Why don't we get the flexible unit system à la SMAC?

Don't we deserve it? Isn't it one of the most important improvements in SMAC, cocnerning the development of CIV? The other one would be the Social Engineering, but why don't the Firaxians implement a flexible unit model as we had in SMAC, why do they bother us with static units as in CIV2? (isn#t that what they intend to do?) That doesn't sound too pogressive to me, even if they include some kind of tech level (AFAIK).... I really wonder what's so bad about the SMAC unit model...


wouldn't it be great to take "Infantry", "Muskets" and "Special Training" to get a nice 18th century Guard Infantry, for example?

[Darkknight]

I think we are getting that check out the civ3 firaxis site.

[Urban Ranger]

I would like to design my own unit also. As I pointed out in another thread, it is rather silly to give every civ the same units.

I rekcon this could be a problem with the computer players. I don't think the AI routines can handle this kind of flexibility.

It's a rather sad day when Firaxis decided to remove the ability to build custom units.

[Roman]

They did not. You will still be able to create your own custom units.

ahem... 2 people say they removed it, 2 say they didn't... aren't we able to get any 'serious' information somewhere? perhapos we're talking about different things here...

Bah. The Unit Workshop invariably hinders people from making custom units. Sounds strange? It's not, really, because the most important customisation feature is not in-game, it's in scenario making.

[Urban Ranger]

--, your reasoning is flawed. You are saying that, once people have the ability to tweak with their units inside the game, they will cease to make scenarioes. I don't think that is the case, since the unit workshop and the scenario editor are targeted towards two different groups. There are people who like to mess around with strange units but lacks the patience to build scenarioes from the ground up.

[Yog-Sothoth]

I feel that the unit workshop and SE is aspects that fit more into scifi games like SMAC than in "historical" games like Civ3 will be. Fixed units can be made more detailed and you don't get problems with recongnizing units etc. And the units in SMAC looked utterly stupid.

And you will be able to create your own custom units, now it's 3 vs 2

I'll bet you will buy the game anyway CH

[RonHiler]

I agree with you 100% Chaos and Urban. I think it's an amazingly huge mistake for Firaxis to not put in a unit workshop. For me, at least, that's a game breaker. When I first heard that CivIII was in the works, I was as excited as everyone else. When the announcement came down that the unit workshop was out, I crossed it off my list, with no small amount of regret. Ah well.

Civ, when it came out 10 years ago, was an astonishingly great game, and is among my top favorite five of all time. But the gaming world has moved on, and a lot of Civ's systems are now obsolete. Civ III needs to be more than a facelift of Civ II (as Civ II was of Civ). It needs to update its subsystems to take advantange of the new concepts in gaming today. If it doesn't do this, I fear it will fare poorly with the public.

The deletion of the unit workshop is, to me, the first indication that this reworking isn't going to happen. The static units are one of the biggest and most fundamental systems that needs updating. If they aren't going to fix that, what exactly is it, then, that they are improving?

A lot of people here at Apolyton disagree with me (based on the poll, which has nearly 50% agreeing with Firaxis' decision), and that's fine. Everyone's entiteled to their opinion. In the end, when the game is released, the final judge will be the sales and reviews and such. I wish them well, I really do. But at this point, I'm skeptical.

Anyway, if you want a Civ style game with a unit workshop, there is one in development, which has just entered its Alpha testing phase. I know, because I'm the lead programmer for it Check my webpage if you want to take a look. Sorry, though, we don't have Governments. Take a look at Clash of Civilizations or Guns, Germs, and Steel if governments are more important for you, for those two games have heavy government systems in them (although I am unsure if either has a unit workshop).

Ron

I think that one of the main reasons people diagree on issues such as the unit workshop (as well as future techs and SE engineering) is that there are to very diffrent views od Civ, and thus what civ3 should be:

1) That Civ is a historical game where you can watch and herald in the history of mankind.

2) That Civ is a game that allows you to re-invent history.

I am of the latter camp.

Just a thought.

well, butt , I'd like to be able to play a nice balanced and halfway realistic game without changing the rules. I like the SMAC system, it's definitely better than the civ2 onw, so I vote for it. basta.

the same about social engineering... I'm not going to buy a CIV game where I have to deal with static Government forms!

[Dan Magaha FIRAXIS]

quote: Originally posted by Urban Ranger on 02-11-2001 09:05 AM I would like to design my own unit also. As I pointed out in another thread, it is rather silly to give every civ the same units. I rekcon this could be a problem with the computer players. I don't think the AI routines can handle this kind of flexibility. It's a rather sad day when Firaxis decided to remove the ability to build custom units.

I think some folks are getting confused about what's happening with units in general. The whole point of not having a unit workshop is that we want you to be able to build whatever kind of unit you want, and the unit workshop actually hampers your choices.

