Dale of Dales Combat Mod, please read.

Dale,

I'm not too hyped up for CivIV yet, I bought it, and tried it, and it wasn't fitting for my tastes. Plus, I'm still making units for Civ3. However, your combat mod, is one of only a few that would give me the desire to give CivIV another try. I have some ideas/requests for you personally, since you seem to have done some incredible work with improving combat in CivIV from what I've read in this thread.

These are functions that are lacking in Civ3, and I was hoping CivIV would have addressed them, but it didn't. I see more possibilities of fully implementing these features in CivIV than in Civ3.

1.Ships that specifically require escort and that escort. I'm looking for a way to make cruisers and destroyers escort capital ships (carriers and battleships) and transports. Civ3 AI has the problem of battleships escorting transports and carriers instead of conducting ASUW(anti surface warfare) and NGFS (naval gunfire support), I see this somewhat in CivIV as well. I was hoping for something that would make the AI use cruisers and destroyers more for escorts.

2. First strike against specific units. Right now, if I understand it correctly, if two units have first strike, they cancel each other out. This isn't right, at least in terms of one weapon outranging another.
As an example, I view first strike in naval warfare as a battleship getting several shots in on, say a destroyer or cruiser, since a battleship's guns outrange the guns of a destroyer or cruiser. Now if two opposing battleships go against each other, then the first strikes being cancelled is logical. The opposing battleships would have the same gun range. In a gunnery dual cruisers should have first strike over a destroyer, and a battleship should have a first strike over both cruisers and destroyers. Subs should have first strike over all ships except for maybe destroyers.

3. One type of unit cannot attack another type. Battleships, cruisers and carriers should not be able to attcack subs. They didn't have sonar or anti-sub weapons( at least in WWII and early post WWII, crusiers did have it later on in the Cold War). Is there anyway to do this ? Maybe make a fourth domain, underwater/subsurface ? This would aid the implementation of specialty ships for ASW.

Now understand this, these ideas are not necessarily for general gameply (they could be) but more for scenarios such as WWII, and during the Cold War.
I help El Justo when I can with his The Cold War (TCW) scenario for Civ3. These are issues we have faced when trying to improve his scenario, and there seems to be no way of fully resolving these issues in Civ3. I was hoping Civ4 would have taken care of these things, but it didn't. That is why I am not too eager to jump to CivIV at the moment,that and some other issues. If my above ideas could be possibly implemented in Civ4, that would give me much more reason to move on to it.
That's why I am posting directly to Dale, because he seems to be one of the top guys for improving combat in Civ4. However, if anyone else could do this, well that would be just as good.

Thanks for your time Dale, and for the work you've done so far to improve CivIV.

I apologize if you are already aware of this, but the Civ4unitinfos.xml file does allow you to make one unitclass have distinct advantages or disadvantages over another, so you could make it so surface ships would be impotent against subs. This isn't EXACTLY what you are looking for, but may be useful.

I think you can't attack invisible units, unless someone sees the unit for you. Destroyers can see subs, carriers and battleships cannot.

You can implement "first strike" orders by giving a unit more first strikes. If one unit has 5 first strikes, and another has 2, the 5 first strike unit will get 3 hits in.

This works for range, but works less well for surprise-attacks.