Poll: New units

[Drakenred]

quote: Originally posted by WesW on 11-19-2000 07:33 PM I edited my post to change the names of the ages to ones which I think are appropriate. I would also like to have wonders which allow the building of special units. There are a number of units which Morgoth made for Ctp1 which would be great for this, and if AOK sprites could be converted, it would open up many more units. From what I understand, it is possible to do this with slic, but I want to set up generic units first, and add in the slic stuff later, once we have made the standard game play-balanced and stable. As far as advances, I want to use the new ones in Ctp2, unless people think they are clearly inferior to those already in the Med mod. Then I want to remove all those from the Med mod that aren't absolutely needed. If the AIs know how to switch out of building wonders when someone else beats them to one, and don't waste that city's production from that point in the game forward, then there will be no need for all of the new wonders that I added in the Med mod 4. This will allow the removal of a number of advances as well. As far as the ages, the Napoleonic era would cover approximately the 19th century, while the Modern age would cover the late 20th and 21st centuries. The Genetic age would cover the last two centuries of the game. This would largely skip the two world wars, which were themselves transition eras. If it turns out that another age is needed, then this would be the era to do it in. Btw, I haven't heard any views on re-working the City Walls values and inserting the Stockade. Does this mean everyone thinks it's a good idea, or have we gotten so used to it that it feels odd not having this setup? Btw, what about changing the name from Stockade to Palisades, or something else?

a couple of thoughts.

1 aparently walls no longer stop slavrades.
2 you may want to consider 3 levels of walls (stockades/walls/fortifications) pre-forcefeild as wall s seem to lose a lot of their value before the introduction of forcfeilds,considering the known dificulty of asualting realworld cities during the 20th century

[WesW]

I tweaked some of the age and unit names to more appropriate ones. While I am posting, here are some units that I think would be great wonder-enabled ones:

Elephants- Iron age assault infantry, w/ranged attack
Legions- Iron age all-purpose infantry
Longbowmen- Iron age ranged attacker

Berserkers- Medieval age assault infantry (sprite needed)
Janissaries- Medieval age all-purpose infantry (sprite needed)
Crossbowmen- Medieval age ranged attacker (sprite needed)

Arquebusier- early Renaissance defensive infantry w/ranged attack
Bombard- early Renaissance ranged attacker


Make the Fire Trireme a special unit, and use the Trireme as the standard unit in the game?

After reading Harlan's Alexander scenario GL files on the Longbowmen, I learned that Longbowmen were not an English invention, and that they would fit well into the Iron age.
After gunpowder began to be used, armies became ore standardized, making special units harder to come up with. If any of you have ideas though, I would be happy to hear them.
Sprites for some of these are needed, so don't hesitate to volunteer if you are interested in this!

These special units would be cheaper to construct than other units of comparable ability, and perhaps require lower support, and/or have 'special unit' designation, so that they would always be at full strength.

[lev]

I have to admit, it would be way cool to have Elephants.

As for Fire Triremes, those were historically limited to the Byzantine empire, who guarded the secret of greek fire so well that it died with them.

Plain ol' triremes were the naval combat ships of the classical era.

Hey, maybe Greek Fire could be a wonder that allows you to build Fire Triremes and maybe gives other naval bonuses...

[lev]

Wes, the Janissaries were elite Turkish troops of the 14th century, so I wouldn't use them for standard infantry, but maybe as special forces.

I think lightly-armored spearmen were the basic troops of the middle ages...

