UNITS (ver. 2.0): hosted by JT3

[Theben]

This fits under 3 categories-units, combat, and radical ideas-so I'll post this at all 3:
I've suggested before-and this would work great with the SMAC workshop-the attack/defense values should be scrapped and replaced with the following: land/air/sea/space (or LASS for short). Both attack and defense would be based off of the appropriate terrain. FE, a phalanx would use it's air rating vs. a fighter (none or low) while the fighter would use it's land rating vs. the phalanx (low to middle for modern units, but still much higher than the phalanx. Also with more hp's and firepower). Reasons:

1) Combat in CIV/SMAC/CtP is on a strategic scale; although tactics are a part of the combat, you don't make those decisions (thankfully). Combat consists of charges, feints, counterattacks, etc., so the idea of attacker & defender on this grand scale is lessened unless the defender is in a fortification of some sort (which can be taken into account).

2)This is regarding SMAC unit construction mostly, but it appears it will be used in civ3. In SMAC combat is resolved by comparing the weapon strength(attacker) vs. the defender's armor. This is ridiculous; the defender's weaponry and the attacker's defenses aren't taken into account but I think anyone would agree that they should.

3)It would work very well with a modified workshop. The player could buy each attack level for each category when the appropriate technology is gained. FE,
Fighter(WWII era): land=low, air=high, sea=low, space=none
Dive bomber: land=medium, air=low/medium, sea=medium/high, space=none
Torpedo bomber: land=low, air=very low, sea=high, space=none
phalanx: land=low/medium, all others=none
musketeers: land=low/medium, all others=none
marines(20th cent): land=medium/high, air=low, sea=none, space=none
Each category would also be divided by their hit points, and the strengths of each would overlap. FE, Ancient units (1 hp) can have a a strength from 1-5 land(approximately). Gunpowder units (hp 2)would have STR's from about 4-7, modern(hp 3) 7-12, etc. The weapons, etc. for the graphics would change when the hp level is selected in the workshop (where the reactor is now).

To differentiate between similar units, such as legions vs. legions, there would be modifiers:
-Terrain, which would apply to both attacker and defender (infantry bonus in cities; horsemen, tanks in open; special units-alpine, marines-in their specialized terrain); forts could count as terrain that only benefits the defender, but allows attackers to retreat easier & defenders less easily
-Morale, social engineering(happy soldiers fight better than unhappy soldiers), & tech bonuses (techs that would give a minor advantage to combat that are otherwise too small for the workshop; i.e. writing, telegraph, satellite mapping).
-The Random Combat Events: RCE represents the things that happen in combat that are unforseen and out of your control. Applied each and every time units engage in combat. Using a scale from 1-100, whereas 1=disaster for the attacker & 100=disaster for the defender. Most of the time results fall in the middle, which has no effect on combat. Other results give a minor bonus to the attacker or defender. Can be modified by military "leader" units & attacks launched from surprise(to be discussed later). Allow a toggle at game start to turn this effect on or off.

[Eggman]

It should be possible to upgrade units. It is annoying to have to replace obsolete units every 50 turns when new technology appears. I think it would be easier just to spend some production and/or cash and upgrade it to the new unit instead of building a new unit and then disbanding the old one.

Really, what is the difference between a phalanx, a legion, a musketeer and mechanized infantry? Basically just equipment and training. The actual soldiers are the same. Same deal with the mounted units. Even with ships, all you are really doing is replacing the ship, not the crew.

What should happen is that when my unit becomes obsolete, I should have to bring the unit back to a city (maybe with a barracks or the appropriate improvement) and refit it. The refit costs LESS than the full cost of the new unit since I don't have to recruit anyone. The unit either keeps its veteran status or is slightly reduced (the troops may be a bit clumsy the first time with their new weapons but they remain well trained soldiers when it comes to keeping their cool).

There may be some exceptions to these upgrades. I can't see how to upgrade cavalry to armor. Those two units are completely different from each other, even though they perform the same role. Perhaps the cavalry could be upgraded to another unit, such as an infantry unit.

[Theben]

Eggman,
I always considered cavalry, i.e. "mounted units" to have their own separate chassis, from infantry, tanks, etc.
The rest sounds good though.

