Why not imprison those nerving unconventional units?

[Grumbold]

I'm all in favour of imprisoning special units. Heck, why the occasional missionary cannot disappear in unusual circumstances without war breaking out beats me too. The idea of scientifically advanced "western" nations flooding into the likes of cold-war era Russia, China or any tinpot dictatorship armed with lawyers and corporate branches always struck me as laughable. If only it wasn't so easy to switch government types I would be strongly in favour of allowing more ruthless types one or two free UWU kills per turn or complete immunity to certain types of attack. Personally though I'm just hoping that CTP2 will allow the 2nd Tank Corps to proceed unhindered along the roads without being blocked by any old foreign noncombatant and their entourage.

[Atahualpa]

Heck XMon could you make shorter posts?

quote: First off, I'm not one to have 40 small cities. I like 15 to 20 cities with massive Public Works for big population and big production.

Hmm well on large maps if you aim for global domination you wont get around 40 cities.
Playing style differs and of course I know this is your wishlist.

quote: When I play CTP I put a Lawyer and a Spy (or Agent in Med Mod 4) in every city for defense against the current UW units. My thinking on the "police" units or the "security" units is that they would be relatively cheap and you just build them and put them asleep in your cities and wait until a UW unit rolls up on them. No big micromanagement problem because they're asleep most of the time.

Hmm having a special police unit in your cities reduces the amount of military units to 11. Rather I would suggest some military units that have police functionality. Maybe something like a MP unit in modern age that is cheap with moderate attack and defense values (nothing that kicks ass) that is able to arrest people. Or just make it that all infantry units can arrest UWUs.

quote: MY UW units are MILITARY units. They can fight, they can just do a couple of other extra things as well.

Oh okay thanks for making your point clear. Now ok thats one thing I could agree too.
I imagine some kind of guerilla unit that has attack and defense strength but is able to infiltrate enemy cities...
Something along that line right?
Yeah that is a VERY good idea!!!!


About the spy idea: Would it still be as much fun if you just move some numbers? I mean moving some numbers, does that give you the feeling of spying someone out? If you treat them as values they are just well values. I hope you get the point.

quote: My thoughts are that this is related to the timeline. In the "olden days" they've gotta walk or take a ship. In modern times they catch a flight. Just takes a credit card. Any unit before a certain advance (you can have a new one! "Commercial Flight") have to be physically transported. After that, non-military units (and also certain stealth UW military units) can just use the "Travel Screen."

Like I said: Excellent idea!

quote: I don't know much about the game's AI yet but I would want the foreign civs with the appropriate tech advance to be prone to build one or two of these units and then not want to build anymore

Yeah that option is given! If you add a negative number next to the unit in the AIP files. For example the AI in CtP1 will never build more than 5 battleships at any time.

quote: I can understand only having one Counterterrorist unit per civ (as that is somewhat reflective of real world CT, but not really) but can't imagine just having one SEAL unit or Special Forces unit (for examples) as, in the real world, a bigger more productive nation would have more of these units.

I dont care much about real world. I just ask if the game balance would suffer. Just imagine a stack of 12 SEALs. Now who has a chance against them?

quote: I'm sorry...I don't remember the author

Wes Whitaker (aka WesW)

quote: I think it goes that "two foreign civs have an advance the all the civs get that advance." Could be wrong though! Something like that. I love it! It helps prevent the F-15s versus Knights problem.

Hmm yeah thats what I thought. I think it should be tested with CtP2. It would really help the AI and the positive thing is that when you are behind it also helps you. So no side loses.

quote: I'm only in the middle ages (galleons and knights) but if anyone cares I'll let you know how it goes. I think that making jungle and swamp impenetrable to wheeled vehicles will make the other units more valuable and make the game more interesting.

Go into the cheat menu and give you the appropriate advances and your enemies as well.
Put some of these units somewhere on the map and let them fight against each other.

quote: I've started a game that does not allow "wheeled" units (like tanks and siege units) to travel in jungle or swamp. I changed the movement points so that foot troops and motorized units are not so far apart.

Another excellent idea! Yeah I would too reduce the moving ability of wheeled units. Tanks are way too strong and render all infantry units obsolete. I just build them cause they are cheaper or for city defenses but not for attacking. This is sad since I think infantry is way cooler!

