I'd like to see each civ being completely unique, with very few unit types shared between civs. That would make playing a new civ like playing a completely new game. Civs could be set for a certain style, etc

Would this work against the idea of re-writing history? If all civs are thoroughly unique, this is a real problem.

im not sure i follow...

I would love the idea for at least ancient and medieval flavour units, like african style Zulu Spearmen, Chinese Swordsmen, Arabian Swordsmen, etc. :)

Rather than have all unique units, I would like to have all civs pick from the same stock units, but with the ability to customize those units to their needs. Amount of resources, technology, etc. will determine how much customization is possible.

ex) there is a basic infantry unit, like the one in Civ3. I have a small, peaceful empire, and don't want to pay for a regular infantry. I can customize the stock infantry to have less attack, same defense, maybe fewer troops (fewer hitpoints), because i don't think i will need to fight a real war with him. Now he will cost less to build, and less to maintain, but will still give my people a feeling of security.

Or I am planning a war, and need more highly trained troops. I will create some divisions of infantry with higher attack, defense, etc., but they will cost more to build, maintain, and will take a longer time to train. The rest of my divisions will be regular infantry, and I can have some cheap infantry for garrisoning captured cities, etc. As my troops win battles, they will become veterens, elite, and will have their attack/defense stats increased to reflect this status.

This will help make each civ's army unique, without tying it to their real historical forces. You would still be able to rewrite history, if you wanted, or you could base your army on history. You could name your elite infantry the SS, for example, if you play as Germany. You could also build the Bismark, and set it apart from other battleships by making it bigger, faster, and more powerful than the average battleship.

In my opinion, Civ4 should offer more options to the player to play as he wants, and should not bind him so tightly to real history.

I agree with Capslock on the general sentiments.

As for the notion of having all unique units, well, the whole point of civilization is to rewrite history. Say I am playing as the Mayans and (in my game) I start the game on wide plains with plenty of horse ressources nearby - would it make ANY sense whatsoever at that point for me to start building javelin thrower and have little or no cavalry units to build?

Of course not. If I start on a wide plain with plenty of horses - then I should have a large cavalry army and relatively minor infantry forces, which a set of "Mayan units" probably wouldn't be able to afford well.

So the notion of having "mostly unique units", while it works mostly fine for a real world map or scenarios , wouldn't really be fitting for random maps.

Originally posted by Oda Nobunaga
As for the notion of having all unique units, well, the whole point of civilization is to rewrite history. Say I am playing as the Mayans and (in my game) I start the game on wide plains with plenty of horse ressources nearby - would it make ANY sense whatsoever at that point for me to start building javelin thrower and have little or no cavalry units to build?

Of course not. If I start on a wide plain with plenty of horses - then I should have a large cavalry army and relatively minor infantry forces, which a set of "Mayan units" probably wouldn't be able to afford well.


Yes, this is another reason why I don't like the idea of unique units. Your military should reflect your style of play, your nation's geography/resources and technology, and the sort of wars you will be fighting, not the civs historical military.

@starrider: I ment something like Oda Nobunaga here. Civ is not supposed to be a game that follows history as it was, but a game that allows you to make your own history. Having all unique units that are linked to the civ you choose would work against this. I agree with Capslock, though. The environment should affect your civ. MOO2-styled unit design would allow you to design your own units within certain limits. We don't have to use that to achieve the goal Capslock suggested, but it would work.

I really like the idea of customizing your units, but I don't like it to be done via forcing you along different kind of units for different civs. The UU is enough - or too much - already.

I had an idea, have all Civs have at least 1 UU per age.

(EX: England- Ancient- Briton Barbarian; Medieval- Longbowmen; Enlightment- British Regular, Industrial- Tommy Infantry; Modern- ?)

