stack members of the losing defender. this system also works exactly the same with artillery, air to ground combat or ship to ship, except that there is no counterattack phase to each round unless the defender (unit y) has a long distance attack (artillery, anti-air or ship based cannon, respectively) as well.

i didn't come up with this myself, it's an amalgam of several different combat systems from other games (not all of them computer strategy titles) and ideas bandied about on different strategy forums, but this could easily be workable into a new civ combat paradigm. the question is whether such a departure would be anathema to the spirit of the whole civ series. but i guess that's up to brian and firaxis to decide.

/willko.

p.s. yin! my god how you've changed and yet stayed the same. it's good to see you've moved onto more constructive pastures. good luck with these brainstorming collations. kudos for the effort. btw, i don't have the same "lurking" philosophy here as on the smac forums for some reason. c'est la vie. eh.
[/lurk mode on]
hmm. this isn't working very well anymore.
[lurk machine sputters and dies]
[lurk machine receives swift kick in the petard]
[/lurk mode resumes for old times sake]

[This message has been edited by willko (edited May 20, 1999).]

[This message has been edited by willko (edited May 20, 1999).]

[Sieve Too]

Whoa! What a large number of posts!

One more wrinkle on the (way) above mentioned idea of radar jammers: decoys and "spoofs". A lot of modern warfare is deception based and electronic and this should be reflected in the game.

Decoys should be incredibly cheap (say, 2 for 10 shields) and have no A/D value at all. For all long range seeing units that are not adjacent to it, decoys look like something dangerous, e.g. Battleships, loaded Transports, Helicopters, etc. Once you move adjacent to it, though, you can see that it's just a decoy but you've now used up most of your units movement points.

Those who have their radars on can be spoofed into believing that a wave of Bombers, or something, is coming at them, when in fact it's just an echo artificially created by a stealthy ship, ground or air unit. It's a tactic that makes you commit your forces away from an actual target. Amusingly, this would have no impact on those WITHOUT radar.

[Stefu]

Only one wish.

MAKE THE NUKES TO HAVE THE EFFECT OF PLANET BUSTERS IN SMAC! I KNOW IT IS UNREALISTIC BUT IT IS SO COOL!

[Jason Beaudoin]

Air Units:

Why not completely automate air units? They only go and bomb a target and come back to base, or defend a city or base, so why not just have them automated? Point to the target and off the go. What do you think?

Unit Visual Qualities:

First... let's not make the same mistake as SMAC. Make sure that a sub looks like a sub and an artilery piece like an artilery piece.

Secondly... would it be possible to have different looking units for different races, much like that of Age of Empires? ...European units that look like European units while the Asian units like Asians, etc?
That would add to the flavour of the game.

Flags:

Can we have real flags? Instead of just colours, can we have flags, that can be possibily edited by the gamer himself? These flags (although small) could be placed on the tops of cities or even in the units themselves. I don't know... this is just an idea. By the way, we should be able to choose which colour we would like instead of being given a default colour.

[JT]

Willko, awesome ideas. The size would definatly make it more realistic(I, too, have sat there yelling at the screen, "One transport is carrying 8 Armors and you can't carry over 8 spies?!?!"). The Air Transport has already been suggested and is popular.

As for the combat model, that's brilliant. It seems strange that marines can take out tanks time and time again when attacking, but when defending, they always lose(unless in a fort on a mountain or something).

I have a few posts that I would like to be copied and directly E-Mailed to BR at the end of June, and your combat model is now one of them.