"Unit Workshop" Module List

[Mihai]

Congratulation Youngsun !
Excellent idea and a LOT of work. You didn't leave me anything to add. J

I love the workshop because it gives a plus to strategy : if you are under attack you can quickly build some cheap/weak units to defend yourself. In case that you plan an invasion, you can prepare in time an attack force consisting of more expensive/stronger units. And beside that it adds more subtlety to the scissors/paper/stone system (cavalry/archers/pikemen or battleship/distroyer/submarine). This way a single military tech could give you the victory on the battlefield. Two tech = almost total strategic victory (Mongols had fast horses and the composite bow and that allowed them to conquer half of Eurasia; Alexander the Great had phalanx and his genius ).

Seriously, the limitation of overconquer should came from the others aspects of the game (economic = high cost of keeping a huge army, social = unhappyness of conquered city => garnison needed, diplomatic = all others payers allied against you etc).

However your idea for combat screen is too complex. Actually what you try to do is to include a whole separate game : The Operational Art of War I&II (or Steel Panthers maybe? - I didn't play it yet). I think that's too much for Civ3. Maybe in Civ4.

Phalanx vs. Tanks? If modern armor negates ancient attack then that is the answer.
Phalanx vs. GIs? Well...in WWI infantry attack against machine guns over and over again with huge casualty. In 1879 at Isandlwana 30000 zulus armed only with spears and leather shields wiped out 5000 british armed with the-most-modern-at-the-time breech loader rifle. In conclusion, size does matter.

The LASS system of Matthew Hayden is good and should be used.

[Matthew Hayden]

Well, the reaction seems to be positive so far, so,
on to the rest eh!

I've got several ideas for a few unique and different helicopters.
Med Evac helicopter, (Huey?)

Hitpoints=10-Fairly generous defensive capabilities
Firepower=5-armed only with basic machine-gun type weapons.
Evasion=5-not a very fast hunk o' junk

L A S S

A 10 8 10 0
R 0 4 0 0
D 10 8 10 0 Transports two infantry, restores one infantry unit to fuul health in it's stack every turn, thats why its a Med Evac chopper, eh.

By the way, thanks for the feedback Youngson, your National Arsenal and Organision Workshop ideas are awesome, spectacular even!

Firaxis, you'd better be listening!!!

C-Ya all soon!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Youngsun]

Mihai Thanks.

You can suggest more if you got any and don't hide them from me

quote: However your idea for combat screen is too complex. Actually what you try to do is to include a whole separate game : The Operational Art of War I&II (or Steel Panthers maybe?- I didn't play it yet). I think that's too much for Civ3. Maybe in Civ4.

The combat model I put above is based on Colonisation style believe or not. And that was enhanced little bit to accomodate "stacked combat" & "combined arms concepts" so nothing is too complex here

Matthew how's it going?

Med Evac helicopter? Medical? Evacuation?

quote: Transports two infantry, restores one infantry unit to fuul health in it's stack every turn, thats why its a Med Evac chopper, eh

You mean two infantry units? in civII term perhaps?

I'm very glad you liked the "arsenal" & "organisation workshop".

[Matthew Hayden]

By the way, as far as I know, there won't be any Unit Workshop! Sob, Weep, Sob! Weep! SOB!! WEEP!!
Oh well, I guess you can't have everything. The new units on the Firaxis website do look promising though.


Spotter Helicopter; (Gazzelle?)

Uses an advanced laser rangefinder to aid combat helicopters in order to increase the 'one shot kill' potential of their ordinance.
In game terms, this would translate into an increased attack value against any and all ground or sea units attacked by a stack containing one of these spotters.
To prevent abuse of this ability, it is not cumulative.

///////L A S S

/////A 0 0 0 0
/////R 0 0 0 0
/////D 6 0 6 0

The forward slashes are to stop the lines getting screwed up like they did in my previous posts.

I shan't be able to post anything else until saturday,
to much damned School work!!

[Matthew Hayden]

Is there anybody out there!!

Youngson, Darkcloud, Technoophile, where r u!!


House Carl

Big strong mediaeval fella with a twenty-foot long sword. Used during the Hundred-Years-War against the French by the English. Combined with the mighty Longbowmen and Knights of England, these guys often played a major role in the destruction of French armies many times bigger than their own forces.

////////L A S S

//////A 4 0 0 0 First unit with 4 attack
//////R 0 0 0 0
//////D 3 0 0 0

[DarkCloud]

Matthew- about the LASS plan, where is the movement point section?