[Ekmek]

A big issue that is often forgotten is command and control. Oddly enought C2 as its called is now the focus in US Army doctrine and is supposed to be decisive in Information Age Warfare. CIV2 sticks to an Industrial Age idea of production and defeat by mass (rarely have I played a game where a small army bats a big one). The information age (in theory) gives small flexible armies an advantage if they have better C2 and can destroy the enemy's C2 nodes (such as in the Gulf War).

CIV3 should have C2 elements because it is to unrealistic and it kind of makes games unbalanced or not practical when you can send Legions around the world and you still can control them (not to mention the supply issue). Leader units should be used for: a morale/leadership bonus/ command and control/ and for stacking (maybe a battle AI). But there needs to by C2 element like how you send your orders which may seem tedious but anyone familiar with military history knows that the means of commo determined a lot of battles and campaigns. This would make it prctical because the same reason the US today can have a global presence and the romans couldn't had to do with C2 (not to mention how the mongols built a world empire but it crumbled because over overstretch, it was to big to C2).

Some units would be towers (Persians and Romans commo'd by fire signals, but it took days to send messages), horse carriers, then later to telegraph, phone, radio, satellites.

This won't add to the tedious but would make it more realistic and challenging and it would be great to intercept enemy messages and figure out there strategy or foul up there plans by intercepting there messages or sending false messages (of course it would be frustrating to be on the other end, but thats a challenge)

[Mikel]

Well I noticed a while back that people where discussing the idea of units needing supply line. Someone even suggested that they may need multiple types of supplies. Personally I feel that is getting a bit complicated but three types of supply types may be workable, rations, fuel, and information.
Any comments?

[Theben]

Mikel,
Read SUPPLY, MOVEMENT, etc. There are many excellent suggestions there.

[Jakester]

I dont know if anyone has talked about this here yet but I think mercenaries should definetly be a part of civ3. I just finished writing about this on general suggestions but I wanted your guys input if u didnt see it. I think they would best be represented in a more realistic type of combat with numbers of soldiers involved instead of just units. Colonization had the units for mercs but I would definetely prefer the more lords of the realm2 type of combat or possibly a scaled down battleground type of map. So Im really askin two questions. Do we want mercs and if we do realistic combat or ctp type combat? Check out my article on the other civ3 section if you want to see a more detailed description of my ideas.Thanks

[Diodorus Sicilus]

The “types of armies” fall into certain recognizable patterns. The current game systems make no provision for “mobilization” - everybody is in uniform or carrying a shield all the time. If we go to a system of raising forces as needed based on an existing pattern or organization, the patterns could be as follows:
1. Civilians in Uniform The army is raised from the population based on who can supply their own weapons and equipment. This is the standard pattern for all barbarian, nomad, and most ancient city states.
2. Paid Professionals The army consists entirely of those who make it their business. This is the Roman legion in the Imperial period. This was also the pattern for the 18th century European armies, based on the fact that the long drill required to make a good musket unit was considered too time-consuming for ‘amateurs’ to have a chance to master it. This is the most expensive army to maintain, because they have to be paid all the time
3. Call Up the Pros The army consists of those who have the weapons and know how to fight in the population, but they are only called up as needed. This is the classic fuedal system, in which knights had (ostensibly) no other profession than to carry arms. Even then, it was usually supplimented by ‘calling up’ a portion of the (amateur) peasentry as footmen. This is slightly less expensive than paying the Pros all the time, but since they have to be supported while they train on their own, it still makes a deeper hole in the economy than any system other than No.2 above.
4. Draft The conscript army consists of Everybody who can possibly serve. However, most of them serve only for a couple of years, then go into the Reserves which can be called up in case of war. This requires a large standing army to train everyone, but allows a huge army to be quickly mobilized from the trained reservists. This is the European system common since 1815, and modifications of it persist in virtually all armies today. By providing a ‘sliding scale’ of % called up and training time, you can adjust the size of the standing army, and reserves available to the economic resources you want to spend on the military. In Democracies the Happiness will also vary (sometimes dramatically) with the % called up each year and the amount of time they have to spend in uniform.

Equipment for the Host is provided by the troops in Systems 1 and 3, must be provided by the State in System 2, and must be provided and stored for the reserves in System 4.