You will absolutely be able to create your own units. You will have the flexibility to do practically anything you want with them: you can give them whatever tech prereqs you want, name them whatever you want, fiddle with their abilities, and *lots* more.

Then you select what image or animation you want to represent that unit, and presto, you've got a custom unit.

The decision not to use a design workshop makes sense when you consider the limitations of that system. With that system, you're forced to use a couple of stock "chassis" or general unit types, coupled with a variety of weapons and armor that don't really look different but just have different stats.

Say you wanted to create a UFO unit for a scenario you were doing. With the unit workshop model, you'd be stuck using whatever the closest chassis in the game was, maybe a tank or an airplane of some type. You could snap some generic weapons onto it, but chances are it wouldn't fit your vision of what the UFO would look like.

If you want a more specific example, go into SMAC and try to create a catapult using the existing unit workshop components. Whatever you come up with, I'd be willing to bet it doesn't look much like a catapult.

When you're not constrained by the unit workshop model, you basically find (or create) a graphic of a UFO that you like, and attach it to the custom unit you've created, complete with your own custom technologies, attributes, prereqs, and so on.

The point of all of this is that we are NOT taking away anyone's ability to create custom units; to the contrary -- we're trying to allow for the maximum level of customization.

Dan
Firaxis Games, Inc.

[Roman]

Just look at Dan's post and rejoice. This is exactly what I was thinking. Once again Firaxis made a very wise decision not to include the Unit Workshop in the game.

[EnochF]

Round of applause for Dan Magaha

[Cyclotron]

AGGGGHHHH... I am physically, emotionally, and spiritually drained after hearing this depressing news... poor civ, my gaming vitality dies with thou...

:dissolves into small self-pitying pool of liquid and floats mournfully away:

[RonHiler]

quote: Originally posted by Dan Magaha FIRAXIS on 02-12-2001 05:30 PM I think some folks are getting confused about what's happening with units in general. The whole point of not having a unit workshop is that we want you to be able to build whatever kind of unit you want, and the unit workshop actually hampers your choices.

I don't see any confusion, Dan. I think everyone understands perfectly the trade off here. You have decided to decrease the "out of box" playability in favour of scenario customizability by players.

That's y'alls decision. I disagree with it, but that's just me. I have no interest in "mods". I have never built one, and I have never downloaded them. My interest is entirely how the game plays off the shelf. Therefore I am stuck with your static units, if I want to play, which quickly becomes boring. Thus, I will not buy the game. For others, mods are all important, and they applaud your decision. Different styles, I suppose Good luck with the programming.

Ron

[Cyclotron]

As said above, this is really to bad. As was pointed out, Firaxis is truly submitting to the mod players and scenario builders, and neglecting the rest of us. Customizability is great, but I think that this much open-ness is even worse than the SMAC system. I am quite aware people will get mad at me for saying this, but I just hopw Firaxis doesn't really go ahead with this. The only thing that's confusing is why Firaxis would ever do this to us?!?!

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"Any shred of compassion left in me was snuffed out forever when they cast me into the flames..."
- Marsil, called the Pretender

[Theben]

I guess the important question, Dan, is how much, if any, of this customization is available in-game? What you describe sounds a lot like the civ2 method of customization: tweak the rules.txt and units.gif. OTOH, I can't think of any in-game modifications that couldn't be described as a "unit workshop" in some way.

Here's just a thought... since it seems that customization has won out over flexibilty, perhaps firaxis can complile new units and "modded" units into some sort of "offical" dowloadable expansion... if they release enough of them (say 1 a month for a year), each with a few goodies to add to the "off-the-shelf" game, perhaps this can be seen as a compromise.

I'm not sure of this idea myself, I'd much rather of had a workshop of some-sort (or perhaps an in-game editor like dan spoke of with a lot of extra graphics).

Any comments?

[Youngsun]

Dan

quote: the unit workshop actually hampers your choices.

That's true if you want to use SMAC style unitworkshop.
Unitworkshop for civ doesn't have to be like SMAC style one does it?

I want
No more prototype(sounds like labortory work to me)
No more types also(which really reduce our choices).

Unitworkshop should be aimed to make "infantry division" or "armoured brigade" rather than individual "tank" or "soldiers". Here you face problem once you try to create a single tank which is composed of AT-gun+Chassis+Engine+Turret+radio equipment)just like SMAC style.

Tanks/airplanes should be produced as they are and they should be the basic elements to form a unit such as armoured division or fighter squadron.

The only area for SMAC style might be appropriate is battleship or crusier designe and this perfectly make sense and brings fun regarding MOO/MOOII experiences if you played them before.

This actually reduced types of units you can have but it will bring great customisation of each unit which is based on how many equipments you give to that unit.

Please come and visit my unitworkshop module list thread and have a look at "organisation workshop.gif" that will help you to understand what I'm trying to say here.

