I am infavor of using the LASSR combat ratings (use the smae rating for attacking and defending but have ratings for land/air/sea/space and ranged within the units own domain. all betewwn domain combats are ranged attacks)

Here's one thing that would be easy to change. I don't understand why my units advancing on a city cannot see if there is a city wall! Were they invisible (like Star Trek force fields)? Of course not.

Also, when attacking cities or stacked units you have no idea what kind of unit you are shooting at. This is less preposterous than the invisible city wall, but still silly. After all, how do they aim if they don't know who they are fighting? (I know I could find this out but throwing away 30 shields on a diplomat investigation).

These two problems are the main reason why I don't engage in much offense warfare until Espionage and Stealth. Even a Dragoon would probably lose to a fortified Archer unit behind a city wall, even though the former unit is supposedly much more advanced.

While I'm posting, let me re-iterate an idea that may or may not be in the summary (I just can't tell from reading it). The cambat values need to be expanded from a max of 18 to more like 36 or 48. This would allow for more subtlety and sophsitication in the different units.

-If you have to no life, (like me ), you could take a single archer and destroy a large castle garission, with hit and run tactics. (Or you could manually dodge enemy arrows, by firing , moving, firing, moving, etc. The computer slowly lost men. I slowly lost patience.)

Capturing units:

First of all, I think there should be several types of attacks. For instance, you should be able to do "damage" attacks where instead of trying to kill a unit, you just try and weaken it. Why? Well, you do sustain less losses, and it makes what is described below easier.

You should also be able to pull off a "capture attack" where, say, a damaged galleon or ironclad or cruiser can be assaulted without the intent to destroy, but capture and use for your own cause. Typically, the later the age, the harder this attack is, but the more valuable. Of course, the ship would be greatly weakened, but could be repaired for less than the cost of building a new one (assuming Victor's model is used- under the old model, all it has to do is sit at sea and it'll magically heal), and plus, it allows you to get your hands on technology greater than your own.

close: is for non-ranged, within domain fighting (two legions fighting)
land \ air \ sea (LAS) : is for ranged combat against each domain. all combat between units from different domains or between air units is considered ranged.
defense: is the amount the opponents combat rating is reduced by. This makes certain modern units involnerable to weaker ancient units, like a tank vs. a phalanx in the open.

The rating used in a battle is called the combat rating.

The combat system:
Each round a number between 1 and 100 is picked for each combatant. If it is equal to or less than their modified combat rating the other takes damage equal to the units FP.
close combat proccedes to the death of one unit.

Ranged combat runs for a number of rounds equal to the percentage of max HP the attacker had at the start of combat.

Attackers get a + to attack due to them having initiative. Rough terrain takes away some or all of this bonus, but can never give a net penalty.

Infantry get +25% normally and +50% vs. cities and forts.
mobile units get +50%.
River, hills forest, etc. take away -25%
mountains, galciers, etc take away -50%

Fortifying and forts and city walls gives +50%.

Stacking.
The main attacker is the unit used to launch an attack, and the main defender is the one with the higest combat rating (or designated for it).
If the main unit is an infantry type the auxillary unit is a mobile type, and vice-versa if the main unit is mobile. For naval combat most ships qualify as both.
The ranged unit on each side is the one with the best applicable LAS rating.

The attacker initiates combat and uses 1 MP. The auxillary unit adds 0.5x times it's close rating to the main unit (for both sides). Every 4th turn any damage taken goes to the auxillary unit instead of the main unit. The ranged unit makes an attack every 3rd round. The auxillary and ranged units for the attacker use 1/3 or 1/2 MP.
This allows a simple way of giving benifits to a combined arms strategy. Some units can be used in more than one roll. Mech inf count as both infantry or mobile. Armour are mobile or ranged. The attacker can choose which units act as auxillary and ranged combatnts, nearby aircraft can be used as ranged units also.

Bombards
bombards are ranged combats without the close fighters involved.
Not all units that have a combat rating vs. a domain can bombard it.
cannons can only bombard land, even though they have a relativly good rating vs. sea. If a ship bombards a square with a cannon in it the cannnon shoots back. (it has to wiat for the ships to get in range, even if they are trying to hit the temple, the cannons still shoot back)
In a bombard the defender is the unit with the best LAS rating. The target is what takes damage, not neccisarily the same thing. For older tech units this is random for every round, as tech gets better the target can be chosen, and hit, with more presision.

