Things that could be in editor

[Kaneda]

I was wondering how good should be creating a WW II mod... but a GOOD one... which propose tactics and organization of troops with inteligent combat weakness and bonuses for every type of unit and situation.

Looking at the editor I found a reasonable resource on editing units, but it lacks of somethings to turn combat a good challenge for strategies, not only stack in a mountain or charge with 200 modern armors.

Let's get straight to the point:

One of the ideas is the possibility to add FLAGS to the unit type and the possibility to edit these flags too. Explaining better: Let's supose 4 types of units:

an Armored Tank 20/12/3
a Squad of Soldiers 10/10/1
a Squad of Anti Tank Soldiers 9/10/1
an Anti-tank Cannon 15/15/1

And 2 Types of Flags:

Defensive Bonus Against Armored Vehicles +50%(flag 1)
Attack Bonus Against Armored Vehicles +50% (flag 2)


Ok... It the AT Squad attacks a tank it should have a bonus for attacking it, since their weapons is aimed for destroyng armored vehicles. So they should have they should have a flag 1, thus their attack strenght rise from 9 to 18, having a good advantage against the armor's defensive str. 12.

The same apllies inverted when a tank attacks an AT Cannon (that should have flag 1, defensive bonus).

But when attacking or being attacked by the Normal Squad of Soldiers (which has no flag) the tank's and soldiers' attack and def. str. should be normal.

So concluding this idea... The editor could offer the possibilities to create flags like this (not 2 or 3, but much more) and editing then, and the possibility to apply it to the units. A unit could have 3 or 4 maximum flags like this... not only for attacking and defending, but for moving too, and for situations like being in a town or in a forest (a squad hiding in the forest could use guerrilla tactics against tanks advancing in the forest)... and many other possibilities that I thought but there's no room to type them.


Proceeding to other idea that could possibly be added in the editor: The possiblity to make objects seen just by who creates them (like subs) but in ground too...
Like fortifying, a Squad of Soldiers could hide on the terrain and wait for ambush enemy units (in a forest, jungle or mountains).
Other point is planting Anti Personel or Anti Tank Mines, they can be saw (seen) only by who plants and could have a behavior of a terrain improvement... could add a percentage chance of them explode when a unit passes thru them (30%, 50%). A improvement that can be saw by you (who plants) and not by your enemy foes.

The other idea is the possibility to add def/att bonus depending of where you attack from the enemy unit. It's better explanable if I draw a graphic: (i dunno if the graphic will be exactly)
------- 4 3 2
------>5 X 1
------- 4 3 2

The arrow (--->) points the last movement made by the defending unit. The "X" is the defending unit and the numbers the side which the attacker comes from. Ignore the "-----" which is just to arrange the table.

If the att. unit attacks from position 1 (the front of the def unit) the defending unit has a bonus of 10% from his defending str.

If being attacked by position 2 and 4 (flanks) it should get a penalty of 10%.

If being attacked from position 3 (the sides) it gets his normal defending str. (no bonus or penalty) .

If being attacked from the position 5 (rear) it should receive a 50% penalty in its defending points.

Basically if this or something similar could be created, it could possiblity a new level of tactics. It COULD be an editable flag (adding bonus and penaltys for each type of unit).


I'm aware that are preset flags of the units, like "can see subs" and many stuff like that, that is used in the game, but the possibility to free create flags (by scripting or a visual interface) could proportionate a new level in the creation of high quality mods, much more fun and a long life for Civ3 and its mods.

Thanks and sorry for the "bible" written here.


PS: if something like what i written is already possible, or there is something wrong with my text, or you want to add ideas for it, feel free to do so... I'm opened to suggestions and hope Firaxis read this topic.

Edit: Spelling

[Barnacle Bill]

I like the general idea of more flags & all, to better model the real inter-relationships, but I think they are more needed for air & naval units and how they interact with each other & ground units.

The thing I think you are missing is that Civ is not Steel Panthers. In other words, units are not squads of infantry and individual vehicles. Look at the game scale. A game of squads is played on a map where each tile/hex/whatever is of a size measured in meters. The map of such a game does not show multiple cities - it generally doesn't even show all of one city. In Civ, of course, we have lots of cities on the map. If you want to do the entire war, not just one theater of it, you need one of the world maps. The biggest one of those possible has a width of 256 tiles, which means each tile is about 150km across. On any smaller world map (like the one that shipped with the game), the tiles are even larger in terms of how much territory they represent.

Plus, there are hundreds of squads in a single division, and hundreds of divisions on each side in WWII if you are doing the whole thing, dozens of divisions just to do one theater.

So, at this scale it is most appropriate to think of each unit as a division. An armored division in WWII had a mix of battallions - tank, mechanized infantry, artillery, plus a wad of support guys. A mechanized infantry division (not used by all combattents, but the Germans had them and I think maybe the Russians) was made up of the same stuff but fewer tank battalions & more mech infantry battalions. A lot of the artillery in both was self-propelled. An infantry division was just non-mechanized infantry & non-self-propelled artillery battalions. Mostly, they were slower that armored/mechanized infantry battalions because they did not have any way to move the infantry (away from rail lines) except walking. The US and British infantry divisions (especially US) had wads of trucks available so they could move as fast as the armored/mechanized divisions. The point is, you don't need any new special flags to model the differences between these sorts of divisions, just attack & defense factors, speed and the existing "blitz" flag.