[Roman]

From the gallery on the Civ3 website, it is apparent that the choice of units will be much greater than in Civ2. Hence Unit Workshop is completely unneccessary.

Dan Magaha posted in MY thread! YAY!

[Grumbold]

Roman, while I admire your enthusiasm, concept art of two tanks instead of one and two fighters instead of one doesn't exactly prove beyond doubt that a greatly expanded range of default units will be part of the finished game.

Total customisability for scenario makers is laudable but the people in favour of a unit workshop approach generally seem to be looking for customisability between nations in a game, not between scenarios. Providing enough graphics to ensure that the units don't appear completely ludicrous is certainly one of the hardest and most time consuming parts of that.

Now if the talked about approach to unique nationalities in Civ III also leads to diversity in what unit types the nations can build, then perhaps a workshop is more redundant. While building (for instance) elephants relies solely on polytheism and discounts any other factors then all nationalities with the same techs will be fielding exactly the same units.

[Nikolai]

We love Magaha! We love Magaha!

Myself, I like the news we get from Firaxis, I think they are doing a great job!! And butterflies are in my stomach(is that the right exoression? We have that expression in Norway )

And, people, please be kind to Firaxis, they are doing a good job!!!

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Who am I? What am I? Do we need Civ? Yes!!
birteaw@online.no

[Yog-Sothoth]

I think this is great news. I believe as Dan said that a workshop would be a limitation, and wouldn't fit well into a game with such a long timespan.

[Grumbold]

I realise I am being aggressive about this, but I do not see how anyone can accuse a unit workshop approach that allows any feasible combination of troop type, troop weapon and troop abilities of being a limitation. A workshop does not force you to adopt the SMAC graphics approach of gluing the components together into an ugly composite unit model.

The limit is the number of skins available to "dress" your finished units up in and some code to ensure you can't dress a footsoldier in an aeroplane skin. That limit is down to artwork and will exist whether we have fixed units or an in-game customisation tool. It does not restrict the ability for scenario makers or expansion packs to add even more skins if they need to.

Having the website release more skins from month to month would be an added attraction for Civ III, a bit like SimCity 3000 released new buildings - but only if the player can plug them straight into the main randonly generated game, not see them only in specific scenarios. My ambition would be to be playing the game three years after release with historically accurate skins for all the major nationalities in any given time period, and an AI that could choose the ones appropriate to its nationality or government style.

The strongest counter arguement I can think of is the difficulty in knowing what units are capable of at a glance. Either you have to find that out by observation or have the stats appear in clear format when you study an enemy unit. To me this makes more sense than knowing not only that all countries can only churn out 4-4-1 infantry and 8-8-3 armour, but they all look the same, too.

[Dan Magaha FIRAXIS]

quote: Originally posted by Grumbold on 02-13-2001 09:31 AM I realise I am being aggressive about this, but I do not see how anyone can accuse a unit workshop approach that allows any feasible combination of troop type, troop weapon and troop abilities of being a limitation.

If indeed we were able to provide you with every feasible combination of troop type, troop weapon, and troop abilities, then it wouldn't be limiting at all.

But the unfortunate reality of the situation is that we can't possibly do that. Instead we're doing our best to ensure scenario builders and yes, even casual players will be able to tailor the game to their needs.

Dan
Firaxis Games, Inc.

[Grumbold]

Thanks Dan

I'll eagerly await news about how you are managing to achieve this

[Youngsun]

quote: since the unit workshop and the scenario editor are targeted towards two different groups. There are people who like to mess around with strange units but lacks the patience to build scenarioes from the ground up.

Well said Urban Ranger!

A lousy scenario builder like myself or possibly many other people just don't have time and patience to build well customised scenarios for satisfcatory result. That's why I prefer to see Firaxis put more weight on the main game. I played the original civ for a long time without getting bored whereas civII was not able to make me preoccupied very long though it was still better than other games. CivII's main game features didn't match up the greatness of civI(it was just enhanced version of civI with better graphics with some modifications) While Firaxis seeing the reason which helped civII last longer was due to the existence of scenario builder, Firaxis must have felt to guarantee the success of civIII, there should be massive investment on scenatio builder and other customising tools. I see this very reasonable but what makes me so sad is why Firaxis decided to sacrifice the main game in favour of scenario building. I played many great scenarios which were made by many genious scenario builders and I enjoyed them but those scenarios were not civII anymore. They were just other games to me and I will definitely hesitate to put civII as the greatest game of all if because civII had scenario builder and other good scenario made by fans. I hope Firaxis open its eyes and put more effort to the main game then the need to create scenario will be reduced if not disappeared. I'm not saying scenario builder should not be in civIII but just expressing my opinion that the main game should be counted first.
[This message has been edited by Youngsun (edited February 15, 2001).]

[Cyclotron]

The above post is perhaps the most insightful and meaningful (and true, IMO) post I have seen since I arrived here.