Navies always require more training than armies, but the common system from ancient times to the present day is to have some or even most of the warships ‘laid up’ in peacetime (ancient Athens had Ship Sheds for the triremes in storage). This usually requires a training time when the crews are called up again, which will vary depending on what % can be provided from the Active Navy and what % of the population makes their living on the sea: England had a big advantage for most of the 17th and 18th centuries because she could support a large navy from a large seafaring population: recruiting experienced sailors wasn’t always easy, but it was possible and it’s much easier to train landlubber as naval gunners than to train them as sail handlers.
Therefore, almost all navies will fall into the same patterns as the armies: usually nos 2 or 3.
With the same requirements for specialized training, air forces can be treated like navies: the state provides all the equipment, but the men can be called up or full time: patterns 2 or 3.

So, if most of the military units only exist in wartime, how do I explore? Earliest explorers would be the Warriors/Hunters - wandering after better game or pastures, finding things and people by accident. As soon as Trade is ‘invented’, the Merchant-Adventurer, hot for a new source of goods to trade, becomes the primary explorer. A variant of this is the Prophet or Priest looking for converts to his faith, who will explore for slightly different reasons, and the Conquistador variant who explores looking to conquer the goodies instead of trade for them.
The professional explorer is largely a 19th century invention, but the same effect can be obtained from the earlier Merchants, Priests, and Conquistadors. The neat thing is that based on your Economy and Religion scales, your civ will generate Merchants and Priests to explore automatically - the government at most will subsidize them. Same with Conquistadors, but the militant religious explorer-converter is a phenomenon peculiar to only some religions, so there will have to be some kind of limiting rules, proably based on the type of religion in the civ (proselytizing or not?) to keep everyone from sending out Crusaders, Conquistadors, and other religious fanatics to abuse their neighbors.

[monolith94]

I want a wisconsonite cheesehead unit

I would rather build armies and fleets than "units".

[Gregurabi]

(yin -- sorry about starting a new thread. When I tried to reply in this thread the other day, I got syntax errors from the web server. Reposting here.)

Something's always bothered me about the Civilization unit concept. Military units should not be built in factories. Military units are people!

When you wish to build an army for your civilization, you should require people, and you should require weapons and other gear. The people should come from your population (perhaps not a whole "population point" -- that's another strange concept as it stands). The weapons and other materials should be manufactured the way units are currently done. Then in order to actually build an army (what we call a "unit" in the current gaming system), you would have to put the people and the equipment together in a city which has a military training base (similar to a Barracks in Civ1/Civ2 but not identical). The training would require some time -- and the more time you invest in the training, the stronger your army would become.

This is VERY vaguely similar to a concept from Colonization in which your "people" are actually individualized, with different educations (including soldiers), and require guns and/or horses to become fully equipped military units. However, I thought it rather silly that when your mounted units lose a fight, they simply lose their horses and can either fight as a ground unit or go get new horses. *That* idea is right out -- but the
education/training thing is something I liked.

When you take people away from their farms and businesses and put them in the armed forces, you make a trade-off which affects your civilization's prosperity beyond just raw production. I think this is an important consideration which is missing from current Civ games.

(In response to Theben's point in the other thread -- doing this requires a game model in which your city has more "population points" than Civ1/Civ2/CTP cities have. Consider Colonization -- that game is balanced so that you need more population points in order to get the full potential from your cities. You need Lumberjacks to harvest wood, plus Carpenters to convert the wood to "hammers". You need Miners to harvest ore, and Blacksmiths to convert the ore into "picks". The "hammers" and "picks" are used to produce new buildings, guns, etc. So instead of having two citizens working land tiles as per Civ1/Civ2, you need about 4 citizens in Colonization to get rougly the same kind of effect. So your cities have twice as many population points, and therefore losing a population point to produce a military unit doesn't hurt as much. I rather liked this.)

[Scooter]

I posted this response to your idea on the other thread. Here it is again so others can comment one way or the other.

This sounds exactly like Lords of the Realm II. Basically, you chose what weapons to produce, depepnding on what resources you have, and then you can build an army using those weapons and people from the populous.
It was good for that game because it did not require too much micromanagement in the strategy portion of the game. You could afford to micromanage your military. I do not like the idea of incorporating this into Civ3 however. Civ is a strategy game, not a military simulation. Micromanaging my cities is fine. Micromanaging my Civ is fine. Please, please don't make me micromanage my military down to the unit and equipment. As the ruler of my empire, I simply say "Make me some tanks" and it get's done. I don't say "Make some tank bodies, 2 treads, a bunch of wheels, a turret, a 105mm gun, a small arms gun, find some men, train them, etc, etc."

