UNITS (ver. 2.0): hosted by JT3

[wesley32]

Theben, I agree with everything your saying.
But about Japan, there is another side to the story. Their was no way they could stop our forces yet they still refused to "wave the white flag." We even warned them of the severe penality they would pay with they continued to refuse surrendering. And it's not like the U.S. was invading Japan for power or economic gain. We were trying to stop their manifest. Japan was in the wrong.
Had we not been invading for a just cause and still used nukes, it would have been different.

[Theben]

wesley32, I've studied Japanese history quite a bit. The Japanese did surrender, it was just not an "unconditional" surrender. They had one condition, leave the emperor alone. To many Japanese the dropping of 2 bombs, especially the 2nd 2 days after the 1st, was morally wrong.

[Tornado7]

Ok, I was thinking about the concept of the general unit the other day-
For each "era" of a civ, you would get two or three general units, with the option to build more after you got a tactics advance for the tech level. Then you could use it to enhance the attack/defense power of an army or unit.
This brings me to another point: Stacked units should be destroyed one-by one.
While I know everyone loves taking out a dozen computer units with one guy, it's not realistic. Think about it- If the Germans had the entire Western Army group on the Normandy shores when the Allies invaded, do you think the invasion would have succeded? Air attacks could destroy an entire stack, but ground attacks shouldn't. This also makes it a helluva lot easier to move an army group into attack range of a city.

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Truth is stranger than fiction, and people are weirder than both.

[Theben]

Tornado7,
This has been covered in the COMBAT thread. If you don't see anything similar to what you suggest, then post your idea.

[wesley32]

Theben,
there is something wrong with this picture.
I respect your opinion. Everyone is entitled to there own opinion. Here is mine:
Hitler invades all of Europe with a plan to
eventually rule the world, massacres millions of Jews, Japan ALLIES with him, destroys China, and massacres 1000's of Chinese, and you're telling me what America did was morally wrong??? That doesn't hold water. The Japanese emperor is who called the shots, and he was responsible for Japan's part in the war. Where I come from, we hold people responsible for their actions. "If you do the crime, you must do the time."

[Theben]

wesley,
What I've been telling you is that many JAPANESE think what America did was morally wrong. My opinion isn't in there. After all, did the bombs kill the emperor? The Japanese high command? Or thousands of civilians, which is incidentally what you accuse Japan of doing to China?
If you wish to continue this arguement, please create a post in the off-topic forums, and I'll answer any questions you have. Mean while, back to your original question:

"Their definitely needs to be penalties, specifically diplomatic, but should they last forever?"

Which is a good question, btw; one I've been questioning myself. Obviously my answer is yes, but more importantly should the atrocity penalty remain at the same level? In this case, I'll answer no. The above being a good example. America hated the Japanese for the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, and a very few still hold a grudge, but not enough to really affect diplomacy in any way. The Japanese, however, are just recently starting to question whether or not the 2 nuclear attacks were necessary, and this may have some diplomatic bearing for game purposes. China & Korea also have grudges with Japan, for many reasons. So what are the factors to determine how long a grudge remains? Is it type of govt? Type of economy? Is it proximity to the other nation? Does a long history of mutual antagonism count? Or is it simply the sins of a generation die with it?

[wesley32]

Theben,
I agree, no more about that subject. On to Civ III. The diplomatic penalty probably should be slighty randomized but it should mostly depend on any agreements after the war. If not agreement is reached, hostility should go on forever. If a cease fire is reached, maybe severe hostility remains for 20-30 turns??? Peace treaty - 15-20 turns??? Also, something that should be thrown into the equation is : were nukes used to attack a country or were you attacked first and used for retaliation. Retaliation shouldn't be as severe. Also, it should be less severe if the existence of your civilization was on the line (your only hope of surviving is using nukes for defense.) Just some ideas.

[Ekmek]

Nukes - besides eliminating population and military units, city improvements need to be destroyed too (I didn't see it mentioned but it might have). As far as diplomacy it should affect your REPUTATION (of course in civ3 reputation should be modified a bit, the consequences of an atrocious reputation had no real effect, in Civ3 it shoold affect trade and science too!).

Military Units and Population -
Flavor Dave, the US has an army of half a million that is not a huge army. But i see your point in how people can get a huge army with a huge population and beat down the computer, but that's life, even in civ3 science and money go up with a huge population too. I saw get rid of the "we love days" and add some disasters to poulation like epidemics too.



