UNITS (ver. 2.0): hosted by JT3

[Theben]

This fits under 3 categories-units, combat, and radical ideas-so I'll post this at all 3:
I've suggested before-and this would work great with the SMAC workshop-the attack/defense values should be scrapped and replaced with the following: land/air/sea/space (or LASS for short). Both attack and defense would be based off of the appropriate terrain. FE, a phalanx would use it's air rating vs. a fighter (none or low) while the fighter would use it's land rating vs. the phalanx (low to middle for modern units, but still much higher than the phalanx. Also with more hp's and firepower). Reasons:

1) Combat in CIV/SMAC/CtP is on a strategic scale; although tactics are a part of the combat, you don't make those decisions (thankfully). Combat consists of charges, feints, counterattacks, etc., so the idea of attacker & defender on this grand scale is lessened unless the defender is in a fortification of some sort (which can be taken into account).

2)This is regarding SMAC unit construction mostly, but it appears it will be used in civ3. In SMAC combat is resolved by comparing the weapon strength(attacker) vs. the defender's armor. This is ridiculous; the defender's weaponry and the attacker's defenses aren't taken into account but I think anyone would agree that they should.

3)It would work very well with a modified workshop. The player could buy each attack level for each category when the appropriate technology is gained. FE,
Fighter(WWII era): land=low, air=high, sea=low, space=none
Dive bomber: land=medium, air=low/medium, sea=medium/high, space=none
Torpedo bomber: land=low, air=very low, sea=high, space=none
phalanx: land=low/medium, all others=none
musketeers: land=low/medium, all others=none
marines(20th cent): land=medium/high, air=low, sea=none, space=none
Each category would also be divided by their hit points, and the strengths of each would overlap. FE, Ancient units (1 hp) can have a a strength from 1-5 land(approximately). Gunpowder units (hp 2)would have STR's from about 4-7, modern(hp 3) 7-12, etc. The weapons, etc. for the graphics would change when the hp level is selected in the workshop (where the reactor is now).

To differentiate between similar units, such as legions vs. legions, there would be modifiers:
-Terrain, which would apply to both attacker and defender (infantry bonus in cities; horsemen, tanks in open; special units-alpine, marines-in their specialized terrain); forts could count as terrain that only benefits the defender, but allows attackers to retreat easier & defenders less easily
-Morale, social engineering(happy soldiers fight better than unhappy soldiers), & tech bonuses (techs that would give a minor advantage to combat that are otherwise too small for the workshop; i.e. writing, telegraph, satellite mapping).
-The Random Combat Events: RCE represents the things that happen in combat that are unforseen and out of your control. Applied each and every time units engage in combat. Using a scale from 1-100, whereas 1=disaster for the attacker & 100=disaster for the defender. Most of the time results fall in the middle, which has no effect on combat. Other results give a minor bonus to the attacker or defender. Can be modified by military "leader" units & attacks launched from surprise(to be discussed later). Allow a toggle at game start to turn this effect on or off.

[Eggman]

It should be possible to upgrade units. It is annoying to have to replace obsolete units every 50 turns when new technology appears. I think it would be easier just to spend some production and/or cash and upgrade it to the new unit instead of building a new unit and then disbanding the old one.

Really, what is the difference between a phalanx, a legion, a musketeer and mechanized infantry? Basically just equipment and training. The actual soldiers are the same. Same deal with the mounted units. Even with ships, all you are really doing is replacing the ship, not the crew.

What should happen is that when my unit becomes obsolete, I should have to bring the unit back to a city (maybe with a barracks or the appropriate improvement) and refit it. The refit costs LESS than the full cost of the new unit since I don't have to recruit anyone. The unit either keeps its veteran status or is slightly reduced (the troops may be a bit clumsy the first time with their new weapons but they remain well trained soldiers when it comes to keeping their cool).

There may be some exceptions to these upgrades. I can't see how to upgrade cavalry to armor. Those two units are completely different from each other, even though they perform the same role. Perhaps the cavalry could be upgraded to another unit, such as an infantry unit.

[Theben]

Eggman,
I always considered cavalry, i.e. "mounted units" to have their own separate chassis, from infantry, tanks, etc.
The rest sounds good though.

[Ekmek]

A big issue that is often forgotten is command and control. Oddly enought C2 as its called is now the focus in US Army doctrine and is supposed to be decisive in Information Age Warfare. CIV2 sticks to an Industrial Age idea of production and defeat by mass (rarely have I played a game where a small army bats a big one). The information age (in theory) gives small flexible armies an advantage if they have better C2 and can destroy the enemy's C2 nodes (such as in the Gulf War).

CIV3 should have C2 elements because it is to unrealistic and it kind of makes games unbalanced or not practical when you can send Legions around the world and you still can control them (not to mention the supply issue). Leader units should be used for: a morale/leadership bonus/ command and control/ and for stacking (maybe a battle AI). But there needs to by C2 element like how you send your orders which may seem tedious but anyone familiar with military history knows that the means of commo determined a lot of battles and campaigns. This would make it prctical because the same reason the US today can have a global presence and the romans couldn't had to do with C2 (not to mention how the mongols built a world empire but it crumbled because over overstretch, it was to big to C2).

