(a) The combat system of Civ III (read the website)
(b) The combat system of Civ II (no armies)
(c) The combat system of Ctp (armies fight as one entity)
(d) Something new (describe what you want new)
(e) The combat system of Colonization (horsemen lose horses, become footmen)

Some Features to accomodate this system to civ3:

-Air units were going to still be controlled by the AI, but you could organize their attack priorities - Firsrt attack the walls, Second the enemies air units, Third the ground units, Fourth ...

-Wall are there to separate the defenders from the attackers while the attackers have to destroy the walls first to atack the enemy- bombard units will help a lot - The defenders can atack their enemy with range and bombard units behind the walls or send all to attack outside of it. The Defenders can even make improvments to help then destroy the attackers(like the Ballistica Tower of CTP2)

THe battlefield idea sounds like an OK idea, but you have to remember, this is not a war game, so it might be going too far to add battlefields.

I say, dont make it so complexed as battlefields and such, but definetly improve it from that crappy Civ2 system!

just make it realistic, heres a few things I demand for combat:

1. air units (bombers, fighters, etc) should be able to be given a option of passing over, or bombing a unit when it comes upon one, same thing with cities. helicopters should be air units instead of ground units, just with alot of 'range'.

2. there should be flanking attacks, ambushes, and the like.

3. when your unit is atop a hill, there should not only be a + to defense, but also to attack, especially with ranged units. In real life two howitzers when atop a hill could demolish New York in a couple hours, I'm not exaggerating.

4. catapults, siege towers, and the like should be only used for sieges, and for knocking down city walls. And should NOT be able to attack other units, period.

5. ground units (specifically infantry) should be able to pillage villages, and agriculture sites.

6. cruise missiles, and nuclear missiles should have a percentage of missing its target.

6A. there should be curtain stages of missiles. for nuclear weaponry, the first would be Atomic Bomb. second, Nuclear Missile. and third, LRBM (for those of you who dont know what that is, it stands for Long Range Ballistic Missile). with each lvl, there should also be a range, for the first, it would be a range of 10. the second, 14 - 20. and third, 20 or more, you decide. The percentages of missing its target would be as follows: lvl 1 missile, 50% chance, lvl 2 Missile, 35% chance. and lvl 3, 20% chance. and lastly, with each higher lvl the missile is, the worse the damage.

6B. for cruise missiles, the first should be SRM (Short Range Missile), lvl 2 missile would be Cruise Missile, and 3rd, would be Guided Missile, or GM. the SRM would have a range of 10. the Cruise Missile, would be 16. and the Guided Missile would only have a short range of 10.
the percentage of chance of missing its target is as follows: lvl 1 missile, 50%. lvl 2, 30%, and then lvl 3, would have a 0% chance since it would be guided.

6C. another thing about missiles, is that they should be launched from a silo, and NOT moved (civ2 style). The smaller, non-ballistic missiles could be launched from a ship (preferably AEGIS cruisers), or silos. the nuclear missiles could be launched from underground silos (which would be undetectible to radar, that is, if radar is implemented), or temporary missile sites (remember cuban missile crisis, those were temp. launch pads (silos)). Only the guided missiles would be able to be moved, but they wouldn't be "moved" at all, they would be guided.

6D. And lastly, there should be anti-missile missiles, that could be launched to destroy nuclear missiles in mid-air. They would have a 50% chance of intercepting the missile.

I know the "unitworkshop" is dead so you can assume a tank battalian as one armour unit.

The basic concept was borrowed from Colonisation.(simple combat resolution with variuos bonus factors)

No tag match style but Total battle between two opposing masses of military force.

For air and ground support, "range" plays vital parts.

You can assume the individual units as stacked group of variuos units.(a stack of 4 tank units + 1 infantry unit should be shown in the map as one tank?)

Now we all agree that the Civ1/Civ2, kill one unit in stack kills all was crap and that the one at a time combat was flawed.

Civ3's proposal seems to address most of those flaws by implementing the concept of armies with bombardment concept. Do we really need to improve upon what Firaxis has announced?

Remember that it really it all comes down to production. Build up productive capacity and just mass build lots of units.

I certainly don't agree we're near the point of Diminishing returns, as much more realism can still be extracted out of the stacked system Firaxis are proposing!
Anyway, sorry for the post length, but I just wanted to clarify everything

Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker.