They could be a modern unit that would become available with a discovery of some advanced military tech such as "Advanced Battle Tactics"

I think that the Israelies had something of the sort also, but I could be wrong on that one.

The SEAL unit can destroy a radar site, city wall or any other defence to make your assault with ground and/or air units more succesfull.

These units should differ with the different goverment types. Like a fundamentalistic goverment cannot have a SEAL unit. The can have terrorist unit or something.

BTW such a unit would take longer to build considering the skills they have. You should be a able to use them from land, sea and air.

I agree with Theben that some Special Operation attribute can find its place on a Unit workshop, but to avoid any temptation to build an army of Special Forces it must have some limits (expensive production cost? expensive support cost? limits to some percent of whole regular army?)

Evil capitalist, I don't think that Special forces were reserved to some countries. They can have different names (ehi Doomer, the other side always call this forces terrorists, you know ), equipmnent and training, but they have similar targets.

(BTW the USSR special forces you mentioned were the Spetnatz, if I spell it correctly)

I agree we should divide diplomat/spy rules with Special Forces: proper espionage mission must find its place on the "espionage screen" (see related thread), where sabotage missions and ability can be passed to Special Forces units.

quote: how realistic is it having a 20 man squad destroy a brigade?

On open field? None, I agree.

In night operations, with good use of explosives on the brigade at camp? A lot more.

But don't use SEAL units as a bunch of superwarriors, use them to sabotage city buildings, destroy undefended structure deep in enemy territory, mine roads and RR to slow down and damage reinforcements (this will be nice, uh? ).

I don't bother to do the math about hit points, armour point, movement point, ZOC free etc. Lot of people are smarter than me to balance them properly.

SEALs aren't unbeatable, this is unrealistic in real world as in game terms, but they are very useful indeed!

I mean to attack an artillery or SCUD missile group and, once again, hit and run.

If your unit is discovered it can be destroyed or damaged (I'm thinking about the SMAC fast unit ability to retreat if 50% damaged).

I agree, Special forces must be fast and smart, not bullish to attack on a fair level

In game term, they are more like SMAC probe team that plain heavy infantry, just left pure espionage mission to an intelligence screen.

Here's another idea, that a bit unrelated - if the SMAC morale system (it's like the veteran thing but had many diff levels of verteran-ess) is to be used in Civ3, then maybe units can be built (at much higher cost) to be elite (ie most verteran). This would address the SEAL idea above because you could, for example, choose to pay extra to build marines/commandos that come out of the factory already elite, instead of slowly becoming elite.

Good Idea, then the unit progression would be

For Regular Units-

Green
Veteran
Hardened
Elite
Commando (Commando recieves 'stealth' options "Invisible Unit to enemy")

For Air Units-

Green
Veteran
Hardened
Elite

For Marine Units-