Civ3 Units

[Thunderfall]

Do you think Civ3 should contain a few civilization-specific units? Of course, most of these units should be limited to ancient to pre-industrial periods.

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Thunderfall
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[Gord McLeod]

I'm hoping Civ3 will get away from the Civ/Civ2 unit model... I'd rather see Civ3 have an evolution of the SMAC unit model, having a variety of base unit types that can be designed and enhanced with the aquisition of technologies.

[War4ever]

do you mean like AOE2 with one unit or perhaps more for civ that are special to each civ.... i think one would be neat , but i find that games with these special units cause many players to use one or only two of the civs.

Now giving each civ special powers like aoe 2 would be cool although again you run into this flaw of superior civs.

I guess civ is best the way it is.... ie everyone can build things evenly..... a historical scenario with the rise and fall of empires would be cool though imagine being the babylonians only to be invaded countless times by other tribes, who posses tech before you... yes i know this is like the human vs the ai but what if you were the weaker one all the time, now thats a challenge

[Slingshot]

In a way, Civ already does this:

- Fundamentalist Units with a Fundamentalist Gov't
- Special abilities for spies under Communism

I never used either of these gov't types, though.

What does everyone else think? It is appealing to have special units with specific gov'ts? Or is it better to have civ-specific units?

[Thunderfall]

Alpha Centauri does have good a "design-your-own-unit" feature. I like that feature alot. :-)

Still, depending on which civ you play, I think civ3 should provide some unique features for each civilization, just to make it more realistic. Maybe tech-tree for each civ should be slightly different too...

quote: Originally posted by Gord McLeod on 03-10-2000 02:12 AM I'm hoping Civ3 will get away from the Civ/Civ2 unit model... I'd rather see Civ3 have an evolution of the SMAC unit model, having a variety of base unit types that can be designed and enhanced with the aquisition of technologies.

[NoviceCEO]

I was hoping SMAC to have unique units. Actually several of them.
Or better, each faction should have a couple of unique reactors, chassis, weapon or armour.

I'm not sure if that would fit in Civ3 though.

[Youngsun]

Thunderfall how's it going?

I'd liked to see both civ-specific unit and unit workshop. So how can we compromise the ideas into one?

I'm quite a fan of "unit workshop" since I played MOO1,MOO2 but I was little bit disappointed by SMAC workshop. Why? though MOO2 was released earlier, it had better unit workshop than SMAC since it can also afford empire-specific unit graphic!

Even if I had a spaceship which has exactly same hull and weapon system with other ships that belong to other empires, my ship looked different from other empires' ship.

What I'm trying to say is that when we make a spearmen unit from CIVIII unit workshop,the unit made by European civs should look different from those of Asian civs.

This could be done with same game concept from MOO2. So each civ may have different unit icon archives like clothes shop and as the era comes close to modern they may become look similar.

I hope we can later see tank units look like M1 Abrams tank used by American civ and her allies while the soviet-backed civs have unit look like T-72 or 80 tank.

[This message has been edited by Youngsun (edited March 11, 2000).]

[Sirotnikov]

Youngsun, I couldn't agree more. It would make the game more fun I think. But a big question, what is the difference between a greek phalanx and a roman one? and china never had those pesky defenders in real life. It raises some questions but they aren't very hard. So a good idea.

BTW: I hated that my greek\roman\german\french warrior looked like and indian with a red feathered head peace. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I just think each civ should look correctly.

[MidKnight Lament]

War4ever -

I agree. I've said my bit about this in a few places before, so I won't go into it too much here, but I think giving civs specific advantages is a bad idea. Why? Because it always means that some start better than others, no matter how designers might try to balance it.

Besides, we're starting from the very beginning of civilization. All civs should be starting equal! If they are to gain advantages over other civs, it should be because they live in a certain terrain, or because they've lived under a certain government or leadership style. If this is how they gain their advantages and unique units, then I'm all for it.

It's not just a simple matter of saying, "Romans get Phalanxes, Japanese get Samurai".

Nothing should be pre-determined!

A civ should should evolve to what it becomes, not have it dictated from the beginning.

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-MKL
[This message has been edited by MidKnight Lament (edited March 12, 2000).]

[Youngsun]

quote: Now giving each civ special powers like aoe 2 would be cool although again you run into this flaw of superior civs.

I Agree War4ever & Midknight Lament

quote: I guess civ is best the way it is.... ie everyone can build things evenly

Once again I agree

But aren't you little bit sick to see your Trireme or Legion units look the same as other civs'units?

That's why we need to have different unit icons for different civs which can be civ specific.

CivII already has different city icons for Ancient age and I liked that. There are no special bonus nor disadvantages involved in it.

If you have played MOO2 before you would know what I'm saying(I'm not saying that racial bonus thing here but different unit icon archives)

The point is when you have a heavy infantry unit that unit may look like "Samurai" if it belongs to the Japanese or look like "Legion" if it belongs to the Roman. Got it?