"Shields" are supposed to incorporate all the resources. Timber, steel, coal, etc. If Civ3 comes out and we have to divide shield production into different resources, then refine that resource into a semi-finished good, then ship it to a factory where it combines with other goods just to make a gun that is then shipped to yet another factory to finally build the tank, I'll go nuts. If I wanted that, I'd play Industry Giant, or something like that.

Civ is a strategy game, not a manufacturing simulation. Like I said before, when I want a tank, I simply say "Make me a tank". Period. It is assumed that that order goes down the pipeline to the appropriate underlings who do what it takes to make it happen. I am god. What I say goes. I do not want to be an underling. I'm already one of those in real life.

Your other idea is workable and realistic in my opinion. But to do it we have to define how many people are represented in a Population and how many troops are represented by a unit. I believe a Pop is 10,000 people. If a unit represents 10,000 soldiers (or pieces of equipment with soldiers), then it stands to reason that a Pop would be subtracted for every unit you create. This would cause many problems. Pop would decrease way too fast in times of war. So if we adjust a military unit down to 1,000 people, then we run into fractional Pops. Do you want this? I don't think I do, but that is what these threads are for, right?


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"BEEFCAKE, BEEFCAKE!!!

-E. Cartman

[Mind Elemental]

I think having some different resources is a good idea- it differentiates between the wood & cloth for a man-o-war and the steel, electronics, fuel, etc. for a tank. Civ III can simply use the Imperialism system (tools, lumber, arms, hardware, steel, etc.) - not too many resources to confuse things, and a great many of them can be trimmed nyway.

[Theben]

I posted an idea elsewhere that resources would be visible on the map-wood, oil, iron, uranium, etc. (not every resource would be, just the big ones). If the resource was in your territory, you could use it at all your cities, if not, you'll have to trade or conquer for it. Keeps it simple, Stanley.

[Theben]

RE: loss of pop when build military unit,

I've changed my position, I'm now against it. Why? Because some things civ doesn't and cannot represent. Most of those military personnel would be working at civilian tasks for the majority of their existence, either working in the fields during serfdom or moving on to public/private service after 4-6 years in modern times. Either case has little impact on a region's(city's) production & pop levels. This isn't possible to model with units that remain in existance for hundreds of years.

[Chowlett]

I've posted this before, but I haven't seen it in a summary, so I'll post it again.

Upgrading units is fine, so long as it's kept sensible. For example, IMHO it's ridiculous to be able to upgrade a unit to better armour, on the discovery of Iron working for example, while it's out in the field. Where did it get the iron armour from? I say that a unit needs to be in a city (or as someone else suggested, a city with a barracks) for at least 1 turn.

Alternatively, I say a unit should be able to upgrade after defeating a higher technology unit, to represent the spoils of war idea - I beat you, now that you're dead, I'll have your armour and this new-fangled gun, kind of thing. To mediate the power you could gain through this, I suggest that a new weapon (not armour) should either be taken only if it makes sense to the unit (give a swordsman a bigger sword, but not a bow and arrow), or should be used at a slightly reduced effectiveness for a while until the unit works out exactly how to use it to the best effect.

[The Brain]

These units could be under called "Religious" units:
Witch Doctor- The early religious leader of your city. He is a temporary "temple" until you build the real temple. Once the temple is built it he will lead it. He will keep the citizens happy partially. Can not move out of city.
Preist (Mysticism)- Once you discover the advance in the parantheses the witch doctor is converted and works in the temple double time doubling his effect on the city. Also cannot move out of city until Polytheism is discovered.
Guru (Polytheism)- About the same thing with the previous unit except they can move and convert enemy units making them part of your civ, but it has zero attack and defense. Coversion is not always absolute.
Bishop (Monotheism)-Same things as previous
unit but has the ability to preach to an enemy city and cause a revival in the city making the people join your civ out of faith in your religion. Has somewhat defense power due to people following him in faithfulness to him. Doubles effect of cathedral.
"Jesus" (Fundamentalism)- NOT really God! Everyone thinks he is God and will die for him. Therefore he can covert cities almost easily. Makes whole city happy. Only with Fundamentalist government. Has a good defense since LOTS of people following them and will fight for him.

[Theben]

Brain,
I hope your kidding.

