I'll go through this in points, so it doesn't become one massive block of text

This is an idea that will hopefully encourage more non-city battles, create a system of city seiges and add a bit of realism :)

I read somewhere that Troops were never allowed into the City of Rome itself. This is in direct contrast to Civ, where cities become unhappy with troops there. compare this to Real life as well. we don't have troops stationed in the Adelaide CBD, I'm pretty sure it doesn't happen anywhere else :)

Thus, the first change in my system - Having troops stationed in a city shuts down all production. Where will the troops go, you ask? two possibilities, i guess. One is to the countries borders, where they'll hopefully form lines (OMG! Trenches!). The other is that they'll just kinda be around, on the countries countryside.

Part two. If an enemy troop is adjacent to a city (ie within the 8 squares surrounding it), the city shuts down. Moreover, he seiges whatever side he happens to be on. with 4 troops (or 4 sets of troops) one could completely seige a city. any units inside a seiged city would lose a bit of health over several turns. the amount it stops at would depend on how many sides are covered - 10% for each side.

so. We have units forming lines on their borders, the player having to prioritise on which sides he feels are most dangerous. When war is declared the walls of units face of against each other. You don't stack units coz otherwise troops'll just go around you. You have to clear out troops from around cities coz the city will be useless otherwise. If an enemy gets close to a city, you put troops in either late to keep production going as long as possible, or early to build up a fortify bonus. If early, the enemy will likely seige you. If late, the enemy must decide between attacking early before the fortify bonus can happen, or seiging and knocking down health.

This opens up for new promotions for seige resistance, increased fortify %'s and instant fortification. It also opens up for new units such as city and (the actual) praetorian guard, defensive units that don't stop city production.

what do you guys think?

Could be a interesting idea, definitely worth giving a try. I wonder if it's possible to mod this in?

sounds nice, you should try if the AI can cope with it.

Well worth playing with to see what you come up with.

Errr guys I've spent the last 6 months trying to learn python (as my first programming/scripting whatever it is attempt), and i haven't even touched C++. I was hoping someone would pick the idea up. I know the chances of that are slim :) but yeah.

*sigh* In case this idea gets left untouched, can anyone direct me to a good C++ tutorial-type thing? :)

A free program for editing and compiling the code probly wouldn't go astray either :D I have notepad++, will that compile? what does it mean to 'compile'?!? *cries in the corner*

There is a free program for compiling called "Codeblocks." Follow the instructions in the "Downloading and Using the SDK" thread to get it. You will also need to download the MS Platform SDK itself, which is about 400 MB. If you have dial-up, this will be a problem for you. :(

Broadband, brother. Rudd's got us on the internet revolution. I've heard horror stories about people messing with C, and losing their start bar coz they missed a set of brackets, or something. Is it really that dangerous? any way to make it less dangerous?

The worst thing that has ever happened to me is that I've had to close Civ 4 and restart due to a crash. But if you know no C++ or any code going into it, it will be hard, although Python is very similar.

oh really? ok. Python was and is really hard to learn for me, so that's not a huge comfort :) I actually have my brother's old uni textbook "C by dissection" sitting infront of me, I guess i'll have a read through that

If anyone is interested in having a go at coding this though, by all means go for it. Let me know tho :)

Am I able to use C, or do i hafta learn C++?

The game DLL is in C++ so you need to use C++ not C. However, a good understanding of C will make C++ easier. You won't melt your PC or break anything when working with the game DLL unless you get in way over your head and try doing things the DLL isn't designed to do (and doesn't need to do) such as writing your own disk I/O routines or trying to directly manipulate memory (which won't cause any permanent damage, just stability issues). MS Visual C 2005 express is free and a bit better than Codeblocks, the IDE will have more useful functions for modding such as being able to track down all references to a specific variable, method or class and creating the 'symbols' used when evaluating crash dumps. There is a tutorial here at CF on how to compile the DLL with 2005 express, as long as you don't skip any steps or put the wrong info in the wrong place it'll work. In either case you're using the same compiler from the Visual Studio 2003 toolkit so the end result will be the same.

Issues:

Fast commando units can take cities. I suspect that you might want to have some kind of "innate defense" to a city that has to be defeated.

An attack via a huge stack will be ridiculously effective against spread out defenders. What prevented this in the real world was a mixture of "ancient combat was linear, not quadratic in power" and "logistics is hard".

A diffuse army can mostly live off of the land by stealing from the peasants. A concentrated army requires a supply train to feed them, which is requires guarding against raids, and a level of logistic and economic power that ancient civilizations had issues with.