[Urban Ranger]

Youngsun,

Fantastic work you have there! A few suggestions, comments, etc.:

1. Take all you have written in this thread, condense and edit all that material, whip it in a PDF file, and post a link. The advantages of this is a person can read that offline, plus you can have all your illustrations in there. It's quite daunting to go through this thread right now. Now if you could include an index in that PDE file also, that would be just great

2. Did you steal those diagrams of military hardware from PG3 or PG3D?

3. The illustrations are great but they are too wide for my screen. If you could make them narrower it would be perfect. Nitpicking, I know.

4. I think the unit workshop in SMAC has almost the perfect combination. What I think would be the best is for a unit to have, on top of the basic "frame" type: one armor slot, one movement slot, two weapons slot, two special slot, and a doctine slot.

For example:

Ancient Skimisher
Basic Frame - infantry
Movement - foot
Weapon 1 - short sword (bronze)
Weapon 2 - short bow
Armor - leather
Special 1 - wilderness survival
Special 2 - none
Doctrine - skimisher

Modern Special Force Unit
Basic Frame - infantry
Movement - foot
Weapon 1 - light arms
Weapon 2 - espionage kit
Armor - bulletproof vest
Special 1 - wilderness survival
Special 2 - combat insertion/extraction
Doctrine - special forces

[Matthew Hayden]

Good point Darkcloud, sorry I missed all those out!

Hoplite=1 MP

Tank-Buster Chopper= 7/8 MP

Spotter Chopper= 7/9 MP- almost no weapons and a
fairly decent engine.

Med Evac Chopper= 6/7 MP

House Carl= 1/2 MP

C-Y'all Soon!!!!!!

[Matthew Hayden]

Good point Darkcloud, sorry I missed all those out!

Hoplite=1 MP

Tank-Buster Chopper= 7/8 MP

Spotter Chopper= 7/9 MP- almost no weapons and a
fairly decent engine.

Med Evac Chopper= 6/7 MP

House Carl= 1/2 MP

C-Y'all Soon!!!!!!

[Matthew Hayden]

Hello!!
Where've ya'll gone!!


Darkcloud, an expansion of my last post. The reason I didn't include any MP(movement point) values for the units is that nobody knows what scale the game will operate on, that is, elevation from ground level/ distance in square miles in every tile.

[Stuff2]

Train and treat ancient men and modern men the same way and they will be just as good fighters.

People are always people. I don't think that different 'eras' should change the conscripted mens ability. It's the weapons and armoring that makes the big difference, and training ofcourse.

Maybe your civ's overall health could play a part in how good your men can be (without weapons), this will probably, but not necessarily, increase with time. With knowledge, food and hospitals e.t.c.

People in ancient times where shorter simply beacouse they usually had to survive through several periods when foodsupply was very low.

[This message has been edited by Stuff2 (edited January 23, 2001).]

[Matthew Hayden]

Stuff2, I coudn't agree more, since the game only goes back to about 4000BC anyway.

Tiger Tank

////A D R M

//L 18 16 16 3/4 Sloewd down by heavy armour*.
//A 0 8 0 0
//S 0 8 0 0
//S 0 0 0 0


*And a badly underpowered engine.

Youngsun, wher've ya gone!

Please, somebody gimme some kinda feedback on this!!

[Roman]

I guess this thread is irrelevant now that we know unit workshop will not be included in Civ3.

[Mark_Everson]

I agree with Stuff2 also, although in addition to nutrition and overall health, lifestyle makes a big difference IMO. So given equal levels of training and technology people with "harder" lives will have an advantage since they are hardier and can take more punishment on the battlefield and from the environment. (Although I'm pretty much talking about infantry here) One example of a hardly people is the Mongols, since the pastoralist lifestyle is very difficult compared to what we have nowadays. Another example of lifestyle is that people who shoot rifles every day from childhood on Will be better riflemen than city dwellers who have never seen one before military service. I think that was one of the things that gave the southern states a relative advantage in the U.S. Civil War.

On another topic...

I've followed this thread with some interest, and I think it's a shame that they're not going to have a unit workshop at least available as an option in civ 3. The Clash of Civilizations military model will have a lot of the things you have been talking about here, and could Seriously use more discussion and ideas. If you are interested in checking it out please look at the Current Clash Military Thread. We have a new military coder, Laurent, who is making serious progress, so there is the potential for you to see any good suggestions you might make actually Implemented fairly soon!