[Theben]

These are my ideas from the old "Units" thread, with some changes:

There is a single chassis type for air.

"Special options" are used for variation.

Air units with a range of 1 are bombers (in this case, range is a function of the domain
of the unit). Any air unit with a range higher than 1 has fighter capability.

"Biplanes", "Advanced Planes", "Jets" are all special options. Older options cannot attack
newer ones, but may be attacked by them.

"brigade" is an option (that I'd like) for all chassis, which greatly lowers the cost & hit
points of a unit. Should all air units be required to have this?

Regular bombers, fighters are the default. "Heavy Bomber" is a special option, which has
certain bonuses, penalties, and missions:

1)Bombard-Air unit selects a single unit to bombard. Heavy bombers damage all units in
square, regardless of country or city/fort(city/fort units take less damage). May reduce
city pop.(% chance) w/ or w/o walls. Concealed units may not be attacked. "Biplanes"
have only this mission and support-intercept.

2)Scorched earth: In city, attempts to damage buildings &/or severely reduce
population. May attempt to target specific structures at a greater risk of failure. In
country, pillages terrain. Heavy bombers do considerably more damage (regular bombers
would do minimal damage). Laser-targeting, possibly other adv. tech (satellite
mapping?) will increase chances of success.

3)Interdict-Heavy bombers only. Affects a single square; any unit(friend or foe) in or
attempting to pass through square is attacked by the bomber & costs triple move to
enter & leave.

4)Air support-Intercept: All air units have a radius of operation=1/2 total move of unit
in civ2/SMAC (for example). Players can send air units to support stacked ground
combat in this radius; the air unit acts as artillery in the combat (ships could also do
this if within bombardment range, btw). The air attacks with bombard, and may attack
any enemy unit on the battlefield (certain other units may intercept you, either in air or
on ground). Fighters/bombers attack a unit. Heavy bombers attack all enemy units in
combat or all units in reserve (enemy units in square but not in combat). Concealed
units may not be attacked.
Intercept is a command given to an air unit. It performs the same as above outside
that civs turn, like a sentry command. It would be necessary to allow the human player
to choose whether or not they wished to intercept, FE if they expected it would be
better to use it later. Fighters generally intercept bombers in this fashion, but may lend
"support" vs. an "intercepting" bomber.

5)Tactical nuke; bio/chem warfare: Missions for jets only, that cause diplomatic
atrocities. Their effects I'll leave to others.

Air units return to a base on same turn as completing mission. Because of this, bombard
missions may only be intercepted in your turn but since interdiction is an ongoing
mission, it may be attacked (by sending a fighter to the interdicted square) in other
players' turns.

"Heavy bombers" suffer from having expensive air STR's, and may not have a range
greater than 1.

[Depp]

I have though about leaders...
Why not have headquarters instead, that contribute to each and every units fighting capabillity in a certain radio? Like in the WW2 boardgames... That would make more sense than leaders really. The HQ coudl give a +25% attack and defence bonus or movement bonus (at least one).

Leaders could still be used, like there is a 1% chance every turn that a unique (very good) leader emerges, and he stays like 20-40 years /whatever that means in turns for the moment. He will double the effectivness of the HQ or grant other benefits.

Maybe one should limit the amount of leaders a civ could gain in a game to like 10 in total, so you don´t have to find that much names and stuff

What do you all say?

[The Brain]

What do you mean? I think it's a good idea! I would like to take over cities without any destruction. That goes same with taking over units.

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Acctually I'm a genetically altered lab mouse plotting to take over the world!

I would like to have a leader figure, as posted above. The main reason is that I find the game a bit impersonal/lacking in drama. Its a bit like chess without a king at the moment - its one major weakness (IMHO).

[Flavor Dave]

Brain--yeah, it would be cool if diplomats and spies could incite revolts in enemy cities, or bribe enemy units, much like your priests would convert.

Oh wait, they already can do that...do you see his point now?

