|
Warlord
Local Time: 03:16
Local Date: October 31, 2010
Join Date: Apr 1999
Location: Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
Posts: 221
|
A new civilization concept ?
A new civilization concept.
Sorry if this is a little long.
I started a new thread so that poeple wouldn't have to skip through it in a old one, and I always seem to post things to a thread just before it is closed.
If we think of a city as the abstract representation as a population centre in a region, they make more sense. - they are really spread out over the whole area, but we need something to keep track of them.
My concepts
-resources are pooled throughout the whole civilization, and then used as you see fit. this better simulates modern countries. the province of Newfoundland would not be able to build the multi-billion dollar Hibernia oil platform, but the country of Canada can...
The three resources are Production, Trade and food.
all are gathered by the city-states, and modified by factories, marketplaces and supermarkets, etc... The results are pooled for a GDP style accounting. (new york is a major trade centre, but produces no food or resources)
TRADE
all the gold from cities (after banks, etc.)and capitalization in the civ is added together.
unit and structure maintenence payed out of this.
The remaining amount is called surplus. the science rate is taken out of this amount.
The ramaining surplus is added to your reserves.
Repair, luxuries, bribes, etc are paid out of your reserves.
Science is bought with gold. the normal conversion is 1:1. THis is modified by gvernment, wonders and science improvments. The improvments bonus is alculates as (normal % bonus)*(number of population points in cities with the structure)/(total pop points)
if 12 of your 20 citizens are in cities with marketplaces, you get a +30% to your science.
Maintenece of units costs 1 gold per 20 shields to build. (modified by government?)
when units and structures are repaired it costs 1 gold to repair each shield worth of damage. This simulates how expensive it is fight modern wars, even if no new units are produced. Ancient units are much cheaper to repair than modern ones. a phalanx costs 2 gold per HP while a nuke costs 16 per HP, and can have much more damage.
You have a repair rate slider and can reduce the rate of repairs if you are in a cash crunch, and induvidually designate units to be repaired. ( a status togle of auto / always / never repair, auto by default).
Luxuries are assigned to cities induvidually instead of as a across the board rate. (say pay 12 gold a turn to London to keep 2 people content) THe conversion rate depends on gov'n, improvments, wonders, etc. The city governer can automaticallly assign luxuries to prevent riots (until you run out of gold... one reason to hold off on repairs)
FOOD
-the total food prodcution of your civ is pooled and the survival level is distributed automatically. Surplus food is distributed by a priority system.
Every city gets assigned an arbitrary priority number. (priority #)*(city pop pts) = priority points. Food is assigned based on the fraction of your civ's priority points the city has. This method makes relative growth rate roughly proportional to the priority level.
ex. you have 4 cities, and 20 surplus food, total pop = 25. Berlin, pop =5, has priority = 4, for 20 priority points, of a total of 50. Berlin gets 12 surplus food per turn.
PRODUCTION
Your production is again pooled, after the effects of factories, etc.
There is sliders to control how this is divided up. The four areas production can be assigned to are improvments, units, wonders and capitalization.
capitalization converts production to gold. the conversion rate is derived in the same way as science is, but you use banks, etc. instead of libraries, etc.
for wonders there is a queue of the wonders you want to build, and their destination cities.
(some wonders could only be built once, others by each civ , like a space program, to be able to build ICBM's and satilites...?), one of a kind wonders cost proportionally more for balance.
units
there is a menu listing all available unit types (and the number owned, etc). Each type gets assigned a priority level. This functions the same way as for food distribution, with the cost of the unit being used instead of population. The priority number's of two units give the ratio that they will be produced in. ( phalanx priority 3, diplomat priority 2, in the time that 3 diplomats are produced, 4 phalanxes are finished and half of a fifth.)
improvments
same as units. if there are as many structures of a given type as cities, priority for that type is taken as 0.
ex. your civ has 100 production. all sliders are at the default 25%. 250 production goes to units. transports have a priority of 10, for 500 priority points out of 5000. 25 shileds are addid to your transports bin every turn (2.5% of your civ's total), for a transport every 2 turns. if there was only 800 total priority points, 150 would go to transports, and 3 would be built per turn.