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"All great things must first wear terrifying and monstrous masks in order to inscribe themselves on the hearts of humanity."
- Nietzche

[Jon Miller]

I would just like to say that none of the rest of the world treated what we did to Japan as an attrocity, therefore it is not always correct to have global reprucussions. Our allies were still our allies and none of the neutrals declared war on us. I think that the antinuke feeling and the making of nukes as taboo did not occur until after the 50s or 60s when worldwide cultural forces (starting in th US) asked countries to be responsible with them. For gameplay reasons I think that the antinuke thing should be a result of certain social standings. At this point, I think if US government launched a nuke there would be internal strife no matter how just the cause was, the same for many other western nations (and ruusia). These would be the same nations that would react very negatively if someone else used a nuke (if it was not on them). Any nation that a nuke is used on should be mad at the nation that nuked it but it should be a function of civilian loss in addition to the fact of use. The same could go for bio and chem weapons. There should also be a voting thing in the UN to globaly disallow nukes and the like.

It should not work ala smac, A nukes you, B and C (your allies) do nothing, you nuke A, B and C cancel alliance and declare war on you.

Is this the place for this conversation?

Jon Miller

[Guest]

I have a feeling the units in CivIII will be much like those in Alpha Centauri or CtP, meaning they are 3D animated (even if they're really sprites). I like these animated units, but the one disadvantage is that when making a scenario or something, I can't make my own units, whereas in CivII I could at least attempt to shrink a picture or draw a new unit freehand.

For CivIII, whether Sid decides to use the chassis concept or the stand-alone unit concept, I hope the CD can provide extra 3D units that a player can use to his liking, (extra units not normally found in the game). So even if during the regular game there will still only be Stealth Fighters and a regular helicopter, maybe a 3D unit of other fighters and an Apache can be included on the CD, since if the units are 3D, the user has no hope of ever creating his own chassis or models for use in scenarios, etc.

[Diodorus Sicilus]