Some units would be towers (Persians and Romans commo'd by fire signals, but it took days to send messages), horse carriers, then later to telegraph, phone, radio, satellites.

This won't add to the tedious but would make it more realistic and challenging and it would be great to intercept enemy messages and figure out there strategy or foul up there plans by intercepting there messages or sending false messages (of course it would be frustrating to be on the other end, but thats a challenge)

[Mikel]

Well I noticed a while back that people where discussing the idea of units needing supply line. Someone even suggested that they may need multiple types of supplies. Personally I feel that is getting a bit complicated but three types of supply types may be workable, rations, fuel, and information.
Any comments?

[Theben]

Mikel,
Read SUPPLY, MOVEMENT, etc. There are many excellent suggestions there.

[Jakester]

I dont know if anyone has talked about this here yet but I think mercenaries should definetly be a part of civ3. I just finished writing about this on general suggestions but I wanted your guys input if u didnt see it. I think they would best be represented in a more realistic type of combat with numbers of soldiers involved instead of just units. Colonization had the units for mercs but I would definetely prefer the more lords of the realm2 type of combat or possibly a scaled down battleground type of map. So Im really askin two questions. Do we want mercs and if we do realistic combat or ctp type combat? Check out my article on the other civ3 section if you want to see a more detailed description of my ideas.Thanks

[Diodorus Sicilus]

The “types of armies” fall into certain recognizable patterns. The current game systems make no provision for “mobilization” - everybody is in uniform or carrying a shield all the time. If we go to a system of raising forces as needed based on an existing pattern or organization, the patterns could be as follows:
1. Civilians in Uniform The army is raised from the population based on who can supply their own weapons and equipment. This is the standard pattern for all barbarian, nomad, and most ancient city states.
2. Paid Professionals The army consists entirely of those who make it their business. This is the Roman legion in the Imperial period. This was also the pattern for the 18th century European armies, based on the fact that the long drill required to make a good musket unit was considered too time-consuming for ‘amateurs’ to have a chance to master it. This is the most expensive army to maintain, because they have to be paid all the time
3. Call Up the Pros The army consists of those who have the weapons and know how to fight in the population, but they are only called up as needed. This is the classic fuedal system, in which knights had (ostensibly) no other profession than to carry arms. Even then, it was usually supplimented by ‘calling up’ a portion of the (amateur) peasentry as footmen. This is slightly less expensive than paying the Pros all the time, but since they have to be supported while they train on their own, it still makes a deeper hole in the economy than any system other than No.2 above.
4. Draft The conscript army consists of Everybody who can possibly serve. However, most of them serve only for a couple of years, then go into the Reserves which can be called up in case of war. This requires a large standing army to train everyone, but allows a huge army to be quickly mobilized from the trained reservists. This is the European system common since 1815, and modifications of it persist in virtually all armies today. By providing a ‘sliding scale’ of % called up and training time, you can adjust the size of the standing army, and reserves available to the economic resources you want to spend on the military. In Democracies the Happiness will also vary (sometimes dramatically) with the % called up each year and the amount of time they have to spend in uniform.

Equipment for the Host is provided by the troops in Systems 1 and 3, must be provided by the State in System 2, and must be provided and stored for the reserves in System 4.

Navies always require more training than armies, but the common system from ancient times to the present day is to have some or even most of the warships ‘laid up’ in peacetime (ancient Athens had Ship Sheds for the triremes in storage). This usually requires a training time when the crews are called up again, which will vary depending on what % can be provided from the Active Navy and what % of the population makes their living on the sea: England had a big advantage for most of the 17th and 18th centuries because she could support a large navy from a large seafaring population: recruiting experienced sailors wasn’t always easy, but it was possible and it’s much easier to train landlubber as naval gunners than to train them as sail handlers.
Therefore, almost all navies will fall into the same patterns as the armies: usually nos 2 or 3.
With the same requirements for specialized training, air forces can be treated like navies: the state provides all the equipment, but the men can be called up or full time: patterns 2 or 3.

So, if most of the military units only exist in wartime, how do I explore? Earliest explorers would be the Warriors/Hunters - wandering after better game or pastures, finding things and people by accident. As soon as Trade is ‘invented’, the Merchant-Adventurer, hot for a new source of goods to trade, becomes the primary explorer. A variant of this is the Prophet or Priest looking for converts to his faith, who will explore for slightly different reasons, and the Conquistador variant who explores looking to conquer the goodies instead of trade for them.
The professional explorer is largely a 19th century invention, but the same effect can be obtained from the earlier Merchants, Priests, and Conquistadors. The neat thing is that based on your Economy and Religion scales, your civ will generate Merchants and Priests to explore automatically - the government at most will subsidize them. Same with Conquistadors, but the militant religious explorer-converter is a phenomenon peculiar to only some religions, so there will have to be some kind of limiting rules, proably based on the type of religion in the civ (proselytizing or not?) to keep everyone from sending out Crusaders, Conquistadors, and other religious fanatics to abuse their neighbors.

