How war should be waged

[Stuff2]

I've already posted this in civ3 suggestions thread, but I think this is more that kind of idea you would find interesting.

Unit's are not needed.
Work-shop model can have some functions but unit's on the screen is not necessary.
(Unless u feel an urgent need to view the combats closer, this should be possible)

Handling military moves should be done more smoothly. U have a window where u can choose several things. Like :
- Mobilize men from city/region
- Train men (% of capable men in city/region)
- Prepare for war (in city/region)

The orders u give during warfare are:
borders to patrol, trade routes to block, provinces to invade, city's to capture, City's and regions to defend, when to redraw(during battle u may be given several oppertunities to redraw troops), U should also have option to destroy infrastructure and plunder civilians.
There should only be a few numbers of different army types like:
- Infantry
- Artillery
- Cavalry
- Sea
- Air
- Space
- Missile

whatever is needed. This is handled by the workshop. Where different units is engineered, how many people needed and what weapons, shields, e.t.c.

During a turn in peacetime u don't have to be bothered with stupid unit's wandering around.
During war. U get information from every battle: How many was killed, how many was wounded, how many was captured e.t.c.
If u want to u can have a closeview on every battle. And if youre not interested in closeviewing u just see the flags burning and some numbers in the info window. During the battle u can see how things are going and be able to redraw almost the whole time.

[Lord God Jinnai]

I really like that idea. I never liked the units method in civ or civ2

[Kanzid Stonebreath]

One problemn that could occour with this idea is that people would feel distanced from their armies.

Secondly from what I understand with this model it will be very hard for you to have parts of your army cut off e.g. Dunkirk in WWII

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What does this box do I wonder?

[Lord God Jinnai]

However with the current model its hard to do an encirclment manuver or a blockaid.

[Mannheim Tanker]

Stuff2: You are assuming that everyone agrees with your opinion on units in Civ. I know that many people (includes me) have a lot of fun waging war with units on the map. If you did away with these in Civ (or Clash), I'd quit playing

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Stuff2, welcome to the Clash forum!

Your idea certainly is radical, but I think we would lose much of our target audience, including me, if we implemented it!

However, if we do our job with the AI right, You and anyone else will be able to actually Play this way. That's because the AI will be able to figure out reasonably decent strategies for you if you are not interested. So if you only want to specify the forces available on a given front, etc. you will be able to do that, give the AI your priorities, and see what happens. However, by preserving traditional military units, we also allow the at least 50% of players that will want to micromanage military activities at some point to do their thing also.

[Richard Bruns]

A possible compromise here is the units idea I posted earlier. Rather than controlling every aspect of your troop's movement, you build them and garrison them in border provinces. If you want to attack, you simply tell them where to go. They go over automatically, like airplanes or missiles. Any defenders in the area will "scramble" like fighters to meet the threat.

Essentially, we are treating the ground units as air units (real air units, not the Civ2 units that hovered in midair for years). In ancient times, the turns will be about 20 years, so an offensive army will only be good for one turn anyway before everyone retires. So we treat them like cruise missiles. Defensive armies would renew their forces constantly. In modern times, armies will attack and return to bese, so they can be treated like airplanes.

This system would also have the advantage of eliminating the difference between civil and military turns. All armies would move in the civil timeframe, which IMO will lead to a lot less problems.

It should also be easy to program. Simply use the code for airplanes, but modify the range of the units based on the terrain.

I think that there are a lot of people who would prefer this option. I don't like messing with lots of units, and I would rather not have to deal with the two timescales that the current system uses. I am not suggesting that we get rid of the old system; this should be kept as an option for the 50% of people who don't like micromanaging a lot of units.

[Stuff2]

An more detailed explanation on my idea:
Instead of moving unit's u send soldiers on a specific task/mission. U can have tons of missions going on at the same time. This can be both macromanaged and micromanaged. Once on the field the army will ask for further instructions after completed missions.
During a battle u have always the oppertunity to redraw if thing's are going bad.

Example of macromanagement missions are:
- Invade city/region/country
- Block all traderutes from xxx
- Patrol borders
- Military readiness
- Surpress rebellions

Example of micromanegement missions are:
- Send defence troops to squares/region/city
- Redraw troops
- Cavalry attack
- Infantry invasion
- Air attack
- Missile attack
- Place minefield
- Pirate enemys support

This is just a few of the thing's u can do with this interface. There are some reasons why i want this interface.
- First of all moving units is boring and it takes unrealistic many years to even begin a war.
- It's easier to calculate how many was killed, injured, captured or unharmed
- If a very small and weak civ starts war with me and a very strong civ starts war with me at the same time I want to be able to concentrate on the "big war" and leave the 'small war' to my generals.
- Or if i'm really tired of warfare i can leave it to my generals who probably won't be as good as myself, but it's my headache if this makes me loose the war. Besides, maybe I wan't the challange of winning it back.
- It would be fun to always get feedback from your soldiers. How well their missions went...

Actually. I think my idea will make warfare more complicated and more interesting and absolutely more realistic. Ofcourse some kind of symbols have to show up on the map to tell u where your soldiers are. In this sense i'm not totally giving up units. I just want another way of interact with them.

Maybe u can give names to certian missions...like "The great invasion" or "The roman minefields" or "the six-day-battle" ....;-)

Very well. I hope that I have made my point more clear now.

[Stuff2]

There are some more possibilities with this:
- mission will cost u money and resources.
- winning armys will advance into enemy
territory and loosing armys will have to retreat. During a retreat u can have a "destroy as much as possible" -option.
- Think of how my idea can make allies coordinate their moves! Beacouse with this system the computer get to know exactly the same strategic possibilities that u have.
- No AI-units will wander around without purpose beacouse the purpose of every possible move is built-in.
- U still have units on the screen where the armys are. And u can still click on it with your mouse.

Why not have units implemented in this idea? Then u can do it both ways.

[Harlikwin]

Well, actually this type of system was discussed, however as Mark said it would loose a lot of the target audience. And with the right AI you would be able to basically do the things you have described. As it stands right now the mil model is actually pretty far from Civ II. The Air model will be quite different and the land combat model is quite significantly different.

-Harli