These could be discovered and would allow us to not have such redundant units as Horsemen,Knights,Crusaders,Dragoons, and Calvary.

If it is simply a strength upgrade, then what's the difference between that and a new unit?

There must be some other tactics worthy of inclusion. What about outflanking, interfering with supplies, etc..

------------------
Get paid for every second you spend online at http://referral.jotter.com/join/bulk
Refer people (like what I'm doing) to earn even more. $50 a month is not uncommon.

To simulate the Blitzkrieg concept:

1.Say the units, which go from green to hardened have these ratings on experience. 1-5.
2.In addition to them they have a strategy rating of 1-5.
3.As new advances are discovered and new warfare types are made they learn new strategies.

If a civ has Sun-tzu's wonder they will automatically rate 1 strategy rating higher than they would have before.

quote: These could be discovered and would allow us to not have such redundant units as Horsemen,Knights,Crusaders,Dragoons, and Calvary.

You know, I've just realised: what exactly do you guys mean by "tactics"? Why would it make redundant all those units? Because as you come out with more tactics, wouldn't it make the old units "redundant" anyway?

I'm confused...

AI-cities should have 2-4 potent quality units per city, instead of buckloads of resource-draining mediocre units.

Rule 2:

The AI settlers seems to be pretty keen on building unused fortresses all over the place.
Let AI build combined land/air "tripwires" instead - these can act as early warningsystems. More usefull.

Rule 3:

Unless theres a war going on, military units should "stay in bed", instead of vandering around aimlessly. AI vessels are an exception.

Rule 4:

If AI military vessels are within coustal human player city areas, they should have the same effect on that citys happyness and resource-drain as if they actually would be owned by that city - and away from it.

This would pretty much FORCE the human player to do something about it. Quickly!

Rule 5:

AI land-units should mainly stay garrisoned within cities, lashing out preemptive strikes on any invaders directly next to the city-squares. Perhaps there should be exceptions from this rule.

Rule 6: (The Holy Grail)

AI land-invasions should consist of at least 4-16 units locked together should-by-shoulder - and then move simoultanesly forward in any persistant direction, in the same pace.
They shouldnt be forged together by the AI however. Thats probably way to complicated for the AI to achieve.
Instead these wide shoulder-by-shoulder armadas should be avalable as seperate 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14 or 16 wide separe entitys. From the AI:s point of view, the move as ONE unit (altrough one with a pretty wide a s s).

If any unit stumbles into a foreign city - they however break up: all the units to its left turns right, and all units to its right turns left; in order to do a pinch-manoeuvre on that poor city.

Or are you talking about increasing their strength being increased from experience? Or is it something different entirely?

If we on the other end, are talking about a human vs AI game, you should bear in mind that most of above suggestions can be utilized *much* more effective by the human player, and by the upcomming Civ3 AI.

What I originally suggested (about civs having Command Ratings) was meant as a way of creating armies in civ3. Armies is what civs use to fight it out - NOT individual units. The point of creating armies is this: Combat becomes simpler AND more realistic, at least it can be made to be so. This is because a large number of units fight a large number of units INSTANTANEOUSLY. You're also likely to have far LESS armies than a regular civ game would have units. Combat results don't necessarily end in one army dying, it could also result in a retreat. This might even be dependent on what orders YOU give it.

The composition of an army, i.e. the number and TYPE of units in it, reflects YOUR civs ability to command military forces. It is simple: Say your civs Command Rating is 3 (rather low - I'd guess the maximum would be 9-12). Say a simple infantry unit requires 1 CR, and an artillery piece also requires 1 CR. Thus, your civ has the ability to combine 2 inf and one arty into an army. The point is, that the ARMY gets better stats (bonuses) than the individual units summed up. If you decide to create such an army, you just need your cities to start cranking out units to 'fill the ranks'.

Bonuses should only go up to a certain extent - having more than, say, 3 inf per army wouldn't give you any extra bonuses compared to having just 3. Instead, you'd just make more armies.

The whole point of the exercise is to allow for SIMILAR military technologies (units) being HANDLED differently by different civs, without introducing silly concepts like leaders. Think of any conflict in history. To armies squaring it off would have, roughly speaking, the same technology level. But maybe one civ knows better how to command and organize troops, and that's what decides the outcome.

quote: Originally posted by Marcel I on 09-28-2000 03:26 AM .... the best option would be, as discussed earlier in another thread, to separate men and weapons. You could upgrade the weapons of your unit as you discover new technology and their experience level or tactical grading when you discover new tactics .... .... Firaxis should make it possible for you to recognize in a glance the kind of unit your dealing with. So there should be some kind of standard icons like the knights or cavalry in Civ 2 symbolizing the kind of weapons they wear ....

