American Minutemen

Somebody should make Minutemen (since I am too stupid to do it) for the Americans.

:soldier: They should be an upgrade of the Worker after you learn Gunpowder, then they will be able to attack and defend themselves with their rifles.

:shotgun: They should take the same amount of time as a Worker to make if you're at peace, but fairly faster to make if at War time. (they ARE called minutemen!!!)

This would increase America's defence if you're building an industrial and cultural based civilization. It sucks waiting until you can make an F15 when everybody else gets their special units way before...

if that's even possible...

if it's not possible to make them faster during war time, they should be just a little faster to make all the time.

atleast I thought it was a good idea... it probably isn't to you guys but simple things amuse me...

Part of it is possible.

I'm pretty sure you CAN'T make changing shield costs depending on whether or not you're at war (correct me, anybody, if I'm wrong).

Another thing to note is that it doesn't take long to get your city to the point where workers only take one turn to create anyway... it's not possible to get faster than one turn.

All in all, I like the idea of workers having the ability to defend themselves... maybe 1 Atk, 1 Def... (possibly 2?) and to make that the American's special unit... especially since F-15's ARE late in the game and kind of suck...

The real question is how useful will they really be? Even with barbarians on raging I don't lose THAT many workers... I suppose the main use would be during wartime you could crank out a butt-load of these 1,1 or 2,2 units and/or bring all your workers back to town to defend. And, if you end up with too many after the war is over, you can assimilate them back into your cities.

More thoughts?

Originally posted by Zippo
Part of it is possible.
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All in all, I like the idea of workers having the ability to defend themselves... maybe 1 Atk, 1 Def... (possibly 2?) .....
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More thoughts?

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I have been toying with this idea myself after a friend told me he up the def of both settlers and workers to 1 with 0 attack. However, I notice that if you make this changes then something will be missing from the AI wars.

During a war, the AI's main target is to capture opponents' workers. If an AI has enough captured workers, it will use its own worker to join its small cities. So, if the above changes is made, a worker can no longer be captured (they will be killed instead ) and of course the above strategy will not work. I usually resort to capture workers to cripple the enemy's infra and use them as my own as well thats why I give up the idea of giving the worker any def point.

As to settlers I created a new unit called the pioneer which become available after gunpowder and has (3.3.2/All terrain as road) with 2 pop points to represent those western settlers

Why make a Race with and advantage over other races? I feel that the F15 is already an advantage for the Ameriacan over the other races.

Imagine having your special unit at early part of the game where you haven't discovered other Races yet. Useless. Imagine your special unit become useless after some time when it's replaced by a better unit. What a waste....

American and German had and advantage cause their special unit will never be outdated. Althought it arrive late, but that when you discovered the entire world and can wage war against others.

And for the Minutemen.....I guess 10 minutemen (with attack strength 1) cannot defeat a elite spikeman.... not sure....anyone tried attacking a spikeman with something with attack strength 1? care to share?

Originally posted by dk99
Why make a Race with and advantage over other races? I feel that the F15 is already an advantage for the Ameriacan over the other races.
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About time I see some guys next door positing something.

My pioneer unit which I created for my own mod is mean for every civilization representing modern settlers who can actually defence themselves. It is not mean to be the minutemen mentioned above. In fact, whenever I change something, I always have the balancing issue in mind

To make my point, these are just a few things that I have changed:

1) Made a unique tank for the american and named it Sherman Tank. I make it weaker than the standard tank in both attack and defence but much cheaper to build. This is to simulate the real case in WWII. US won by numbers and not by better equipment. Almost every single piece of nazi military hardware I can think of is better than the Allies'

2) Created a Special Ops unit that is stealth/all terain as road and with hidden nationality. This represents the real Special Ops units that do the dirty tricks for the Agency. I make it require smart weapon to build and available to all Civ as well. I find that its kinda boring without any battle but at the same time I do not wish to start a WW and this unit is perfect for the job

I am currently testing all these units with my 4th game. I want to see how the AI will utilize these units before I post the mod. I figure if the AI cannot use it effectively then the unit is useless

Do not use any spec ops units if they have a hidden nationality!

i made one, and the hidden nationality will screw up the game in a few ways.

1) you can take over cities without declaring war. The AI will also never notice anything.

2) somehow because of the hidden nationality they will not attack the spec ops unit.

