A rant for Firaxis(since the suggestions and ideas forum is now closed)

[Neo Guderian]

I can only pray that multiplayer will one day come out, but when and if it does, there is one little thing that I feel as a warmeister needs to be implemented....

Organizational entities for units..

Have you ever played those long drawn out wars where you spend way to much time moving units around, fighting with yourself trying to decide if this mech infantry belongs over here or over there? Where does this bomber need to bomb?

We all know the feeling, especially in civ2 games with hundreds of units battling our human foes. Force organization is a nightmare and reinforcing the front is tedious.

so enter my humble plea to the gods...

Wouldnt it be fantastic to have some sort of list, that you can attach units to, give those lists unique names, put them into hierarchies, and give the units orders to complete while your waiting on the other civs to go?

Just imagine creating such a Unit Entity called "9nth Bomber Wing" and basing it out of Frankfurt. Or the 11th Amphibious Division based in Seattle. Or how about even " The Veii Legion"

Anyone ever play East front or west front? Know how you have units organized by battalion and company and plattoon? Imagine that in civ3! Where you can actually see what units belong to what entities, lets say by a red outline or something,, or even just a little name or number over or under their icon?

Now imagine that you can create a unit composition list for each entity. Example, every infantry division will be comprised of 4 infantry, 2 artillery, and 1 tank. By using such templates all of your newly created units would go into a pool and when a division or whatever has losses and becomes understrengthed, it is automatically reinforced with reserve units. This would save enormous amounts of time in regular games not to mention multiplayer.

Imagine a front line where you can visibly see the different divisional groups of units arrayed against your foe. Imagine having fleets of ships. A really fantastic concept would be instead of repeating the 'go' command 10 times for 10 units , you simply order the 8th panzer division to Munich and all the units move automatically.

I really hope this idea or something like it is implemented, just think of how much fun moving divisions around would be. perhaps even entities gaining their own experience and prestige that gives them added bonuses. Like Pattons 3rd Army getting a +1 attack bonus after winning alot of battles.

This takes the armies concept much further. Let me know what you guys think.

 

[Ohwell]

Its a good idea, but I think it would be too complicated. Firaxis would never spend any time on this, It might be in civ 4 though.

I actually do this with my ships, I have apice of paper that I write down where my ships are, Especially elite Battleships and Carriers, they are the ones I track mostly.

 

[hamster]

Thats a neat idea. But it would be tough to implement and still have a streamlined interface.

I do think they're working on some sort of unit group movement thing though.

for now, I do the same as ohwell. I write down on a piece of paper my military divisions and battlegroups. For the most part, this works fine, but I'm sure it'll get hairy once I start using more units.

Anyway, my suggestion: when u right-click a stack, units within other units (ie. units in transports or units in armies) should either be in a different color, further indented, or smaller in font.

 

[PaulNAdhe]

I like the idea, but that would make it more of a war game than a civ builder. And it would be incredibly difficult to retrofit into the game now.

What I do crave and don't think it would be too difficult is for the contents of the Transports to be shown when I'm loading another unit onto them. It's very frustrating when I'm trying to build that 9th Armored Div or 1st Marine Exp Force by loading them into Transports in the same city. I usually wind up moving some Transports out of port and have them just loll around in the open while being loaded.

If there was some indication of the units already loaded then when I'm presented with the list of Transports to load it would really be helpful.

And a Carrier group is a hopeless jumble of units. Trying to find the unused Bomber amid all the Destroyers & Battleships is a mess.

 

[maracle]

I just wish you could move a group of units without doing each individually. I have only gone to war once since I got civ3, and I was using almost all immortals. It was such a pain to tell 15 guys standing on the same square to go to the exact same spot. You should be able to right click and move all or something.

 

[Zouave]

Even in Civ I I thought about having computer commanders take control of a certain number of units and execute orders such as "defend", "attack", etc.

It would make things easier indeed.

 

[SlightlyMadman]

Speaking as a programmer myself, one obvious solution has always jumped out at me.

To use a metaphor familiar to most, look at MS Windows Explorer (the file manager, not the web browser). If you control or shift click, you can select multiple files, and drag them into another folder.

I can't imagine how this would possibly be hard to code. The only trick is allowing for multiple selections in the context menu, and that shouldn't be a big deal.

Once you have multiple selected, you get the same cursor as when you click the "move" icon, when you click on a destination, that order is assigned to all the units you had selected. The code to assign a unit a "goto" order is already there, again, it's just a matter of coding the multiple selection.

The only issue with this approach is that fast units would get there first, so it wouldn't solve the escort problem, but it would still be a wonderful addition (and is currently, in my opinion, a glaring omission from the game).

 

[Libertarian]

I have [a piece] of paper that I write down where my ships are...

Ah, that cutting-edge interface delivered by Civ3!

 

[zebomba]

I defend the game strenghts when there are, but as I always say, it's obviously a beta version, they're actually stealing money.
Just between us, despite the -cutting edge- interface, the game has a helluva potential uh?