Raids
Raids are similiar to bombards, except they are conducted by mobile units, with both using their close combat rating. After the number of rounds given by HP is finsihed they automatically retreat. Ships can also conduct raids.

Defense:
dragoons, riflemen, ship of the line are the first units to recieve any defense rating, with 1-2. Stealth-fighters have a small amount also.
Mech inf. cruiseres, carriers, marines, etc have a miedium amount, 2-3.
and Armour, battleships, subs, stealth bombers. have the most.
These are all units that are very hard to damage with even WWII weapons, or in the case of subs/stealth bombers, you need modern weapons to hit at all.

Air combat. Air units are based in cities, airbases/forts, and carriers. They can only be moved between cities by deploying them. All air units have 1MP, with which they can launch an assult (normal ranged combat) or assist in 2-3 ground/naval assults anywhere within their range, or they can re-deploy. Fighters can intercept one incoming assult per turn, and bombers can intercept one naval unit per turn if they have MP left (even a fraction).
Air units do not have a close combat rating, all air combat is considered ranged.
When a fighter intercepts an incoming unit it does a normal ranged attack against it. If the incoming unit survives, it continues to it's taraget, but attacks for fewer rounds do to lost HP.
Helicopters take 2x damge in air combat. They can transport 1 infantry unit into a battle, and act as the ranged unit. They can spot submarines (% chance every turn, higher the nearedr to the sub). AIr units in a city or carrier will intercept land/naval/air units attacking that square even if they have no HP left. Only helicopters can intercept subs this way.

Terrain gives a penalty to air units attack ratings.
-25% for hils, forest, etc. and -50% for mountains, etc.
Infantry give air units an aditional -25% penalty. (infantry on mountans are very hard to kill with planes). Spies cannot be attacked with ranged combat.

All buildings have HP. They are reduced in effectiveness by damage. Both units and building require money to repair. Units cannot be repaired in enemy territory. Population can be bombarded also, at ~10-20 HP per pop point, with fractional amounts lost. TI's ahve a ~2x land or Sea rating of being destroyed.

Nuclear weapons:
Count as a stealth bomber attack against every unit, structure, TI and population in the target zone, as a regular bomber in the surrounding squares, and a Fighter in the 2 square radius (shpaed like a city radius).

UP this goes.

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I like that idea for a nuke...how about that be for a strategic nuke, however?

Why not have Tacnukes that devastate a single square by destroying all units? And in a city, have them be not as severe as Stratnukes?

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Q Cubed
Renaissance Q • Q-of-all-trades
Thread Discussion Facilitator for Wonders

(For the purpose of clarity I will call a type of solider or armored weapon a "Unit" and I'll call those icons you move to get into a battle in Civilization a "army" and i'll call people in command of armies cammanders, sorry I don't know the right Civ. grammar)

First off I really like the idea of only having control of an army near a base, this boosts the realism and better yet gives a person that feeling of total suspense "will they find someone?" "If they do will they be friendly?" "If we battle will they have superior technology?” that kind of thought is priceless.

Anyway I have an idea; I like to call trained commanders. The idea is you have to choose from a list of people who to lead different armies, some would be better at organizing a garrison, some would be better at attacking, some would be better at tank commanding, some would be better at guerilla warfare, some would good at moving large armies with thousands of troops while some would be better at small hit and run attack forces, some would take risks some would be cautious. You'd assign them to the army that does the stuff they do.

To make them smarter you can construct

Schools: you'd upgrade the schools from a place children would here stories to a place to learn to read to a structured multi-grade learning center that they would learn whatever you want to learn e.g. religion, reading, science, self-defense, physical attack, true history, propaganda history etc. You could pick a principal much the same way you would pick a commander (if you took my advice) and could tell him how much free thought was aloud.

Colleges: for "higher learning" teenagers could pay for it or they could be forced, they could choose what to take or be assessed on their skills and be told what they should take, colleges would evolve into Universities and then specialized schools could replace or follow Universities. Like schools you could pick the classes they took or leave it up to a "Dean" that would work much like a principal.

Special Schools: Special Schools would be a replacement or an addition to colleges or Universities, they’d be schools you could build from architecture to government, but for our purposes the two main schools in military will be a West Point like school for officers (kids who are smart) and school for soldiers (kids who are strong and can shoot). These would splinter into different schools for Navy, Marines, Army, and Airforce and then splinter even more into very specified schools for Tanks, infantry, artillery etc. After that you upgrade all the training programs by using new technologies and new teaching approaches
The commanders would also learn from real-world experience.