King Aldous XI, alot of civs weren't around in the ancient ages, or aren't around now. It would be too impractical, but for England in the Modern ages it could be an SAS dude :)

As for the original idea, i'm completely against it.

but it makes no sense to invent a unit that gets +50% in jungle if you have no jungle on your continent.

ideal would be a combination of the unit design workshop in SMAC
and a skill type system, with each of the unit abilities and general unit types as a skill on the civ level, so if you make/use a lot of horse artchers you'll get better at using them, and you'll make better ones fight in jungle a lot you'll get better at that, same for artic or mountians, or even on defensive developing tactics to counter certian units,

simple example: only allow pikemen, which should have that +100% against mounted, if you've had X battles with foot units defending aginst mounted units..

i disagree,i dont think every civ should have all unique units

take a look at modern tankis from diffrent countries,very similar in design and appearance

maybe there should be 2 UUs per civ,that would be nice but no more

Originally posted by Suki
but it makes no sense to invent a unit that gets +50% in jungle if you have no jungle on your continent.
...
simple example: only allow pikemen, which should have that +100% against mounted, if you've had X battles with foot units defending aginst mounted units..

I just made a post (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=1761678#post1761678) in the other Unique Units thread with a similar idea. It works fine for certain situations, like the one you describe, in which any unit can defend against mounted units, and the unique version gets a bonus. But what about some of the special abilities that UUs have that the corresponding regular units don't. For instance, Berserk has amphibious assault: what would you have to do in order to get to be able to build Berserks? It would only make sense if there was a generic unit with amphibious assault and you got Berserks is you had X successful amphibious assaults with that generic unit. But making generic units to cover all such special abilities would result in an awful lot of units, not to mention the fact that then those abilities wouldn't be really unique anymore, since generic units would have them, and the UUs would simply have improved stats.

I do sympathize with the sentiment expressed in your statement about jungles, but on the other hand, its fun have a unit with an ability that no one else has. That's the point of the other Unique Units thread: Warlord Sam started it by saying that UUs should be more about unique abilities and less about simply improved A/D/M statistics. How to rectify the two different thoughts, I don't know.

I think on the pikemen notion (for example), it would be simpler, and more in keeping with the civilization spirit, to have a special tech you do not need to research (ie, it'S a prerequisite to nothing, not need for age advancement if that concept is kept) called polearms.

So, if you are facing horses (or think you might be facing them soon), you can (and are able to) research polearms. If you have no reason to be concerned about horses, then you have no need to research polearms, and can focus on other, better things.

Originally posted by Oda Nobunaga
I think on the pikemen notion (for example), it would be simpler, and more in keeping with the civilization spirit, to have a special tech you do not need to research (ie, it'S a prerequisite to nothing, not need for age advancement if that concept is kept) called polearms.

So, if you are facing horses (or think you might be facing them soon), you can (and are able to) research polearms. If you have no reason to be concerned about horses, then you have no need to research polearms, and can focus on other, better things.

I agree. If I ever find the free time to make a mod, one of my ideas is a mod where every UU is buildable by every civ, but each one requires its own optional tech. For example, "Legions" would be an optional tech, branching off from Iron Working, that would allow building of Legionaries. I'm sure rebalancing of unit costs and stats would be required, but it'd be neat to be able to research "Coastal Raids" and then build Atzec Berserks if you were Montenzuma and happened to find yourself with enemies with lots of coastal cities ripe for plunder. It would free you up to rewrite history a little bit more.

One of the reasons why I bought "Rise of Nations" is that it had so many UUs. It would influence me even more on Civ IV

I think starrider meant chinnese style spearmen, greek style knights.

That would be very cool.