Grumbold: Good point! A sniper unit (as of XMons definition a military unit with assassinate capability) kills UWUs with low chance of being detected (10%)

quote: Personally though I'm just hoping that CTP2 will allow the 2nd Tank Corps to proceed unhindered along the roads without being blocked by any old foreign noncombatant and their entourage.

Well said

ATa

[XMon]

AAAaaaarrrggghhhh....!

OK, a shorter post here.

The no wheeled units in jungle thing doesn't appear to be working! I figured it would be as simple as giving jungle and swamp the TERRAIN_TYPE_MOUNTAIN flag yet retaining the name jungle (and swamp) and the jungle (and swamp) icon(s), but apparently it's not that simple. My siege engine just rolls merrily through the jungle like it was nothing. I REALLY want to make that change. Tanks should not fight in the jungle. Just infantry.

I agree with Grumbold about being able to kill UWUs without starting a war. In fact, ANY time a foreign unit is in your borders AND they refuse a no trespassing demand, you should be able to kill them and just make the foreign civ's regard of you go down a couple of notches (but this is only if they're trespassing). When the Soviets shot down KAL-007, no one went to war over that.

Could a sniper unit work with the current CTP code? Would it be possible for a stealth unit to kill another unit (not CONDUCT_HIT which a whole different thing, an act against a city) and only have a chance of being discovered? This would be SO COOL! If that's not possible then maybe we could just get rid of the Lawyer unit and replace it with a sniper looking guy. Any units you want to be vulnerable to sniping, you make "can be sued" or whatever the flag is called. When the other unit rolls up on the sniper then you "sue" them and, if you're talented enough to make the animated sprite, the sniper shoots them and they die horribly! The only downsides are that I believe you have a 0% chance of being caught and, of course, the ultimate fun would be using the sniper to shoot lawyers. Wouldn't you love to lay snipers out at all your possible entry points and just waste those UWUs when they come through your borders!

quote: Personally though I'm just hoping that CTP2 will allow the 2nd Tank Corps to proceed unhindered along the roads without being blocked by any old foreign noncombatant and their entourage.

CTP2 is supposed to actually let us name armies (stacks) which is pretty neat. So you will be able to have a 2nd Tank Corps if you want. That bit about the foreign noncombatant happens in real life though, and I use it in the game. If I capture an enemy city that I don't want to keep, I start making settlers to get the size down small enough to disband and I send those settlers down the roads to slow down the enemy attack (no...I wouldn't do it in real life, I'm no butcher, but it's only a game and I have no qualms about using stormtroopers or nukes either). If you do that you will also find that the AI will use it's fighters and interceptors on the settlers rather than on your military units. In the war between Iraq and Iran, the Iraqis claim that the Iranians sent "waves" of civilians, including women and children, at advancing Iraqi forces as a buffer to slow their advance on Iranian military, knowing the less fundamentalist Iraqis would be loathe to attack the civilians.

[QUOTE}Hmm well on large maps if you aim for global domination you wont get around 40 cities.[/QUOTE]

I like the IDEA of the big map, much more realistic, but the time between turns kills me (400MHz PII with 64 RAM, maybe I need more RAM). Plus, I hate attacking cities called Berlin2 or London3. Maybe I'll try it again soon.

quote: Hmm having a special police unit in your cities reduces the amount of military units to 11. Rather I would suggest some military units that have police functionality. Maybe something like a MP unit in modern age that is cheap with moderate attack and defense values (nothing that kicks ass) that is able to arrest people. Or just make it that all infantry units can arrest UWUs.

Great idea. The MP could be like the Slaver. When you put a Slaver in a stack and you win a battle you get slaves. With an MP in a stack you would get Prisoners Of War! Very cool. Of course, you could always use the MP on it's own to arrest the UWUs that the sniper misses!

quote: Oh okay thanks for making your point clear. Now ok thats one thing I could agree too. I imagine some kind of guerilla unit that has attack and defense strength but is able to infiltrate enemy cities... Something along that line right? Yeah that is a VERY good idea!!!!