Second in Command: This is basically the commander’s first real-world experience, a seasoned and respected commander will mentor him as they go on missions together, the new commander will get a sense of what war really is and learn valuable skills for when he is in command of his own army. This would be beneficial to the mentor also, because he can do things more efficiently with an extra commander present.

Special Training Programs or S.T.P.s: Basically Special Training Programs are for commanders going back to school and for extra school for new commanders. It will be a military version of a PHD or Masters, a Commander may request to be put in one of the classes or be told to attend. Advanced strategies will be part of the teachings but possibly more useful things like sociology will teach him to deal with large amounts of people and predict the enemy's army's reaction to different tactics i.e. psychological warfare. Psychology will be taught too, it will also increase a commander’s people skills especially with small groups of elite troops like the navy seals, he will also be able to predict what a enemy commander’s reaction will be to different tactics. Armys are also welcome to take large scale STPs which will be made up of classes and wargames usually for new weapons training.

I know this all sounds like moral but it goes much further when a commander has to make a judgement call with you miles away. Before they left you could talk to the commander and explain what this mission consists of. Instead of the incredibly simple and clumsy system of moral there should be much more.

Moral: This actually means Moral as in how the troops feel, if you order them to race across the world with a new leader just after getting back from another mission they'll be kind of pissed off, this would ad a huge new dimension to planning. This will also bring in the idea of shore leave for the troops to remember what their fighting for, or you could even create a U.S.O. to entertain the troops.

Commander's training: just what I said above, how long he was in school and how much he learned. If they just went to regular school they'll be quite stupid but you'll get them out on the field faster. But obviously if the commander’s been training all his life to be a tank commander he won't do very well as an infantry commander even if he is "elite" he is.

Commander’s people skills: if he knows how to treat his army they'll go to the ends of the earth for him and fight harder, this will also increase moral and rate of movement (they trust the commander knows what he's doing and just go rather then winning about how their legs hurt.) But keep in mind if he's taught to work with small groups of people he might just curl up in a shell when he's under command of a legion. A commander’s people skills will develop as he matures or he could take a Special Training Program.

Commander’s real world experience: you can take all the classes you want but you need to know what a real battlefield feels like (this could be slowly boosted by large-scale wargames, although they would be expensive and time consuming). Second in Command also helps build real world experience. But keep in mind just because a commander has gone on a million hit and run guerrilla missions doesn’t mean he’ll have any idea of what to do with a legion.

Commander's courage: this is how many chances a commander will take, this may result in incredible victories or huge upsets, you need to find a commander who can accurately predict his troop's abilities (this is gained by a commander staying in army for long periods of time and acting out missions where his troops are challenged.)

Troop's training: basically same thing with commander's training.

Troop’s real world experience: basically same thing with commander’s real world experience.

Troop’s rest: This is determined by how long a army has had to rest, a Army has to stop and set up camp after a certain amount of movement. Infantry is affected the most by this so they will have to rest quite frequently. This also works the same way if the army has been inactive for a large amount of time, this is best solved by staging large wargames.

Weapons Training: If you upgrade an army’s weapons you’d expect to increase its chances of victory but this may not be true, if an army has been using a weapon for long periods in time they will become experts at that weapon, a new weapon that they have training on is quite a bit like giving a secretary in the 1950’s a computer loaded with Microsoft Word, it works better but it will take some time to get used to. The best way to give an Army training in a new weapon is to have the entire Army enroll in Special Training Program.

Another feature I would like incorporated into Civ. 3 is a General who would lead multiple armies lead by commanders in different operations in which they would be spending a large amount of time outside of your zone of control. Generals would be very valuable and would be the best and brightest of the commanders. You can’t just create a General you have to wait for for a commander to get enough experience so he’ll be able to take the title General. Generals are so valuable that some may argue you shouldn’t even risk them in combat and you should keep them as advisers or to make them Deans of Special Schools.

Build a training centre to slowly add expereince to your units and I'll go along with it, but I feel that this is nedlesly complicated for the number of 'armies' that would be involdved in a typical game...

Thanks for your reply. My idea is not that prisioners/slaves are counted as individuals. You could have a prisioner unit from every unit your capture in the battlefield (acorded with the retreat rules posted before) with more than 50% of its initial strengh. You could also create an slaves unit from every population unit that you convert in slaves in an occupated city (specially from other races if races were implemented).

If you have a prisioners camp/slaves market in a city, you could transfer the prisioners/slaves unit to that city and use it as a labor unit, increasing your population with a special population unit very likely to unrest if you have few units in that city.