UNITS (v. 1.3): hosted by JT

[JT]

The other one was over the limit. See UNITS Summary for (gasp!) the UNITS Summary.

[Sieve Too]

WOW, what a list so far! Great job organizing all this JT!

New class of Units: Biological/Chemical Weapons (I didn't find it on the list but I might've missed it)

Early biological weapons need be no more than a diseased corpse catapulted into a besieged city. This was a common ancient tactic to overcome the impenetrable City Walls problem. A diseased unit loses 1/3 or their hit points. Further attacks by early diseases have no effect on the unit, as it becomes resistant.

Later biological weapons are more devestating : 1/2 hit points lost, mobile units lose mobility for a turn, loss of veteran status due to green troops replacing sick ones, more contagious diseases affect 2 or maybe more units, highly contagious diseases affect all units in a 1 square radius.

Spies would have a chance of "planting" a disease. With Rocketry, civs could deliver biological weapons from a long distance.

Users of biological weapons should run a risk of self infection each time the weapons are meant to be used. This class of weapons would carry the same unhappiness penalty in Democracies as nukes. Likewise, the use of these weapons is generally frowned upon in the world community, but to a lesser extent for Fundamentalist civs.

SDI would be a good defense for cities, similar to nukes. Advances like Sanitation, Medicine and Genetic Engineering could reduce or eliminate the effects of earlier weapons. In the field, a Patriot Defense System Unit could protect an area against later rocket delivered weapons.

[JT]

It _was_ on there, but it was defined differently than that.

[Cartagia the Great]

I'm not sure if this was on there, but I'd also like to see the inclusion of refugees. These units would be created, much liek Partisans from Civ2, but would have differant affects. They would have the 'everything is roads' ability, to show their fleeing from a fallen city. They would also take food from what ever space they ahve landed on, even in your own civilization, denighing food, and resources, to your permenantly housed civilians. For this reason you might have them flee, for a short period, to an allies territory, but it may make them angery at you. Unlike real settlers, all refugees could do is build cities, not roads, or irrigation, and their food consuption would make sure you don't want them on your land much anyway

[NotLikeTea]

I advocated for refugees in SMAC too, but never got them.

I don't think that they should be able to found cities, but should be able to join existing cities, and add a population point.

I also like the idea of having them accepted by allies, but not to add a population point, obviously. Once they can come back to your civ, they should.

I also don't think they should be too much of a drain on resources. Let's just say that each refugee unit (representing one population point) requires the same food as one population point in a city, and would take it from the nearest city (not crossing borders)

Of course, attacking refugees is an atrocity, in the later game, at least. And whenever it happens, legal or not, it would cause some major hard feelings.

Refugees cannot be disbanded.

[Francis]

Not sure if this should go here or elsewhere, but NONE units should be eliminated. In the real world military units require support from somewhere; bribed barbarians should be no exception. Note that I'm not talking about your three free units under monarchy, etc. When you bribe a unit, you should get the option to home it to any of your cities, so that you can pick the one best able to support another unit. Exceptions to this would be partisans (always NON), perhaps settlers/engineers (in theory, might be able to support themselves on the fat of the land or something) and fanatics under fundy. But you'd still have to home the fanatics, because if you switched govs they might then require support.

[Mo]

I think refugees should consume food from the nearst city with which their country isn't at war with. That city can refuse to give food but unless they truly don't have enough food to support them their reputation should go down.

[Mo]

I think that you should be able to burn a city to the ground similar to smac, but it shouldn't be an atrocity early in the game.
Artillery and ranged attacks against a city should destroy a city improvment or 2 during each turn they bombard.

[Eggman]

Good call on the NONE units. But I think it would be better if they did away with a specific city supporting the unit. Make it the civ at large that provides the support. New York doesn't pay for the army, the United States does. Anyway, unit/city support optimization is boring. Get rid of it.

[Lung]

Message to Francis -

Many early military units lived off the land when they left their city of origin, and therefore should not incur any production penalty. This should be considered for certain units in the ancient age.