Yup, exactly. Well...sort of. I mean, I wouldn't call it "guerilla" because that's a whole nutha ball of wax, but that's the general idea. Military units with special capabilities and stealth. I know some guys dig aviation and would love 10 different jet fighters and other guys love naval warfare and want dozens of ships to play with. I could easily come up with 20 different military UW units (guerillas, counterguerillas, terrorists, counterterrorists, antiterrorists, commandos, airborne shock troops, force multipliers, combat divers, combat controllers, elite security units, long range recon, mercenaries, snipers, assassins, saboteurs, provocateurs and etc etc etc) but I know most guys wouldn't like all those units. I guess CTP2 is going to have "unit creation" function. I'll probably go hog wild with that! I hope they give us a bunch of extra animated sprites to play with...

quote: About the spy idea: Would it still be as much fun if you just move some numbers? I mean moving some numbers, does that give you the feeling of spying someone out? If you treat them as values they are just well values. I hope you get the point.

It's OK to disagree on certain aspects of the game play. I like the spies but late in the game I get tired of just moving them around ("Oh look, the Turks built another city, I was wondering when someone was going to put a city there.") looking at stuff. To me that's micromanagement. Once I discover something or some area, I just want to be able to go back and look there and get an update. I love the GlobeSat Wonder. It allows me to see everything going on outside of cities and always up-to-date. Once I spy on a city, I want to be able to call my Director of Intelligence and say "Hey! What's going on in Bangkok?" and get a city screen. I don't want to have to ship a spy halfway across the world and then have Grumbold kill him for no good reason.

quote: I dont care much about real world. I just ask if the game balance would suffer. Just imagine a stack of 12 SEALs. Now who has a chance against them?

12 Counterterrorist units! 12 Armor units would also beat 12 SEALS on land but that's not the idea, of course. In the real world these kinds of units aren't used in direct combat (unless some dumbass general doesn't have a clue about special forces like in Panama) because a) that's not what they're trained for or equipped for and b) because they are too valuable. They are trained for unconventional missions and they conduct missions where every man has a very good chance of surviving. A SEAL unit is kind of like an F117 Stealth fighter. You don't send it out on a mission where there's a good chance of it getting killed or shot down. It's too expensive. How do you translate that to AI? I don't know. Maybe limiting the number that can be built is the answer. Can you make units "non-stackable?" This reflects a real debate that has occurred in the US military and helped to spur the creation of the Joint Special Operations Command. The argument was that traditional conventional Army commanders were using special operation units as "shock troops" or elite infantry. When you use units like Delta Force (who are actually trained to assault hijacked commercial jets and rescue hostages or to penetrate and attack underground nuclear weapons facilities, among other things) as front line infantry then you are wasting a valuable resource. Until JSOC was created, the CIA seemed to be the only big US agency that had a decent grasp on how to use these units. The Brits, among others, always (at a high military command level) have had a better sense of how to utilize units of this type. Anyway...can this be translated to AI? Probably not, if the unit has attack capability then the AI will probably use it indiscriminately. So maybe limiting the number produced is the answer.

quote: Wes Whitaker (aka WesW)

The trigger is in Med Mod 4 but I don't think Wes created it. I could be wrong. I think someone just posted it on one of these forums and he added it to version 4. I wouldn't forget Wes's name!

I guess I lied about this being a shorter post.

[Atahualpa]

Well making SEALS non stackable would be the only solution I could think of.
In CtP there is no difference between front-line troops and special troops. There is only the attack and defense value.
Plus defending 12 SEALS with 12 Counterterrorists is not an option either since that would result in a war of giants. Only those nations will survive that have a stack of 12 special forces units and thats not in the sense of special forces units. But well non stackable would mean that you cant have them in a city when other units are their too. You cant move them where other units of yours are placed. BUT you could make an stacked attack and defense value and a non-stacked attack and defense value. Now if a SEAL is stacked the attack and defense rates would be quite lower. If they are not stacked they have awesome attack and defense rates. This would be the only solution (and I think it is an awesome one) that I can think of.
Unfortunately the code of CtP wont allow you to do this and I dont think it would be in CtP2 either. Like the damn imprisoning idea would not be in.

Ata

[Atahualpa]

Besides XMon I think your jungle problem is because you didnt start a new game. Didnt you know? Everytime you change something in the files you have to start a new game in order for the changes to effect.

Ata

[Atahualpa]

quote: Wouldn't you love to lay snipers out at all your possible entry points and just waste those UWUs when they come through your borders!

