Suggestion For Making Marines More Useful

[cgannon64]

Everyone knows that marines are useful in maybe one out of every 100 games. They are even less useful since it has been verified that 1 tile islands cannot exist. I have never built a marine, except for fun. Now here is my suggestion for making marines more useful: make them need no resources or just rubber. Marines need oil and rubber, so do tanks. They cost the same amount. So why build a marine over a tank? After reading a thread about an oil-less late industrial war, I thought---why not make marines not need oil, or need no resources? They have a decent attack (10) and a decent defense (8), so they could be quite useful, replacing the crappy 6 attack cavalry. They could go from not useful at all to quite pivotal in games where you do not have oil.

So, to sum up: make marines not need oil, or not need anything!

Anyone agree?

[XOR]

Marines attack 8 and defend 6...

And they are the only unit that can do amphibious assaults.

Some say that on amphibious assaults all defense bonuses are discarded and dont participate, but this is unconfirmed.

Marine armies being able to do amphibious assaults would be very usefull.

Amphibious assaults, I am sure, will be your biggest fear in multiplayer.

[Wormwood]

Originally posted by cgannon64
Everyone knows that marines are useful in maybe one out of every 100 games. They are even less useful since it has been verified that 1 tile islands cannot exist. I have never built a marine, except for fun. Now here is my suggestion for making marines more useful: make them need no resources or just rubber. Marines need oil and rubber, so do tanks. They cost the same amount. So why build a marine over a tank? After reading a thread about an oil-less late industrial war, I thought---why not make marines not need oil, or need no resources? They have a decent attack (10) and a decent defense (8), so they could be quite useful, replacing the crappy 6 attack cavalry. They could go from not useful at all to quite pivotal in games where you do not have oil.

So, to sum up: make marines not need oil, or not need anything!

Anyone agree?

I do pretty much the same thing, give them no pre. req., and I also reduce their cost. But I don't understand the part about 1 tile islands. In the world map (huge) that comes with the game, their are a number of 1 tile islands that can only be taken by marines.

[Akaoz]

Originally posted by XOR
Marine armies being able to do amphibious assaults would be very usefull.

Can Marines in an Army make Amphibious assaults?

[Theseus]

Nope, no Marine Armies.

(and in RL, it's Marine Divisions!)

[Akaoz]

Argh... I just checked it in a save game... damn... I had two marine armies just waitning to go... and now they are junk... *shrug*

Is this something that will be adressed in a patch?

-Alech

[Theseus]

Don't know... I know that Soren is aware of it.

BTW, they are NOT junk!! (if you don;t know, I am an Army fan)

Build the Pentagon, and throw Infantry into each... that's still a general, take-no-prisoners, badass Army.

[Ninot]

In one of my latest games, i was at war with England, and we were both early modern era

i WAS playing a resource-deprevation war, always pilaging their oil and rubber. im pretty sure they didnt have any

but they never built a single tank. 100% Marines

I crumpled them good! But it was shocking that they refused to build tanks, and only built marines, even before i took away their oil and rubber.

[Akaoz]

"Build the Pentagon, and throw Infantry into each..."

I have the pentagon, they consist of 4 Marines...

BTW, I looked at the Army in the editor, and it is listed with the Blitz ability. Does that mean that Cavalry can Blitz if you put it in an Army?

I added the Amphibious ability to the Army as well, not sure if that's a good fix, but it's something....

-Alech

[Hurricane]

* Yes, Cavalry armies can blitz (or even chariot armies. ).

* The earth map is manually created and thus has 1-tile islands. The random map generator doesn't make 1-tile islands, however.

I suspect the AI will favour building Marines heavily over Tanks if Marines are made cheaper or to require less resources. The best bet would probably be to increase its stats to maybe 12/10 or something.

[Thrawn05]

I made some radical changes concerning the Marine unit.

Keeping D-Day in mind, I moved Infantry to Amphibious assault and gave it Amphib. ability. I then moved Marines to Computer and replaced Mech Infantry. I then made Marines have the same stats as Mech Infantry. I then moved Mech Infantry to Syth. Fibors.

At which point it got tricky. What I did then is look at some websites and found which countries use Abrams (MA) and gave those civs the ability to build Abrams. The rest build MI (the MI have the stats as MAs).

[The Pioneer]

Originally posted by Thrawn05
At which point it got tricky. What I did then is look at some websites and found which countries use Abrams (MA) and gave those civs the ability to build Abrams. The rest build MI (the MI have the stats as MAs).

