Dunkah
Emperor
Ok. Just one question - why? I mean that goal you try to achieve with all this?
My vision of Civ (and perhaps I should be looking towards Civ VI) is a Civilization where its more of a grand strategy game/ civilization builder/ total immersion. More so than it is currently.
Currently the scale is all off. Units represent small one weaponed groups when they fight or even individuals. Trading Posts, Mills, Mines etc all represent 1 building. Whereas the Cities we place occupy only 1 tile yet are supposed to be these huge things. They are spaced strangely and there are no suburbs or towns or other smaller cities anywhere.
Scale effects combat so drastically that the AI can't grasp how to move or fight with the strange rules over the current terrain. Therefore the AI stinks. Very difficult to balance. Each turn counts as a year at least and battles can take hundreds of years to complete.
By adjusting everything up, scalewise, you make work details, armies or divisions occupy 1 tile and then once 2 opposing divisions meet and combat starts they could zoom in to some basic controls to choose formations and fight out the battles. It all but eliminates AI movement blunders. My vision would have each combatant choose a formation and a starting location just prior to combat then have some basic controls like reinforce, counter attack, retreat etc while the battle played out.
But Just scaling up the units would not make any sense. So scaling up the whole game is required. This would effectively make the game play very similiar to what it is now other than combat but the immersion factor and AI would be better. IMHO
<rant> at no point in time in history did units run around willy nilly shooting arrows, picking out units of opportunity, fighting with only missle troops, (not fight with mellee troops) etc.
Civs representation of combat is unrealistic and very complicated. The AI will never figure it out. Armies fought battles in formations since ancient times. There is not an ingame representation of that.
Armies typically had a balance to them of so many horses so many mellee troops so many missle troops so many siege weapons. Those limits are not represented either.
By making the combat and unit system much less complicated you can concentrate more on stuff like Diplomacy, Economy, Trade, Technology, Religion, Corporations etc... But it can't just be one aspect of the game.
The whole thing needs to be scaled up! Especially the country side. Trading Posts just don't make any sense, kill the immersion etc.</rant>
Even though I still love the game!