UNITS (ver. 2.0): hosted by JT3

[Chowlett]

I've posted this before, but I haven't seen it in a summary, so I'll post it again.

Upgrading units is fine, so long as it's kept sensible. For example, IMHO it's ridiculous to be able to upgrade a unit to better armour, on the discovery of Iron working for example, while it's out in the field. Where did it get the iron armour from? I say that a unit needs to be in a city (or as someone else suggested, a city with a barracks) for at least 1 turn.

Alternatively, I say a unit should be able to upgrade after defeating a higher technology unit, to represent the spoils of war idea - I beat you, now that you're dead, I'll have your armour and this new-fangled gun, kind of thing. To mediate the power you could gain through this, I suggest that a new weapon (not armour) should either be taken only if it makes sense to the unit (give a swordsman a bigger sword, but not a bow and arrow), or should be used at a slightly reduced effectiveness for a while until the unit works out exactly how to use it to the best effect.

[The Brain]

These units could be under called "Religious" units:
Witch Doctor- The early religious leader of your city. He is a temporary "temple" until you build the real temple. Once the temple is built it he will lead it. He will keep the citizens happy partially. Can not move out of city.
Preist (Mysticism)- Once you discover the advance in the parantheses the witch doctor is converted and works in the temple double time doubling his effect on the city. Also cannot move out of city until Polytheism is discovered.
Guru (Polytheism)- About the same thing with the previous unit except they can move and convert enemy units making them part of your civ, but it has zero attack and defense. Coversion is not always absolute.
Bishop (Monotheism)-Same things as previous
unit but has the ability to preach to an enemy city and cause a revival in the city making the people join your civ out of faith in your religion. Has somewhat defense power due to people following him in faithfulness to him. Doubles effect of cathedral.
"Jesus" (Fundamentalism)- NOT really God! Everyone thinks he is God and will die for him. Therefore he can covert cities almost easily. Makes whole city happy. Only with Fundamentalist government. Has a good defense since LOTS of people following them and will fight for him.

[Theben]

Brain,
I hope your kidding.

[Theben]

These are my ideas from the old "Units" thread, with some changes:

There is a single chassis type for air.

"Special options" are used for variation.

Air units with a range of 1 are bombers (in this case, range is a function of the domain
of the unit). Any air unit with a range higher than 1 has fighter capability.

"Biplanes", "Advanced Planes", "Jets" are all special options. Older options cannot attack
newer ones, but may be attacked by them.

"brigade" is an option (that I'd like) for all chassis, which greatly lowers the cost & hit
points of a unit. Should all air units be required to have this?

Regular bombers, fighters are the default. "Heavy Bomber" is a special option, which has
certain bonuses, penalties, and missions:

1)Bombard-Air unit selects a single unit to bombard. Heavy bombers damage all units in
square, regardless of country or city/fort(city/fort units take less damage). May reduce
city pop.(% chance) w/ or w/o walls. Concealed units may not be attacked. "Biplanes"
have only this mission and support-intercept.

2)Scorched earth: In city, attempts to damage buildings &/or severely reduce
population. May attempt to target specific structures at a greater risk of failure. In
country, pillages terrain. Heavy bombers do considerably more damage (regular bombers
would do minimal damage). Laser-targeting, possibly other adv. tech (satellite
mapping?) will increase chances of success.

3)Interdict-Heavy bombers only. Affects a single square; any unit(friend or foe) in or
attempting to pass through square is attacked by the bomber & costs triple move to
enter & leave.

4)Air support-Intercept: All air units have a radius of operation=1/2 total move of unit
in civ2/SMAC (for example). Players can send air units to support stacked ground
combat in this radius; the air unit acts as artillery in the combat (ships could also do
this if within bombardment range, btw). The air attacks with bombard, and may attack
any enemy unit on the battlefield (certain other units may intercept you, either in air or
on ground). Fighters/bombers attack a unit. Heavy bombers attack all enemy units in
combat or all units in reserve (enemy units in square but not in combat). Concealed
units may not be attacked.
Intercept is a command given to an air unit. It performs the same as above outside
that civs turn, like a sentry command. It would be necessary to allow the human player
to choose whether or not they wished to intercept, FE if they expected it would be
better to use it later. Fighters generally intercept bombers in this fashion, but may lend
"support" vs. an "intercepting" bomber.

5)Tactical nuke; bio/chem warfare: Missions for jets only, that cause diplomatic
atrocities. Their effects I'll leave to others.

Air units return to a base on same turn as completing mission. Because of this, bombard
missions may only be intercepted in your turn but since interdiction is an ongoing
mission, it may be attacked (by sending a fighter to the interdicted square) in other
players' turns.

"Heavy bombers" suffer from having expensive air STR's, and may not have a range
greater than 1.

[Depp]

I have though about leaders...
Why not have headquarters instead, that contribute to each and every units fighting capabillity in a certain radio? Like in the WW2 boardgames... That would make more sense than leaders really. The HQ coudl give a +25% attack and defence bonus or movement bonus (at least one).