Here's a summary of how I'd like to see Air Units work in CivIII. The ideas are culled from other posts by various folks on this and other Threads, old board games (especially the Europa series), The Dupuy HERO Institute's studies of Close Air Support, and my own experience (US Army) of 'friendly' close air support. Here goes...
Air units will move within a single turn, flying a Mission and returning before the next turn begins. Parts of your Air Units’ actions may take place during an enemy turn, and all such air units will return to a base in a separate sequence after all other movement has been completed for the turn.
Therefore, air units will not have a speed or movement factor that is separate. Speed is part of the Combat (Attack/Defense) factor for the given aircraft. The range of the aircraft is the distance it can move within the turn, and this can vary even for the same type of aircraft:
At very short ranges, some aircraft can fly multiple missions, multiplying their effective attack factor against ground targets, and the number of attacks they could make against air targets.
At medium and long ranges, multiple-engined bomber or transport aircraft can trade payload for fuel, extending the range at the expense of ground attack factor. At short ranges, these aircraft get extra ground attack factors by loading more bombs/ordinance in place of fuel.
Some, probably most, aircraft units will have multiple missions possible. The possible missions, whch can be displayed in a single ‘pull down’ menu for each air unit, are:
1. Ground Support
Air unit takes part in whatever attack the indicated friendly ground unit(s) take part in. This can be either as attacking or defending units. The effectiveness of the air support depends on development of Communications and Tactical Doctrine as well as aircraft and ordinance. The air attack is treated as a Bombardment preliminary to the computation of the ground combat results.
2. Interdiction
one or more map tiles are indicated, and the air unit attacks any (enemy) unit attempting to move through that tile during the rest of the turn (until the beginning of your next turn). This mission lasts until the air unit is shot down or forced away by enemy action, or until the beginning of the next friendly turn. The most common result of these attacks is to slow down movement through the tile/square, but with sufficiently advanced and powerful air units, damage can also be inflicted on moving ground units.
3. Bombing
Air unit flies to an indicated tile/square and makes a Bombardment attack against an indicated target in that square. The types of Bombing attack are:
Carpet Bombing the air unit attacks ground units in the square. A specific ground unit cannot be selected: if there is more than one, the one attacked is semi-random, in that it depends on which one the air unit is likely to spot. In order of difficulty from hardest to spot to easiest, the ground units would be: Spy/Scout/Diplomat; Settler/Engineer; Infantry; Caravan/Freight; Cavalry/Mounted unit; Mech/Armor unit.
Strategic Bombing the air unit attacks a square with Improvements or a city. Only after certain Advances (Targeting Radar, Photo Reconnaissance?) can specific Improvements or city features be targeted, and the chance of damaging a specific target is very low, of destroying it outright even lower (with conventional weapons: Cruise Missiles/Smart Bombs increase those chances dramatically).
Air Superiority the air unit attacks airfields or airbases in the square to render it temporarily unusable or permanently demolished. If successful, enemy air units flying from that airfield/airbase may also be damaged or destroyed by the attack.
4. Air Superiority Sweep
Air unit flies a ‘patrol range’ equal to a percentage of its total range. This is extended from its airfield/airbase as a radius of action. During the entire period until your next turn, it attacks any enemy air unit that attempts to enter that radius.
A variant of this, for air units with Naval Attack or Anti-Submarine Special Capabilities (see next post) is the Naval Patrol in which the unit will ‘patrol’ a similar area over water, looking for enemy ships or submarines and attacking them as they attempt to move through the area.
5. Air Transport
Air unit moves a ground unit from one airbase/airfield to another, or transports Paratroop-capable unit(s) to their drop zone. The transported ‘unit’ can include Supplies, either transported or air-dropped to keep an otherwise-isolated ground unit(s) in action.
6. Escort
Air unit flies with other air units making Bombing, Interdiction,Transport, or Ground Attack and attacks any enemy air unit attempting to make an attack on them.
Putting It All Together:
In a sample turn, say you have 6 air units: 3 multiple-power plant ‘bomber’ types, and 3 single-powerplant ‘fighters’. During your turn, you’ve moved a stack (‘army’) of ground units to attack an enemy stack. You pull down the menu for two of the bombers, which are stacked (‘based’) on the same airfield, and select Ground Support. When you put your pointer on the air units, a faint blue line appears leading from the airfield to the target tile/square you select. If the airfield was very close to the target, you might have the option of selecting 2 targets for the air units in the same turn, reflecting the fact that they can ‘turn around’ faster and fly multiple missions. You select Interdiction for the other bomber, and select the tile directly behind the enemy unit(s) being attacked - interdiction against retreating units is much, much more effective, like a ground pursuit on the Battle Screen. For the three ‘fighters’, you select Air Superiority Sweep for two of them, and their icons on the map are surrounded by a faint blue halo, indicating that they are ‘on alert’. For the last fighter, you select Escort and place your pointer on the Bomber units to be escorted. A blue halo apears around that fighter as well.
You then move the ground stack into combat. The bombers automatically fly Bombardment against the same stack, the one fighter flies with them, and the last bomber flies to the Interdiction square and remains there, surrounded by the blue halo that indicates that it is ‘in the air’. It will remain there until it is attacked by an enemy air unit, shot down by SAMs, or the beginning of your next turn, when it will return to its airfield/air base. Enemy flying aircraft are not visible until they attack or are attacked by your Air Superiority/Escort fighters.

[Diodorus Sicilus]

