trickofthehand
Prince
- Joined
- Oct 16, 2007
- Messages
- 310
the civ5 suggestions threads all seem to be kind of general, I thought we could put in more specific things we'd like to see here. Would make it easy for CIV developers to look over the thread and see what exactly their fans think needs improvement, as long as we keep from re-posting what others have posted.
Also if this could be kept of commentary such as "oh thats cool" and other stuff it would keep the thread relatively smaller and keep people from having to go through pages and pages of commentary just to see the actual suggestions.
On another note, if a moderator could watch the thread and simply edit the original post with other's suggestions, the rest of the thread could be used for discussion while all the suggestions would be kept on the first page and we wouldn't have to dig through pages of comments to find people's suggestions.
-military researcher: a small portion of research is re-directed to a military researcher, which researches military technologies opened up by discovering the traditional technologies. His discoveries would be small in scale and used to improve your unit's capabilities. For example, with gunpowder units some research projects might include: smokeless powder, cartridgeless ammunition, improved rifling, electronic firing, gas-operated bolts.
Many times throughout history civilizations have gained victory over their technologically equal opponents by having superior military training, equipment or technology available to them. Compare the tanks of all World War 2 combatants for an excellent example of the new dimension of game-play a military researcher would bring to Civilization.
General Combat
-bonuses for all units vs their obsolete counterparts. Everytime I lose a missile cruiser to a WW2 destroyer it makes me want to punch kittens. I could understand if I lose that cruiser vs 3 destroyers, but its nonsense that I should lose it when attacked by a sole destroyer.
-reworked ranged attacks. Just like Civ3 some units should have a ranged attack to where they can engage units far from themselves. this should only be available to siege type units and naval units.
non-combat artillery: siege weapon strength values should be abyssmal, their primary use should be just like CIV3, a non-combat unit that was used to conduct ranged fire missions. to counter the artillery stack strategies of civ3 though I propose a reworked siege weapon system through the use of fire missions.
fire missions: siege weapons would be used to support offensive/defensive missions. by shifting your unit to offensive it could be used to bombard and lower city/unit/fort defenses, as well as provide a pre-attack bombardment to soften up the defenders. defensive use would have your siege unit wait until friendly units in the siege unit's AOR are attacked, then it would provide a defensive barrage to weaken attacking units.
the way this new system would work is by granting a siege unit X amount of support missions per turn. for example, a modern day mobile artillery may be granted 2 support missions per turn, any action other than bombarding unit/fort/city defenses would cost only 1 support mission. An example of the available fire missions below:
Example: 4 mobile artillery units are supporting a stack of infantry positioned outside an enemy city. the first artillery chooses to bombard the city and lower it's defenses which costs it all it's support missions. The second artillery is commanded to wait (W), and afterwards two of the infantry units attack the enemy city, which causes the artillery commanded to wait (W) to use it's 2 fire missions to provide a pre-attack barrage on the units defending vs the infantry. the third artillery chooses to go into defensive mode, and after the player's turn his stack is attacked by 2 enemy units. The third artillery uses its two fire missions to provide a defensive barrage vs the attacking units. The fourt artillery is ordered to provide harrasment/interdiction fire on a small radius of squares inside it's AOR. This would make a number of units equal to the artillery's available fire missions which enter it's harrasment/interdiction AOE to lose their turn and take some damage.
this system can be used not just with siege units but also with naval units.
the reason behind this new siege system is because A) siege units attacking other units directly is lunacy, B) makes siege units more versatile and useful when in the modern times they tend to lose their usefulness. the only real use behind them in modern times is when first making a beach-head in an enemy continent, once you own a few enemy cities you can fly in enough stealth bombers to basically make your artillery obsolete. C) this new siege system works hand in hand with other proposed changes in this thread.
-custom units. Galactic Civilizations has an excellent unit creation system that brings endless re-playability and greatly reduces the /yawn factor of war.
For Civilization, each unit would be granted X amount of 'build points' which could be used to customize their equipment and properties.
example: Early in the game you decide to create two custom fighting units to replace your regular units. Both units have 10 build points available. Unit 1 you decide to give heavy armor (3 build points), heavy weapons (3 build points), and offensive training for a 15% bonus on offense (4 points). Unit 2 you decide to give light armor (2 points), light weapons (2 points) and increased movement (5 points).
This is a very rough example but gives a taste of what the custom unit building system could be like. New military technologies might increase the number of build points, give new equipment or new training.