Leaders could still be used, like there is a 1% chance every turn that a unique (very good) leader emerges, and he stays like 20-40 years /whatever that means in turns for the moment. He will double the effectivness of the HQ or grant other benefits.

Maybe one should limit the amount of leaders a civ could gain in a game to like 10 in total, so you don´t have to find that much names and stuff

What do you all say?

[The Brain]

What do you mean? I think it's a good idea! I would like to take over cities without any destruction. That goes same with taking over units.

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Acctually I'm a genetically altered lab mouse plotting to take over the world!

[Alexander's Horse]

I would like to have a leader figure, as posted above. The main reason is that I find the game a bit impersonal/lacking in drama. Its a bit like chess without a king at the moment - its one major weakness (IMHO).

[Flavor Dave]

Brain--yeah, it would be cool if diplomats and spies could incite revolts in enemy cities, or bribe enemy units, much like your priests would convert.

Oh wait, they already can do that...do you see his point now?

[Jon Miller]

Hello all

I think that building units should take down population in respect to the size of the unit, but I am not really sure how this could be carried out as of yet

one idea that I have is that cities that are producing units take man power from a national group of population reserved for that purpose (and disbanding a troop would add the disbanded strength to the stockpile)

and one could also move from the stockpile to any city with national or regional government structure or any city connect to one by roads, railroads or the like that are free of enemy zoc and the same method is used when removing a population point to go into that stock pile

the amount of people that went to make that population point (in civ2 the first was 10000 the next 20000, etc.) would go into your stockpile

this would realistically give the edge in combat to those civilizations that are larger

then that national stockpile, which would be divided evenly between the (or as dictated by the social engineering choices) between the cities of national and regional government (for the occasion of one of those cities being blocaded from the rest), would be used to form the units

(maybe something like the courthouse would denote regional government and the palace would of course denote national government)

each type of unit would require different ammounts of people depending on the social settings and technolgy and type of unit

a city (or regional or national government or a city connected to one by an unbroken, by enemy zoc, road) would then pay the production price to train and equip that unit

there would be technology that would change the available organization choices allowing for larger groups to work together and thus units that are larger, a good example of this would be the radio

each like 1000 combat strength (number subject to debate) would be represtented in the game by like 10 hp

an alternate idea is to have the respective particpants of a battle have their respective combat strenth taken down by the largest common denominator and then the ratio used as their respective hps for that battle

combat strength would be found by taking the whole size of the unit and subtracting a precentage that reflects medicine tech level, organization tech level, organization type, terrain type and army(ies) type

for example a settler unit would be cheap to build but would take a lot of population away from your stockpile, which would make sense

some examples of combat strength modifications:

in jungle more people would be sick - less combat size
if medicine is better less people are sick - greater combat size
in ancient times there was often a lot of people who did not engage in combat who traveled with the troop - less combat strength

also, for those units who work the land, the time factor for finishing the work would be related to the combat size, showing that larger groups of people can get more done

this idea would also take care of that strange occurance in civ2 where a settler that takes you down a million population works the same as one that takes you down 20 thousand

this idea would also but more ballance into the game by making big cities more worthwhile and go against the strategy of producing thousands of small cities (my favorite strategy)

please comment, this is just one page of my ideas and I have many more, but this post is getting a little long

Jon Miller

[Ekmek]

I like the population cost of units idea it is more realistic and it makes it more challenging. I makes you think about what your priorities are. Maybe some units should have a life expectancy/ service expiration of # of turns too (should be an optional feature or editable in the units editor) that way we can upgrade easier or deal with challenges like the US military does today of trying to keep people in and trying to get people to sign up (Rome had this problem at one point too).
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by E (edited July 06, 1999).]</font>

[Ekmek]

I'm still for the leaders as units and have random occurences (like special leaders rising from the ranks, and it would work good to have revolutionaries as a new type of barbarian). Headquarters could be a technological development because in the ancient days the leader was a participant and also one of the decisive points on the battlefield. I still think leaders should have a command and control range too, so you can only activate units in there range (instead of having rogue legions walk around they need leadership and a way for you to communicate to those leaders)

Unfortunately revolutions and revolts in the cities is done too simplisticly in civ, you really can't wage an insurgency or a counterinsurgency low-intensity type of war (if i could think of a way i would suggest it, give me time ). that would add more to special ops and leaders and go to a suggestion I had in the COMBAT thread which is to diversify war because Civ sticks to a really basic view of warfare (conventional mostly and try to take the cities, not really what military history was about).

I love the "have resources availlable on the map" idea (kinda like Age of Empires) but make it include horses and elephants and livestock (the native americans didn't have horses until europe brought them and the elephant story is the same) this would make it more challenging to build units and give a cultural feel too. (this should be mentioned in the terrain thread I'll lend my support there too).

Brain: I'm not a big fan of your religious units, they are represented. The "jesus" idea really killed it, maybe if you atleast tried the term "martyr" it might not have seem too out there.