Nice! But what did you do with your MAs? Left them as is? That would diminish their significance as they only would have an adv. of 1 movement? What stats did you give Abrams?

So long...

[fittstim]

The point about 1-tile islands doesn't necessarily mean a thing.

You can have a VERY LARGE island and simply have the outer edge surrounded by workers or warriors...whatever. If you haven't set your bombard units to be able to kill, then you can't ever attack this island - no matter what the size of the island/continent.

So the point is, if you have the ability to kill units with air and sea units, you NEVER need to build a marine.

[Jaybe]

Originally posted by fittstim
...
So the point is, if you have the ability to kill units with air and sea units, you NEVER need to build a marine.

... Unless it is a worker or other non-combatant, which cannot be bombarded.

[XarXo]

[DELETED]

[Thrawn05]

Originally posted by The Pioneer


Nice! But what did you do with your MAs? Left them as is? That would diminish their significance as they only would have an adv. of 1 movement? What stats did you give Abrams?

So long...

Adrams are the name of the MA. They are one and the same.

Both the MIs and MAs are the same stats, it's just a cosmetic effect for which civ gets what.

[The Pioneer]

Originally posted by Thrawn05


Adrams are the name of the MA. They are one and the same.

Both the MIs and MAs are the same stats, it's just a cosmetic effect for which civ gets what.

So MA loose all their purpose in your mod!

So long...

[vmxa1]

I did find one use for Marines. I could make them faster than Calv or Mechs so I created them to sit in a "safe" city and let me remove the existing unit that was better for attacking.

[Thrawn05]

Originally posted by The Pioneer


So MA loose all their purpose in your mod!

So long...

No, the MI has the speed, cost, attack, defense, resources etc... as MA. It's just that SOME CIVS use MIs, and the rest MAs. THey are both the same unit in every way expect in Name and Animation.

What part of this don't you understand?

[Thrawn05]

Originally posted by vmxa1
I did find one use for Marines. I could make them faster than Calv or Mechs so I created them to sit in a "safe" city and let me remove the existing unit that was better for attacking.

Marines are also good for those One Way ROPs.

[cgannon64]

On CFC, they claimed that Marines don't need oil (says oil and rubber in the manual) and are 8/6 (10.8 in manual) like you guys said. IF they are 8/6, then I do realize that they wouldn't make too much of a difference in combat. Is the manual wrong?

And still, like you said, they are a neccessity when the island is surrounded by units...but have you ever seen a computer do that? In MP they will get more useful.

[Catt]

Originally posted by cgannon64
Is the manual wrong?

In numerous places, but particularly in the unit statistics list towards the end of the manual. If you look closely, you'll see that a good number of industrial and modern age units stats are wrong. Fact is, writing, proofing, printing, and distributing manuals takes a good chunk of lead time and the game designers play with unit stats well past the manual "print" date.

BTW, that's why we should also be cautious about predicting exactly what unit stats will look like in PTW, no matter what the early screenshots seem to imply.

On-Topic: I happen to like the Marines in Civ III (see this thread). But they are specialists, sometimes quite useful, oftentimes a near total waste of time and shields. I do think that they'll be more widely used in MP (assuming games make it to the near Modern era in many MP games).

Catt

[cgannon64]

I wonder, is the fact that there is no good non-oil units in the late Industrial by accident or on purpose? Was Firaxis trying to portray the mass suicide and stalemate of WW1? I wonder, because cavalry vs. infantry quickly become suicide runs and trench wars...maybe Firaxis is smarter than we think.

[Wormwood]

Originally posted by cgannon64
I wonder, is the fact that there is no good non-oil units in the late Industrial by accident or on purpose? Was Firaxis trying to portray the mass suicide and stalemate of WW1? I wonder, because cavalry vs. infantry quickly become suicide runs and trench wars...maybe Firaxis is smarter than we think.

I've always thought of it that way. When infantry show up, they become my attack unit, since they have the same attack as cav. Often, a war at that time will be based on artillery pounding cities and troop positions, then infantry moving forward to gain that little bit of ground, just as in WWI. When tanks and aircraft appear, I can have a dynamic and mobile war once again, just the same as in WW2.

