How shall the partisan-unit be re-balanced?

[Ralf]

I generally liked the idea of partisan-units in Civ-2, but I didnt like how they where implemented. Any ideas how to tweak and change this unit?

The way I see it, those partisan-units should NOT appear all at once directly after city-captures. Thats too obvious. Instead they should pop-up one by one, here and there within conquered city-areas concentrating on pillaging shields, roads and RR. However they can only pillage the next-coming turn, and they are not so many as they where in Civ-2. Special abilities:

- treats all non-RR terrain as roads.
- No zone-restrictions, of course.
- New abilities: No automatic map-recentering on these units. Be alert!
- A partisan-unit must be killed completely. Only wounded partisans disapperars and come back again healed.

[ancient]

those are good ideas but i dont think you should be able to have partisens pop up that werent ever really built like in civ2..

[Buck Birdseed]

How about having partisans pop up every few turns as long as you haven't pacified a city completely?

[Sava]

Guerilla warfare is a form of warfare that some people just don't understand. In true Guerilla Warfare, you wouldn't have a "partisan" unit running around. A true guerilla unit would be able to hide in a tile unvisible to an army. Also, sharing a tile with an enemy unit, and holding surprise attacks. In Civ games there can't be a Vietnam war because you can land ten tanks on a jungle area, and just obliterate all partisan units. In Vietname, the US landed the equivelant of ten tanks and still couldn't flush out the Viet Cong because they burrowed in and hid so well.

Did you know in Vietnam, the US dropped more bombs on that small country than all the previous wars combined?

Ralf, you need to let go of the past CIV games if you want an improved realistic game. The earlier civ games were good building blocks, but its time to move to the next level.

Partisans aren't organized armies, they are small groups of soldiers who surprise-attack forces occupying their territory. My grandfather was a partisan in the hills of Italy during WWII and he fought Nazi and Italian troops. Basically, they saw troops in transit, attacked quickly, then ran back into the forests and hills and hid. That's guerilla warfare.

[ajbera]

Rather than have partisan forces characterized as a unit, let the captured city experience high incidences of production, unit and city improvement sabotage. You can attempt to supress partisans by military presence, other city improvements, or one of the functions of a spy could be to ferret out saboteurs.
[This message has been edited by ajbera (edited May 12, 2001).]

[Lawrence of Arabia]

The number of partisans that should appear should be based on city size and the ration of cultre. If the captured city had a higher cultuer, then more partisans would appear. The partisans home town would be the city which has just been captured. They would draw support from it. For the captured city, that would mean more corruption.

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Its okay to smile; you're in America now

[Ralf]

quote: Ralf, you need to let go of the past CIV games if you want an improved realistic game. The earlier civ games were good building blocks, but its time to move to the next level.

OK, then - any good ideas of your own? Remember that Civ-3 is a computer-game played on a very abstracted level. How shall a partisan-unit be tweaked to be "real-life realistic" in a turnbased game, like Civ-3?
By the way, its have already been 100% confirmed that Civ-3 will be turnbased Civ-2/SMAC style - so discussing ideas based on alternative models is basically a waste of time. Now, with this in mind; again - how can the Civ-3 partisan-unit be tweaked and improved according to you?

Or shall we, as Ajbera suggest, NOT have partisan forces characterized as units at all? There have previously been talks in this forum about having spy-functions attached to some spy/intelligence-screen, instead of a spy-unit. Maybe the partisan sabotage-function can be incorporated under this screen spy/intelligence-screen also?

[This message has been edited by Ralf (edited May 12, 2001).]

[Roman]

My idea of representing guerrila/partisan warfare would revolve around atrition. Basically any enemy unit in your territory (or for a certain amount of turns also the territory that was yours previously ) would suffer automatic damage each turn. The idea could also be expanded upon to include automatic pillaging of roads and railroads (this feature would only apply if enemy had already captured that territory completely - ie. it is now within his borders) if there isn't a unit stationed on the tile.

[Mathphysto]

I think both ajbera and Lawrence have good ideas. Maybe a city with higher culture rating experiences increased levels of corruption and some probability per turn of production, units, and city resources being sabotaged. The corruption and sabotage levels would decrease with increased military presence, or if the conquering Civ patches up relations with the offended Civ. Also, as time went on, the sabotage and corruption levels would drop.

This way, partisans are discrete and unavoidable - like real life. You can't just mop them up with tanks, like in Civ2. But, the partisan spirit also dies down - either by force (increased military presence) or by choice (peace treaty between Civs, and time heals the wounds). There may be other factors to either refire or extinguish the partisan spirit, but I think that these may be the primaries.

[JamesJKirk]

Well why not the best of both worlds? You can get a steady partisan supply so long as the city has a high cultural rating, and there could be a partisan unit, that's invisible to the enemy, that can move quickly, and use the bombard feature to attack enemy troops undetected?

[Ralf]

Since, there is a Poll about Guerilla warfare, I thought it could be nice to blow some life into this topic as well.

[Ralf]

Oops! double-post. Sorry!

[Theben]

There should be an option in either the diplomacy or espionage screen to fund partisan warfare in another country, whether units or automatic.

[LDiCesare]

Originally posted by Theben
There should be an option in either the diplomacy or espionage screen to fund partisan warfare in another country, whether units or automatic.

Yes!!
In WW2, partisans in France were almost inexistant, or at least very badly organized in 1940-41, they began causing some trouble in 42 and were more serious in 44, mainly because England gave them a headquarters and a leader was sent to organize them, but also because the difference in culture between democratic France and nazi didn't show up immediately. The atrocities performed slowly turned passive people into partisans.
Thus, you should be able to "pay" people to rebel in other cities (like what existed in Master Of Orion): more discontent, inability to build military units because of too many people complaining, and maybe also automatic sabotage of roads/production.
Also, it should be noted that Paris was not freed by the Allies but by itself, so, if the conquering civ is suffering drawbacks, conquered cities should be able to revolt by themselves/funding from other countries.
I think partisans shouldn't be modeled as units because it's very hard to model these revolutions with units, since the units should disappear once the town is freed.

[Grumbold]

Invisible partisan acts of sabotage to units and terrain is a method I like. Blowing up buildings is too harsh when they take far longer to rebuild than it takes to repress the rebellious populace (unlike real life where guerrilla warfare goes on for decades and a bombed building can be open for business again in months.)

Unfortunately I have a problem with FIRAXIS acknowledging the potency of guerrilla warfare when they have just taken out most zones of control saying units dont need to slow down when in each others' vicinity. It is precisely because there is a trained army nearby that can pull all these guerrilla stunts that ZoC exist irrespective of how the unit is equipped.

[Optimizer]

The partisan idea is good, because it balances the game in favour of the defender. Partisans should be available earlier but be weaker.

Remember Colonization, where a percentage of your colonists were tories, and thus were a minus when defending your colonies against the king?

The idea of resistance could be implemented so that the portion of production that the conqueror loses due to disorder/corruption can be used by the conqueree to build and maintain guerrillas.