[Urban Ranger]

It's a shame that Firaxis has decided to take out one of the two major innovations from SMAC. The other one being social engineering. They should have at least included this as an option to let players who are interested to play with it.

I don't think that's a lot of additional work for little gain. There are already some players expressing utter disgust at this decision and refuse to buy the game as a result. I am not so extreme as I will evaluate the game carefully. Of course, missing the unit workshop wouldn't work out to Firaxis's favour in my case.

I understand there are players who don't like the feature, but why not include it as an option? The groundwork has been done in SMAC already.

[Youngsun]

Oh Stuff2 Long time no see!

About varing ability of men for each era.

I was thinking once I occupy some enemy land and some of its population come under my control there should be different consequences which depend on situation.

CaseA(Primitive people come under control of modern civilisation)
After British colonial force subdues some primitive tribes in Africa, we wouldn't expect to see those tribemen as eligible candidate for conscription to serve in the British army-no instant call for mobilising occupied population for militatry use until those people are more civilised.

CaseB(ancient/rennaissance people come under control of modern civilisation)
Unlike their primitive counterparts, those people(ancient/rennaissance)should be conscripted by their modern masters much easier than primitive ones. The British used the Egyptians and the Indians(Sepoy)extensively throughout the colonial era.

CaseC(Ancient people come under control of rennaisance civ)
There should be no real difficulty to mobilise the ancient men since there is no dramatic difference between those two civilisations.

Perhaps there should be only 3 distinct eras(Primitive,Ancient and Modern)by merging rennaissance and modern as one. Primitive people shouldn't be able to cope with modern military training(think about air force and navy)which make them virtually useless in military use after their subjugation while ancient people have more chance.

Just imagine your civ is the only modern civ in the globe and others are primitive or ancient and your military forces are almost unstoppable then this limit imposed to usage of people based on era will function as some sort of obstacle to you because occupied population will be useless for a long time which depends on how primitive your opponents are.

Urban Ranger
Your suggestion looks good and I especially like the "doctrine" part which gives the distinct colour for each branch of armed forces.

If you read my model carefully you can find the term "unit" is not a "unit" used in Civ series or SMAC.
In CIV or SMAC, unit is just one piece of thing that represents bunch of arms moving together while "unit" in my model represents a military organisation such as division or brigade. That's why my model is very different from SMAC style one. A unit is an organisation which includes combat personnel,equipments and given training/doctrine.
An infantry division does not consist of only riflemen! there maybe some artillery piece(to improve firepower support)attached or some horses or trucks given(to improve mobility of the unit). If my model is used there will be no catapult unit or cannon unit roaming around(less unit variation!)but just infantry divisions or Roman legions which might have those equipments(catapult & cannon) as attached forms. My "organisation workshop" may give some ideas about how combat personnel and equipments come togeather as one unit.

Mark

quote: I've followed this thread with some interest, and I think it's a shame that they're not going to have a unit workshop at least available as an option in civ 3. The Clash of Civilizations military model will have a lot of the things you have been talking about here, and could Seriously use more discussion and ideas. If you are interested in checking it out please look at the Current Clash Military Thread. We have a new military coder, Laurent, who is making serious progress, so there is the potential for you to see any good suggestions you might make actually Implemented fairly soon!

Long live the Clash!

Matthew
Hello Mattew How's it going?
[This message has been edited by Youngsun (edited February 13, 2001).]

[Stuff2]

quote: Originally posted by Youngsun on 02-13-2001 02:41 AM Perhaps there should be only 3 distinct eras(Primitive,Ancient and Modern)by merging rennaissance and modern as one. Primitive people shouldn't be able to cope with modern military training(think about air force and navy)which make them virtually useless in military use after their subjugation while ancient people have more chance. Just imagine your civ is the only modern civ in the globe and others are primitive or ancient and your military forces are almost unstoppable then this limit imposed to usage of people based on era will function as some sort of obstacle to you because occupied population will be useless for a long time which depends on how primitive your opponents are. [This message has been edited by Youngsun (edited February 13, 2001).]

History is full of primitive people meeting more advanced people. Your basically is saying that advanvced civs don't use conscripts from from conqured tribes that are too primitive beacouse they are not good enough. I don't agree. Actually, i would say that conscripting from a newly captured cities isn't hardly likely at all. It has to go several years until a captured civ is likely to be trusted to be given weapons, and don't use them against you. There is a reason why primitive tribes isn't normally trained as a modern conscript. It is called prejudice.