-modern age defense projects: This would allow your military researcher to build modern-day defense projects, which would replace the 'basic' unit you just gained through research with a more advanced version. Not only to create more flavor in the game but also to mirror real-world military research.
Example: You research advanced flight which allows you to create Jet fighters. Now your military researcher has new defense projects available to him, such as the F16, the MIG fighter, Mirage, etc.. These defense projects would be more expensive than regular militay research, but upon completion your civ would be able to build the researched unit. Once a project has been completed it cannot be built by any other civilization and a random defense project related to the technology wich opened up the project you just built, would be unavailable to you. This would prevent one civilization from dominating all research projects and leaving all other civs stuck with the 'basic' models. These advanced units would have certain strenghts and weaknesses but overall be more powerful than the 'base' unit.
This would go hand in hand with the unit customization system, imagine an f16 built to intercept aircraft, and one designed in a fighter/bomber role.
-improved stack defense: Drives me bonkers to have an enemy unit attack one of my stacks and have it engage the lowest health unit, specially after I just moved another unit there to defend the weak unit. this seems to happen mostly in naval combat, and makes having carriers a very risky endeavor since the enemy goes straight for them every time. A promotion could be available that allows units experienced enough to actually be able to choose which enemy in a stack they can attack, or it might be available to stealth units. For any other inter-unit combat scenarios though the strongest unit in a stack should always defend.
-Biological/chemical weapons: Short of nukes there's not much to stop a giant stack of death headed to your territory. Less cataclysmic weapons could be incorporated along the lines of biological/chemical weapons. Their presence in modern combat is undeniable and should be represented in-game. A chem/bio attack might not neccesarily do damage (though it could), it might instead give units inside it's AOE combat /movement penalties. The cost of all WMDs should be raised to reflect how difficult it is to create an arsenal in the real world, and each weapon might create one unhappy citizen inside the city it's stationed in. Chem/bio weapons would also add an interesting twist to an improved UN system. Extremely large stashes of chem/bio weapons might cause other civs to like you less, perhaps even leading to a unified attack against your civilization or trade embargoes.
-war ally shared vision: share vision with your war allies. Along the same lines, war allies may receive support from your units in the form of fire missions and the such if you choose to allow it.
-sattelites: Sattelites affect our world in such a way that they cannot be ignored in civilization. Sattelites would be introduced in the commercial and military variety. The resource cost of sattelites would be extremely high however, to reflect the years of research and development behind each sattelite put into orbit. Also from a game perspective it would prevent a player from mass producing sattelites to harness mass bonuses. Perhaps a shared sattelite 'cap' may be put into place, allowing X number of sattelites TOTAL, and shared by all countries. This would help give the Space Race age a better feel in a game of civilization.
Commercial sattelites: Commercial sattelites would give a bonus to commerce, or to research or both as chosen by the player.
Military sattelites: Military sattelites would allow the civ to grant bonuses to friendly units. With more sattelite launches the bonuses would be cumulative. Suggested bonuses:
Bonus 1: Increase all friendly unit's sight range by 1
Bonus 2: allow any square a friendly unit passes by to remain free of fog of war for 1 turn.
Bonus 3: Increase interception chance of all fighter air units
Bonus 4: Increase interception chance of all ground-based units
Bonus 5: Increase missile (WMD included) evasion chance
Bonus 6: Increase missile (WMD included) interception chance
Depending on how far ahead Civilization 5 plans to go into the future, some options would even include space-based weapons platforms, phasing out nuclear weapons and adding yet another element into a improved UN system.
New World Wonder: GPS system. The gps system could be considered a modern wonder of the world. It helped usher in a commercial revolution as well as giving America and those countries it chose to share it's capabilities with a giant edge in combat. A new CIV wonder would reflect both the commercial and militaristic aspects of such, perhaps by granting X amount of free commercial and military sattelites.
Anti-sattelite weaponry: Available through military research, would give the civilization the capability to destroy an enemy sattelite. Because of the difficulty in shooting down a sattelite though all sattelites would have a high evasion chance, with perhaps better sattelites being researchable through military researcher, just like better intercept weapons. Anti-sattelite weaponry would be extremely expensive to build so it cannot be mass produced to reflect the expensive cost of launching sattelites.