3) The AI tends to use them in numbers, even when you put the price very high, they come attacking you with 10+ of these guys. They also tend to combine it with their normal army (not very smart), even though the privateers don't do this.

so you can't take a rifleman, keep it's stats so it's not a weakling, add worker abilities, and make it an upgrade of a worker after you gain gunpowder?

how about taking a rifleman and adding the real important worker abilites such as building a road, and making it a seperate unit as a whole. can that be done?

this way you could defend your city and work at the same time. makes sense right? that's basically what the minutemen did, and because of that they were a huge part of americas success.

you'll have to be patient with my technical ignorance, i have been out of the civ thing for about 2 years. i left it to play age of kings for a bit, then i left computers completely.

plus, i have no means to my copy of the game until this weekend, thus i can not check out the editor to see what is possible.

<I>Originally Posted by Sween32</I><BR>
<B>so you can't take a rifleman, keep it's stats so it's not a weakling, add worker abilities, and make it an upgrade of a worker after you gain gunpowder?

how about taking a rifleman and adding the real important worker abilites such as building a road, and making it a seperate unit as a whole. can that be done?</B>

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Yes this can be done. However, there are a few things to consider.

First of all, workers are much easier to build than riflemen... a civ with a lot of gold could simply build up workers then, once you researched gunpowder, upgrade to riflemen without waiting forever to build them, thereby having a large army with little effort.

Second, upgrading workers to riflemen would mean that the riflemen would now need the ability to join city. Then you would have to change it so riflemen had a population cost of 1. This isn't a big deal as far as the editor goes, but would it create a problem for gameplay? Would riflemen be underutilized?

Third, if workers upgrade to riflemen doesn't this mean once you have riflemen, regular workers are no longer available, just like warriors are no longer available once you get swordsmen? This would mean that you could no longer pump out workers with ease if you needed them.

Fourth, since riflemen upgrade to infantry, would the infantry also have the abilities to create roads, etc.? This would set the cycle going again as far as pop cost and all that I mentioned earlier. (and so on down the line with mech infantry, etc.)

As you can see there are many issues with giving existing units worker abilities. For this reason I think it would be better to just add a new unit... IF you agree with the idea of minutemen in the first place.

ok, forget the upgrade from worker. i'm just trying to figure out the limits of this editing program using minutemen as my example.

so even if i used the editor hack that gives you the add button, you cannot create a new unit from srcatch that is only available to the Americans, looks and has the same stats as a rifleman, has the worker abilites of build road, build colony, and build fortress, and is called "Minutemen". Then, when a rifleman would upgrade to infantry, the Minuteman would upgrade to... lets say... Volunteer Infantry (a version of Infantry that can build roads and build fortresses, losing the Minutemans ability to build colonies).

I'm not saying this SHOULD be done as some of you seem to think it's too much of an advantage, I just want to know if it can be.

If this can be done, I could make the regular riflemen and infantry unavailable to the Americans, right?

<I>Original post by Sween32</I><BR><B>so even if i used the editor hack that gives you the add button, you cannot create a new unit from srcatch that is only available to the Americans, looks and has the same stats as a rifleman, has the worker abilites of build road, build colony, and build fortress, and is called "Minutemen". </B>

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Not sure what you mean by this... if you mean to say it's impossible to create a brand new unit called Minuteman then you are incorrect. It IS possible to create brand new units. You can either use existing artwork (maybe the musketeer or musketman for minutemen?) or use FLICster to make your own artwork or modify existing artwork. It IS possible to limit that unit to specific civs. It IS possible to give ANY unit the worker abilities.

<I>Original post by Sween32</I><BR><B>Then, when a rifleman would upgrade to infantry, the Minuteman would upgrade to... lets say... Volunteer Infantry (a version of Infantry that can build roads and build fortresses, losing the Minutemans ability to build colonies). <BR>...<BR>If this can be done, I could make the regular riflemen and infantry unavailable to the Americans, right?</B>

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Yes, that could be done and you could make the regular rifleman, infantry, mech infantry, etc. unavailable to the Americans.

ok, thank you.

the way the conversation was going, it sounded like i would not be able to create a brand new unit... like i had to go replace the rifleman. i was repeating what i had picked up from previous posts.

thanks again

I'm a little concerned as to how the AI would deal with it, would it still be clased as a non militry unit?