Nah I wouldnt as the enemy could do the same with my UWUs. That would render UW obsolete.

ATa

[Grumbold]

I don't consider settlers an UWU so blocking the roads with refugees is a legitimate ploy. The unit represents a significant number of people, after all. Its the UWU's like lawyers that I believe should not hinder military movement. Perhaps this would require the separation of military and non-military stacking limits to allow a foreign UWU to temporarily occupy the same square as your army.

[XMon]

quote: Well making SEALS non stackable would be the only solution I could think of.

Or there could just be a limit on how many the AI could build. The humans would have to be on the "honor system!"

Honestly, I wouldn't make SEALs stronger than tanks. Just stealthier and faster. Tanks should beat SEALs or counterterrorists if stacked equally. Non-stackable would a great option. How about if the counterterrorist unit cost more than all other units? Another thing...I think the code would allow this...you are allowed one (or two or three) counterterrorist unit...if you build a second one, the first one disbands. That could keep the human players under control.

quote: Besides XMon I think your jungle problem is because you didnt start a new game. Didnt you know? Everytime you change something in the files you have to start a new game in order for the changes to effect.

I tried it. I started a new game. Used cheat to create a tank and it did not work. I have no idea why, but that's not surprising since I don't know that much about the code!

quote: Nah I wouldnt as the enemy could do the same with my UWUs. That would render UW obsolete.

Exactly! I hate UW (CTP version). I'm going to start thinking about ways to turn all of those units into something else (like I was dreaming about making lawyers into snipers).

quote: Its the UWU's like lawyers that I believe should not hinder military movement. Perhaps this would require the separation of military and non-military stacking limits to allow a foreign UWU to temporarily occupy the same square as your army.

Great idea but I bet that would require a major change in the code that even Activision would hesitate to undertake. How about if military units could "bump" UWs out of the way. If a military unit wants to occupy a tile that has a UW sitting on it, the UW bumps to a randomly picked unoccupied tile within 1 movement or the nearest unoccupied tile if he's surrounded. I bet the code could handle that.

Anybody know anything about that Phantom space ship's "cloaking" capability? I don't care much for those superfuturistic space units but I'm interested in the fact that the unit's values change when the unit goes into the stealth mode. Very cool possibilities perhaps. Like different movement points in stealth mode vs regular mode.

[Big Dave]

quote: Originally posted by XMon on 09-14-2000 08:54 PM Honestly, I wouldn't make SEALs stronger than tanks. Just stealthier and faster. Tanks should beat SEALs or counterterrorists if stacked equally.

I catagorically disagree. The USMC has a saying "Hunting tanks is both easy and fun".

Modern combat on the tactical level is like a game of rock/paper/scissors only it's artillery/infantry/armor. It goes like this: Artillery kills infantry, infantry kills armor, and armor breaks through the lines to take out artillery.

------------------
Big Dave

If you don't stand for something
you'll fall for anything.

[Stratesford]

Dave that is the best idea I have heard so far. I just hope activision still reads the posts on these forums. I hevn't seen any activision posts for a while, I wonder if they still read these posts...

[Atahualpa]

Actually XMon this was the "only" idea I could think of. I forget the other one to take out:

quote: BUT you could make an stacked attack and defense value and a non-stacked attack and defense value. Now if a SEAL is stacked the attack and defense rates would be quite lower. If they are not stacked they have awesome attack and defense rates. This would be the only solution (and I think it is an awesome one) that I can think of.

Ata

[MWatts]

I think there is an easier way to solve the problem without making unconventional units useless.

When a spy or cyber ninja try to cause a revolt, the cost is weighted based on various factors. Currently the cost is fixed for other unconventional unit attack types, so add this type of weighting to all unconventional unit attacks, just not as expensive as forcing a revolt. This logic is already in the game and should be easy to implement.

Another option would be to have the game track what units had attacked each city, and decrease the success percent for that unit each time. Eventual that unit would have little or no effect on a specific city.

A third option would be to prevent certain special attacked from being done on a civilization based on it's current development status. For example, you can't sue a nation when it does not have a legal system, or use a televangelist in one without the ability to produce TV or radio. This would give a less advanced nation a better chance to catch up.

These suggestions could be used alone or in combination, and involve a lot less micro management on the player's part.