-land/naval mines: The effect of land/naval mines in war and even peacetime cannot be denied, and should be represented in CIV5.
land mines: new unit, mine layer (can be foot soldiers at first and evolve into vehicle in later ages), would lay mines on a tile they occupy. the speed that they can lay mines could be affected by military researcher, who may research more effective mines, or faster ways to lay mines. Mines would stop all production in that square, as well as act as a cultural barrier not allowing another civ's culture to enter that square. Mines would also cause a negative relations impact if used to impede another civ's cultural growth. This adds a unique strategy to cultural victories, and since mines would only be available later in game, would prevent players from creating tons of them to box other civilizations in. The military effect would be as such: Depending on the saturation of your mines in a tile (saturation would be a measure of mine's strength, and could be upgraded through military research), every unit to enter would receive X damage as well as have all remaining movement points removed. Mines would lose saturation effect as more units pass through their tile until eventually it reaches a level where it does no damage to enemy units. It would however still impede movement and production until an enemy mine laying unit removes the mines from the tile.
naval mines: much the same as land mines except for they do not impede cultural growth. They do however act much like the Blockade function and keep all naval trade from passing through their tile.
Naval Combat
-no more carrier targetting: The AI in Civ 4 has a SERIOUS flaw in that it can spot and target a Carrier even when there is absolutely no chance that it has actual sight of it. You can be in the middle of the ocean and enemy ships will ALWAYS find and target your carrier first. Even if you defend the carrier with a stack of ships it will ALWAYS be targetted first. the new stack defense feature would eliminate this, and even ships with the promotion that allows them to choose their target, or stealth units, would still be subject to defensive barrages from the supporting ships in the stack using the new ranged attacks feature.
-no more harbor-hiding. Enemy ships that attack a unit while still within a city (trying to break a blockade) should suffer major combat penalties, just like real ships do. Enemy ships in port should also be attackable with the enemy again suffering combat penalties. An exception would be if the ship ends it's turn inside a third party's harbor which is neutral to the war.
-improved submarines. Subs in the real world are the scourge of the seas, in civilization they are mostly just a quick and easy way to lose a few nukes. It seems like the AI is almost always able to spot subs right away. To mirror the way real-world subs operate a stealth rating would be assigned to all submarines. Each turn that the sub does not attack or is not attacked it builds it's rating, to a maximum of 100%. Upon attacking the sub loses X amount of stealth rating and must remain un-aggresive to re-build it's stealth rating. A sub's stealth rating would reduce enemy's chance to spot the sub, even if they are right on top of it. The sub's stealth rating would also work to allow a submarine to withdraw from combat, both on offense and defense.
Example: A brand new sub is built and leaves it's home harbor. It starts off at a stealth rating of 15%, giving it a 15% chance to avoid detection by all other vessels, 15% chance to withdraw from attack or when being attacked. The sub chooses to go 'deep' and not move, and therefore gains 15% stealth rating per turn it remains 'deep'. After two turns it has acheived a stealth rating of 45% and proceeds to make a course for enemy waters. Since it is no longer 'going deep' and is moving, but is not engaging in combat, it gains 5% stealth rating per turn. after 2 more turns it comes into range of an enemy destroyer. It now has 55% stealth rating, however the enemy destroyer has an ability that reduces all submarine's inside of its AOR to have their stealth rating reduced by 25% as long as they stay inside the destroyer's AOR. That would bring our submarine's stealth rating to 30%, which would make the destroyer have only a 70% chance to spot the submarine. From here we have 3 different scenarios.
Scenario 1: The destroyer does not spot the submarine and passes by it.
Scenario 2: the destroyer spots the submarine and attacks. Each round of combat the submarine now only has a 30% chance to withdraw from combat. Yes, that would mean that a submarine could escape from combat unscathed, slightly wounded, or extremely wounded.
Scenario 3: the submarine attacks the destroyer and enters combat with a 30% chance to withdraw if losing.
This new system for subs portrays them more accurately and also ties in some very interesting military research upgrades (more stealth per turn, more stealth reduction for other ships etc...). It's chance to withdraw per round of defensive combat does mean that a sub might withdraw from a battle though it might in the end win, however in the real world subs are not defensive in nature, strictly offensive.
-ranged attacks: Post-industrial age ships do not broadside each other into oblivion. In modern times they often do not even see each other, therefore all post-industrial ships would have a ranged attack. The more modern a ship the longer it's range. This would give an advantage to modern ships when attacking their antique counterparts who might be out of range for a counter-attack. This brings up the problem of modern ships being able to outrange and decimate WW2 era ships, which while real-word accurate, would make for crappy gameplay. A possible solution would be to have the ship with the range advantage gain combat bonuses but attack within the defending ship's range (free move so that you aren't forced to stay at the square the game system forced you to move to).
