Zone of Control

[Tellius]

Hi,

After having played CtP2 relentlessly for the past two years, I've come across the ZOC effect several times. Yet, is is not described in the manual.

How exactly does it work? I mean, I know of course an enemey ZOC onto a tile containing one of my units inhibits any further movement for that unit, but will excerting a ZOC of one of my own units into that specific tile, negate the existing - enemy - ZOC? Haven't had a chance yet to try that out. Any other effects I should be aware of? Come to think of it, I haven't tried to attack the enemy unit excerting the ZOC with the unit whose movement is inhibited either yet. Would moving to (and thus attacking) the enemy unit be possible?

By the way, will Civ3 also have this ZOC effect?

Thanks very much

Tellius

[BureauBert]

an enemey ZOC onto a tile containing one of my units inhibits any further movement for that unit

AFAIK a tile within the ZOC around an enemy unit just isn't considered as "free" by the pathfinding algorithm, therfore if your unit is surrounded by enemy units it may be "locked" because it can't find a way out rather than because the tile it's standing on is under the enemy unit's ZOC. In other words: A path will not be generated passing through enemy controlled tiles, but a path can end on an enemy controlled tile allowing you to move your units next to (and into ) any enemy unit/army/garrisoned city. But I have to admit that I never cared too much about the ZOC, so I am no expert in this regard .

attack the enemy unit excerting the ZOC with the unit whose movement is inhibited

Well I am not quite shure what you mean here, but I think the answer is similar to the above: If your unit can't get a path toward the attack target that is the reason for your unit not being able to attack. Apart from that you can always attack enemy units regardless of whether they have a ZOC or not -- so it should always be possible to attack an enemy unit standing on an adjacent tile and as far as I recall I never had a problem doing that .

BTW you can modify the ZOC-behaviour of units using the IgnoreZOC and NoZoc flags in Units.txt.

Sorry, but I played Civ3 only once or twice, so I don't know much about how things are working there, and I am technically unable to even test Civ4 on reasonably sized maps .