RADICAL IDEAS (ver 2.0): Hosted by korn469

[korn469]

I have volunteered to host this thread. keep the ideas coming i'm working on the summary for this thread and it will be up soon.

korn469

[DarthVeda]

How about the concept of supplies in the game? (This would be in addition to the regular support fee).

In addition to the health bar, there would be a supply bar. Supplies would represent fuel, food, and ammunition (or sometimes just food).

Ancient units would require some supply, while modern units would suck supply from your coffers like no tomorrow.

To keep it easy on the player, there would be a function to take a percentage of your city production to funnel into supplies. (Like PW in CtP).

If there weren't enough supplies to go around, then your units would start subtracting from their supply bar. When the supply bar reached zero (from fighting, moving, or existing without supply), the unit's health bar would start to suffer.

The farther your units move away from your empire, the more it costs to supply them. (Though advances like Airplane, etc. could reduce this cost).

For a unit like a carrier or refueler, the supply would drain faster on that unit, the more aircraft/whatever it was carrying (but no supply would subtract from the regular units (as in, the supply would be transfered from carrier to aircraft).

[DarthVeda]

How about morale too? This would introduce the concept of Generals. I will elaborate on my earlier post in the UNIT section.

The morale standing would represent highest attainable morale

Low=55%, Medium =80%, High=105%, Highest=130%

The morale would be the multiplier on the unit attack, with the above being the maximum possible in morale class.

There will be several types of unit experience:

Conscript-Rush bought unit (Low Morale)
Regular-Produced Normally (Medium Morale)
Veteran-Some Combat (High Morale)
Elite-Hardened Vet (Highest Morale)
Commander-(Increases units within 1 square morale by 20%)
General-(Increases units within 2 squares morale by 45%)

Military academies (barracks) in towns would increase unit experience the longer the unit stayed in that town, if the unit wasn't originally a veteran. It would be impossible to go beyond Veteran without combat experience. So, it would be impossible to get a commander or general without combat experience.

However, if a commander is in a town with less experience units and a barracks, he can help train elite soldiers, while if a general is in the town, he can help train commanders.

If a commander or general is killed, the amount of morale twice their normal effect on the soldiers is subtracted from the nearby soldiers.

We could introduce a whole bar on a unit to represent its morale. It won't clutter too much up in addition to the supply bar. Let me illustrate:
http://members.tripod.com/~darthveda/bars.gif

[Theben]

You should post the 1st in the SUPPLY thread, and I think levels of veteran status (morale) is pretty much in. Leader units are debatable. Some people want MOO2-like leaders, while I'd rather have a unit-it can go on the battlefield.

[Jakester]

If i remember right master of might and magic had leaders who could fight. The problem is if u want realistic battle that wouldnt work to well. Think of seeing one general fight a thousand troops and winning. So if u had leaders who could fight which I guess I wouldnt mind u would have to have the same type of combat system as ctp. Like I said before a leader like in moo2 would make realistic combat a more interesting thing if realistic combat is what people want. Realistic combat of course watching troop formations of say regiments to legions to divisions battle each other. For either type leader names would of course have to be made. U could have real leaders from the past with their atributes . Napoleon, Hannibal, Alexander, Caesar, Ghengis Khan, Robert E. Lee, George Washington and such be available for hire. The only problem would be the actual leader names of some civilization might have to be altered. This shouldn't be to much of a problem cause most civilizations had more than one great leader. The other option would be to just make up leaders with cool names who u could hire.

[EnochF]

Genghis!!

Jeez, Genghis Khan and Mohandas Gandhi have got to be the most misspelled leaders in history, not counting Qaddafi...

Anyway, I agree that leader units just aren't realistic for a strategic game such as Civ. You'd have to give them zero defense, near-zero attack, and then the only point in having them around is to stack them with other units to boost their "morale" or give them all veteran status or something. Interesting for a tactical military game, but not Civ.

[Theben]

EnochF,
That pretty much sums up what I think they should do. Zero ATT/DEF, bonus to MORALE. If my ideas get across then I'd include ability to bribe enemy armies to join or disband, Bonus to random combat events (explained elsewhere) & ambush/pre-emptive strikes, enemy units about to die may join instead (due to charisma of leader, certain SEs might prevent), and natural concealment (hidden like subs).

