Guess I've been pouring through my SCA research material, as well as my James Burke books a little too much lately.

This month I'm going to crack open the PC editor and muck around a bit... The Kids' PC and my Mac now share a monitor, so I just FTP the edited .bic files over to my G3 when I'm done with them... Nice, since from what I gather from I_O_M's thread, that there is no FLICster or equivalent application for the mac (yet ::sighs::)

Tell me what you think, and suggestions are welcome!!!

Hills - irrigation is allowed - Hillside terraced farming.
Hans as a modified Chinese specialty unit, a slightly different mounted horseman/archer.

Small Wonder: Krak de Chevalier (sp) Allows for healing in enemy territory... I know it's not entirely accurate, but Battlefield medicine comes so late in the game... Trying to figure out resources and requirements still.

Hospitaler - French
Teutonic - German
arabic crossbowman - Perisan
Welsh Longbowman - English (yeah... slightly better than standard longbowman... I think I've been watching Henry V too much)

trebuchet
ballista
... Which brings up something I've often wondered about... Anyone ever attack a city and find it has a catapult defending it?? I personally always considered the catapult more of an offensive weapon rather than a defensive weapon. it'd be more effective against buildings that it would against people attacking a walled in city... kinda hard to hurl a boulder at something as close as your city's walls, now wouldn't it?

Buffalo Soldier - American (slightly better rifleman)
slave catapult - china not as strong, but quick and less expensive to build.

v2 rocket -German weaker, shorter ranged missile

any other ideas/suggestions?

I want a stagecoach, or maybe a horse and buggy! :D

That is to say, I want a land transport unit that has a 2 MP, like a chariot but it can carry 1 or 2 units.

Yes, I know the game isn't realistic, but if I were in charge and my civilization had horses and wheeled conveyances, I wouldn't be making my soldiers, settlers, and workers go plodding about on foot to get where they're needed! ;)

There are some nice unit images - Wagon is one of them. This can be used in your editor to make a land transport. Be warned, though, I don't think the AI would know how to use them. And remember that adding land transports changes the balance of the game. Now your swordsmen get to the front much faster!

Originally posted by Grey Randall
... Which brings up something I've often wondered about... Anyone ever attack a city and find it has a catapult defending it?? I personally always considered the catapult more of an offensive weapon rather than a defensive weapon. it'd be more effective against buildings that it would against people attacking a walled in city... kinda hard to hurl a boulder at something as close as your city's walls, now wouldn't it?
[/B]

I've seen this once or twice, last time when I was attacking a city with modern armor :crazyeye: , the AI doesn't seem to like upgrading units much.

Could you remove certain options like building longbowmen when a certain tech has been reached?

Personally if I had an editor I would reduce corruption a bit in cities under size 6. I also miss the supermarket and associated terrain action from civ2. (I haven't played that for more than a year so I'm unclear what that action was called...). I'd also like to see a return of engineers, the rest of the units could stay the same although I sometimes miss the civ2 artillary and paratroopers, but then the AI was completely overwhelmed by those so it's no great loss.

I always thought of it as sort of a siege-breaking device. You'd lob rocks and hot tar etc into the major formations of the enemy lines, hopefully disrupting their attacks and demoralizing them overall.

If there's one thing artillery (and catapults) should be able to do, it should be to actually kill a unit. For example, if you play Age of Empires, Mangonels (which are pretty much catapults) massively kill enemy formations (sadly, I was the enemy formation). I think that artillery should be able to kill low-power units, and weapons like cannons should be strong enough to straight-out kill barbarians! (there could always be attack and defense values for that, but it doesn't make sense).

In the civil war cannons were defensive only outside the city. A cannon can't shoot up over a wall like a catapult, should be modified. Groups of troops would charge and the cannon would fire and weaken groups, not eliminate them, thus the point system. In civ one unit represents a group of troops. That being said I thing that bombardment can kill a unit only if it has one hit point left, more realistic.

It should be able to kill the unit with either one or two points left, depending on the unit's defense and the artillery's bombardment. It's not always easy to imagine the unit being a group because it looks like one person.

Mortars, however, are able to shoot over walls like a catapult. Perhaps there are mortar teams with the cannons?

hmmmm another unit to add!! Good ol' Viet Nam era Thumpers!!!!

And what if the cannons are actually incorporated into the walls themselves? Many gunpowder-age fortresses used cannon ports not unlike those seen on ships. Being a shameless artillery enthusiast, I must concede that this defense usually used naval cannon or fixed batteries, though, not field guns.

I'd contemplated that as an improvement rather than a unit.. something along the lines of Coastal fortress.

Was also thinking of an upgrade to city walls. after all, what type of walls are we talking here?

I've been pouring through my James Burke stuff as well as my SCA research material, and finding tons of improvements, units, etc to include. Now.. if the PTB would just release the <expletive deleted> editor already. I was hit the other day with a little snare that might keep me from switching completely to PCs all together. it just depends on how things go. But I want that editor!!!