I don't for a second believe that 'primitive tribes' are more more stupid and lazy than swedish people (i'm swedish). I meet stupid people everyday, and i'm not too bright myself, so i know that there are a great variation of dumbness in the world. But the prejudice is a part of the nationalism. You can't get a bunch of soldiers to kill other soldiers unless you give them a feeling of superiority towards the others.
My theory is that primitive men are not consripted simply beacouse it would endanger the feeling of nationality that keeps your troops loyal, and why bother spending money on making your troops loose their prejudices when there are so many men to conscripts in your own civ? (those who you know will be loyal). Sooner or later the tribes will be a natural part of your country and you will no longer see them as primitive tribes. It all has to do with point of view. By that time they probably will be so assimilated bye your culture that there is no real difference in your lifestyle except maybe some special small things like some art and music and other symbolic things too make them feel good about their origin.

During every war we have seen that once a tribe discovers how the advanced society works it soon will begin defending it's right with more sophisticated methods. But this was not my point. My point is that humans are so much alike in different eras and different cultures that it's only the weapons, shielding and training that should have some effect. There is only cultural differences between different people. Among every people you can find the same mix of stupid and smart, nice and bad guys.

In civ terms. A people should maybe have a attribute called loyalty, (or nationalism or whatever). This atrribute decides whether the men are suiting as conscripts or not. If not they are harder to train and more likely to be bribed or revolting. I think the easiest way of representing this is simply to forbid building units in captured cities for x number of turns. The number of turns depending on difference in tech level, difference in government, religion and ofcourse if the civ still is at war with you.

Also, no difference in how the men themselves fight without equipment. Let the equipment and the chance decide. Moral and health could play a part but don't make it too complicated. I wouldn't like to see the war machine get too complicated we still are playing civ, not war.

[Youngsun]

Stuff2

quote: Your basically is saying that advanvced civs don't use conscripts from from conqured tribes that are too primitive because they are not good enough

I said

quote: should be conscripted by their modern masters much easier than primitive ones.

So there are some difficulties involved to conscript less advanced people but that's not impossible but just takes time.(the more primitive the longer it takes to be eligible for recruitment)

quote: i would say that conscripting from a newly captured cities isn't hardly likely at all. It has to go several years until a captured civ is likely to be trusted to be given weapons, and don't use them against you.

Of course, "assimilation of conquered people" takes time but what I was talking was after they become less rebellious we can conscipt them but unless they are quite fond of modern technology they shouldn't be able to control aircrafts nor battleships. You may still conscipt them but you will get primitive men in your stock(national arsenal)whose ability is somewhat limited to use only primitive to ancient weaponry.

quote: I don't for a second believe that 'primitive tribes' are more more stupid and lazy

Excuse me? I did NOT say primitive people are stupid and lazy. However they lack understanding of very basic modern science such as mathematics or physics which are extensively taught from year 7 to year 12 in all over the modern societies. And it takes time to teach such concepts to those people who were not aware of such things.

quote: By the time they probably will be so assimilated by your culture that there is no real difference in your lifestyle except maybe some special small things like some art and music and other symbolic things too make them feel good about their origin.

That's right and now you also acknowlege it takes time to assimilate people.

quote: In civ terms. A people should maybe have a attribute called loyalty, (or nationalism or whatever). This atrribute decides whether the men are suiting as conscripts or not. If not they are harder to train and more likely to be bribed or revolting. I think the easiest way of representing this is simply to forbid building units in captured cities for x number of turns. The number of turns depending on difference in tech level, difference in government, religion and ofcourse if the civ still is at war with you.

I absolutely agree with you stuff2.

quote: Also, no difference in how the men themselves fight without equipment. Let the equipment and the chance decide. Moral and health could play a part but don't make it too complicated.

I still firmly believe three variations(primitive/ancient and modern)will do the job good.

[Urban Ranger]

Youngsun,

I realised that your unit is not the same as the "unit" used in Civ 2. There is one major difficulty to implememnt your idea though, namely, it is a rather modern one.

Ancient units didn't have such standardised organisation and doctrines. I think the ones came closest are the Romans, who had quite formal requirements for their legions. Most others didn't.

Therefore, I reckon the strength of a "unit" should be somewhat less strict than that of modern military units, say, a battalion or a company.

As you pointed out, a Civ unit is just a loose grouping of men and equipment put together for a particular mission, and it should be treated as such.

What I am saying is any such units shouldn't have any standardised attributes; these should be depedent on the number of combatants, training, equipment, experience, and morale. We can then throw in other modifiers such as supply status and terrain.