[Bird]

My apologies if this has been mentioned before. There should be an air transport unit that allows you to transport more than one unit by airport each turn. I hate the limitations on using airports each turn, but I understand that it may be necessary for game balance. But there's no reason you shouldn't be able to build a transport, put x number of units on it, and send it off. Game balance is less an issue because (1) you have to build the transport and (2) there is a risk of losing all the units if the transport is shot down.

[Ecce Homo]

Yes, units must be fed. The demand of food should depend on the number of people minus the yield of the terrain.

This will mean that small armies can easily make it without food supply if they are not on a mountain or in a desert. Large, modern armies would always need food supplies.

[NotLikeTea]

How much food? Keep in mind that one citizen only needs 2 food units (I think), and this represents many, many times the number of people as would be in a single millitary unit. I don't think feeding should be a major factor in the game. Realistic, maybe, but not really fun. Giving shields as support is good enough.

[Ecce Homo]

Alright NotLikeTea. The idea of food support requires that the concept of food production is redone.

Also - I think only vehicles should need shields (representing fuel and spare parts).

[Mo]

I think it is better to just increase the limit that an airport can handle instead of making a seperate airtransport unit. Using airports there is also the risk of having your incoming unit being shot down if there is an enemy antiair unit within range.
The only air transport unit that I think might be usefull is a transport helicopter. It can transport ground units small distances and can unload them even if there isn't an airbase around.

Since these posts are going to be sent to Firaxis soon and just in case they ignore many of our suggestions and just tinker with the CivII model (let's face it in gameplay SMAC was CivII with a few enhancement such as a world council and borders and improved AI), at minimum Civ III needs:

an infantry unit between legions and musketeers let's call it swordsman

a realization that a great many of history's naval battles took place between 1500 and 1850 before the development of ironclads and with more than frigates involved. So Civ III needs at least:

fire galley (soon after triremes) (2-1-2) with ability to sink if ending turn offshore

roman-type ship (3-1-2)

medieval early galleon-type ship like the Great Harry built by HenryVIII with a castle-like structure on the stern (3-2-3)

Man-Of-War (5-3-3)

An U-2 type sub (6-2-2)

Downgrade the battleship somewhat to maybe (10-10-4) and replace it with a dreadnought class ship with the battleship's old statistics

Increase the carrier defense factor by 50% against sea units to reflect its air wing

If anyone knows the correct historical names for some of the described units, please post them, I don't know them.

[Ecce Homo]

Thanks VaderTwo, but the ships' movement rates should be higher - at least doubled.

Before the late 1800s, ships were the fastest means of transportation - the seas were rather connecting than separating people.

A fast ship should always be at least as fast as the fastest ground unit on a road.

[NotLikeTea]

True, but I think that this is a case of realism vs fun. Faster ships would be better in the realism department, but the AI would be able to snaek into your territory easier, expolration would be much quicker, and so forth. It took Europe a very long time to find North america (if youi leave ot the vikings) and they had marvelous, quick ships. In civ, it could be done in a few turns after you get past triemes.

[Harel]

It seems to me that increasing the scale of things in CIV III will do a world of good. Is it me, or they still program the variables in 8 bit bytes?
For example, like MotLikeTea said, a popultion unit requires much more food then one military unit.
Would it be that bad, for example, is you would reseive 30 food for a tile, and require 20 to feed someone, insteed of 3 and 2?
That would allow us to assign food supply to units.
Same thing with movement. Is it that hard, really, to create a bigger map and allow every unit to build faster and keep the movement rate more realistic?
Indeed, it's very ease fo find america in civ ii. True, we KNOW America is there, but never-the-less.
I think ( and probaly lot's of people allready said so ) that we should X10 civ III entire variable array.
Finer control on things, realism and allow us to give things smaller bonus ( not just +50%, but more subtle changes ).
Is it that hard to insert? I think not. It won't even change civ old model that much.