...

I'd also recommend a return to zones of control -- or at least, attacks of opportunity. If you move from one threatened region adjacent to a unit to another, the unit should get a free attack on your unit as you expose your flank. If the attack succeeds, you lose your movement point, and you fail to move, and you take a single hit of damage.

Naturally this doesn't apply if you move into a guarded square.

...

Sadly, all of these kind of mods require serious AI work.

ExactlyYes, the one thing I see problematic is that. As defenders rightly get bonuses, you do not need so many to defend against a slightly larger group right? What I would see happening is at the start of a war (Or previously if the human prepares) they groups all the units they feel they can spare, and immediately punch through the spread out defenders taking cities quickly, and/or slowing them down production wise.

This, to some extent really was the way it worked, but no matter how you try, 30 tanks "units"in real life would probably not even be able to fit on on square, and that is not even considering the logistical and organizational problems.

What I would like to see would be Hearts of Ironish. You would have a number, lets call it "headquarters maximum" per square. Any units over that number would become less effective. Also, the more units above that number, the less effective they all become.

This number would go up with eras and techs, and you could also send a non-stackable units (Army HQ for example) that would up that number..

So you really have to spread them out to get the maximum effect really.

Also giving all units say a 75% chance to withdraw to a square of your choice when losing on thedefence would make it harder for clean breakthroughs.

Also, I would not have troops stationed in a city totally stop production. I would give them a few unhappy faces, which slows it down all the same. And the more troops, the more unhappy faces.

The reason being that yes we do not have armies sitting in our cities all the time, but in wartime, when it is your borders being attacked, you do have garrisons in your cities.

My thought was to limit soldiers in cities the same way they limit aircraft in BtS. So a fixed number of units can fit inside a city of a specific size. Barracks gives a +2 to the number of ground units whilst Stables gives a +2 to the number of mounted units.
I am sure that, if you went through the BtS code, it would be easy enough to adapt it to this purpose!

Aussie_Lurker.

@ Seven05: Thanks for the bad news. *cries* C++ Looks so HARD!!!

@ Yakk:
1. The Commando issue would kinda replicate the German Blitzkrieg yeah? if so, I like it :) I'm all for realism

2. About the power of Stacks, this could be diffused entirely by setting up a system where A) their strength is reduced by being in a stack, much like in the Defence mod or B) The General Winter power from Rhye's and Fall, except for stacks (They lose health)

3. Zone of Control, along with Regicide and Mass Regicide, is a concept most sorely missed from Civ III, and I'd definitely put it back in.

4. The AI change is just one of the reasons I Would Really love for an experienced programmer to step in. You'd have all the credit for it :D:D:D

@ GeneralMatt:

1. I think my response to Yakk works for my response to the start of your reply :), in fact i'm pretty sure we're in agreeance

2. I also wanna have withdrawal odds improved to the point where it's more likely a full strength unit will get out of there rather than fight to the death, for both attacking and defending units.

3. The idea between shutting down production completely is that it A) forces you to only garrison units in the city when absolutely necessary B) Encourages you to meet enemy forces in the field before you have to garrison.
A system based on an unhappiness measure would be rendered meaningless by a player able to get enough happiness. Again, it would also allow for units like the praetorian guard.

@ Aussie Lurker: I don't like the idea of imposing a limit in that way, as it doesn't feel realistic. In fact, in regards to airports, I feel a much better way would be to have a cost for having extra air units in a city, rather than imposing a flat limit.

@ anyone :) : Any thoughts, comments, suggestions on the seige idea?

3. The idea between shutting down production completely is that it A) forces you to only garrison units in the city when absolutely necessary B) Encourages you to meet enemy forces in the field before you have to garrison.
A system based on an unhappiness measure would be rendered meaningless by a player able to get enough happiness. Again, it would also allow for units like the praetorian guard.

The thing is, it is forcing you to go out of your way to get Smiles. What I was thinking was maybe two unhappy faces per unit, so it may be worthwhile garrisoning one or two units in war time to keep enemy infiltrators and paratroopers at bay, but if you put even 10 units in a city, that could shut down a lvl 20 city effectively..

good point. and it would be easier to code, and easier for AI to swallow...

you've converted me :)

The thing is, it is forcing you to go out of your way to get Smiles. What I was thinking was maybe two unhappy faces per unit, so it may be worthwhile garrisoning one or two units in war time to keep enemy infiltrators and paratroopers at bay, but if you put even 10 units in a city, that could shut down a lvl 20 city effectively..

you could also try to add a building (like a fort or something) that would reduce the unhappiness. although it may make it harder you could also try to make it so that the unhappiness from the military could only be fixed by specific buildings ,events, civics, etc.

you could also try adding crusaders which can work as non defensive but still cause no penalty if of same state religion

ps this idea has so many options that can be exploited

Hey that's a cool idea. It would give me a reason to build Castles.