Only after the "discovery" of a certain civ advancement do standardised units become available.

[Youngsun]

Urban Ranger

I used terms like "division" or "brigade" to help other people to understand what I'm trying to portrait as a unit but it's not those terms which hold the significance to bear the fundamental difference between the SMAC one and mine but the nature of the unit.

quote: What I am saying is any such units shouldn't have any standardised attributes; these should be depedent on the number of combatants, training, equipment, experience, and morale=. We can then throw in other modifiers such as supply status and terrain.

Great! I was thinking exactly like that.

[Stuff2]

Actually, Youngsun, i'm beginning to agree with you. Sorry for my missunderstanding.

But instead of different named men you can simply have a number of how advanced and how civilized they are:

Your civ is 5 points advanced and 3 points civilized
the local tribe is maybe 1 point advanced and 5 points civilized. The difference from each number is calculated to measure not only how good/bad conscripts they will be but also how your different people will feel for each other. In this case the difference is (3-1)+(5-3)=2+2=4.

This can also be a measure of how well you succeed in the game. When gathered enough advanced you earn an 'advanced point'. But i'd rather see the 'advanced point' depending on your infrastructure. Unapplied knowledge don't make anyone happy. And the 'civilized points' depend on government and warfare and other social factors.

[Youngsun]

No need to be sorry about Stuff2. misunderstandings may happen all the time.

quote: Your civ is 5 points advanced and 3 points civilized the local tribe is maybe 1 point advanced and 5 points civilized. The difference from each number is calculated to measure not only how good/bad conscripts they will be but also how your different people will feel for each other. In this case the difference is (3-1)+(5-3)=2+2=4.

I definitely share your view of technologically superior civ doesn't have to be more civilised than technologically inferior ones. However military supremacy is usually in the hands of technologically superior civilisation and this should be reflected regardless of relative civilisedness.

[Matthew Hayden]

WOW!! Theres sure been a lot goin' down here since last I strolled through.
Good to see ya Youngson, I thought this thread had died.

How's life, the universe, and everything.

I agree about the Unit Workshop, what was the point in leaving that out Firaxis!

However, perhaps in your city view you would have Youngsons manager screens with which you would sort a group of, say 200,000 men into an Infantry corps, or army, or division, although something that large would normally be an army group. It was the size of the German 6th Army which got trapped at Stalingrad.

[Matthew Hayden]

Stuff2, your civilization and tech level idea is excellent!!

[Youngsun]

Hi Matthew I'm very well.

and about the decision made by Firaxis I don't think that because there is no unitworkshop in civIII, the thread should die. The thread contains far more stuffs to be considered than just unitworkshop and some people just don't see it they just give weary eyes on the thread merely because of the title it has "unitworkshop module list". what a pity..

[Urban Ranger]

Any of you freeciv guys reading this thread? Could you use some of our ideas?

[RonHiler]

I don't know about the gang at freeciv, but if y'all don't have any objections, I wouldn't mind taking a look at it

MD's unit workshop components need fleshing out (to put it mildly, it's still in a pretty primitive state), and it looks like you've done some very impressive work here.

Of course, you designed this for Civ, which MD is not. As such, some of the concepts don't work under our system. But a lot of them will. And it would need to be expanded in directions you don't have to accomodate our different combat systems. But that could all be handled in due course.

I only have looked over it very briefly. If you have objections to me looking at it, I won't touch it again. But if you do not, I'd like to examine it in a more detailed fasion, with an eye to adapting it for our needs.

Let me know if it's okay with you. Since they aren't going to use it for CivIII, it'd be a shame for all this work to go to waste, heh.

Ron

[Youngsun]

quote: Let me know if it's okay with you.

It's alright Ron. no objection. Good luck.


[This message has been edited by Youngsun (edited February 20, 2001).]

[RonHiler]

Thanks Youngsun! As soon as I have the time (probably this weekend), I will distill out the stuff that I think we can use and feed it to our discussion group for analysis. I will be mainly pulling out of the first page (on the second and third y'all moved into stacks, which is a system defined by the individual players in MD, so it has no bearing for us). You are certainly most welcome to join our discussions if you'd like, to keep a watchful eye on what we do to your baby. But keep in mind, we will be, at the very least, adapting quite a bit, so if that will bug you, you might not want to watch Entirely your call.

If we end up using significant parts of it, I will, of course, give credit where it is due on the credits screen.

Ron

[Youngsun]

I just checked the site and MD surely looks promising! I hope everthing works out alright Ron..