Ranged naval attacks would also share the same qualities as siege unit's reworked combat system. Meaning they could provide harrasment/interdiction fire, lower enemy defenses, and provide defensive and offensive barrages. The new ranged combat system would allow naval vessels to support each other and would finally give damaged ships a chance in battle, as well as carriers.
Naval ships however would have their regular attack be considered a free fire mission, and not use up their pool of fire mission points available. This mechanic would make naval support as important in CIV as it is in real-life.
-stealth destroyer: no longer possible for enemy units to occupy same tile as a stealth destroyer or to have them run completely past them. Maybe it could be an option, engage or dont' engage, but atm its annoying to have enemy units run straight through stealth destroyers without initiating combat.
-kill unit flag: It is accepted that a naval unit represents a single ship, while a land unit tends to represent an entire division (or less). Currently missiles can destroy entire units but seeing as in modern navies battleships were phased out because aircraft carriers could do the same job they did only better, aircraft should be allowed to destroy naval units completely. This would make aircraft carriers appeal to more players and the AI, as well as make them more than anti-air support. It would also allow aircraft carriers to defend themselves better.
-missile defense: all modern day naval units have a sophisticated missile defense system, however due to the complexity and accuracy involved in intercepting faster-than-sound missiles they have a record of mixed results. Missile defense in modern day navies would allow for some interesting unit customization, with new upgrades to missiles, and missile defense systems being able to be researched by the military researcher.
Also if this could be kept of commentary such as "oh thats cool" and other stuff it would keep the thread relatively smaller and keep people from having to go through pages and pages of commentary just to see the actual suggestions.
On another note, if a moderator could watch the thread and simply edit the original post with other's suggestions, the rest of the thread could be used for discussion while all the suggestions would be kept on the first page and we wouldn't have to dig through pages of comments to find people's suggestions.
-military researcher: a small portion of research is re-directed to a military researcher, which researches military technologies opened up by discovering the traditional technologies. His discoveries would be small in scale and used to improve your unit's capabilities. For example, with gunpowder units some research projects might include: smokeless powder, cartridgeless ammunition, improved rifling, electronic firing, gas-operated bolts.
Many times throughout history civilizations have gained victory over their technologically equal opponents by having superior military training, equipment or technology available to them. Compare the tanks of all World War 2 combatants for an excellent example of the new dimension of game-play a military researcher would bring to Civilization.
General Combat
-bonuses for all units vs their obsolete counterparts. Everytime I lose a missile cruiser to a WW2 destroyer it makes me want to punch kittens. I could understand if I lose that cruiser vs 3 destroyers, but its nonsense that I should lose it when attacked by a sole destroyer.
-reworked ranged attacks. Just like Civ3 some units should have a ranged attack to where they can engage units far from themselves. this should only be available to siege type units and naval units.
non-combat artillery: siege weapon strength values should be abyssmal, their primary use should be just like CIV3, a non-combat unit that was used to conduct ranged fire missions. to counter the artillery stack strategies of civ3 though I propose a reworked siege weapon system through the use of fire missions.
fire missions: siege weapons would be used to support offensive/defensive missions. by shifting your unit to offensive it could be used to bombard and lower city/unit/fort defenses, as well as provide a pre-attack bombardment to soften up the defenders. defensive use would have your siege unit wait until friendly units in the siege unit's AOR are attacked, then it would provide a defensive barrage to weaken attacking units.
the way this new system would work is by granting a siege unit X amount of support missions per turn. for example, a modern day mobile artillery may be granted 2 support missions per turn, any action other than bombarding unit/fort/city defenses would cost only 1 support mission. An example of the available fire missions below:
Example: 4 mobile artillery units are supporting a stack of infantry positioned outside an enemy city. the first artillery chooses to bombard the city and lower it's defenses which costs it all it's support missions. The second artillery is commanded to wait (W), and afterwards two of the infantry units attack the enemy city, which causes the artillery commanded to wait (W) to use it's 2 fire missions to provide a pre-attack barrage on the units defending vs the infantry. the third artillery chooses to go into defensive mode, and after the player's turn his stack is attacked by 2 enemy units. The third artillery uses its two fire missions to provide a defensive barrage vs the attacking units. The fourt artillery is ordered to provide harrasment/interdiction fire on a small radius of squares inside it's AOR. This would make a number of units equal to the artillery's available fire missions which enter it's harrasment/interdiction AOE to lose their turn and take some damage.
this system can be used not just with siege units but also with naval units.
the reason behind this new siege system is because A) siege units attacking other units directly is lunacy, B) makes siege units more versatile and useful when in the modern times they tend to lose their usefulness. the only real use behind them in modern times is when first making a beach-head in an enemy continent, once you own a few enemy cities you can fly in enough stealth bombers to basically make your artillery obsolete. C) this new siege system works hand in hand with other proposed changes in this thread.