DEPLOYMENT. All units and structures are placed in the deployment list when produced. After moving your units you deploy the reserve units. deployment is started at the end of your turn and finishes at the biggining of your next one. The computer assignes deployment automatically, but you can modify this as you see fit, and set parameters for the AI routene (like, defend cities near new york, improve new cities, and supply carriers, etc) If a space where units are being deployed is occupied by enemies, they are destroyed without offering resistance.
Units can deploy to cities, bases, and ships with holds. maximum rate of deployment depends on the size of city, type of ship or base, and the isolation. the algorithm would have to be thought out for play balance. Units that have not been used yet in a turn, may be put in the deploy list, to be deployed elsewhere the next turn (note, this is the only way to move air units, saves the micromanegment of guiding all your stupid units through your rail net.)
COMBAT
My porpose in this is to try and represent the flexalbe nature of modern warfare, without compromisng the idea of units.
The SMAC idea of the main defender taking the damage, but not neccisarily having killing off all the units in a square. A bonus is given for having ranged, mobile and infantry units in the same square. (maybe +50% for each other type present)
Many people forget that squares are ~100km across. archers CANNOT fire into the next square, let alone more than a couple football fields.
To me a unit represents a combined arms division with a focus on one specific aspect of that, and includes all the support equipment and personnel neccesary.
A legion represents that, while an archer unit would be similiar but have many more archers propotionally than a legion, but would still have some footmen and mounted scouts.
a artillary brigade has some infantry for self defense, but too few to actually launch an assult.
When a unit is destroyed it means that the infrastructure of the unit is so damaged and the unit rendered innefective, that the reaining soldiers are re-assigned or disbanded (or sent to the mental hospitals)
special units like spies are too small to be bombarded.
structures have hit points based on their era (~10 ancient, 30 modern...). Damaged structures are repaired at 20% per turn, and cost double maintenance while doing so. THe building's effectiveness is reduced proportionally. (20% damaged SDI stops 80% of nuclear weapons). Population points are counted as structures for bombardment damage and targeting. damage reduces food in the staorage proportionally to % damage done.
ANCIENT UNITS
for me civ II represents them well, an anceint units can only be fought by so many other people at a time, so the conventional one on one battles (modifed by the preence of dfferent troop types, to represent more flexialbe tactics) work well. Leave as is.
BOMBARDS
bombards are a key idea for the rest of the eras.
attacker: unit initialting the combat
target: unit or structure that takes the damage
defender: unit who's defense rating is used to damage the attacker (mostly for air attacks), often but not always the target, especially when air units attack structures.
Active defender: ranged units that can launch a counter bombard, somtimes pre-emptivly, depending on the situation.
in a bombard round two things happen.
The attacker has attack rating % chance of doing fp damage to the target
The defender has defense rating % chance of doing fp damage to the defender
The bombard procedes for hp of the attacker rounds. (badly damaged units do not have the firepower available to mount a heavy attack).
Bombards agains cities. every time a target in the citie takes a hit, some other random, structure also takes a hit, as collateral damage. Each pop point counts as a structure, each hit on a pop point destroys one row of food in the bin, if it goes negative the pop is reduced by one, with a full bin). This includes regular attacks agains defenders of cities w/o city walls.
AIR COMBAT
due to the extreeme speed, yet huge dependance of air craft on fixed bases, they cannot be acuratly represented under the current model
All aircraft bombard. Air craft do not tend to get into one unit shall die situations as easily as ground or naval forces, there is a strong chance of both sides being damaged to some degree, but still efective as a unit.
air craft can only be moved by deployment (see my economics thread post) they can be deployed to owned and allied cities, air-bases and carriers. In the case of nuclear weapons and cruise missiles, to subs and cruisers instead of carriers.
Air units have four options for each turn; to attack, to go into active defend mode (sentry), go inactive (fortify) and to redeploy.
Redeploy is done by sending them back to the deploy list to be re-deployed the next turn.
ATTACK
The movment of the air unit gives its attack range. When it attacks it bombards the target.
figters and bombers can just choose to bomb units or structures. one of these is then picked at random. Stealth fighters/ bombers can choose induvidual targets. The unit with the best agains air defense rating always defends
Modifiers to air attacks
city walls / fortress: no effect on air combat
SAM: +100% defense
Airport / airbase: +50% defense for defending aircraft
hills, forest, river...: -25% attack
mountains: -50% attack
ships in port: +50% attack
normal moral modifiers apply
For air combat, a unit in the forest does not have an easier time hitting the planes, but the planes have a harder time hitting them.