Cheers for the PS. Only problem is finding someone experienced enough that has enough time and interest to code this

i have time and interest, but I'm restricted by knowledge to xml

Maye you can have roit police and the like defend within the city.

you could also bring back the guerrilla unit form civ3 and divide it in two as a urban and country guerrilla. the urban gets a bonus in cities and production doesn't stop or slow where as the country guerrilla would do the opposite yet have bonuses outside cities.

I was thinking a Praetorian Guard unit / Royal Guard / Home guard unit would work well for that

It would also allow for America (Colonial Guard, Minuteman, something of that nature - a rifleman city guard unit) to have a unique unit with a bit more influence

I think it's a very interesting way to prevent city turtling, but it does create some problems with the city garrison promo and the units designed around it (archer-longbow line).

First thought: focus on a promotion that makes units popular to be in the city---that is a promotion that makes them the royal guard, the people's brownshirts, etc... that don't cause unhappiness in a city. The simplest solution is to make the City Garrision promo line do double duty that way. An adjunct change would be to make it expensely possible for any unit to get City Garrison--like maybe after Combat II, so even your melee troops could be city guards.
So basically if any unit lacks that promo and is stationed in a city, it causes a degree of happiness, even if it's the first unit (or maybe the second unit?).
That alone and it becomes harder to keep a city stocked full of units.

A second thought (and I've seen at least one mod do this)---make the defense modifiers of a city dependent upon the amount of surrounding tiles of the city. If an enemy owns more than one tile around a city, the defense of the city tile should be modified somehow. Not saying that that should count as some kind of free bombardment, but it should affect at least the bonus that culture, fortifying, and City Garrison provide. Actual castle-walls should still have to actually be bombarded.
That alone will cause a fight for control of the tiles around a city.


Third thought: allow a true blockade of a city on land, just as it occurs on sea (though perhaps less generously). If an enemy unit is adjacent to a city, it should block the city from working tiles that it has to travel through that tile to get to. Figuring out what's fair here will take some balancing, but if one civ can get a line of 3 tiles covered with units around a city, that should block the city from working those three tiles, and some more.
That will make sieges more deadly, and field battles more useful.

Fourth thought---make it possible to blockade enemy roads as supply routes. Not sure if this can't happen already. Usually I just cut them with horse units, but a blockade that gives gold and blocks resources (or even allows intermittent syphoning of resources) would be useful and force some battles in open ground.


Thus, the first change in my system - Having troops stationed in a city shuts down all production. Where will the troops go, you ask? two possibilities, i guess. One is to the countries borders, where they'll hopefully form lines (OMG! Trenches!). The other is that they'll just kinda be around, on the countries countryside.

Part two. If an enemy troop is adjacent to a city (ie within the 8 squares surrounding it), the city shuts down. Moreover, he seiges whatever side he happens to be on. with 4 troops (or 4 sets of troops) one could completely seige a city. any units inside a seiged city would lose a bit of health over several turns. the amount it stops at would depend on how many sides are covered - 10% for each side.

what do you guys think?

well since we're talking about blockades you might as well make something to disrupt the siege

Seige disruption would just be to bring out and attack the seiging troops, wouldn't it?

@ GoodGame: I wasn't thinking of getting rid of the defence bonus of cities, or the need for artillery to knock 'em down. In fact, i think they should have the ability (especially late game artillery) to bombard buildings, such as destroying barracks, or ampitheatres, stuff like that.

I hadn't thought of cutting off supplies. they could cut off resources to make it unhappy and unhealthy - Thus, killing off people!!! true Seige!!! WOooooooooooooooo!

My smelly little brother raised an interesting point: Amphibious attacks. As in, Declaring war then moving boats in before the enemy has a chance to summon a defence.

I had 2 ideas: The Sea mine. Enemy boats have a 50% chance of getting blown up when moving onto this improvement. The main problem with this is spamming, making it impossible to amphibiously assault. Also, it would only come in with, say, Military Science.

The Second Idea: Making one unable to amphibiously assault cities, either by making it a permanent rule, or by building a building (Military Harbour? Coastal Fortress?) or by having naval units in your city.