-custom units. Galactic Civilizations has an excellent unit creation system that brings endless re-playability and greatly reduces the /yawn factor of war.
For Civilization, each unit would be granted X amount of 'build points' which could be used to customize their equipment and properties.
example: Early in the game you decide to create two custom fighting units to replace your regular units. Both units have 10 build points available. Unit 1 you decide to give heavy armor (3 build points), heavy weapons (3 build points), and offensive training for a 15% bonus on offense (4 points). Unit 2 you decide to give light armor (2 points), light weapons (2 points) and increased movement (5 points).
This is a very rough example but gives a taste of what the custom unit building system could be like. New military technologies might increase the number of build points, give new equipment or new training.
-modern age defense projects: This would allow your military researcher to build modern-day defense projects, which would replace the 'basic' unit you just gained through research with a more advanced version. Not only to create more flavor in the game but also to mirror real-world military research.
Example: You research advanced flight which allows you to create Jet fighters. Now your military researcher has new defense projects available to him, such as the F16, the MIG fighter, Mirage, etc.. These defense projects would be more expensive than regular militay research, but upon completion your civ would be able to build the researched unit. Once a project has been completed it cannot be built by any other civilization and a random defense project related to the technology wich opened up the project you just built, would be unavailable to you. This would prevent one civilization from dominating all research projects and leaving all other civs stuck with the 'basic' models. These advanced units would have certain strenghts and weaknesses but overall be more powerful than the 'base' unit.
This would go hand in hand with the unit customization system, imagine an f16 built to intercept aircraft, and one designed in a fighter/bomber role.
-improved stack defense: Drives me bonkers to have an enemy unit attack one of my stacks and have it engage the lowest health unit, specially after I just moved another unit there to defend the weak unit. this seems to happen mostly in naval combat, and makes having carriers a very risky endeavor since the enemy goes straight for them every time. A promotion could be available that allows units experienced enough to actually be able to choose which enemy in a stack they can attack, or it might be available to stealth units. For any other inter-unit combat scenarios though the strongest unit in a stack should always defend.
-Biological/chemical weapons: Short of nukes there's not much to stop a giant stack of death headed to your territory. Less cataclysmic weapons could be incorporated along the lines of biological/chemical weapons. Their presence in modern combat is undeniable and should be represented in-game. A chem/bio attack might not neccesarily do damage (though it could), it might instead give units inside it's AOE combat /movement penalties. The cost of all WMDs should be raised to reflect how difficult it is to create an arsenal in the real world, and each weapon might create one unhappy citizen inside the city it's stationed in. Chem/bio weapons would also add an interesting twist to an improved UN system. Extremely large stashes of chem/bio weapons might cause other civs to like you less, perhaps even leading to a unified attack against your civilization or trade embargoes.
-war ally shared vision: share vision with your war allies. Along the same lines, war allies may receive support from your units in the form of fire missions and the such if you choose to allow it.
-sattelites: Sattelites affect our world in such a way that they cannot be ignored in civilization. Sattelites would be introduced in the commercial and military variety. The resource cost of sattelites would be extremely high however, to reflect the years of research and development behind each sattelite put into orbit. Also from a game perspective it would prevent a player from mass producing sattelites to harness mass bonuses. Perhaps a shared sattelite 'cap' may be put into place, allowing X number of sattelites TOTAL, and shared by all countries. This would help give the Space Race age a better feel in a game of civilization.
Commercial sattelites: Commercial sattelites would give a bonus to commerce, or to research or both as chosen by the player.
Military sattelites: Military sattelites would allow the civ to grant bonuses to friendly units. With more sattelite launches the bonuses would be cumulative. Suggested bonuses:
Bonus 1: Increase all friendly unit's sight range by 1
Bonus 2: allow any square a friendly unit passes by to remain free of fog of war for 1 turn.
Bonus 3: Increase interception chance of all fighter air units
Bonus 4: Increase interception chance of all ground-based units
Bonus 5: Increase missile (WMD included) evasion chance
Bonus 6: Increase missile (WMD included) interception chance
Depending on how far ahead Civilization 5 plans to go into the future, some options would even include space-based weapons platforms, phasing out nuclear weapons and adding yet another element into a improved UN system.
