King Units

A few questions and thoughts about "King" units: (For those who may not have seen these yet, they show up when the "Regicide" or "Mass Regicide" option is on. With "Regicide", each civ gets one King unit, which, if killed, destroys that civ; "Mass Regicide" gives each civ multiple King units, which all have to be killed. Many of the Conquest scenarios have these options enabled.)

The generic King unit has an A/D/M of 1/1/2 (I understand that in the Japan scenario, these units are modified and upgradeable, but my questions / thoughts are more for the general game).

Now, it makes sense that a King unit would have some defense (what head-of-state doesn't have their own guard), and, in desperate times, I could understand a King going into battle (so, sure, some offense), but why do these units have two movement points?

See, starting an epic game with King unit(s) gives the player a (couple) free two-movement-point explorer(s), which seems like a bit of an exploit to me. I mean, sure, there's a bit of risk involved (if (all) your King units get killed, well, game over), but mostly it's pretty safe. Is this what the game designers planned? Because once you're done exploring, these King units don't seem to be of much use (am I wrong, do they do anything else useful?); they're just two-movement-point warriors…

But really, I like the idea of King units, it just seems like their implementation was only half finished (unless I'm missing something; entirely possible). I had some ideas on making them more interesting:

First, to discourage using them for early exploration (raise the risk & cost):
1. King units can only heal in cities.
2. (Assuming they still have two movement points) Damaged King units only have one movement point.
3. Not having a King unit in your capital causes unhappiness (in that city).

Second, to improve their usefulness / impact:
1. Having a King unit in a city makes one citizen happy (this would be the politician entertainment factor, er, I mean, patriotism).
2. Having a King unit in a city reduces corruption & waste (more than a Courthouse, less than a Forbidden Palace; this would be the King personally overseeing things).

Finally, one other thing that bothers me about the King units, is that if you kill off all of another civilization's, every one of their cities is instantly reduced to rubble. Um, what happened here? I killed off their king(s), so they razed their own cities, then committed mass suicide? Even the city that you just captured is destroyed! I think it would make more sense if, at the very least, you got to keep the city you just captured. It would be even better if all the other cities would have a chance to join your civ, based on distance from your capital, culture, etc. Of course, this would also mean that if another civ had better culture and a closer capital, they might end up with more of those cities, but that would seem more realistic. If any of those cities decide not to join another civ, then they should turn into barbarian huts, stacked with units according to what their population was…

Just a few thoughts.

Just a few thoughts, but good ones....

Oh, I like your ideas, cities joining to one of the neighbors(with chances according to culture) or destroying itself.
And king units reducing corruption and waste... Sounds pretty good. By that way you can go round robbing making outside cities more useful for a few turns.
Pretty good idea!

It would be even better if all the other cities would have a chance to join your civ, based on distance from your capital, culture, etc.

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I seem to remember (and I may be going back a version or two here) that there used to be a chance, when you took a Civ's capital, of that Civ suffering a civil war and effectively splitting in two.

This might be an interesting way of implementing Qpdaj's suggestion. Or maybe a combination of effects - some cities, say those smaller than 3 in size - are razed as their citizens abandon their settlement and flee in fear. The others either join your conquering Civ, form a new Civ, or... just plain carry on as usual, but without their King...

If the other King-bonuses (happiness, reduced corruption etc, which I think are great ideas) are implemented, then a Civ without a King loses those benefits.

Or how about making it conditional on your King being in a new city if you want to re-locate your palace there, or build the Forbidden Palace... again, making the King more useful and logical, no..?

To compensate for the bonus effects, the King unit could consume more food, if being in a town (let's say, four food). So, if being in the field, they would live from the land, but wouldn't offer any bonus. But, as soon as they are in a given town, the 'Royal Bonus' comes into effect, but the local community would have to pay for the King and his fellowmen...
This would be a rather authentical model, since - at least in the early middle ages - kings indeed travelled around a lot in the European states of that time.

What gets me about regicide games are that the AI NEVER moves them! If I see a horde coming at MY city, I'd get my king out of Dodge, but the AI never does this.

I only like the last idea, making the cities turn into barbarian huts. Or even better, make them into netural cities that cannot produce more troops (i.e. cities guarded by barbarians) and the cities are the bounties for anyone who goes on to capture them. This would feel more similar historically. Once the capital falls/king dies, the cities under it's rule are diretionless and it often becomes a race for their neighbours to claim ownership of these now free cities.

Ideally, I would even like to see all these cities each becomes individual civs, but that would probably means too much processing power and complicating the game needlessly.

Yeah, the fact that the AI never moves its king units is what got me thinking about how worthless they are. Of course, if they did make the King units more useful, it would be interesting to see if the AI was improved enough to actually do something smart with them...

And I've always thought Civ would benefit from "minor" civs - single cities that couldn't produce settlers, workers, or most improvements, but only defensive units, and only up to a certain limit (say, two or three times population). To a certain extent, this is represented by goody huts in Civ3, but that's only in the beginning of the game. Independent cities could be interesting later in the game, as cities left over from a destroyed civ (in regicide), or rebelious cities, or lost cities if the capital is destroyed. I wouldn't think having a bunch of independent cities that do nothing other than build defensive units would add too much to the code or length between turns...

Originally posted by Qpdaj
[...]I wouldn't think having a bunch of independent cities that do nothing other than build defensive units would add too much to the code or length between turns...

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Since we are talking about significant changes in the game engine anyway, I agree to the quoted statement.
With the adoption of some principles of relational databases, this should be possible and wouldn't consume too much processing power, nor would it consume too much memory (for any system above a PII and more then 128mb ram, I guess).

Nevertheless, after a King's death I would propose to have the cities adjacent to any other civ's territory fall to that civilisation. The 'independant' cities could be the former 'inland' cities, which wouldn't have been exposed too much to foreign cultural influence....