[Jon Miller]

Hello all

I think that building units should take down population in respect to the size of the unit, but I am not really sure how this could be carried out as of yet

one idea that I have is that cities that are producing units take man power from a national group of population reserved for that purpose (and disbanding a troop would add the disbanded strength to the stockpile)

and one could also move from the stockpile to any city with national or regional government structure or any city connect to one by roads, railroads or the like that are free of enemy zoc and the same method is used when removing a population point to go into that stock pile

the amount of people that went to make that population point (in civ2 the first was 10000 the next 20000, etc.) would go into your stockpile

this would realistically give the edge in combat to those civilizations that are larger

then that national stockpile, which would be divided evenly between the (or as dictated by the social engineering choices) between the cities of national and regional government (for the occasion of one of those cities being blocaded from the rest), would be used to form the units

(maybe something like the courthouse would denote regional government and the palace would of course denote national government)

each type of unit would require different ammounts of people depending on the social settings and technolgy and type of unit

a city (or regional or national government or a city connected to one by an unbroken, by enemy zoc, road) would then pay the production price to train and equip that unit

there would be technology that would change the available organization choices allowing for larger groups to work together and thus units that are larger, a good example of this would be the radio

each like 1000 combat strength (number subject to debate) would be represtented in the game by like 10 hp

an alternate idea is to have the respective particpants of a battle have their respective combat strenth taken down by the largest common denominator and then the ratio used as their respective hps for that battle

combat strength would be found by taking the whole size of the unit and subtracting a precentage that reflects medicine tech level, organization tech level, organization type, terrain type and army(ies) type

for example a settler unit would be cheap to build but would take a lot of population away from your stockpile, which would make sense

some examples of combat strength modifications:

in jungle more people would be sick - less combat size
if medicine is better less people are sick - greater combat size
in ancient times there was often a lot of people who did not engage in combat who traveled with the troop - less combat strength

also, for those units who work the land, the time factor for finishing the work would be related to the combat size, showing that larger groups of people can get more done

this idea would also take care of that strange occurance in civ2 where a settler that takes you down a million population works the same as one that takes you down 20 thousand

this idea would also but more ballance into the game by making big cities more worthwhile and go against the strategy of producing thousands of small cities (my favorite strategy)

please comment, this is just one page of my ideas and I have many more, but this post is getting a little long

Jon Miller

[Ekmek]

I like the population cost of units idea it is more realistic and it makes it more challenging. I makes you think about what your priorities are. Maybe some units should have a life expectancy/ service expiration of # of turns too (should be an optional feature or editable in the units editor) that way we can upgrade easier or deal with challenges like the US military does today of trying to keep people in and trying to get people to sign up (Rome had this problem at one point too).
<font size=1 face=Arial color=444444>[This message has been edited by E (edited July 06, 1999).]</font>

[Ekmek]

I'm still for the leaders as units and have random occurences (like special leaders rising from the ranks, and it would work good to have revolutionaries as a new type of barbarian). Headquarters could be a technological development because in the ancient days the leader was a participant and also one of the decisive points on the battlefield. I still think leaders should have a command and control range too, so you can only activate units in there range (instead of having rogue legions walk around they need leadership and a way for you to communicate to those leaders)

Unfortunately revolutions and revolts in the cities is done too simplisticly in civ, you really can't wage an insurgency or a counterinsurgency low-intensity type of war (if i could think of a way i would suggest it, give me time ). that would add more to special ops and leaders and go to a suggestion I had in the COMBAT thread which is to diversify war because Civ sticks to a really basic view of warfare (conventional mostly and try to take the cities, not really what military history was about).

I love the "have resources availlable on the map" idea (kinda like Age of Empires) but make it include horses and elephants and livestock (the native americans didn't have horses until europe brought them and the elephant story is the same) this would make it more challenging to build units and give a cultural feel too. (this should be mentioned in the terrain thread I'll lend my support there too).

Brain: I'm not a big fan of your religious units, they are represented. The "jesus" idea really killed it, maybe if you atleast tried the term "martyr" it might not have seem too out there.

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"He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man."
- Dr. Johnson, from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

[Theben]

Norton anti-freeze my a**... Okay 2nd time:

Brain,
Flav Dave has a point. Spies are already powerful enough; any unit more powerful than a vet spy is not something I want. Actually I want LESS units overall, and spies should be abstracted to a espionage screen. The only single person unit I want is a generic military "leader".
My point was that religion has been a touchy topic here. Just check out the "Real Religions in civ3?" thread in the Suggestions forum. Even after I tried to explain my position I received negative responses. So care is called for when discussing religion. And the "Jesus" unit really turned me off, although I wasn't crazy about the rest anyway.