My idea was/is to expand on the unique units, and mebbe have a couple per era for each civ. But increasing it even more so would certainally spice up the game:D

Originally posted by judgement
I just made a post (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=1761678#post1761678) in the other Unique Units thread with a similar idea. It works fine for certain situations, like the one you describe, in which any unit can defend against mounted units, and the unique version gets a bonus. But what about some of the special abilities that UUs have that the corresponding regular units don't. For instance, Berserk has amphibious assault: what would you have to do in order to get to be able to build Berserks? It would only make sense if there was a generic unit with amphibious assault and you got Berserks is you had X successful amphibious assaults with that generic unit. But making generic units to cover all such special abilities would result in an awful lot of units, not to mention the fact that then those abilities wouldn't be really unique anymore, since generic units would have them, and the UUs would simply have improved stats.


well that's why i suggested bringing back SMAC's unit design workshop.
good idea you have of making them tradable like techs and researchable... but if it was based on concentration and accomplishments as well, civs would end up with unique sets iof abilities they could design units with.
you could also set it up that if you developed it through practice, it would have a slight advantage over the researched & traded versions.

isn't the soloution there something like: any unit can get off a boat and attack someone, so you can't just put one unit on each square of beach to stop anyone but the vikings, it's just a question of how well,

you could also have wonders, of either type, enable certian abilities...

@judgement & Oda Nobunaga:
This is a good idea. The rebalancing should be made with care, though. I thought it was one of the best ideas ever to separate ironclads (I was happy that they even noted the problem of the late medieval ships and ironclads), but then I never researched ironclads. It simply isn't worth it, as the destroyers and such are just around the corner and the other contemporary techs are probably the most important in the game. Others disagree with me on this, but there is a whole thread full of people fighting about the usefullness of ironclads, so the problem is real anyhow.

The stats of the unique units should be tuned up a bit or the techs should be a bit cheaper than other contemporary techs. I am sure this could be done quite satisfactorily, though.

Another problem I see in this is that this would allow multiple immortals and other UUs. I am not sure if this was such a bad thing, but a thing worth noting, anyhow.

I think a civ shuld have more than one unique civ like the germans thy had tiger,king tiger and other but they also had the V-2 or the turks had also the jasanaries(I hope i spelled it correctly)and they discoverd the first cannon.Only the english had the longbows and not all civs and many many other things

maybe the civis could have 4 UU, one UU for era, 3 more powerfull than the standart one, 1 less powerfull than the standard.
this idea just has a problem, exampling: USA does not exist in ancient times, how the Americans could have a UU from this time? maybe a Native Indian UU :confused:

@deo: I agree. The history wasn't balanced. Some civs were large in the history, but some of them had only small time to live.
Its impossible to give 4 UUs for the 4 ages...
It could work for Germany or Britain but never with Zululand.

@judgement: I dont think so. The military units were main parts of the ages. Do you imagine middle ages without pikes? No.

@capslock: Yes, good idea.
For example when you research Nationalism, you can build early rifleman with 40.60 stats. With researching Communism or Espionage you could build normal rifleman with 45.65 and it could cost a bit more. Finally you could get advanced rifles (50.70) with Electricity.

Early Spearman 10.20.1 Bronze Working
Normal Spearman 10.25.1 Iron Working
Advanced Spearman 15.25.1 Construction or Republic

Early/Light Tank 160.80.2 MT
Medium Tank 170.85.2 Radio
Heavy Tank 170.90.3 Computers

What do you think about the idea?

Originally posted by EddyG17
I think starrider meant chinnese style spearmen, greek style knights.

Yes, pretty much what I meant. The A/D/M numbers would vary a lil bit between cultures/races. :)

Originally posted by Vizurok

@judgement: I dont think so. The military units were main parts of the ages. Do you imagine middle ages without pikes? No.

I don't understand this comment. Where did I suggest removing pikes from the middle ages, or removing any unit from its proper age?

Originally posted by CivArmy s. 1994
maybe the civis could have 4 UU, one UU for era...
There was quite a bit of discussion about that idea in this thread. (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=84810
)

Originally posted by Vizurok
[B@capslock: Yes, good idea.
For example when you research Nationalism, you can build early rifleman with 40.60 stats. With researching Communism or Espionage you could build normal rifleman with 45.65 and it could cost a bit more. Finally you could get advanced rifles (50.70) with Electricity.