[MidKnight Lament]

Indeed I do. And if Firaxis give the game the grunt to do it, I think it would be cool. So long as you didn't have 1000 units to identify and remember

But yeah, I think it's best if you don't give them varying attributes just because you choose a civ at the start. Make the player earn them.

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- MKL

[Atahualpa]

I didnt like the SMAC Unit-Workshop. It was way too complicated.
The idea of a unit-editor is still good, but the implementation was sooo poorely.

Ata

[Sirotnikov]

I think the SMAC work shop should be improved and simplified a bit. Also making improvement in dealing with obsolete units.
i often have, like, 6 versions of almost the same unit. it's annoying.

I think government specific untis would be nice:

democracy: National guard
communism: bolsheviks
nazism: Storm troops
pascism: black shirts
republic: uhm... I'm not sure
monarchy: royal guards

they would act as police: you stack them in citys to prevent \ stop riots and to depress unhappy people (martial law, don't you just love it?).

I agree that units icons should be at least race\culture specific for the first ages. Like the city icons in civ2 just with more then 4 possibilities.

[Urban Ranger]

It is slightly unfair to compare MoO/MoO2 unit graphics and SMAC unit graphics. In MoO or MoO2 you don't see enemy units until you get in a battle with them, then you switch to tactical screens. While in SMAC/Civ, you get to see all different units all the time. That means temporary vs permanent storage of graphics. High res graphics can eat up a lot of memory and slow down operations.

[Youngsun]

Urban Ranger

Have you really played MOO/MOO2 before?

We can see enemy units if we have right scanning technology or a scout unit on enemy planet without necessarily going into battles.

After I got many advanced scanning techs I could see all the enemy units every turn and would you say that is temporary?

[This message has been edited by Youngsun (edited March 18, 2000).]

[ajbera]

Here are a few ideas.
1) As Civ 2 has multiple city styles to attempt to reflect cultural differences, there could be a handful of cultural styles that would be applied to the civilizations. European, Greco-Roman, Asian, Mid-Eastern, etc., would each be a style, with corresponding city and unit appearances. The cavalry units of two cultures would have identical statistics, but would appear just differently enough to add cultural flavor (but still be readily identifiable as cavalry units.) Civs would have default styles, but you could have the option to choose another style.
2) Specific (and different) units may be granted based on certain characteristics. Rather than saying the Japanese get samurai because they're Japanese, give that unit to a civ when it reaches the appropriate technology in conjunction with having the proper social settings (I think social engineering has certain potentials) or government or something appropriate.

[Sirotnikov]

1) what ajbera said.

2) atahualpa, I agree. a major problem once with the workshop is once you got the hang of it, the game would create zillions of useless unit types that are only good as obsolete museum exhibits.

3) I think no civ should start really diffeerent. only graphics different. in smac, basically the best civ is gaians (+ effic. +1 growth) and then spartans, peacekeepers and morgan. everybody else suck ass. How can I control a nation which doesn't have a + 5 police value and has - 3 probe and - 3 tech? In AOK same problem: Persians are best (elephants). teutons are 2nd. Vikings are best for sea. every one else don't come close.

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[Urban Ranger]

quote: Originally posted by Youngsun on 03-18-2000 11:03 AM Urban Ranger Have you really played MOO/MOO2 before? We can see enemy units if we have right scanning technology or a scout unit on enemy planet without necessarily going into battles. After I got many advanced scanning techs I could see all the enemy units every turn and would you say that is temporary? [This message has been edited by Youngsun (edited March 18, 2000).]

Yes, I have played MoO extensively and MoO2 not so extensively.

IIRC, you know what's on the ground (such as 15 stinger missiles) but not graphical representations. If there are graphics, they are the generic ones. I don't think there are any differentiations between missile launchers.
[This message has been edited by Urban Ranger (edited March 27, 2000).]

[Youngsun]

Urban Ranger

Were you talking about defense facilities such as missile launchers?

I was talking about the military units. Spaceships. Don't you remember different coloured banner has whole different set of fleet graphics? If your memory got little bit rusty try the game now.

Ajbera's idea seems to be the most logical solution to the problem. If we can select a city style, why not a units style. It wouldn't neccessarily be "pre-determined", yet it could serve historical accuracy if playing on Earth. There should be an option when creating your world to have random units style or standard unit style. That way you can make the Indian Civ fight with Elephants, or randomly select their style. Maybe the same option should be given for city style. Why should the English AI always be in a castle? Makes sense right?

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[Yuvo]

I like the ideas, but intstead of civ- specific units, I'd like to see terrain- specific units. Think about it: in the real world, most civs in the same climate have similar units.

The way I'd like to see this put in place is for units to have terrain-speeds.

For example; an alpine troops would be fast on tundra and mountains, but slow on grasslands. While a horsmen could be fastest on plains but pretty slow on glaciers(or maybe just wouldn't be able to get through).

In this way civs would build units that suit their nearby terrain types.