I lean towards having troop transports having to battle naval units inside the city, which are given bonuses by coastal defensive buildings.

Yes! It works perfectly when you 'siege' an island city by 3 triremes. No bread and no health bonuses = quick starvation. Something similar for land is needed.


I hadn't thought of cutting off supplies. they could cut off resources to make it unhappy and unhealthy - Thus, killing off people!!! true Seige!!! WOooooooooooooooo!

Sounds a lot like Medieval Total War 2 with it's system... I wouldent mind seeing this put together.

What I was thinking was maybe two unhappy faces per unit, so it may be worthwhile garrisoning one or two units in war time to keep enemy infiltrators and paratroopers at bay, but if you put even 10 units in a city, that could shut down a lvl 20 city effectively..


The thing is, shouldn't troops in a city during wartime make people happy?

Seige disruption would just be to bring out and attack the seiging troops, wouldn't it?

i guess so, i just through it out as a suggestion anyway

@ Black Baron: Suggestions are good, I just thought you might have something different in mind

@ GeneralSpecific: I don't know. I wouldn't be too pleased about having to see troops outside my house at any point in time. Rather than make me feel safe during war time, they would concern me that they feel that troops need to be there.

@GoodGame: Would it be possible (this is directed at anyone, i guess) to A) change the blockade mission so that it cuts off resources and B) modify it to allow military units to do the same? That in itself would be, i think, a pretty good modification to Civ on it's own. It shouldn't be a huge stretch to teach it to the AI either.

there really isn't much to change if anything for counter-besiegement either attack with calvary to kill artillery or use artillery to do collateral.

like i said nothing if not anything to change

this is a great idea i think! lets try to really develop it!

some thoughts:

regarding amphibious attacks and early game commando strikes... i think walls should make it impossible for an enemy unit to capture the city. realistically, the wall itself is what gave rise to the concept of a siege... armies couldnt break them down early in history so they had to starve people into submission. so i think that having a wall should make city capture impossible without siege equipment, say a catapult (or a siege tower/battering ram... new units?!)

however, i think that if there are overwhelming odds... like 5 units outside an undefended city (other than walls) then the city would have a 75% chance of flipping... that way you cant just build walls and be totally ok.

i also think that the duration a city can withstand a siege should be a function both of its size and connecting trade routes but i think this should work in an inverse kind of way... for instance: a small city should be able to withstand sieges longer (!) because there is less population to feed and they can ration better. with bigger cities there is a greater demand for food which can't be readily brought in due to the siege so there will be more widespread starvation and unhappiness... maybe even revolts! historically, sometimes cities let the besieges take the city so they wouldn't have to starve and be killed in the looting. but maybe we wouldnt want that... whatever. regarding trade routes... this should not be inverse... simply the more active trade routes, the less the effects of the siege would be. so even if you are besieged on land, your naval and air routes could still mitigate the effects.

re. troops causing happiness or not... i think we should bring the mobilization back from civ3... but in a slightly different way. instead of mobilization, i would call it "Martial Order" or something so that the troops dont cause unhappiness, but production and commerce should be reduced by 10% per military unit... the more defenders that have to be supported, the more unproductive your city becomes. if not in a state of "Martial Order" then troops do cause unhappiness at 2 per unit (sounds good right?) but production and commerce aren't affected.

I think more buildings should be added, like "Reinforced Gates" should give you +20% versus battering ram attack and "Ballista Towers" (with mathematics) and "Cannon Towers" (with gunpowder) could give defending units first strikes against attackers... say +2 for ballista, +4 for cannon, or something like that.

i think that in terms of combat the artillery you bring (cannons, trebs, cats) should be used first to "attack the walls" -- could be done the way it works now with reducing the defense percentage, except other units CANT attack until its at 0% or could represent the walls as a unit-- before other units can attack the city and its defenders. only after the walls are destroyed can the assault begin.

also the spy unit sould have a new mission "Open the Gates" or something which would be moderately expensive and obviously allow you to directly assault a city or capture an undefended one.

OK! thats plenty for now! i have to go to class!

Good idea, I like it....

for one i wouldn't say "not effect" production and commerce try directly effect.

as for the towers you can try doing like the coastal fortress from civ3 and make it automatically bombard passing enemy land units

mmm... Nice to see this is gaining interest :)

RE KingColtrane (this may take a while :D)

Interesting idea about the walls. It'd certainly make them more useful (compare how often they're built in civ compared to real history: there is no comparison). I dunno tho, If there's noone in the city, there's noone in the city. hmmm. Anyone got an idea on how to penalise a player for not having someone there, while giving walls a use?