Jon Miller & E,
I'm still against units causing pop reductions, for the above reasons (7/3 post).

Actually the Native Americans had horses before the Europeans & Asians. Unfortunately for them, they didn't domesticate them but instead hunted them to extinction, while others migrated to Asia, then to Europe. In case you wanted to know.

[Jon Miller]

my next post

topic: settlers (or the like)

there should be settlers like in civ that improve the terrain

the biggest reason for this instead of public works is that public works does not make sense in military situations

One thing I hated in call to power is that I could not send a settler to build forts, railroads, roads, and airports when fighting in enemy territory

I always in civ send settlers or engineers for an attacking army

of course you should be able to build stuff in enemies land whenever you want (that is the reason they have that limitation there) but you should also sometimes be able to and that distinction can only be had with a unit

also if one civilization is invading another the defending civilization should not be able to improve at their own leasure, no, the invader should be able to destroy the improvers

this of course leaves the tiring mircomanagement of improving during peace with settlers

this can be solved, as I see it, in either of the following ways (maybe both):

have a competent auto ai with a lot of choices to choose from like farm and road only or road only between cities or improve only in a certain city radius or improve only within the bounds I set (which would then be set by clicking certain points that have a line connecting then and ending when you click the original point), of course this would be devided into different sections such as what improvements do I make and a lot of choices (multiple ones can be picked such as: mine mountains, mine hills, irrigate plains, road plains) and then a seperate section of where do I make them and a lot of choices (such as the bounds choice or the city radius choice or the road between cities choice) and finally there would be a third section with special choices like as soon as a foreign unit moves within seeing radius alert and then when such a thing occured you would get a message at the beginning of your turn asking if you want the unit to cancel action or continue on auto

long paragraph

an alternate idea (or maybe both should be included) would be to give each settler a building queue that would show you the order of their jobs, where their jobs are to be done (the location numbers and maybe if you click on that entree it shows a picture of that square and moves your cursor there), and what they (the settler) are going to do there

as I mentioned previously in the units thread, the time it takes to do an improvement project should be a factor of the size of that unit but this idea would only work if my size idea was accepted

settlers should be able to be protected by small armed attachments that are hooked with the unit, modern settler type units would have guns with them providing some defense, their unit in actual combat would have a large subtraction because of its type (if my size idea is used)

canals and terrain changing as well as bridges and tunnels should be possible, maybe not as drastic of height changing as smac though

Jon

[Jon Miller]

I think my idea for size would work, Theuben, and especially in ancient times the ammount of troops gone for war was significant, and by the way, I assume that over time, just like in civ, people leave the army as they grow older and join the work force and people leave the work force and join the army, thats what that miliatry service thing was all about, the farther the troop was from the civilizations cities, the longer it was before people where transfered back into society and the longer the time of military service, my pool of avaiable people would ba a constantly shifting party of the young, like those available for the draft


Jon

[Flavor Dave]

"Unfortunately revolutions and revolts in the cities is done too simplisticly in civ, you
really can't wage an insurgency or a counterinsurgency low-intensity type of war (if i could think of a way i would suggest it, give me time."

I do this now. I do it when an AI is tired of me buying his cities and goes democracy. Lay siege to his cities, to starve them and deprive them of arrows. Build tons o' spies, and either have them randomly destroy buildings, or go after the money and happiness stuff. It's really fun when you see that a city is paying for improvements that cost way more than the revenue it's generating, b/c you've destroyed the bank and marketplace. Also, destroying the happiness stuff forces either revolt (and no revenue) or an increase in luxuries.

Also, remember that in demo, each unit needs a sheild of support. Occupy all mined hills and buffaloes, and watch the enemy city go from producing 15 shields to 5. It's gonna take a while to build that factory now, ain't it?

"I like the population cost of units idea it is more realistic and it makes it more challenging."

Wrong on both points. It isn't realistic, unless the population model is radically changed. The US has a huge military, yet it's a speck compared to our total pop.

2nd, it wouldn't be more challenging, it would be easier. You understand the power of we love days, and the computer doesn't. So, late in the game, you're going to have vastly larger pop. than the AIs. That would mean that the AIs couldn't support a huge military, and you could. Using your idea, as long as I survive to build the SoL, it's all over. I go demo, go we love to get a huge pop., then build an unmatchable military.

We love already is unbalancing toward the human; it will get worse under your idea.