Hopes for Troop Transports

I read with interest in the "confirmed features" thread that units will transform into ad hoc troop transports as needed instead of having dedicated transport units.

I just hope that there are some limitations on this. Otherwise, units will wander at will across the entire map. It would make sense if your units had to embark upon a water journey only at one of your own cities or the city of an ally. But they could then disembark upon any land tile.

This would make invasions a little more -- I don't know -- not realistic exactly, but more constrained in a logical way. You would not be able to recall disembarked units over water again until they captured or moved to a city.

What do the rest of you think? Should units be able to shift from land to water at will, or should there be some sort of limitation?

I assume that initially, there will be no unit ocean transport functionality (one of the guys from PAX has explicitly mentioned that it will require a particular tech to be able to do this), then likely once you get the initial ancient era tech it will hate Trireme style limitations, such as being unable to leave coastal waters.

Hopefully the unit transports will upgrade as your tech improves to prevent it from being too much of a powerful feature in the early game.

I do like the idea of only being able to embark at a city though. This could lead to some interesting strategic choices.

I don't see the need for any limitation. The "dedicated troop transport" is a creation of the modern era. Before then, troops commandeered or built ships when and where they needed them, or hitched a ride on combat ships. No earlier version of Civ has required us to build rail cars or deuce-and-a-halfs (trucks) to move our troops over land. Having to build them to cross an ocean/lake/straight always seemed like a nuisance to me.

Limiting it to unload/offload in cities would kill any possibility of amphibious assaults. Given the 1UPT limit, launching an assault through cities would be even slower. Also, given the 1UPT limit, landings are going to be slow enough already; your first wave will be vulnerable and exposed - probably without backup.

What will be interesting to see is what happens to a beachhead unit that is defeated?

We know that defending units that lose are forced to retreat. What happens if there is no where for them to go? Will they just take more damage? Will they be forced to embark if near a body of water? Will they be eliminated? Will military naval units be allowed to support defending beachhead units as we have heard that land units will?

How Civ V answers those questions will have huge implications for seaborne invasions. Will you need to leave the second wave one hex offshore so your beachhead units have room to withdraw, or are your beachhead units just extremely vulnerable?

The 1UPT limit will have a mitigating effect on almost all aspects of warmongering - no more ancient era blitzkriegs for us, my friends. We will have to fight for every hex.

Sounds glorious!

Chalks said:

I do like the idea of only being able to embark at a city though. This could lead to some interesting strategic choices.

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I like this idea, as long as there is a way around it for specific units so that you can explore. Perhaps the ability to embark without a city would be a feature of explorer units, or perhaps it could be a promotion.

. . .another benefit of the amphibious promotion, perhaps?

Thyrwyn said:

What will be interesting to see is what happens to a beachhead unit that is defeated?

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I assume that it will be possible to destroy units in the game. I feel that there will be a situation where at the end of a battle, "defeated" units will be left with 1 hit point to give the player the chance to withdraw them during their turn since the next attack will certainly kill the unit.

This would let flanking cavalry units cut off retreating forces and wipe them out, for example.

It seems like it could be a very nice touch.

Of course there will be some limitations, we can just not say yet what they are. I am very much looking forward to this feature since it should reduce micromanagement by a great deal. As long as this feature smoothens gameplay it is fine by me.

As we discussed elsewhere here at CFC,
it is most important to make unit movement so that water and land are not merged
into one heterogenous field as for movement.

So I am strongly against jumping into the water at anywhere on the shore...
...you need a harbor, a specific tile...

Landing on a shore is another topic: this should be possible,
perhaps at risk, like being more vulnerable at the end of that turn being on the shore-tile,
or making it more costly in movement,
or both, or whatever

In my mind, landing units should be vulnerable and backed with support force,
either "ship-artilley" or airforce, or both...

