Civ specific units

[EKM]

My post as requested by Nordicus

I'm working on giving each civ a unique set of units that will not distrupt the balance of the game just make it more realistic. Example: Rome would not have knights but rather mounted Centurians. The units would looke different for the most part only a few might have different capabilities. There is the possibility of other civ's being able to produce these units if they trade "primary culture" scientific advances.

Also I'm thinking of adding a few more gov's

If all of you kind people could please email NightEng@juno.com ideas for units and gov's. I'm not looking to recieve the stats for such units simply their anmes and why they should belong to specific civ's.

EKM

[Nordicus]

Hey.

That was the first little thing that annoyed me--North American Indians as English 'warriors'--or Japanese Samurais defending the Vikings. I'm too tired right now to think of a who's who list.
But the few govs I've thought of (primarily for scenarios):

Constitutional Monarchy
National Socialism
Imperialism
(And there's a few I had to remove before this last batch of file mucking, but I liked them.
Let's see.)
Military Dictatorship
Semi-Democracy
Police State
Crime Syndicate (though I didn't really like this one). The Military Dictatorship especially I thought was an excellent idea--a wartime gov. (I forgot who came up with these, too...sleeeeep)
What types were you thinking about?

Ah, gotta scoot here.
Later.

N.


[This message has been edited by Nordicus (edited November 06, 1999).]

[Dark Schwa]

That would be wonderful if it could be made to work. Perhaps each individual civ could have its own personality .aip file listing which advances those civs would/would not research. The civ-specific units could be made available by those advances.
That way the Vikings (for example) would never learn how to make Samurai except from the Japanese themselves.

The unique advance that all civs had could also be used as prerequisites to other advances. eg, the "japan-ness" advance and "explosives" could allow the "meiji restoration" advance which allows zero fighters.

The only trick that I can see is, what would keep a non-AI player from researching the innate advances for each civ? Can you have an advance that's not in the tree? Can you assign advances at the beginning of the game based on the tribe chosen?

[John LeMaitre]

I see two problems with this. One is that many of these units arose because of forces beyond the game's control. For example, there were no mounted Aztec archers, because the Aztec had no horses. But if you skip any mounted units until the Aztec encounter some other civ, they probably won't get those archers until the Mongols have tanks!

The other problem is that many of us play civs that don't exist on the published version of the game. Could you simply adapt, say, the Mississippians by using Maya units?

I think that a partial solution (although I would have no idea how to encode it!) might be to have about five or six "civ types", much like the city graphics in Harlan's mod. You could use the "Asian type" of units for Japan, China, Mongolia, and so on. As I say above, balance might still be a problem, though.

Would this only affect ancient units?

Here are some ideas:
Aztecs -- Eagle Knights
Arrow Knights
Aztec Priests
Pochteca (Warrior Merchant)
Maya -- Sahals (Warlords)
Standard Bearers
K'ul Ahaw (Blood Lords)
Arabs -- Dervishes
Assassins
India -- Mounted Elephant
Thugee
Phonecia -Mounted Elephant
Naval Warrior
Any Europe- Crusader
Any Asia -Martial Artist
Ninja (or similar)
Celt/Viking-Berserker

How about war dogs?

[Nordicus]

Yeah, I thought about this with the WWII scenario. The only thing that came to mind, in a random map game, was having a "starting" wonder for each civ--only that civ (specified inits aip) could research it (cost: virtually free), and turn 2 of the game the units available for whatever civ will be enabled. If you do it with advances, another civ can steal it or trade it or gain it through conquering or whatever. This way there is no way another civ could get the unit.

John LeMaitre:
I think there'd have to be a bit of a stretch to even the field--in order for civs to have mounted units at the same time...otherwise it's not fair.
I like the list. What kinda "war dogs" were you thinking about?

[WesW]

This topic has been brought up before- check out some of the other threads around here. Then check out the aips, in the aidata folder. They tell the AI which units to build and advances to learn.

[Dark Schwa]

As to the problems of the Aztecs not getting knights 'till the Mongols have tanks...

If that were the situation, I'd make sure that the Aztecs has a full tech tree that extended into the modern ages that didn't require horses.

What if the Aztecs never learned about horses at all? What if nobody did? I think we could get very creative with the "what if's".

As it is, I think tech moves too quickly anyway. I think a) tech should be a lot more fluid. (It should "leak", perhaps through trade routes?), and b) real advances should come much much slower. I should be able to have a whole war with cannons and musketeers. As it stands, by the time I get an army assembled, machine guns are usually invented.

[John LeMaitre]

As to the war dogs, I was thinking of them being a unit slightly more powerful than a warrior (in other words, a warrior with a dog), or a separate unit that might be a little faster than a similar human unit might be. An additional power might be that they can detect lower-level secretive units floating around, such as clerics, lawyers, slavers, and spies.