Air Units and the Design Workshop.
Assuming that CivIII uses a SMAC-type Design or construction workshop for units, air units would have the following components:
Chassis:
Airframe
Size of the airframe would depend on the construction technology and the propulsion technology available. Size in turn would affect the attack and defense factors, transport capability, special mission capabilities, and range.
Airframe types:
Wood & Wire the classic ‘biplane’ configuration. This is limited in capacity, and can mount no more than 2 powerplants.
Metal Monocoque WWII style: this can mount up to 4 powerplants and much more capacity for cargo, bomb load, etc. This requires Light Alloy (Aluminum), which is in turn a product of Hydoelectricity, since aluminum smelting is a high-energy process.
Composite Alloy Modern style: this can make best use of Jet and Rocket propulsion systems and can also be used for primitive Space Launch vehicles. It can mount up to 4 powerplants. This requires Composite Materials processing.
Propulsion
There are only three basic propulsion types for airframes: internal combustion, jet, and rocket. There are lots of ‘add ons’ that could modify them: rotary engines, supercharged engines, afterburners, etc., but I’m not certain that we want to get into that much detail in a strategic game. Instead, change the capacity of the propulsion type based on the airframe it’s mounted in, and we’ll have effectively 7 - 9 propulsion types - that should be enough for everyone.
Internal Combustion - a byproduct of Automobile? This is the earliest air 'powerplant' propulsion, and can be used with all types of airframes.
Jet - This can only be mounted in Metal Monocoque and Composite Alloy airframes. Allows both increased capabilities in attack and defense and range. Has extra defense and attack factor against Internal Combustion aircraft. Unmanned airframe with this propulsion is the Cruise Missile.
Rocket - this can only be mounted in Metal Monocoque and Composite Alloy airframes. As a manned craft, has limited capabilities but as an unmanned unit, becomes the ICBM or IRBM missile with very long range and high capacity payload.
Armament
The attack and defense factor of air units depends partially on the capability of the airframe-propulsion system combination, which reflect the aircraft’s speed in combat, maneuverability, ceiling, climb and dive and its stability as a bombing or firing platform. Thus, the actual weapons carried are only part of the final ‘number’ in the air or ground attack factor and defense factor against air or ground fire.
Air Weapons:
Machineguns
Machine Cannon
Guided Missiles
Infared Homing
RADAR Homing
Beam Riding
Only Machineguns can be effectively carried by Wood & Wire airframes. Each weapon has a Weight factor attached to it, and the number ‘loaded’ onto the airframe and propulsion combination will affect the other factors of the air unit. A heavily-armed single-engine ‘fighter’ may actually have a lower air attack factor than a more lightly armed, and therefore faster and more maneuverable, fighter unit. Missiles are particularly heavy, and will be effectively impossible for a single internal combustion propulsion system to carry.
Air to Ground Weapons:
Iron Bombs
Guided Bombs
Air to Ground Rockets
Guided Missiles
‘Smart’ Ordinance
Iron Bombs and Air to Ground Rockets can be carried by any airframe/propulsion system combo, although the rockets are heavier (for the amount of damage done). Guided Bombs and Guided Missiles, both as air-ground and air-to-air weapons, require the same set of Tech Advances. ‘Smart’ Ordinance is a development of Guided Ordinance requiring Computers, Miniaturization, or possibily an AI advance.
Special Capabilities:
a. RADAR
Ground Attack
Air Attack
Air Defense
Ground Attack radar allows ground attack during foul weather, increasing the attack factor against all ground targets. Air Attack allows higher attack factors against enemy aircraft when flying Escort or Air Superiority missions. Defense Radar allows better defense factor against missiles (including SAMs) and other aircraft.
b. Naval Attack
It requires special equipment and training to attack ships from the air. This reflects those realities. Air units without this can still attempt to attack ship units, but with a very low probability of success.
c. Anti-Submarine
This is a particularly heavy Special, since it involves RADAR, towed SONAR array, depth charges, etc. It dramatically increases the chance of the air unit spotting a submarine, because it no longer has to rely on ‘chancing’ on it while it's surfaced, and also dramatically increases the chance of destroying it by air attack.
d. Air Drop
This allows the air unit to carry and drop paratroops or to air drop supplies
e. ECM
This gives the air unit a ‘counterattack’ factor against SAMs. It provides the possibility of the air unit destroying the SAM instead of vice versa.
f. Stealth
This is available only to Composite Alloy airframes. It greatly increases the defense factor of the air unit against all missile attacks and negates the effects of all enemy RADARs.
g. Nuclear Capable
It takes special fittings to carry and use nuclear weapons. This gives the air unit that capability. If they are included, a similar Special Capability would also be required to load and dissiminate Biological or Chemical Weapons from an air unit.