Early Spearman 10.20.1 Bronze Working
Normal Spearman 10.25.1 Iron Working
Advanced Spearman 15.25.1 Construction or Republic

Early/Light Tank 160.80.2 MT
Medium Tank 170.85.2 Radio
Heavy Tank 170.90.3 Computers

What do you think about the idea? [/B]

I like the idea of modifying unit stats like that, and having all three options available to build (assuming all techs had been researched) is a good way to provide choice. However I would suggest the possibility of having optional secondary techs branching off of bronze working, gunpowder, etc. Techs like "Phalanx Tactics" and "Flintlock" that would allow you to build the "advanced" units. These techs could either be purchased with gold or researched alongside whatever major tech you were researching (maybe 10% of science per turn for x number of turns)

You can just have a warrior for each Culture (group of CIVs), a spearman for each group, an archer for each group,...

Isn't that enough?

I don't think you'd need to necessarily have different stats and abilities for all the units... but a culturally/continentally-linked look for all units and buildings might be interesting.

e.g.: a Japanese warrior looks different from an African warrior.
e.g.: European Pyramids look different from Egyptian pyramids (now THIS would be cool)

The problem with modifying civ stats is that bigger is always better. There is not much real value to mobility besides retreat, and weaker is always weaker, even in great quantity. Units act mono el mono so its always the stronger is the winner. If they made combat where whole armies interacted and units had bonuses/penalties against each other, it would carry more importance.

What would be interesting to me would be unique appearing units. When you have the technology for, let's say, spearmen. You would pick from a list of icons to represent your spearman's appearance. You would still have a unique unit or two for each civ, but not enough to upset game play. It would be a matter of appearances only, without doing a lot of customizing. Another for instance, would be tanks. Look at all the different style tanks. I would really like it if I played the Russians to have tanks that looked like T-34's instead of Shermans, or for the British, a Matilda or Churchill, or maybe some strange or different looking tank for the Aztecs or Koreans to choose.

Have a Blessed Day Everyone,

Mazra

I like Mazra's idea. It is the simplest and easiest to program. it also lends itself to the most unique looking games and most open.

Yeah, allow me to throw my support behind Mazra. Because the numbers would obviously favor one person or another, you couldn't have all truly unique units. But unique artwork would be valuable.

Rather than have all unique units, I would like to have all civs pick from the same stock units, but with the ability to customize those units to their needs. Amount of resources, technology, etc. will determine how much customization is possible.

ex) there is a basic infantry unit, like the one in Civ3. I have a small, peaceful empire, and don't want to pay for a regular infantry. I can customize the stock infantry to have less attack, same defense, maybe fewer troops (fewer hitpoints), because i don't think i will need to fight a real war with him. Now he will cost less to build, and less to maintain, but will still give my people a feeling of security.

Or I am planning a war, and need more highly trained troops. I will create some divisions of infantry with higher attack, defense, etc., but they will cost more to build, maintain, and will take a longer time to train. The rest of my divisions will be regular infantry, and I can have some cheap infantry for garrisoning captured cities, etc. As my troops win battles, they will become veterens, elite, and will have their attack/defense stats increased to reflect this status.

This will help make each civ's army unique, without tying it to their real historical forces. You would still be able to rewrite history, if you wanted, or you could base your army on history. You could name your elite infantry the SS, for example, if you play as Germany. You could also build the Bismark, and set it apart from other battleships by making it bigger, faster, and more powerful than the average battleship.

In my opinion, Civ4 should offer more options to the player to play as he wants, and should not bind him so tightly to real history.