What about this one.
1) In COLONIZATION (somehow I get the idea that this Sid-M.game is not very welknown to CIVvers) free citizen units could be given all kinds of occupation, f.i. miner, tobaccoplanter etc. and !! the equivalant of dragoon, artillery and musketeer. If a f.c.unit was destined as such, horses, guns and cannons had to be available in a city.
2) These requirements had to be produced and stored in a city-arsenal and -stable.
3) If troops had routed and had had the change to escape from being taken captive, you could send them to a nearby friendly city where they were armed again in one turn.

Introduction of these COLO-elements without any adjustements into CIV3 would mean to much micro-management. I suppose FIR. should reduce these principles to:
1) production of weapons (and that would include horses to) in resp. "arsenal" (new to introduce city-improvement), mill (see the thread "top 10 of new tech > Ribannah", factory and mfg-plant;
2) arming of troops becomes possible after production of weaponry;
3) training of troops becomes possible after building barracks;
4) upgrading of troops, meaning the renewal of their arms, would mean that a) these new arms will have to be produced first and then b) the troops have to be interned for say two or three turns in the barracks to get training. In this way they will learn the TACTICS which come with the introduction of the new weaponry. This makes the building and renewal !! (that's a thing that should stay in the game) of barracks even more important.
- The production of the arms is the thing that will cost shields/money. The time this takes depends on whether you have a mill/factory etc.
- It should also be possible to arm troops just like that, but the consequence of that will be that they will have little hitpoints.
- The arming of the first primitive units like militia and horsemen don't need the production of arms.
- Campaigning troops should need to be supplied in the field (allthough the way of doing this has been discussed in other threads I think it needs more thinking)

Tactics is generally defined as being in the middle of military hierarchy. Strategy is on top, Tactics in the middle and Operations in the bottom. To better understand this, think of it like this: "Strategy: What war do I want to wage?", "Tactics: What battle(s) do I want to undertake to win the war?", "Operations: How can my units win this battle?".

I think the concept of tactics in civ should translate more into kind of a "what-can-my-armed-forces-do" mindset rather than "what-can-my-units-do" mindset. Even though individual units differed in tactics historically, they did not differ due to advances in technology - rather, they differed due to differences in organization and leadership.

As I've said before, I think leaders are inappropriate in a game at civs scale. Therefore, I'd like to simulate tactics differences in terms of organization. Specific, historic tactics don't make much sense anyway, since succes due to tactics are/were usually very short-lived advantages anyway. I mean, if blitz-krieg was a succes due to tactics, this advantage disappeared in 2 turns of civ-time. There's hardly any reason to program such concepts into the game for 2 turns worth of difference.

Organization reflects your civs ability to wage war. You might have many armies of small organization for defence. Or you might concentrate your units into larger organizations (armies) for offence. This type of thinking can span military history in its entirety, rather than focus on single, specific tactic abilities.

I agree with the overall civilization tactical concept. I think that there should also be an increased benefit for those civilization's with a historical tendency to be militaristic. Those that have a military culture should get certain bonuses, and those known to be unaggressive should get certain disadvantages.

------------------
"...The highest realization of warfare is to attack the enemy's plans; next is to attack their alliances; next to attack their army; and the lowest is to attack their fortified cities." - Sun Tzu

Someday I would like to see someone attempt to design a bi-level version of a Civilization game. Before you say it can't be done consider this: there is a new type of CD under development that will use an ultraviolet laser, allowing a CD disk to hold up to 70 GB of data. The game "Braveheart" utilized a zoomable map of the entire island of Britain rendered down to a level of 50 meters. A 70 GB disc should be able to hold a map more than 100 times larger. If you accept less resolution, say down to 100 meters, then you could cover over 400 times the area.

You're right, of course.

Mental note:
***Remember never to post b4 checking out the facts***

That stuff about the CD being able to hold 70 GB is interesting. I think it would be fun to have a map that could zoom down even to 500 meters. I would love to control every part of a war. I'd probably get a headache trying to play it though.

It would be the wargame to end all wargames, the everlasting gob stopper of all wargames. You'd never need another. Divorce lawyers would florish.

Alas, I haven't been able to interest anyone in producing such a game. Maybe I should do it myself. Oh wait, when I last went to school people fed programs to computers via little beige manila punch cards. Hmmmm, maybe I'm just going to have to wait.