Putting it All Together:
You’ve got Metal Monocoque airframe technology and Internal Combustion propulsion systems. You decide to ‘design’ two basic air units: a single-engine fighter and a heavy bomber.
You select the air frame and a single power plant. The minimum Weight for the air frame to carry that powerplant is displayed. You select a range of 10 and the weight goes up (fuel, tanks, more air frame weight). You select Machine Cannon for armament and 4 for the number. The weight goes ‘way up, the displayed Attack and Defense Factor go down, and you realize you’ve just overloaded your power-airframe combination. Drop the Machine Cannon to 1, add Iron Bomb and a BombLoad (100, 500, 1000, 2000, etc). The resulting compromise looks much better. Reducing the range would give you more armament combinations to play with, while a very short range (Interceptor) would allow heavier armament or a very high defense factor (maneuverability- hard to hit).
For the bomber, you select 4 powerplants, Range 25, 10 Machine Guns, and Iron Bomb with a Load of 4000. The resulting Air Attack Factor is lousy (it’s obviously NOT a fighter!), but the Air Defense Factor is much higher and the Ground Attack factor is also high. Being a +2 powerplant machine, the defense factor is not based on maneuverability, but firepower and airframe weight. The Ground Attack factor will also suffer when flying Interdiction missions, because the aircraft is very vulnerable when flying low to attack enemy units. You add a few points to the airframe weight (armor). If you add too much, you’ll get a red message saying indicating that you’ve overloaded the airframe-propulsion system combination, and either bomb load, armament, or range will have to change.
You don’t have any Special Capabilities for either air unit, but you could sacrifice other factors on either one for them. Since most of the Special Capabilities weigh a lot, they seriously handicap the earlier airframe/propulsion system combinations: better wait until you’ve got Jet engines and Composte Alloys to play with.
Finally, under each final icon of the air unit is a screen to type in the designation (game may provide sample Designations based on the Civ, but not all civs ever got to have air forces, so this will be tricky) for the new air unit: B-10, Fw-200, P-26, Yak-3U, Flying Fortress, Spitfire, Ruptured Duck, etc
Within the parameters of the system, you can ‘trade off’ range, ground attack, air attack, air defense, or special capabilities according to the needs of your civilization.
If your needs change, you can go back to the Workshop and redesign the air unit. This will result in a displayed cost to convert/re-equip each similar air unit already in service, and a time required before the first of the new equipment is ready to issue. After that date, you will get a number of air units that can be converted each turn and the cost. Conversion is automatic when you select the air unit and pay, but the number converted per turn is limited by your production capacity and the number of new air units you also have in the Production Queue at the same time. Re-equipment that involves changes in types of airframe and/or propulsion system will probably require some time to implement, because they will include time required to retrain air and ground crews, set up new support and maintenance systems, etc.
NOTE: Converting directly to Composite Alloy Jets from wood & wire biplanes could take quite a few years, no matter how fast you can build the aircraft themselves!
This system will allow Upgrading, but reflect the real time and cost constraints on re-equipping the entire air force all at once, without requiring you to laboriously ‘build’ new air units to replace those already in service. By ‘hiding’ the retraining and re-equipping all in the same cost & time figure, the advantage of re-equipping existing units instead of building new ones is reflected, while the gamer is still restricted realistically from apparently blowing out thousands of aircraft in a single turn.

[Flavor Dave]

"Flavor Dave, the US has an army of half a million that is not a huge army. But i see
your point in how people can get a huge army with a huge population and beat down the computer, but that's life, even in civ3 science and money go up with a huge population too. I saw get rid of the "we love days" and add some disasters to poulation like epidemics too."

Please explain (altho maybe in another thread.) If you're getting rid of "we love" in order to make your idea of the military taking away from the population, that's putting the cart before the horse, not to mention making the Pyramids the sole goal of the game.

If you have some other reason for getting rid of "we love," please explain. Your idea is IMO a bad one, since it takes away one of the 2 key advantages of democracy (the other being immunity to bribery.) Your idea would mean that you'd be forced into warmongering communism or fundy.

[Flavor Dave]

"Their definitely needs to be penalties, specifically diplomatic, but should they last
forever? No, we drops 2 bombs on Japan and our diplomatic relations are good. Penalties I would support are: every other civilization declares you an enemy for the next 20 turns"

Who the hell cares about us and Japan. Let's think about how this would work in Civ3--you know, the game we're talking about. I don't know about you, but when I have nukes and I'm in war mode, I'm in one of two situations. Either I'm pretty dominant, so that the AIs are afraid of me and make peace everytime I take a city or kill one of its units. Or, I'm completely dominant, and the AIs are acting as one to try to keep me from winning. In either case, your diplomatic penalty doesn't matter.

And if you're talking about the AI using nukes, why would you want to make the game easier for you?


<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by Flavor Dave (edited July 14, 1999).]</font>

[Ecce Homo]

Theben and Flavor Dave, I am afraid you have come a bit out of the Units topic. If you want to make your opinions heard, you should better continue the discussion somewhere else, for instance in the Diplomacy thread.

By the way - this thread is getting long and it is about time for a new summary. How far has JT3 come?

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The best ideas are those that can be improved.
Ecce Homo