[Diodorus Sicilus]

I agree with the Elephant attributes: assault with ranged effects, but the 'trigger' for it should be the Elephant "trade good" within your civilization: the only people who tried to use elephants were those who had access to them: Indians, Burmese, and Carthagenians and Romans using the North African Bush Elephant (now extinct, 'cause the Romans used 'way too many of them in the Circuses!)
Longbows, or at least bows the height of a man, were used by the Ancient Northern India armies, tribesmen in the Zagros Mountains of the Middle East (described in Xenophon), and by the Welsh as far back as late Roman times. What made the late medieval English longbow so potent was not the weapon itself, but combining it with men trained to use it in mass, on command.
The crossbow has simply never been an effective weapon on the battlefield. It was outshot by the longbow on every occasion they met, and was too slow-firing to keep horse archers like the Turks and Mongols away. To make matters worse, a heavy (metal) crossbow takes a great deal of mechanical and metallurgical skill to make - they're about the most expensive medieval weapon to manufacture!
In answer to Wes' question, the Peltast was the most common mercenary of the classical world, relying on a large shield rather than expensive body armor for protection and carrying a medium-length spear and javelins, usually a sidearm (sword) as well.
The most common infantry type in the middle ages was armed with a shield and spear. Anything else, like swords, axes, throwing weapons, or personal body armor (mail, usually) was auxiliary to the basic "shield wall" with spears sticking out of it. This was, in weapons technology, not much different from the militia infantry phalanx of ancient Sumeria (just had iron spear points instead of bronze). The Medieval "innovations" in infantry were the revival of the Macedonian Phalanx by the Swiss (the Pike Phalanx- a looooong spear held in both hands by a dense body of men fit enough to charge as well as receive charges), the massed longbowmen of the English (see above) and, finally, the Spanish 'sword-and-buckler' men, who were a revival of the Roman legion! Only the aquebus or gunpowder firearms were a really 'new' infantry type, and at first they were combined with pikes or wth both pikes and swordsmen.
Finally, in reference to Generals and Nobles for diplomacy... The nobility and military tended to be the same thing in the ancient world, so a "general-like" figure could be used as a distinct sprite for an early diplomat, before the purely civilian negotiators come along. I'd make him available with the advance Jurisprudence, implying a respect for some kind of law in international relations and allowing diplomatic maneuvering very early in the game. This is easily supported, since some of the earliest records are of diplomatic missions to and from Egypt, Babylon, Lebanon, Sheba, etc before 2000 BC, and it gives you something else to do early in the game besides whack each other with warriors and hoplites...

[lev]

I think there does need to be some tweaking of Ages and units, definitely.

Possible Ages, and their historical character:
Ancient - earliest civs
(Classical) - the height of Rome
(Dark Ages) - primitive feudalism
Medieval - high middle ages
Renaissance - commerce, exploration, Republic of Venice
Industrial - Napoleanic thru Victorian eras
Modern - 20th century
Genetic
Diamond

The ones in parentheses are, IMO, not needed, but Medieval and Industrial (also IMO) are.

It's ridiculous for musket-armed infantrymen to be available before cannon; should be the other way around.

I'd bring in cannon in the early Renaissance, musketeers in the mid Renaissance, then riflemen in the Industrial eras.

Machine gunners should wait until the Modern era, and should be much better at defense than attack - as WWI showed, machine guns gave incredible advantage to the defender. You need tanks and air support to overcome entrenched machine guns.

So, for a breakdown of units as I would have them:

Ancient: Hoplite, Legion, Horseman, Slinger, Catapult

Medieval: Pikemen, Knight, Archer, maybe Bombards

Renaissance: Cannon, Musketeers, Dragoons

Industrial: Riflemen, Cavalry

Modern: Machine Gunners, Marines, Airborne, Tanks, Artillery, etc.

There is still a lot of oversimplification above, but you need to balance simplicity with accuracy.

[rwz]

don't know if this is appropriate or not since it has more to do with emotion than reasoning, how about the Zeppelin? Someone did one for CIV II and I use to love building and moving that sucker!

[Yoleus]

Agree with Lev, but for some details:
Ancient age units:
horsemen, hoplite, archer, chariot
CLassical age NEEDED - units:
legion, catapults, elephants, mounted archers
(togheter they make a complete flexible army)
Dark age not so important, can be left behind
Medieval units: pikemen, knights, crusaders (plus the "leftovers" of the previous ages: archers, mounted archers and catapults - you know, in the middle ages they didn't invent that much)
Industrial units: Riflemen, Cavalry, Artillery
Genetic age should be Information age (seems more fit to me... genes are bio-info after all...)