[JT3]

That would go in other. I like the idea, though.

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CIV3 Threadmaster of UNITS
"We get the paperwork, you get the game!"

Perhaps a way of increasing the movement of ships without fundamentally changing the unit movement points would be to create different types of sea terrain.

Current/Gulf Stream - 1/4 movement point
Shoreline - 1 movement point
Ocean (non-current and not on shoreline) -1/2 movement point

[Ecce Homo]

NotLikeTea pointed out a drawback of increased movement rates.

The AI would be able to sneak into your territory easier.

True. Ships should generate Zones of Control, which would slow the movement of enemies.

[Bubba]

I'm new to the Civ III forums so please forgive me if these are repeats:

1. IMHO all units should be supported from Gold on a civilization wide basis, as is done in CTP rather than through production shields on a city to city basis.

2. Someone mentioned that they would like a General/Commander unit that would give a def/offensive bonus when combined with a stack of units that would become an Army. Others thought that this was overkill and wouldn't add much fun to the game. A fun version of this comes from the Civ II scenarios. Their might be a Great Leader special unit/s for each civilization that MIGHT appear randomly throughout the game and that would have to effect of either a defensive bonus or offensive bonus while in a stack (like a General) or a happiness or scientific bonus for a city (perhaps like plus 5 happiness/science). These units could not be rebuilt once destroyed and would be specific to the age in which they arrived. Moreover they would last only as long as that Age to represent their life span (Modern, Renaissance etc.) Some of these could be for example, Napoleon, Churchill, Wellington, Richard the III, Gandhi, Lincoln, Hitler, Shakespeare, Newton, Einstein, Lenin, Mao etc. In some senses this would allow one to get rid of some of the Wonders that are tied to people and in some ways is like Colonization, except that enemies could try to destroy these units. This would help to make every game special.

[Bigcivfan]

I have a suggestion about the partisan military unit. I think that although the Partisan unit belongs to your civ, in the game the unit is a partisan group of an opposing civ that is being funded by your civ. Therefore, I the partisan unit should be able to attack an opposing civ regarless of diplomatic state, but there is a possibility every time they attack that the link to your civ could be discovered, and then you suffer a reputation penalty and war could be declared. The partisans should be a little weaker to compensate for this ability, as they are mainly good for destroying military supply units (another possible concept?) and small military units. All partisan units should be made a neutral color so that civ's cannot tell who is funding rebel activity on their soil....



<font size=1 color=444444>[This message has been edited by Bigcivfan (edited June 13, 1999).]</font>

[philbo]

I would like to see tethered balloons (for observation up to 3 spaces away) as early as the 1600's. If there is weather in the new model, free flying balloons with no defense and a weak offense could be interesting.

[CormacMacArt]

I realize that this is outside the present discussion, but I wanted to get my two cents in. I completly disagree with the idea of having commander units or captain units. The only thing that it adds to the game is another level of micromanagement. Units can rebel without there being a separate unit to lead them.

[Mo]

Partians:
Nice idea. To make the partisan unit more realistic the units that are created when a city is conquered should be controled by the computer even if it was your city. They should respect all of your diplomtic situations except if you make peace with their home city which is occupied.

[Kaak]

It would be nice if the game could keep track of a unit's history. I.E.: when it was created, battle history, etc...ideas?


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Kaak
Tribe of the Divine

I would like to have generals. They should have a range of modifying effects like diplomats. This would make more sense if there was stacked combat.

[Picker]

I think that officers are necessary, however, I think they should be integrated into the units that are already, and depending on the time period, should have a fight rating, or a strategy rating(in the olden days, low ranking officers led by example, and were ussually the in the front line, nowadays, they lead from the back). However, I think generals should be their own separate unit. Let's be honest, every army needs a chain of command. The units should also have a loyalty to thier civ, which affects the odds of them being induced into another civ, or rebelling against you.

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The Notorious P.I.K.
"Read my clit, not gonna do it."