I envision a "General" unit (or a k'ul ahaw, shogun, or whatever civ-specific name you want) that would fight fairly well, but would also raise the fighting ability of the surrounding units by one. This might reflect the fact that a good warlord would actually lead his troops into battle until the modern age, by which time a general's abilities are merely (?) strategic, and he or she would stay behind lines. (The negligible gain of +1 to a fusion tank would be offset by the inability to add a ninth one, should a general be present.)

I agree that you have to sacrifice some historical reality for gameplay, but as little as possible, I would hope. Perhaps a starting "advances pack" or a forced advances path for the ancient period might be the answer.

I also like the thought that this might force diplomats into play, just to make it possible to trade for needed advancements. It would also force the player to try harder to keep other civs happy, which I only do now if they are significantly more powerful militarily than I.

[Nordicus]

DS:
Or, without making extra work, you could simply change the value of Aztec-only units equal to, say, mounted units in Europe: if each civ is at a similar level technologically, then increasing the movement of the Aztec unit, in Units.txt, would solve the problem of unit fairness. Or just give em horses--easy, fair, saves time and work, and besides, it's not meant to be a historically perfect game. I'd be happy if it just had general types for general civs.
Wes is right--that can be done in the aips--but my way above will also work if you don't want to mess around in those.

As for your second part...it sounds like your game just goes by too fast. I have had a couple full wars with musketeers & canons in a game--this is starting in -5000 and having altered years-per-turn ratios. In the DiffDB.txt file you'll find all this.

I think that more transitional units are needed--one inbetween musketeers and machine-gunners, one inbetween pikemen and musketeers, et cetera.

------------------
"There can be no maximum of creation without a concomitant maximum of destruction, no supreme good without supreme evil"--Heller, paraphrasing Nietzsche.

"Ich Wollen Antreffen Das Heilmittel!!!"

"I SHALL FIND THE CURE!!!"--me.

"Something"--Someone.

[Nordicus]

JM:
I like the dog idea. It would never become obsolete--just less powerful as time goes on. But I'm not sure if it'd better alone or with a "master" unit.

I had a similar idea for "General" and "Air Marshall" and "Admiral" unit for the WWII scenario, making a stack all veterans if included but having no offense/defense. But the "Admiral" type would have to be in a troop ship in a fleet for that too work.
Excellent idea, I thought, but having the AI use it would be problematic. It would be great for multiplayer games. It might be doable, in some way, if one uses the Siege Engine tactic. Have to give it some defensive quality as well, since the AI isn't too bright concerning this.

[John LeMaitre]

The admiral wouldn't have to be in a ship; just make him aquatic. This way, he could ONLY aid ships (and not land units), and he'd still be nearly defenseless alone -- even in water.

I'm thinking that the dogs should probably be with trainers, and come about with domestication. (Would it's attack effectiveness drop as its hit points do? When does the dog die, and when does the trainer?!?) I'd add the cow as well, but have it equal 2 or 3 units of food instead of 5, which is unbalancing.

The unit which kind of intrigued me was the berserker, which could (like the general) be adapted to many cultures. He could perhaps attack twice as hard as a warrior, but only every other turn (to recover)....

I also agree that certain units need "in-between units". This would also slow the game down a little bit. Swordsman, spearman (hunters?), chariots, mounted elephants, mounted camels, battering rams, stockades, flaming catapults and light tanks are all possibilities. One might have to slow down the ancient period to do it, though.

While on the subject for units, I think that it'd be nice, before releasing any such mod, that good graphics files go with it. Having little such skill, yet being anal as heck, I don't use CD's mod because the graphics are either non-animated or too large. (No offense to the maker; I'm just an anal retentive kind of guy, as I say!) Would anyone with skill in this area be able to amend these problems?

[WesW]

All these ideas for special abilities sound great, but do you know if you can implement any of them?

Nord, in my Medieval mod, I introduce Pikemen much earlier, and gunpowder somewhat later, to do what you were talking about. And I am planning a Modern mod, which will implement a bunch of Harlan's WWII units, while bumping back the modern units some. I already have an outline drawn up, and I am going to go at full-time once our ai files work is done.

[TheBirdMan]

Hi EKM

You wanted some input for gov. types?

Here are some, hope you can use the ideas:

GOVERNMENT TYPE AND NAME;ERA;STARTING AGE (APPROX.)