I forget what preview or interview it was in, but they said that losing one combat would not "kill" a unit, it would be forced to retreat. As you point out, this will make it handy to have some more mobile units around to pursue wounded enemies (assuming they are not pouring through the hole to attack the extremely crunchy ranged units). Cavalry will finally feel like, you know, cavalry

Still, leaves the question as to what happens to units with no where to go. . .

Thyrwyn said:

Still, leaves the question as to what happens to units with no where to go. . .

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Those die, ("surrender"), in Panzer General

Thyrwyn said:

I forget what preview or interview it was in, but they said that losing one combat would not "kill" a unit, it would be forced to retreat. As you point out, this will make it handy to have some more mobile units around to pursue wounded enemies (assuming they are not pouring through the hole to attack the extremely crunchy ranged units). Cavalry will finally feel like, you know, cavalry

Still, leaves the question as to what happens to units with no where to go. . .

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They do not retreat and are there to die by your hand? I am sure that there is still a way to kill units and this would possibly be it.

Als in the screenshots, can we see different coastal tiles? I can see there being a beach and a rocky coast. On a beach one can build and launch a ship, on a rocky slope one cannot.

Shurdus said:

Als in the screenshots, can we see different coastal tiles? I can see there being a beach and a rocky coast.

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I sure hope there are different beach tiles - adds way more complexity to landings and defense of coasts. Rocky terrain would also be good to stop tanks/calvary (unless a road is built) and a way for only walking troops to pass/defend.

Shurdus said:

They do not retreat and are there to die by your hand? I am sure that there is still a way to kill units and this would possibly be it.

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There absolutely must be a way to kill units during wars.

Can you imagine it, a civilization with 25 cities and 50 units involved in a massive war... they are about to be defeated, are down to two cities but STILL have 50 units because they never get destroyed? You'd basically be talking about every single hex in their territory and surrounding land being populated by a wounded unit... then what would you do to attack?

I think the ability for wounded units to retreat does not mean that they cannot be destroyed. It just doesn't seem practical.

That is what I meant. They may retreat some of the time, just like mounted units in Civ IV can. I think this does not eman that units will retreat all the time when defeated. Did any source mention that a fully healed unit will never be destroyed in combat? I think it will be like cavalry in Civ IV in the sense that all units now have a much higher chance of retreating, and that there still will be a chance of a unit being destroyed.

The implication was that several combats could kill a unit . They never said units couldn't be killed - sorry if I implied otherwise.

But did they also imply that no unit would die from one single battle? I am unsure if I like a system where there is no risk of losing a unit if you engage in combat. I think a system like with mounted units in Civ IV would work well. That is, your units should have a chance to retreat when you are engaging. Now there also is a chance a unit will escape when on the defending side. That is all nice and everything, but there should be a chance that a unit is killed in one single combat. Maybe it should not happen very often, but it should be possible.

I believe a tank will kill a warrior in one single attack...

Edit: or a spearman

V. Soma said:

I believe a tank will kill a warrior in one single attack...

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I can see a bunch of warriors escaping an encounter with a tank rather easely. The strategy would be something like this:

A TANK!!! RUN!!!

V. Soma said:

Edit: or a spearman

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Thoughts on the off-topic tangent regarding retreat:

The ability for defending units to retreat in my opinion is a good thing, but I'd like to see some kind of mitigating factor. Traditionally cavalry units, especially faster ones, were the primary means to run down fleeing enemies and could potentially turn an organized retreat into a full route. Perhaps when fighting a "chaser" cavalry unit, the chances for a successful retreat should be reduced to reflect that aspect of warfare.

Then again, cavalry units tend to move faster anyways. If chances were already reduced depending on damage the map speed would already simulate the effect, though if the target unit was initially forced to retreat by the cavalry unit it would require them (the cavalry) to wait a turn, which is slightly odd since they're presumably already on top of the enemy army. The way roads work can also be a factor that favors anti-retreat measures being reflected in statistics. If roads work similar to earlier Civ games then cavalry movement speed would not in itself represent chasing down routing enemies, hence requiring the effect to be represented in a unique statistic value similar to collateral damage or withdrawal rates in Civ4.