Trenches

HazieDaVampire · July 7, 2002, 15:24

to WW1 style things. Infantry and Mech infantry should be able to build trenches, which act like fortifications when any unit is in them. So you can have long lines of trenches along a front line! (This would be a button you press and it takes 2 or 3 turns to complete! And look a little like roads.)
That would be cool, cuz you'd have a line line of trenches from 1 side of a continent to the other!

zulu9812 · July 7, 2002, 15:39

presumably it would also carry some sort of defense bonus, albeit less than a fortress. However, it should be workers who build them, not troops, regardless of realism aspects - "oh, infantry could dig a trench". Workers build, trops fight. That's the way it should stay.

Good idea though

HazieDaVampire · July 7, 2002, 17:12

i just think it would be easyer! just move the men up to the front line and get them digging! getting a load of workers to follow your men would be a bit annoying, and they'll probubly be behind your troops while the fighting is going on, so you end up having a laod of trenches in the wrong place, sticking a long line of infantry with another infantry unit under them digging the trech would be better.

zulu9812 · July 7, 2002, 17:35

you'd need to up the cost of infantry, though - substantially since they could keep advancing and digging trenches without support from vulnerable workers.

HazieDaVampire · July 7, 2002, 17:42

seems reasonable

Andrew_Jay · July 7, 2002, 18:19

Perhaps make a new, trench and road only worker unit. Just use the industrial icon, and keep it with zero defense, but perhaps cut out the pop cost.

ThePlagueRat · July 7, 2002, 23:33

When they fortify, they are presumed to dig in and guard the hole. Should be some cooler animations then ( like forified inf. dug in w/ sandbags) Instead of standing upright, as on a shooting range... like they do now!

Adm.Naismith · July 8, 2002, 04:43

Quote:

Originally posted by ThePlagueRat
When they fortify, they are presumed to dig in and guard the hole.

I agree. The fortify command means exactly that.

Quote:

Should be some cooler animations then ( like forified inf. dug in w/ sandbags) Instead of standing upright, as on a shooting range... like they do now!

The trouble here is to keep entrenched (fortified) units not too different from units in "wait", because you need to know them at a glance, and a unit half hidden in a trench is not easy to recon.

Andrew_Jay · July 8, 2002, 09:01

I noticed that missing from Civ3, in Civ2 didn't a little wal thing form around a fortified unit, kind of like a regular fort, but brown, not grey?

statusperfect · July 9, 2002, 09:40

HazieDaVampire: Lets first see what outposts and radar towers are good for before we ask for more

If they made roads editable some modder could make aroad layer that looks like trenches and give defense bonus.

ThePlagueRat · July 9, 2002, 11:01

Quote:

Originally posted by Adm.Naismith

A unit half hidden in a trench is not easy to recon.

Just as in Close Combat 4... (realtime stategy)
Hmmm... not extremely hard to recon either.
Adds realism, though!

Adm.Naismith · July 10, 2002, 05:29

Quote:

Originally posted by ThePlagueRat
Just as in Close Combat 4... (realtime stategy)
Hmmm... not extremely hard to recon either.
Adds realism, though!

Sure, I want to see a realistic entrenched War Elephant!

Killerdaffy · July 10, 2002, 10:29

Quote:

Originally posted by zulu9812
you'd need to up the cost of infantry, though - substantially since they could keep advancing and digging trenches without support from vulnerable workers.

How about a Pioneer / Engineer unit? That seems to be the standard solution to military construtcion problems. Strong infantry with extra abilities that's REALLY expensive, so you'd hate to lose them.

Jethro83 · July 10, 2002, 19:48

I always imagined that the units would be digging their own trenches when they fortify. Particularly the Roman Legions (when they set up camp, they dug a trench and built a palisade to fortify their encampment, improving on them the longer they stayed).

Perhaps after a turn of fortification, a palisade could appear around the fortified unit (like in Civ II) in ancient and medieval. Sandbags and/or barbed wire could take the place of palisades in modern.

Dimorier Maximus · July 10, 2002, 22:28

Trenches might be a good idea for a WWI scenario, but I see no point in having them in the regular game. How much trench warfare do you see today?

HazieDaVampire · July 11, 2002, 11:22

quite alot, their was alot of trench warfare in WW2 too, but it wasn't on such a large scale as WW1.

Claw919 · July 11, 2002, 16:13

Of course, WW2 was *60* years ago...

