Great people: Military

Don't know if this has been up already but i came up with thought when thinking Sun Tsu military academy from Civ3.
Wouldn't it be natural to have also great military people? They could help to raise city defences as specialist or consume to get military tech. Their special move could be when sacrificed, he would give experience to every unit you possess that time. If you have 2 military great people, you could build military academy as national wonder.

discuss.

Great military people should be added in an expansion for sure. Great military leaders played an important in history.

Let's hope this is the case. I really miss Great Military People too & there I was in the beginning thinking that Agressive traits would benefit getting Great Military People.

Yes. I have not thnik about it before reading you.
That's correct. Why they have not introduced the Great military people?

LeSphinx

I agree great military people should be brought back, but what should their abilities be?

-the Wolf

First of all a great military people would inspire your units so first option would be experience for units, maybe just 1 point but to all military units. Could help weaker units to gain some advantage without risking them in battle.

Another idea is that Great military person could upgrade oldest units to up-to-date units for free or atleast lower the cost of upgrading units.

Military academy could give some defence bonus to the city it is built and 1 point to the experience for new units build in the city. Could also lower war weariness by some percentage in the city, maybe. Needs barracks built in a city and maybe some required amount of units built in the city.

anything else?

First, allow me to say, that a 'Great General' should be a very good addition to Civ. Now, for the specifics.

Great People usually have several, but roughly fixed ways to affect the game. Let's summon it up.

- Tech

* Give research points to a certain millitary tech. All the 'leaders' do this, so this should be a no brainer.

- Add to a city as superspecialist.

So, what should be the bonus? Let's consider the different options.

Add +x hammers
Add +% hammers to build up military units and improvements ONLY
Add addional XP to the units built in the city

Plus, possibly, adding some culture&gp points. Money and food would not really fit, though.

- Special specific action. Let's see first what the other leaders do.

Great Prophet: Build religious wonder
Great Artist: Cultural Bomb
Great Engineer: Rush building
Great Merchant: Commercial expedition
Great Scientist: Build Academy

So, we see the type of specific action is to build an specific building, or to add a great quantity of the appropiate type of commodity: culture (artist), coins (merchant), hammers (engineer).

So, two paths are open for militar leaders. Building or militar experience.

For building it should be simple enough. I would equate military academies with scientist academies. That is, turning the military academy national wonder in a g.p. induced building, with roughly the same effects, allowing its benefits for the city or cities that hosts the building (again, like academieS)

The second path would be, I think a bit of a 'military experience' bomb. That is, drop him in a stack of units and make them reach the next level of experience. It could be a great bonus, but I don't think it would be too unbalanced, even bringing all the units of a civ under it.

Upgrade everything can be feasible... but I think that would could have a more unbalanced effect in the game at certain points. Maybe, upgrade an specific type of unit for free.

I've had some ideas about this:
1. Sacrifice to discover a military technology (just like other Great People). Emphasis on techs which allow the creation of new units.
2. Sacrifice as a super-specialist. Will add 5 hammers, but only for units and military buildings (barracks, walls, drydocks). Will also add a free Combat 1 promotion to all units made in the city, which will stack with Aggressive.
3. Create a building which allows units in that city to upgrade at 1/3 cost.
4. Leadership: All units stacked with the Great General will gain 5 xp, but only while they are in the stack. If the units leaves the General's stack, or if the General is destroyed, the bonus XP away. (Not sure about this one.)

Wonders which give Great General points would be West Point, the Pentagon, Heroic Epic, maybe Chichen Itza. Also, the Barracks should allow the creation of General specialists, which add 1 xp to all units produced and create Great General points.

Obviously, this would need tweaking, but I think it works pretty well.

I agree... this is definately an Expansion selling point.

Military Leader-

• Sacrifice for Military Tech
• Sacrifice for Building a city's Super-Barracks (which increases unit experience or lessens military unit cost, or both, in that city)
• Sacrifice to create Army (Military Leader becomes a General who gains experience just like individual units, but General's experience applies to every unit in the 'army' stack)

Lucius Sulla said:

* Give research points to a certain millitary tech. All the 'leaders' do this, so this should be a no brainer.

- Add to a city as superspecialist.

militar experience.

Click to expand...

I agree. I think the "General" should give all of your units an experience level and the unit with the highest experience gains an extra level (elite guard unit).

