New Unit: Yet Another Mine Unit 01/09/04

I made this unit real quick for my personal use and thought I'd share it with you guys just for the heck of it. Fidget, death, and defualt are the only animations include (fidget is used for fortify, defualt is used for run, and death is used for attack), and the one sound (death) links over to one of the .wav's that the artillery uses.

I'm fairly sure it's impossible to implement these kinds of units in-game, but you're free to try obviously. I did add an immobile turret once that had def and bombard values, and no attack. The AI actually used it (dropped it from a nearby continent near one of my island cities and began bombing away)... So I suppose you could give it low cost, high bombard, low def, airdrop, immobile, hidden nationality (possibly invisible), and zero bombard range. Then I know they'd airdrop 'em near your cities, but with hidden nationality, there'd be a lot of suicide attempts. Maybe one def, high bombard, and the cruise missile flag(?). Then they'd attempt to attack you with 'em by dropping them near you or your unit... Not sure if that'd work though.

Anyway, here it is. Preview lost a lot of quality, looks better in FLICster. Also, for some reason flc2gif cuts on of the frames off of the last direction, making it look like it skips... This doesn't happen in FLICster.

Couldn't you just set it to one extra frame to fix the problem? I think that's what I do when this happens.

Flc2Gif leaves a lot to be desired.


This looks pretty good, btw. I have no use for it personally, but I like.

Thanks... And I never really thought about adding an extra frame. To be honest, I hardly ever use flc2gif, I normally just render an animated gif straight from OFX... Didn't think ahead this time .

A Viking Yeti, I will give your Land Mine a try. Looks like it has a smaller explosion but that can also be good. I have been using Land Mines for almost 2 years with no problems and I like them in the game. There are many methods of delevery and pick up to move them as well. 1 move, Immobile, Invisible, Load, Airlift, Airdrop (to use my Camo Green Paradrop animation), Operational Range used for distance, Upgrade Unit (to go to Advanced Land Mine), Zone of Control, Offense and Defense Checked but NO HIDDEN NATIONALITY because the AI "sees" this setting the SAME as a Barbarian (this is the setting Barbarians have) and goes after them even if you set them as Invisible. My MOD has ALL extremely strong Units so I use attack-10, Defense-10 and Hit Points-6, Operational Range-8, and I set them as Foot Units so I can use units to move them as well but these settings are a matter of individual needs in each MOD. Depending on when you set the Land Mine and or Advanced Land Mine to be available, you can use the Paradrop for delivery. This works well for the 8 square range but if you want to retrieve or move them again, you can set them as a Foot Unit and and use any number of units to do accomplish this. In My Fantasy MOD, I use Balloons to place and retrieve or move them again for the first Land Mine that I get befor Airports and when I get Airports, I use the Paradrop for Fun as well and other units to place, retrieve or move them again. Land or air units that have settings to transport Foot Units. Because Land Mines have the Immobile setting and only move 1 time, it is not as if they can take a city as other foot units lol. With the Attack, Defense and Zone of Control used, the Land Mines work well . Each Mine represents a mine field of many so the Hit Points keep them "alive" longer to better represent this factor. Land Mines are Great to Block Territory at a Pinch Point or in areas you desire to build future cities. Set as Invisible, you can place them on Resources and the AI will avoid them until you are at War. Then the Mines Kill workers as well.

I thought if you had immobile set, you couldn't unload them from ships...? I heard that the AI tries over and over, so the game just sits still.

Any Immobile unit cannot be Unloaded from a ship to land without the Game Freezing or causing problems. This is the main problem concerning the AI. Immobile units can be unloaded in a city or from land to land by a transport unit but again, the AI cannot "figure this out" so it is necessary to fool the editor and or give up desirable settings. Personally, I feel that the Human player should use these Land Mines against the AI with the desired settings and forget giving them to the AI. The Human player will remember not to unload from a ship to land for example. Use Balloons or other transports and airdrop them where you want them. Really the Main problem is from ship to land and the AI has a problem with this because from ship to land means the Unit itself is doing the moving and these are Immobile. If we Airdrop them the Transport is doing the moving and no problems. It would be necessary to have these land mines set with no ability to Load on any ship to prevent the AI from trying to transport and then unload them to land. Unfortunitly, there is no setting in the editor that only allows unloading to a city so we are forced to either make settings that would keep the land mines inside cities with no transport options or use the settings we want and forget the AI having them. Use just Airdrop for the AI or any way you like for Human players. Perhaps CIV IV will have more settings to accomodate situations such as this.

I sure hope so, 'cause this whole having to give up settings just to get the AI to use it is pretty annoying... Would seem like mines would have been a big idea from the begining, at least of Civ 3, but I guess the just forgot about 'em .

The new "renegade unit" concept that came up a few weeks ago would work with mines, but I didnt know the AI went for HN units. Here's what was discovered:
Any unit that has 0 def and HN can exist in the same tile as an enemy unit! If you give the mines 0 def, HN, invisible, and a high defensive bombard value it should work fairly realistically, except that the mines can only be destroyed by lethal bombardment (which implies infinite mines in the tile). Another trick with this is that if this unit has defensive bombard, it will attack any unit, even its own civ. This could add a realistic and annoying aspect, but there is now way to get your troops safely past it, other than adding a "detect invisible" minesweeper/combat engineer unit with just enough lethal bombard to destroy the mines. This would force the player to use the mines wisely. (and the AI to waste a lot of hp )
If you want them to be destroyed, give them high defensive bombard, 1 def and 1 hp, so they [should] always disappear after an enemy enters the tile, but will [almost] always injure the unit significantly. If you really want to go in depth you coulkd combine this with infantry stats, giving them low defense but lots of HP, and the mine medium-low bombard and high ROF, so it will only be effective against infantry units.

Hmm... Seems interesting, but I've tried the defensive bombard idea, and the mine does no damage for some reason. Even with a bombard value of 100, but it may just be me, not sure. Haven't heard of this happening to anyone else.

Did you give it a rate of fire? Not to make you sound stupid, but people often overlook little things like that

Don't worry, I do that plenty . yeah, gave it rate of fire 1, then 2, then 6 just to be sure... I still don't know why it didn't hit the tank once (it only managed to take 1 hp from a conscript warrior... With lethal land bombardment).

Thats really strange, defensive bombard obviously works, since units in the game use it and I see it work all the time. I'll give it a try and see what happens.

It works for me all the time with infantry, archers, tanks, et cetera... It just doesn't work with my mines, for some odd reason .

It could be because you didnt give the mine an attack strenght?

No, because arty takes a defensive shot and it doesn't have attack or defense. Or is it just when it's with abother unit?

No, it had attack... And I didn't have any units stacked on it (the mine), maybe that's the problem...?

No, Archers still use Def. Bombard when alone.

The mines used def. bombard, but they were extremely weak for no apparent reason.

A Viking Yeti said:

I thought if you had immobile set, you couldn't unload them from ships...? I heard that the AI tries over and over, so the game just sits still.

Click to expand...

I think a way to counter this could be by making all transports in the game being able to load foot soldiers only and make sure that mines would not have the foot soldiers tag on. Of course you would have to make tanks foot soldiers as well, but that is a sacrifice which has to be made.

No, I haven't tested this theory yet.

Or just not give mines the "load" flag- tested and true