[Savant]

Yes, you're Wes. Need to establish the "base" or common units based on tech tree first then move to SLIC-generated (and/or if) units.

I vote for "palisades" as the name and if possible, a graphic that looks like them. I like the way stockade works and would keep its general features.

BTW, there might be a wonder or unit limit that you "Mod'ers" might run up against as in CTP-I. Is that info available to you yet so you don't hit that wall?



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'Blood will run'

[WesW]

quote: Originally posted by Savant on 11-21-2000 03:06 PM Yes, you're Wes.

Huh? I know my name.

I am not very familiar with the use of Crossbows, but I recall that they always seemed to be used by garrison troops, or maybe by mounted troops as a type of early one-shot firearm.
Perhaps they could be a second type of militia unit created in all your cities upon completion of the wonder which enables them? They would provide ranged support if the city is attacked. I think this would be an excellent use for them, fitting well both historically and in gameplay.

I think Lev misunderstood my language on the Janissaries. All-prupose does not mean standard. They were a specialized, elite unit, which is why they would not be available to everyone.

Also, how about the Phalanx as another wonder unit? They would be a bronze age defensive unit, now that they are no longer in the standard game.
This would help give a mix of unit types available by wonder, so fit whatever style of game you want to play. The various AI types could also be set to prioritize different types to fit their styles as well.

Finally, I got my threads mixed up with the Stockade reference above. I had talked about it in another thread. Mark mentioned in that thread that there is the new ballista towers improvement. We need to run some tests to see how these improvements affect gameplay.

[Locutus]

Well, Diodorus Silicus is right about the Medieval Age: there was fairly little improvement made in that age on any terrain (military or other). But it isn't good for gameplay to just stop all science for about 1000 years or something like that either. So although Crossbowmen might not have been very powerful and although armies consisted mostly of Ancient Age units, I don't think it would be right to keep using the Ancient Age units up until 1500 AD or so.
IMHO it's very important to keep the game fun and to keep new units coming available all the time (not too often of course, the speed of CtPI was a little too fast at times), so I think Crossbowmen should replace Archers, even though this might not be entirely historicly accurate (I guess you can wait with obsoleting Longbowmen until the end of the Medieval or beginning of the Rennaissance Age). Same goes for other units, Pikeman and Phalanx are basicly the same unit, but both should be in the game (in their own era), as should the Horse Archer and Mounted Archer (and others).

Wonder-dependant units sound like a good idea to me, presuming it's balanced out well. Fortunately both the AI and SLIC 2 seem to be very suitable for this sort of thing. Might be useful to make sure a civ can't build more than one of these wonders per age though or things will become unbalanced very quickly...
[This message has been edited by Locutus (edited November 22, 2000).]

[Savant]

You're still Wes, er.. right, West, right left?

Anyway, how about units with fixed locations like forts that can fire (bombard) at opposing units that are adjacent to them? This is akin to the Maginot line or to other fortress structures with (semi) active defenses.

May not be a good unit to include for ancient and medieval scenarios but would seem ok for modern warfare, civil war, wwI, and ww2 scenarios. Of course, the unit couldn't be very powerful in terms of firepower but it could have a high defense factor.

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'Blood will run'

[Bubba]

How about a special unit limited to some civilizations, one that could be built only: 1) with a wonder, 2) a certain distance from the capital or 2) under certain forms of Government.

In this vein, how about a seapoy unit for the industrial age which would be an easy to build defence unit that could not be built under some the government types (communism, fascism etc.) and not in the Capital or X squares of the Capital?

I sure we could come up a special unit for every civilization. These special units could also be "great leaders", such as Napeleon, Waterloo, Alexander, Cesear, or Lincoln similar to those included in the Civ II Scenario pack.

[lev]

Wes - Oops! My bad. That's what I get for just skimming instead of reading.