-the Wolf

First off -- great idea!

Re: the specifics
1) In general I'd try not to induce too much micromanaging.

2) Giving every Unit 5xp, is this meant to happen once if the unit stacks with the general? Seems like a lot of work, to cycle all your units through the general's stack. How would you tell if the unit has received the bonus already? What if you get another general? Giving 5xp to all units stacked with general every turn is (obviously) too much. Maybe 1xp? But again, it would open the door to too much micro-ing to get a good bang for your buck.

3) Give production bonus for making gp a specialist in a city, but prod only applies to military units? All the other specialist give their bonus regardless. No need to add this IMO.

4) Tech research - agree, no brainer.

5) super-barracks - good idea; may need to check how this stacks with other buildings, so that units won't get too cheap too easily

6) grant a level to all existing units - the unit upgrades seem all nice, but not really totally overpowering (IMO), so giving one for free (and by bumping unit up a level, making all subsequent upgrades more e_xp_ensive to get) sounds ok

7) create army with shared xps from general - not a bad idea, but how would you keep the general competitive through the ages, without making him a killer in the early years? Not sure how easy/difficult it would be to scale strength poperly through the ages

I have a variation on the shared xp idea. What if the general gave an attack or defense bonus to every unit in the stack? I think this could be more immediately effective.

or he could make an army

yes, bring the armies back....

I didn't really like the way armies were implemented in Civ III, since once you loaded them you could not unload or upgrade units within them. They also took too long to heal. It would have been nice to be able to move units in and out of them. Though this was probably a balancing issue, since armies were so overpowered. I'd like something that resembled the concept of armies in Civ, but didn't amount to a huge SoD with 20 hp. Having a general present to increase attack and defense bonuses in your stack seems to me the best alternative.

units within certain range of military great people would have some combat bonus?

How about instead of the cycling of the great general's units or the building or the adding to the city it could be:

1. A free military tech.
2. Up city defenses by 25%-50%.
3. Give every unit currently in the city or territory the Great General moves to two free promotions.
4. Build a military academy that adds a free combat one promotion to all units built in that city and/or decreased upgrade costs in that city.

No increased military production because that would decrease the Heroic battle thingy's (forgot the name currently) value in the game because you could have a few great generals instead. Also, the cycling units in the great general army would probably be too difficult or time-consuming to really be effective unless you are an AI. Also, it would make for some one-sided fights that would probably not be to fun to experience.

I would agree with most of the points stated above.
Basically what I'd like to see for a Military Leader (Strategist/Tactician/General):

1) Sacrifice for a Military Tech
2) Join as a Super Specialist (A normal military specialist being a Commander)
3) Build a Battle/Military/War Academy (Acts like additional Barracks. Promotion culmulative with Barracks. Halves upgrade costs in City)
4) Sacrifice for a total of +10 XP (Stack units get XP divided equally. Event of odd numbers, first unit gets the odd XP)

Military Specialist (Commander): + 1 XP per unit produced, culmulative with other bonuses. Barracks allow one Commander.
Other military-related buildings are open for discussion.

Now, to balance this, Military Leader can only be gain through number of Unit promotions. Starts with 2 (or whatever the number that is prerequisite for Heroic Epic) and doubles each time. Therefore, it's easy to get one or two but harder with each time a Military Leader is generated. Aggressive Civs should have an edge in getting one or two more Military Leaders.

My 2 cents

Alphawolf said:

I agree great military people should be brought back, but what should their abilities be?

-the Wolf

Click to expand...

Free promos to all units in a square
Speeds up production of milatary units in a city
Adds more defences to towns
Generates a few units
Starts golden age.

There just a few.

Thought of this last night and searched for a thread on it. The join and Tech capabilities are fine but,
Think of the power of a culture bomb.
Think of the power of a new trade route that gives 5000 gold.
Think of the power of rush building the most expensive wonder in the game.
What is being proposed above for the great general is not anywear near the power of those.

The great generals sacrifice should be of an equivilent scale.
A quick glance shows that a ratio of great wonder cost to military unit cost is probably arround 10 to 1. IE Sacrifice for 10 of your best ground units.

If it is going to be promotion based then it has to be pretty extensive to match the value of the other leaders. Like a promotion or two for all military units.