[Jakester]

I dont see the point in having to show the leader on the battlefield. Having him in control of the army and a picture of him seems like it would fit best in the civ universe.

[croxis]

Unshure of wheer to post this idea, I will post it here. Some guy is making a Civ type game somewhere. He came up with the idea that the AI files are seperat files, i.e. not intergrated into anyother files. This allows easy updates to the AI only, without affecting the rest of the game. I think Civ3 should have this concept. It will allow Firaxis to relace "AI updates" to update the AI without needing to chage the other game files.

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"A human imprisons one of us? Intolerable!"
-Ulkesh

[Jimmy]

I have a new idea for how cities would work.
A settler would found a city by building a town center ( palace only for the capital) then the other city improvements (barracks, temple, farms, banks, colloseum etc...) would be built in adjacent tiles of the city radius. A citizen would be a unit on the main map which the player would send to an empty square to build a new building ( you could stack several citizens to build the building faster and the unit would not dissapear after completing task), you could send the citizen to a tile that already has a building and tell it to work there which would give you the benefits of the building ( the player could activate unit to do something else at any time, you could stack citizens in a building to increase output), or you could make the citizen-unit a military unit, a diplomat or another settler, and leave the city (these units could return to a city and get converted back into a citizen). The name of each building would appear in small under each building so that the player would know what is what (even with good graphics, telling each building apart might be confusing,this would avoid that). Obviously, the city walls improvement would appear as a wall surrounding the city radius.
This idea would give the player a more visual satisfaction of his/her cities since the individual buildings that make up the city are on the main map. Second, the player would see immediately what his/her cities need, which ones are small, growing fast etc... Last, this idea allows for street to street fighting as only when the twon center is captured, would the city be considered captured. Before that happens, the enemy might actually capture a building or destroy it without having capturing the city. Bombers could bomb specific buildings by bombing specific tiles.
recap of main points:
- individual city improvements on main map in city radius.
- the citizen-unit which would build new building, work existing one or become soldier, diplomat, settler.
- a unit could be either a citizen, a military unit, a diplomat or a settler.

[Eggman]

Would this be the Age Of Empires city concept?

Interesting, but I prefer the Civ2 system. Less complicated and less graphics all over the terrain.

[Theben]

Jakester,
I assume you're basing this idea from the MOO2/MoM games. Those games had a limited supply of specialized people, whose abilities could easily swing the game, and thus be unbalancing. The Pax Imperia method, which I endorse, uses generic leaders with minor abilities, helpful but not unbalancing. Plus they would be vulnerable to assassination and subversion quite often; with named administrators/generals you wouldn't have enough and eventually could run out.

[NotLikeTea]

What if, before the discovery of Mapmaking, the map is not permanant?

What I mean is that you would see the terrain in your city radius, and terrain that is visible by your units, but no more. Once a unit moves, terrain no longer in its sight would return to black again. Kind of like fog of war, but even more so. With map making, seen terrains would remain seen.

I'm not even sure if I like this idea myself, but ight as well throw it out to the wolves

[Theben]

I thought of that myself, but I didn't think it'd be very popular. It would do 2 things: give the programmers 1 more thing to worry about, and make everyone research mapmaking ASAP. I'm not sure if it adds to the game overall.
But if others like it I'll rethink my position.

[FinnishGuy]

Proposal: CIV3 scoring could be on per turn basis instead of the SMAC/CIV one-time end-of-game score. You would accumulate points every turn from population, cash in treasury, owned wonders and such. Perhaps there could also be one time grants for military success (capturing cities), being first to research a technology, completing a wonder, etc. This way even getting completely destroyed would be an acceptable ending as you can still have a decent score. The points would then represent your civilization's heritage (cultural, technological, religious...) to the afterworld. We all think that historic Rome was a great empire and our western culture owes a lot to the ancient Romans, but in CIV scoring terms they would be complete losers because they were wiped out and hence scored 0%...