A Big city would have more food stored away. This could however give another (more appropriate/realistic?) use for the granary, in that they help against seige.

I'm beginning to think the purpose of the seige should be to cut off A) trade routes from the city and B) people from being able to work their land. So that if all 4 sides of a city are shutdown, the city hasn't got much chance (assuming defenders can't be brought in from elsewhere), Thus meaning troops should be fought before they get to cities.

In regards to your ideas to the buildings, I agree with you. However they shouldn't be considered akin to other buildings (I think). Instead, they should be very cheap add-ons to the initial walls (1 or 2 turns apiece, only buildable when you've already got walls)

I LIKE the spy Idea. That's a great idea.

Just a note about the seige thing I mentioned above. I'll repeat it here :)

I reckon the point of the seige should be to A) cut off Trade routes. Both commerce and Resources, as this would create unhappiness and unhealthiness (and with it starvation) in a non-artificial, imposed way.

Part B) would be to cut population off from the square they are working on. As in, If there is a unit on a particular side of a city seiging you, you population cannot work the 6 squares on that side. This would further cause starvation and loss of money. However, the impact on production would not be as great, as population not working on a square, by default, become citizens, who add hammers. this means you may be able to pop out a unit or two to try and force back the seiging units.

for the walls thing although easy you'd have to fix the obsoletion problem or have a building replace it

maybe a "home guard" building or something with Military Tradition.

or you could mod the security center

Oooh nice. hadn't thought of that.

hmmm Except is that realistic? What stops armies from rushing into cities now? what has stopped them in the past?

hmmmm.....maybe you could make it a add on like a castle then it'll be more realistic becuase it might give you a heads up to an invasion

the security bureau? if it were to become an add-on i'd probly put in a new building for it, like a police station or something. hmmm, the police. whatcha think?

I'm not sure

but i had another idea. what if once you reach fascism or communism you get the secret police who i guess would be like the security bureau or police

The hardest part of this mod is gonna be making the AI use it properly.
First, just getting the AI to understand that it doesn't need units inside the city all the time is gonna be hell of a hassle.

is that really gonna be so hard? (i honestly dont know) but in civ3 vanilla i figured out how to make the AI do that effectively! i created my own extensive modification of vanilla just for some quick civ fun... but the point is, by giving only a few units the defense flag cities tend to be guarded by 0-2 units... bigger cities get 1-2 while defensive civs usually use 2 per city which is cool. civs like india tend to be mostly undefended... this doesnt mean the civs are weak: they have massive standing armies that tend to cluster together in various areas, so invasions are actually met with resistance and you must often defend yourself from invasion! but anyway, my point is that if i was able to get the AI to do it in civ3 Vanilla (!) then how hard will it really be to accomplish the same goal here? (again, i really dont know)

i figure it'll take python to fix that problem

Ideally whoever coded it would use the SDK, coz Python slows down the game (or so i've heard). Although it is certainly doable from what i've read.

I can't imagine it would be that hard to program unit placement in peacetime. It could be something as simple as: If unit in city, move him. or if you wanted something a little more sophisticated, you could get the units to go to borders according to security risk (based on how the two civs feel about each other and how aggressive the other civ is).

Wartime would be more challenging. Such as when to cut one's losses and retreat to the city. Getting them to seige effectively wouldn't be as hard, methinks.

this kinda thing might add more emphasis to hills and peninsulas

Yeah :) it would also add create opportunities to recreate historical situations such as the battle of thermophylae (the movie 300, for those unaware)

even funnier the meet the Spartans.
back to the subject, this means more promotions and more reasons to use them

mmm. We need someone to pick it up though

people either don't know how to mod or are already busy (provided there interested)

yeah. *sigh* one day... *looks off into the distance*

One thing with the entire concept...um..what's the word...ahh...mmm, oh yeah Stalingrad.