GOVERNMENT_ANARCHY; ; 4000BC

GOVERNMENT_TRIBAL_CHIEF; ANCIENT; 3500BC
GOVERNMENT_ANCIENT_CITY_STATE ; ANCIENT; 3000BC
GOVERNMENT_ANCIENT_KINGDOM; ANCIENT; 2500BC
GOVERNMENT_ANCIENT_EMPIRE; ANCIENT; 2000BC
GOVERNMENT_SHAMANISM; ANCIENT; 3000BC
DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT?; ANCIENT; NO WAY

GOVERNMENT_TYRANNY; ERA OF GREAT MIGRATIONS; 2000BC
GOVERNMENT_CITY_STATE; ERA OF GREAT MIGRATIONS; 2000BC
GOVERNMENT_FEUDAL_KINGDOM; ERA OF GREAT MIGRATIONS; 1000BC
GOVERNMENT_EARLY_EMPIRE; ERA OF GREAT MIGRATIONS; 500BC
GOVERNMENT_THEOCRACY; ERA OF GREAT MIGRATIONS; 500BC
DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT?; ERA OF GREAT MIGRATIONS; NO WAY

GOVERNMENT_FEUDALISM; MEDIEVAL; 600AD
GOVERNMENT_BUREAUCRACY; MEDIEVAL; 400AD
GOVERNMENT_KINGDOM; MEDIEVAL; 600AD
GOVERNMENT_MEDIEVAL_EMPIRE; MEDIEVAL; 800AD
GOVERNMENT_MONOTHEISM; MEDIEVAL; 800AD
DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT?; MEDIEVAL; NO WAY

GOVERNMENT_PEOBLES_REPUBLIC; RENAISSANCE; 1700AD
GOVERNMENT_REPUBLIC; RENAISSANCE; 1300AD
GOVERNMENT_ENLIGHTED_MONARCHY; RENAISSANCE; 1500AD
GOVERNMENT_WORLD_EMPIRE; RENAISSANCE; 1600AD
GOVERNMENT_RELIGIUS_CONQUEST; RENAISSANCE; 1300AD
GOVERNMENT_SEMI_DEMOCRACY; RENAISSANCE; 1600AD

GOVERNMENT_COMMUNISM; MODERN; 1900AD
GOVERNMENT_POLICE_STATE; MODERN; 1900AD
GOVERNMENT_MONARCHY; MODERN; 1800AD
GOVERNMENT_WORLD_CORPORATION; MODERN; 2000AD
GOVERNMENT_FUNDAMENTALISM; MODERN; 1900AD
GOVERNMENT_DEMOCRACY; MODERN; 1900AD

GOVERNMENT_ONEPARTY_STATE; GENETIC; 1800AD
GOVERNMENT_THECNOCRACY; GENETIC; 1900AD
GOVERNMENT_CONSTITUAL_MONARCHY; GENETIC; 1950AD
GOVERNMENT_WORLD_CORPORATION; GENETIC; 2200AD
GOVERNMENT_MILITANT_ECOTOPIC; GENETIC; 2100AD
GOVERNMENT_PLANETARY_DEMOCRACY; GENETIC; 2100AD

GOVERNMENT_MILITANT_LEADERSHIP; DIAMOND; 2400AD
GOVERNMENT_VIRTUAL_REPUBLIC; DIAMOND; 2400AD
GOVERNMENT_RENEWED_REPUBLIC; DIAMOND; 2300AD (pls, someone suggest better name)
GOVERNMENT_PLANETARY_EMPIRE; DIAMOND; 2500AD
GOVERNMENT_ECOTOPIA; DIAMOND; 2500AD
GOVERNMENT_VIRTUAL_DEMOCRACY; DIAMOND; 2400AD


[This message has been edited by TheBirdMan (edited November 10, 1999).]
[This message has been edited by TheBirdMan (edited November 11, 1999).]
[This message has been edited by TheBirdMan (edited November 11, 1999).]

[Nordicus]

JM:

A water Admiral?? Not a mer-admiral, I hope! Oh that would be funny! lol!
Seriously, though, I like the dog idea and the other units--and what the heck is a "berserker?" I've heard of it, but I don't really know.
Some good ideas here, but maybe a new thread for this is in order.

[EKM]

Wow, a nice bunch of suggestions. I think that many people put a little too much thinking into the units issue. The only advances needed to build the distinct units would be the special advance that the civ's would start out with and any other already existing advances. The horse thing is moot. The geography in the game is not the same as the geography in the real world. How many people have had the egypians start on an ice plain? So horses could be anywhere. I just want to get the asthetic of each civ down better. No more Aztec Samuri riding the Viking Longships to conqure the Nigerian [roman] legions. Any of the computer oponents could build the other units if they somehow got that starting "cultural" advance. Wether or not theyactually do it is another thing. For example even with cows enabled I've never seen an AI build a cow. Is there something particular about the AI build agenda that doesn't allow this?