THIS SHOULD BE MADE!!! :goodjob:

I think units should have to be the same for every civilization. This is according to me a part of Civilization 2 fantastic ambiance. In this forum when you want to change your avatar, you can choose in a list of Civilization 2 graphics, and i just remember how fascinating it is to have the Legions in your army by default. Well in Civilization 3 there is the system of ressources, and maybe i would like to see its extension, something like the multiplayer scenario map UUMadness in Civilization 4 (not as far as this though), when each ressource give a special unit. But no, i liked the simplicity of Civilization 2 when there were nothing to do except to build the unit, even not a road to iron. This was part of the great epicness of Civilization 2, and 1. You play and learn in the same time "hey it's cool, i'm building a Phalanx" and don't have to wait another game with another civilization to see other progagonists other than generic figures. Ok you will know that Immortals are for Persia and Numidian for Carthage, but anyway i don't think their capacities are a good reflection of reality. I mean even the reality of the game. (Legions, 3.3 ? I would have give them 4.2 -as Rome is offensive- and maybe 3.3 to Immortals -as i don't know them ;p and they sounds good in defence, as attack and defense in civ are not tactic but strategic)

I definately like the idea of having units that look like the civ that built them, but not actually being any different. And a nice little editor for the modders out there to play around with.

Also, I never saw why you HAD to build your UU instead of the normal unit it replaced. Many times the UU is only slightly better (I don't think India's War Elephant is actually any difeferent than the Knight, and it can't upgrade to Cavalry), and often costs more shields than the 'normal' unit. It's not as if the English, for example, could only build Man-O-Wars and didn't have the technology to build a normal Frigate. Sometimes the difference in shield cost can determine wether you have an extra-defended city or you lose that city.

On 1BigCommunity, I posted an explanation as to my perception of how pre-history should be determined. I like the ideas here too.

Basically all I said was that you work out of barbarian huts without borders with particuler units,

Hunters: act as warriors slash can bring food back to the hut.
Gatherers: make gardens, outposts, and pathways that are harder to travel than roads.
Priests: Influence units in unity with your tribe.
Nomads: Make huts.

After a certain amount of turns your hut collapses, and turns into a Nomad and Hunter/Gatherers. When you get a high enough population inside your hut, your hut collapses and turns into a Settler.

Racial or ethnic identities would be awesome along these lines. Priests can convert allies or enemies into joining your Civilization, and a little star hovers over them, signfying an enlightenment. If you capsture barbarian huts, some of their units join yours as their Barbarian ethnic identity. If you don't desperse races throughout your cities and expand. Than part of your Civ can revolt and declare civil war, wining overwhelming support from people with the same identy as well as others (units and priests).

Diplomatically, paricular races/ethnicities will favor particular laws. A new Diplomacy screen will be your constitution that says Yea or Nay, which you can change at your discretion (may cause corruption, or "We love the King"). Some examples I gave were:

Slavery (Yea or Nay) Slave units can be made out of drafting or any board unit or capturing slaves.
Sacrificing (Yea or Nay)
Right of Passage
State Religion

All the laws included in the game will appear at different technology discoveries especially having to do with Governments/Philosophies/Religion.

Religion can be manipulated to gain support for particular laws. ex: Yea to Slavery bad in Christianity good in Paganism. Religion can help you win support for war, rescuing a Muslim city that was captured by an Shamanistic State.

Genecide can be a Constitutional Law towards a race/ethnicity or a religion.

If the Constitution continually angers a particular city, a mojority of units that were once your convert to the city name. Like if you are the Romans, and Byzantium is just not liking your conquer the world ideal, their citizens will convert to Byzantines.

Accordance to dropping the Eras, it can be changed to new Architecture or Art technologies. And then you have to reconstuct buildings at a lower sheild cost to accommadate the new style, or new units. That way some of your cities look Byzantine Red with Gold crosses, while others stay in Bulgarian mud huts or Ionic Pagan columns. Citizen or worker units can be affected by how much they produce. If the country declares a Animist State Religion, you can pay a small upgrade to change their dress and they work harder, while Robe wearing Pagans refuse to work at all under a Shamanistic state, wondering into enemy territory as a refugee to be converted into their culture. These units may even automate themselves and distroy roads/mines/irrigation/bridges.

Bridges would be a great add and military tactical play. Archers can attack from accross rivers.

I think this goes along with the Pre-History, but in a variance in gameplay.

What do you all think? Comments?
_____

Um I Posted this under Pre-History thread, and it appeared here. I don't know why?