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"He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man."
- Dr. Johnson, from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

[Theben]

Norton anti-freeze my a**... Okay 2nd time:

Brain,
Flav Dave has a point. Spies are already powerful enough; any unit more powerful than a vet spy is not something I want. Actually I want LESS units overall, and spies should be abstracted to a espionage screen. The only single person unit I want is a generic military "leader".
My point was that religion has been a touchy topic here. Just check out the "Real Religions in civ3?" thread in the Suggestions forum. Even after I tried to explain my position I received negative responses. So care is called for when discussing religion. And the "Jesus" unit really turned me off, although I wasn't crazy about the rest anyway.

Jon Miller & E,
I'm still against units causing pop reductions, for the above reasons (7/3 post).

Actually the Native Americans had horses before the Europeans & Asians. Unfortunately for them, they didn't domesticate them but instead hunted them to extinction, while others migrated to Asia, then to Europe. In case you wanted to know.

[Jon Miller]

my next post

topic: settlers (or the like)

there should be settlers like in civ that improve the terrain

the biggest reason for this instead of public works is that public works does not make sense in military situations

One thing I hated in call to power is that I could not send a settler to build forts, railroads, roads, and airports when fighting in enemy territory

I always in civ send settlers or engineers for an attacking army

of course you should be able to build stuff in enemies land whenever you want (that is the reason they have that limitation there) but you should also sometimes be able to and that distinction can only be had with a unit

also if one civilization is invading another the defending civilization should not be able to improve at their own leasure, no, the invader should be able to destroy the improvers

this of course leaves the tiring mircomanagement of improving during peace with settlers

this can be solved, as I see it, in either of the following ways (maybe both):

have a competent auto ai with a lot of choices to choose from like farm and road only or road only between cities or improve only in a certain city radius or improve only within the bounds I set (which would then be set by clicking certain points that have a line connecting then and ending when you click the original point), of course this would be devided into different sections such as what improvements do I make and a lot of choices (multiple ones can be picked such as: mine mountains, mine hills, irrigate plains, road plains) and then a seperate section of where do I make them and a lot of choices (such as the bounds choice or the city radius choice or the road between cities choice) and finally there would be a third section with special choices like as soon as a foreign unit moves within seeing radius alert and then when such a thing occured you would get a message at the beginning of your turn asking if you want the unit to cancel action or continue on auto

long paragraph

an alternate idea (or maybe both should be included) would be to give each settler a building queue that would show you the order of their jobs, where their jobs are to be done (the location numbers and maybe if you click on that entree it shows a picture of that square and moves your cursor there), and what they (the settler) are going to do there

as I mentioned previously in the units thread, the time it takes to do an improvement project should be a factor of the size of that unit but this idea would only work if my size idea was accepted

settlers should be able to be protected by small armed attachments that are hooked with the unit, modern settler type units would have guns with them providing some defense, their unit in actual combat would have a large subtraction because of its type (if my size idea is used)

canals and terrain changing as well as bridges and tunnels should be possible, maybe not as drastic of height changing as smac though

Jon

[Jon Miller]

I think my idea for size would work, Theuben, and especially in ancient times the ammount of troops gone for war was significant, and by the way, I assume that over time, just like in civ, people leave the army as they grow older and join the work force and people leave the work force and join the army, thats what that miliatry service thing was all about, the farther the troop was from the civilizations cities, the longer it was before people where transfered back into society and the longer the time of military service, my pool of avaiable people would ba a constantly shifting party of the young, like those available for the draft


Jon

[Flavor Dave]

"Unfortunately revolutions and revolts in the cities is done too simplisticly in civ, you
really can't wage an insurgency or a counterinsurgency low-intensity type of war (if i could think of a way i would suggest it, give me time."

I do this now. I do it when an AI is tired of me buying his cities and goes democracy. Lay siege to his cities, to starve them and deprive them of arrows. Build tons o' spies, and either have them randomly destroy buildings, or go after the money and happiness stuff. It's really fun when you see that a city is paying for improvements that cost way more than the revenue it's generating, b/c you've destroyed the bank and marketplace. Also, destroying the happiness stuff forces either revolt (and no revenue) or an increase in luxuries.

Also, remember that in demo, each unit needs a sheild of support. Occupy all mined hills and buffaloes, and watch the enemy city go from producing 15 shields to 5. It's gonna take a while to build that factory now, ain't it?

"I like the population cost of units idea it is more realistic and it makes it more challenging."

Wrong on both points. It isn't realistic, unless the population model is radically changed. The US has a huge military, yet it's a speck compared to our total pop.

2nd, it wouldn't be more challenging, it would be easier. You understand the power of we love days, and the computer doesn't. So, late in the game, you're going to have vastly larger pop. than the AIs. That would mean that the AIs couldn't support a huge military, and you could. Using your idea, as long as I survive to build the SoL, it's all over. I go demo, go we love to get a huge pop., then build an unmatchable military.

We love already is unbalancing toward the human; it will get worse under your idea.