The factories were making weapons and sending them directly to the front (about 2 blocks away) (this is why fedex never took off in russia) and there are countless medevil stories abotu cities melting down statues & dishes to create musket/cannonballs to defend the city from an enemy at the gate....the real problem with the badguys on the doorstep of a city is panic, not unhappiness...which would require ripping into the python even more and making a panic factor for city populations

panic is a little different than unhappiness, an unhappy population nicely cleanly cuts off your head, a paniced population uses you for traction trying to escape. Pre-industiral I'd let the armies at the gates be bribed to go away (can anyone say Attila?) as panic grows..post industiral..i dunno, with the civ engine nothing really applies since once you get a city you keep a city forever, where the population doesn't ever resent you 500 years later for being there (can anyone say the balkans?) which if you start changing all of that you get a very unfun game pretty quickly

and siege warfare (starving the varmints out) is alreayd covered in Civ, you just put a dude on every square of thier city space and bam, they starve, I didn't say it was practical or very much fun, but the mechanic is already there...and sieges were never fun, that's why the normans left J-town alone cuz they were tired of the diharrea they had waiting for the city to fall.

but as always Moopoo your stuff is great, if either one of us had any tech.skill we'd be making mods like spanish operas.

hahaha cheers man. Interesting point about the panic thing. same with the bribery thing.

As to how they apply here... Game balance and fun has to come before realism, and while both of those things sound very realistic, i'm not sure it'd be very fun to send troops into an enemy country just to have them bribed off.

what's J-town? (My knowledge of history is weak and vague at best :))

Jerusalem, I couldn't think to spell it before and was too lazy to look it up. and yeah you'd have to put an artificial bribe system in to make it worth it, (getting the 79g out of the civ's population is not really worth it, agreed) but like free units would be enough, or gold *10 of what they can pay, I can alreayd see the abuse this would cause, but then again Attilla abused the hell out of the real world with this system.

Good points, but those are easily handled just as Partisans were, as triggered events. A good trigger would be a high :) to :mad: ratio and maybe some other influences, like the culture of the city as a whole and the civics of the empire (e.g. nationhood). Easily there are other cases of people just plain rolling over once their army was outmaneuvered, and not annhiliated.

One thing with the entire concept...um..what's the word...ahh...mmm, oh yeah Stalingrad.

The factories were making weapons and sending them directly to the front (about 2 blocks away) (this is why fedex never took off in russia) and there are countless medevil stories abotu cities melting down statues & dishes to create musket/cannonballs to defend the city from an enemy at the gate....the real problem with the badguys on the doorstep of a city is panic, not unhappiness...which would require ripping into the python even more and making a panic factor for city populations

I've heard horror stories about people messing with C, and losing their start bar coz they missed a set of brackets, or something. Is it really that dangerous? any way to make it less dangerous?

No, it is not that dangerous, no idea how he managed to achieve that (just truly bad luck I guess). Yes, in theory you could mess up majorly and get a result like that, but the chances must be similar to those of winning the lottery.

If you want to actually dive into C, take a look at these books http://mindview.net/Books/TICPP/ThinkingInCPP2e.html

I never read them, but I did like his Java book ;)

Cheers. Although at the moment I've decided to have a look at Graphics modding (go check out Chugg's Cultural Diversity thread if you want the full story :lol:)

I really like your ideas, however, realism isn't the ultimate goal. The one thing that I think is wrong with the whole concept of Civ is one that you danced around and I think you almost hit it on the head. Our armies don't occupy our cities. Our units are made up of citizens. Our current units in America are the national guard, and the army reserves. So after reading everything you guys have said, this is my suggestion. Make it a special person type. you pull people from their respective jobs (farming, mining or whatever) and they defend the town instead. There is no production bonus, but they boost defense. If the city is attacked, the city defends itself (like a unit) only with strength equal to the citizens on defense. you lose population points in an attack anyway, so this would be realistic. The other thing is, our active army units are on military bases. Not every city has a military base, and most towns around military bases are only there for the base. I would suggest having their be 2 types of cities. Civilian population centers, and military bases, or possibly have some cities have military bases attached to them. Military bases obviously house the units and should be located in strategic locations, however, they would not work the land the way a city does. They would however be able to build and train units and have several trade related buildings and functions. There should also be an option to have them upgrade to full cities in the future, maybe by building a city hall or something, especially when you consider how many cities of today originally were just military out posts. Just a thought. I have no idea how easy it is to implement, but I think you could probably mod it using some of the code in the space mod on BTS. I know they have unique cities there because of the whole planet thing. Just an idea. My dad is trying to convince me to start modding, so maybe I will start soon. :-)

good point. you might as well be able to delete the civilian unit and integrate it back into the population, as for the military instillation that makes sense but i did mention something about a fort or something earlier that it would help with the problem of no production or unhappiness as well as offer a defensive bonus.

i just remembered something, i tried to siege a city before (i forgot which civ4/expansion it was) but didn't realize it had little to no effect