Naval, though, needs some work to model right, and even more so in the modern era. This post is already too long, though, so I'll leave that to another time.

[Kaneda]

I Agree when you say that is impossible to reproduce all the WW II battles, units and tactics in Civ3, to do so we have games like Steel Panthers, Panzer General or RTS like Sudden Strike.

But what a WW II mod should aim in Civ3? It's not to reproduce the complexity of tactics and units, we should look at that as an alternative way to make war in Civ3, since Civ3 is a game where you build up a civilization, which includes expanding your empire, making war, researching technologies and managing your economy/politics/society. The aim of a WW II mod is a total war, where the focus is in battle (but yet there could exist some other management of your civilization), but adding the ideas described above, war in civ3 should taste better than it is right now (war in civ3 actually is fun, but it can be better, agreed?).

When you talk about Divisions with squads, since controlling in Civ3 a single unit representing a Division is actually impossible, cause it just moves and has attack strenght, thats why grouping in Squads, you can join many squads in a single stack, representin them as a division, making possible a more abrangent way to control the units. Of course there's many ways to group the units, but that comes from the mod author way of see the gameplay and how he wants war to be done, Firaxis has one way to see it, but that doesn't means that ALL mods should be done like that, isn't it?

All in all I came here to propose new options for editing flags to mods be more flexible, more fun, and more divergent from each other, without losing the basic features of Civ3, remembering that the mod fits to the engine, if people criticize about the mod because it isn't realistic cause it's impossible to reproduce, than they should go to a war in the real world or play games aimed to that category of gameplay (WW II). The aim of a WW II Civ3 mod is to emphasize battle, trying to be realistic in the way it is possible, without losing the roots of civ3 gamestyle (Which IMO it's a good and fun way to play Civ3).

Edit: Spelling again

[Barnacle Bill]

I think you are missing my point.

On the scale of the Civ3 map and number of units represented, in a WWII scenario every unit would be a division (or larger). Numerous wargames set in WWII have been made on that scale. You can certainly do a WWII mod for Civ3, but it would properly be a strategic scale game. You just don't need the flags that you describe to do it. Those would only be appropriate on a tactical scale game. In a tactical scale game, turns represent just a few minutes (or fractions thereof) and units represent individual squads & vehicles, and there may be re-enforcements arriving from off map but there cannot realistically be any "production" of new units.

Actually, a serious wargame of the entirety of WWII on the unit=division level would be a "monster game". There would be thousands of units. It has been done in board games - takes a big group of gamers months to play, etc... "Grand Strategic" wargames covering the entire war, or just the entire war in Europe, typically use a "unit = corps" scale to keep the thing down to a managable level.

To do just a campaign, like North Africa or Normandy, unit=division works pretty good. The entire Eastern Front on the unit=division level falls into the monster game category (Gary Grigsby's "War in Russia", etc...). Just Omaha Beach by itself would be a (probably unplayable) monster game on the unit=squad level, though. The entire war on a unit=squad level would take longer than the real war lasted to play

[Kaneda]

I got your point, but what I'm trying to say is that I don't see any problem in adding some "spice" in Civ3 combat to have a better "war-feeling" in a mod focusing WW II.
Adjusting these flags and scripts are not only for a WWII but for various other mods and other ideas that could comeout when develepoing a mod... that's why I'm presenting here my idea.

[Libertarian]

But what good are the flags if there are no conditionals in code testing them?

[Barnacle Bill]

Originally posted by Libertarian
But what good are the flags if there are no conditionals in code testing them?

Obviously, adding the code to make them work is part of adding the flags.

Some flags are seriously needed to fix certain parts of combat, but not ground-ground:

Ground & air units should be able to "shoot back" against bombarding air units, with flags to differentiate between the following cases:

1) pre-20th Century units which can't shoot back at all
2) units with AA artillery
3) units with SAM's (better than #2)
4) units with Aegis-like capabilities (better than #3)
5) (a seperate flag) units which are AA escorts and can shoot back at air units bombarding anything they are stacked with. Air units bombarding a stack should be able to choose their target, and normally the target would shoot back, but an AA escort would shoot back instead of the target if present - kind of like a fighter interception.

A similar set would be needed to reflect ASW capabilities. Torpedo attacks would be treated like bombardment (but bombardment should be able to sink ships). Submarines would be able to pick their target in a stack, and most surface ships would be helpless to fire back. Some units would be ASW escorts with the ability to shoot at any sub attacking their tack. ASW units with the "can see submarines" flag would be able to attack subs in addition to defending against them. There should probably be flags to represent different levels of sensors/stealth - modern ASW units would have an easy time against WWII subs, while WWII ASW units are helpless against modern subs.

[Kaneda]

Originally posted by Barnacle Bill


Obviously, adding the code to make them work is part of adding the flags.

That's the point.