Anyway, it really wasn't trench warfare, as such. People were "digging in" at their positions, but they weren't building trenches (eg. long lines of trench).

Trench warfare WAS seen recently in the Ethiopia-Eritrea war, where both sides were using WW1 tactics - human wave assaults being held back (or not) by people leaning against the front side of a trench firing their a$$es off at a wave of approaching angry people who wanted to kill them.

That's mainly the problem with incorporating trenches in the game. Trenches were meant to guard against human wave attacks, since mobility (and defence against flying bullets) was really undeveloped at the time. In other words, you'd trench in at one end of a field and you'd have, say, 90 seconds to shoot as many bullets into an advancing hoarde as possible. Equally, you could only take a field by *having* a hoarde of troops to send at the enemy.

Civ3 is, in reality, not a game of having a ton of troops to send at someone. I can see an advantage to having a unit dig in (eg. 'fortify'), but not really TRENCHES as such.

Claw919

HazieDaVampire · July 11, 2002, 17:50

i'd just like it, it seems like a cool thing to have, a long line of barbed wire and trenches ready for the possible assault from the dreaded zulu's (I bet the indians never see these trenches!).

phunny_pharmer · July 11, 2002, 19:24

Come to think about it, before armor, you have trench WW1 built into the game:

After infantry and before armor, defense already rules the board. Attack has a high 6, defense (without bonus) 10.
Although cavalry have 3 movement, either the attacker needs artillery support or an overwhelming number of attack units.
Railroads give the defender the advantage, if the initial onslaught is repulsed
The lack of new improvements/wonders in the late industrial era, forces old cities to begin to make units.
It is the age of MPPs.

So, if you have an overwhelming number of units, what do you get- imperialism.

If the defender can fight off the initial attack, trench warfare results- stalemate.

With the advent of MPPs, all civs are hopelessly entangled (that has been my experience). By that time, my core cities are usually maxed out (with the help of the rush-buy) and are either producing cavalry, infantry, or artillery. For the first time, I usually begin to pay gold for support.

To create trench warfare, just have enough defensive units in your border cities to repulse their first wave.

[edited for spelling mistakes]

Kull · July 11, 2002, 19:59

Rather than some kind of "new" feature (probably tough to code in to PTW at this point, and even harder to impart to the AI), how about tweaking the existing Fortification graphic so it uses a sequence similar to Roads?

A single fort would look like a fort, but two would appear to be a Trench (or in earlier ages, a wall). As you string them together, a nice line of walls/trenches appears, anchored at the ends by a single tower/fort. This would look really neat, and probably wouldn't entail a major restructuring of the code and graphics.

Getting the AI to use this might be a challenge, but there are some relatively simple concepts they could follow: Build it on borders that are "X" tiles long, build it at chokepoints, build it only against enemy civs, etc. There's probably more, but you get the idea.

Andrew_Jay · July 12, 2002, 09:13

Kull, I think that is the best idea. Just make the trenches something aesthetic.
I know one change that will be needed is to how long it takes for a worker to build a fort/castle/bunker. One thing that really bugs me is that it uses the same formula for other terrain improvments: Grassland:easy, hills: harder mountains:virtually forever.
Does anyone else think that the times for forts should be inverted? Fortifying a mountain takes almost no effort (tunnels, caves anyone?) but to succesfully fortify a flat, grassy field takes some skill.

HazieDaVampire · July 12, 2002, 11:57

it would be cool! Loads of artillary, and trenches with infantry in them.
Infantry could even dig bigger trenchs made to hide the lower halfs of tanks! so just the turrey is visable! (But this could be the same as the trench warfare trenches.

phunny_pharmer · July 12, 2002, 16:16

Now, anti-tank dictches (cost 2 MP for tanks) would be interesting, as opposed to tanks, Hazie. Is that what you are suggesting?

HazieDaVampire · July 12, 2002, 16:20

noooo, but thats a good idea too! I was thinking of ditches that tanks drive into to hides all the tank cept the turret so it can still fire! this would be a defensive thing!

Coracle · July 12, 2002, 21:33

Of course trenches could only be effective in one or two directions, not all around.

HazieDaVampire · July 13, 2002, 07:00

yeah, I just want to see a continent battle scared with trenches. Would also be cool having towns and citys surrounded by trenches like what the romans did! That should give a bonus too!