[Thrawn05]

Originally posted by cgannon64
I wonder, is the fact that there is no good non-oil units in the late Industrial by accident or on purpose? Was Firaxis trying to portray the mass suicide and stalemate of WW1? I wonder, because cavalry vs. infantry quickly become suicide runs and trench wars...maybe Firaxis is smarter than we think.

You're right. Firaxis tried to convey these issues.

Other areas are the Knight v. Musketmen and Tank v. Mech Infantry.

However, the naval history is shot to heck. I lost many Iron Clades to Firgates and Galley's.

[Thrawn05]

Originally posted by Wormwood


I've always thought of it that way. When infantry show up, they become my attack unit, since they have the same attack as cav. Often, a war at that time will be based on artillery pounding cities and troop positions, then infantry moving forward to gain that little bit of ground, just as in WWI. When tanks and aircraft appear, I can have a dynamic and mobile war once again, just the same as in WW2.

This is similar to my strag. of skipping knights to Cav. Since I play as Rome all the time, that extra defense point in the UU actualy makes for a good offense.

Using terrain to your advantage, you can safly move Legionary units to enemy cities and take them (Pikemen are a chalange, and require some Catapults to soften up). You won't have to worry about knight counter attacks if you stay away from open terrain as much as possible, that extra defense point comes into play here. If you use the Civ Combat Calculator, I believe the chances of a legionary unit surviving a Knight is about 66 - 75% of the time.

[cgannon64]

Yes yes, I think Firaxis underestimated the importance of naval combat and naval power. One time, when I was bored and felt like trying out new strategies, I tried what I call a "first response" system. It was in the "Now" scenerio over at CFC (the modern world). I put a whole fleet of ships in the Atlantic, and kept a bunch of offensive units in my harbors, with boats ready to take them. With this, I could see when a sneak attack was coming before it happened. Unfortunately, because the movement rate of ships is bad, it took me several turns to reach the enemy continent, completely nullifying the point of my system.

Will Firaxis make changes to ADM in PTW? I hope so, because several areas need changes.

[Wormwood]

Originally posted by cgannon64
Yes yes, I think Firaxis underestimated the importance of naval combat and naval power. One time, when I was bored and felt like trying out new strategies, I tried what I call a "first response" system. It was in the "Now" scenerio over at CFC (the modern world). I put a whole fleet of ships in the Atlantic, and kept a bunch of offensive units in my harbors, with boats ready to take them. With this, I could see when a sneak attack was coming before it happened. Unfortunately, because the movement rate of ships is bad, it took me several turns to reach the enemy continent, completely nullifying the point of my system.

Will Firaxis make changes to ADM in PTW? I hope so, because several areas need changes.

I do a very similar thing to your first response. Once I become a dominant power ( most players are by modern age) I create several small fleets, equivalent to real amphibious ready groups, consisting of a carrier, a number of support ships, and two or three transports full of marines, and one or two with tanks and artillery. I position them at important points throughout the world, usually by acquiring a single small city through negotiation demands with weak civs, or through rop's. Each group has an area it patrols regualrily with destroyers and aircraft, and should anything happen, I can put down a decent force within a few turns. It really helps to curtail any aggressive action on the part of Ai civs, because half the time, when your force lands, their invasion fleet will turn around to help with the threat. It also allows me to place observers in war zones, to analyze AI versus AI warfare.

[Straybow]

Nope, Firaxis considered altered rates and alternate movement models in the primary phases of game design. All were rejected. Unless you merely mean a 2x mode as in MP Civ2, in which case I'd expect to see it.

[Wormwood]

Originally posted by Thrawn05


This is similar to my strag. of skipping knights to Cav. Since I play as Rome all the time, that extra defense point in the UU actualy makes for a good offense.

Using terrain to your advantage, you can safly move Legionary units to enemy cities and take them (Pikemen are a chalange, and require some Catapults to soften up). You won't have to worry about knight counter attacks if you stay away from open terrain as much as possible, that extra defense point comes into play here. If you use the Civ Combat Calculator, I believe the chances of a legionary unit surviving a Knight is about 66 - 75% of the time.

I do a similar thing to your similar thing

I like to play as Japan, and I usually won't upgrade all my samurai to cavalry, because I like to have a strong defensive unit, with increased mobility and a decent attack backing up my assault forces. Samurai on strong terrain have a decent chance of surviving a cavalry attack, and then counterattacking. Basically, my cavalry surges forward, attacking units and weakly defended cities, and my Samurai change roles from my assault unit to my frontline city defenders, sort of a mechanized infantry of it's time.