[monolith94]

I want a wisconsonite cheesehead unit

[Alexander's Horse]

I would rather build armies and fleets than "units".

[Gregurabi]

(yin -- sorry about starting a new thread. When I tried to reply in this thread the other day, I got syntax errors from the web server. Reposting here.)

Something's always bothered me about the Civilization unit concept. Military units should not be built in factories. Military units are people!

When you wish to build an army for your civilization, you should require people, and you should require weapons and other gear. The people should come from your population (perhaps not a whole "population point" -- that's another strange concept as it stands). The weapons and other materials should be manufactured the way units are currently done. Then in order to actually build an army (what we call a "unit" in the current gaming system), you would have to put the people and the equipment together in a city which has a military training base (similar to a Barracks in Civ1/Civ2 but not identical). The training would require some time -- and the more time you invest in the training, the stronger your army would become.

This is VERY vaguely similar to a concept from Colonization in which your "people" are actually individualized, with different educations (including soldiers), and require guns and/or horses to become fully equipped military units. However, I thought it rather silly that when your mounted units lose a fight, they simply lose their horses and can either fight as a ground unit or go get new horses. *That* idea is right out -- but the
education/training thing is something I liked.

When you take people away from their farms and businesses and put them in the armed forces, you make a trade-off which affects your civilization's prosperity beyond just raw production. I think this is an important consideration which is missing from current Civ games.

(In response to Theben's point in the other thread -- doing this requires a game model in which your city has more "population points" than Civ1/Civ2/CTP cities have. Consider Colonization -- that game is balanced so that you need more population points in order to get the full potential from your cities. You need Lumberjacks to harvest wood, plus Carpenters to convert the wood to "hammers". You need Miners to harvest ore, and Blacksmiths to convert the ore into "picks". The "hammers" and "picks" are used to produce new buildings, guns, etc. So instead of having two citizens working land tiles as per Civ1/Civ2, you need about 4 citizens in Colonization to get rougly the same kind of effect. So your cities have twice as many population points, and therefore losing a population point to produce a military unit doesn't hurt as much. I rather liked this.)

[Scooter]

I posted this response to your idea on the other thread. Here it is again so others can comment one way or the other.

This sounds exactly like Lords of the Realm II. Basically, you chose what weapons to produce, depepnding on what resources you have, and then you can build an army using those weapons and people from the populous.
It was good for that game because it did not require too much micromanagement in the strategy portion of the game. You could afford to micromanage your military. I do not like the idea of incorporating this into Civ3 however. Civ is a strategy game, not a military simulation. Micromanaging my cities is fine. Micromanaging my Civ is fine. Please, please don't make me micromanage my military down to the unit and equipment. As the ruler of my empire, I simply say "Make me some tanks" and it get's done. I don't say "Make some tank bodies, 2 treads, a bunch of wheels, a turret, a 105mm gun, a small arms gun, find some men, train them, etc, etc."

"Shields" are supposed to incorporate all the resources. Timber, steel, coal, etc. If Civ3 comes out and we have to divide shield production into different resources, then refine that resource into a semi-finished good, then ship it to a factory where it combines with other goods just to make a gun that is then shipped to yet another factory to finally build the tank, I'll go nuts. If I wanted that, I'd play Industry Giant, or something like that.

Civ is a strategy game, not a manufacturing simulation. Like I said before, when I want a tank, I simply say "Make me a tank". Period. It is assumed that that order goes down the pipeline to the appropriate underlings who do what it takes to make it happen. I am god. What I say goes. I do not want to be an underling. I'm already one of those in real life.

Your other idea is workable and realistic in my opinion. But to do it we have to define how many people are represented in a Population and how many troops are represented by a unit. I believe a Pop is 10,000 people. If a unit represents 10,000 soldiers (or pieces of equipment with soldiers), then it stands to reason that a Pop would be subtracted for every unit you create. This would cause many problems. Pop would decrease way too fast in times of war. So if we adjust a military unit down to 1,000 people, then we run into fractional Pops. Do you want this? I don't think I do, but that is what these threads are for, right?


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"BEEFCAKE, BEEFCAKE!!!

-E. Cartman

[Mind Elemental]

I think having some different resources is a good idea- it differentiates between the wood & cloth for a man-o-war and the steel, electronics, fuel, etc. for a tank. Civ III can simply use the Imperialism system (tools, lumber, arms, hardware, steel, etc.) - not too many resources to confuse things, and a great many of them can be trimmed nyway.

[Theben]

I posted an idea elsewhere that resources would be visible on the map-wood, oil, iron, uranium, etc. (not every resource would be, just the big ones). If the resource was in your territory, you could use it at all your cities, if not, you'll have to trade or conquer for it. Keeps it simple, Stanley.

[Theben]

RE: loss of pop when build military unit,

I've changed my position, I'm now against it. Why? Because some things civ doesn't and cannot represent. Most of those military personnel would be working at civilian tasks for the majority of their existence, either working in the fields during serfdom or moving on to public/private service after 4-6 years in modern times. Either case has little impact on a region's(city's) production & pop levels. This isn't possible to model with units that remain in existance for hundreds of years.