Ancient units: -100% defense.
renaissance units, helicopters: -50% defense
modern units, bombers: normal
SAM, AGIES, (stealth) fighter: +100% defense
Ranges
figter: 6
stealth fighter: 8
helicopter: 6
bomber: 12
stealth bomber: 16
cruise missile unit: 8
nuclear weapon: 16
Assumes ~100-200 km per square
Recon plane: range 32, when used does not attack, and rarely draws active defense, acts as a vision range of 6 at that point unitl the beggining of your next turn.
airplanes have a vision and active defense range of 0.5x their attack range
ACTIVE DEFENSE only can be used if the plane did not deploy or move in the preceeding turn
for fighters: When an enemy plane targets somthing of yours or an allies in the defense range, they get a pre-emtive air attack on the attacker. It functions as if the active defender had initiated the bombard. If the attacker survives, it bombards the target normally. a unit can only active defend once per turn, and only one unit can defend agains each attacker. Stealth bombers have a 50% chance of the active defense failing to notice them. Figters on carriers active defend agains naval units as well as air units.
For bombers: Enemy naval and ground units are targeted, when they enter range. can be set to only target certain unit types if available, like carriers and transports or settlers.
helicopters: are the only air unit that can attack submarines, target like bombers, but target subs preferentailly. They have a % chance of detecting submarines in vision range.
FORTIFIED air units only defend if they are in the tager square. A carrier attacked by a sub will automatically scarmble helicopters to pre-emptivly strike (% chance before, % chance simultaneously in this case). They do not have to have movment left to defend agains a direct attack, only a distant one.
A good staratagy for bombing is to send in adavanced fighters (target terrain improvments even) to use up the defenders counter attacks, and damage them, then to bring in the bombers. This simulates escorting the bombers with long range fighters.
SAM units activly defend in a 1 square radius. AGIES cruisers have a range of 2 or 3
When air units attack terrain improvments they have a % chance of hitting based on the type of air craft (50% fighters, 90% stealth bombers...)
Helicpters can be used to attack with a marine unit. The helicpter bombards, then the marine attacks in the target square unit it clears all the defenders or dies trying - like an amphibous attack.
NAVAL COMBAT
ships have 2x movment rate (to speed things up)
all modern ships have the bombard ability and can active defend to counter act the increased movement. They can damage units that bombard them within their range. Can only damage subs if they attack or you have helicopters
Carriers group. (2 carrier, amphibous ship/transport, air defense cruiser and pair of destroyers)
bases 4 (stealth) fighters, 2 helicopters, and 2 marines. The marines can be helicopter deployed. Has bombard range of 1, and can spot subarines, (helos and destroyer) deployes two units/turn
Battalship (4 battalships, 1 cruiser, 2 destroyer, transport)
carries 1 marine, bombard 1 square, can deploy 1 every other turn
Cruiser (6 crusiers, 2 destroyers, transport) carries 1 marine, 2 missile units, bombards 2 squares(missiles). can deploy one per turn
Destroyer (8 destroyers, 2 cruisers) no transport ability, bombard 1 square, very fast, spots subs
AGIES crusier (6 AGIES crusiers, 2 destroyers, amphiboues ship) bombard 3 squares(inherent missiles), spots subs, 1 helo unit, 1 marine, 3 missile units can deploy one unit / turn
Submarine (8 submarines) bombard 2 squares (missiles), 4 missile units. deploys 1 / turn
Cruise missile units represent a much more intense bombardment than the regular bombard of a crusier/sub.
Transport (8 transports / amphiboues ships, cruiser, 2 destroyers) no attack, can carry up to 2 helicopter units, and a total of 8 units.
LAND COMBAT
Only changes involve cannon, artillery, howitzer, and an itorduced unit, the V2,
cannon, artillery, howitzers, can only bombard and cannot take cities. cannon and artillery need to be stacked with a normal unit to prevent an imidiate counter attack by the defenders. only the V2 unit has more than 1 square of range, with a range of 2 or 3 depending on play balance
SAM - active defends angains air attacks, even with no movement remaining.
Questions, comments or suggestions?
Please tell me what you think
jhuebsch@engmail.uwaterloo.ca
-Ember
|
)