New World Wonder: GPS system. The gps system could be considered a modern wonder of the world. It helped usher in a commercial revolution as well as giving America and those countries it chose to share it's capabilities with a giant edge in combat. A new CIV wonder would reflect both the commercial and militaristic aspects of such, perhaps by granting X amount of free commercial and military sattelites.
Anti-sattelite weaponry: Available through military research, would give the civilization the capability to destroy an enemy sattelite. Because of the difficulty in shooting down a sattelite though all sattelites would have a high evasion chance, with perhaps better sattelites being researchable through military researcher, just like better intercept weapons. Anti-sattelite weaponry would be extremely expensive to build so it cannot be mass produced to reflect the expensive cost of launching sattelites.
-land/naval mines: The effect of land/naval mines in war and even peacetime cannot be denied, and should be represented in CIV5.
land mines: new unit, mine layer (can be foot soldiers at first and evolve into vehicle in later ages), would lay mines on a tile they occupy. the speed that they can lay mines could be affected by military researcher, who may research more effective mines, or faster ways to lay mines. Mines would stop all production in that square, as well as act as a cultural barrier not allowing another civ's culture to enter that square. Mines would also cause a negative relations impact if used to impede another civ's cultural growth. This adds a unique strategy to cultural victories, and since mines would only be available later in game, would prevent players from creating tons of them to box other civilizations in. The military effect would be as such: Depending on the saturation of your mines in a tile (saturation would be a measure of mine's strength, and could be upgraded through military research), every unit to enter would receive X damage as well as have all remaining movement points removed. Mines would lose saturation effect as more units pass through their tile until eventually it reaches a level where it does no damage to enemy units. It would however still impede movement and production until an enemy mine laying unit removes the mines from the tile.
naval mines: much the same as land mines except for they do not impede cultural growth. They do however act much like the Blockade function and keep all naval trade from passing through their tile.
Naval Combat
-no more carrier targetting: The AI in Civ 4 has a SERIOUS flaw in that it can spot and target a Carrier even when there is absolutely no chance that it has actual sight of it. You can be in the middle of the ocean and enemy ships will ALWAYS find and target your carrier first. Even if you defend the carrier with a stack of ships it will ALWAYS be targetted first. the new stack defense feature would eliminate this, and even ships with the promotion that allows them to choose their target, or stealth units, would still be subject to defensive barrages from the supporting ships in the stack using the new ranged attacks feature.
-no more harbor-hiding. Enemy ships that attack a unit while still within a city (trying to break a blockade) should suffer major combat penalties, just like real ships do. Enemy ships in port should also be attackable with the enemy again suffering combat penalties. An exception would be if the ship ends it's turn inside a third party's harbor which is neutral to the war.
-improved submarines. Subs in the real world are the scourge of the seas, in civilization they are mostly just a quick and easy way to lose a few nukes. It seems like the AI is almost always able to spot subs right away. To mirror the way real-world subs operate a stealth rating would be assigned to all submarines. Each turn that the sub does not attack or is not attacked it builds it's rating, to a maximum of 100%. Upon attacking the sub loses X amount of stealth rating and must remain un-aggresive to re-build it's stealth rating. A sub's stealth rating would reduce enemy's chance to spot the sub, even if they are right on top of it. The sub's stealth rating would also work to allow a submarine to withdraw from combat, both on offense and defense.
Example: A brand new sub is built and leaves it's home harbor. It starts off at a stealth rating of 15%, giving it a 15% chance to avoid detection by all other vessels, 15% chance to withdraw from attack or when being attacked. The sub chooses to go 'deep' and not move, and therefore gains 15% stealth rating per turn it remains 'deep'. After two turns it has acheived a stealth rating of 45% and proceeds to make a course for enemy waters. Since it is no longer 'going deep' and is moving, but is not engaging in combat, it gains 5% stealth rating per turn. after 2 more turns it comes into range of an enemy destroyer. It now has 55% stealth rating, however the enemy destroyer has an ability that reduces all submarine's inside of its AOR to have their stealth rating reduced by 25% as long as they stay inside the destroyer's AOR. That would bring our submarine's stealth rating to 30%, which would make the destroyer have only a 70% chance to spot the submarine. From here we have 3 different scenarios.
Scenario 1: The destroyer does not spot the submarine and passes by it.
Scenario 2: the destroyer spots the submarine and attacks. Each round of combat the submarine now only has a 30% chance to withdraw from combat. Yes, that would mean that a submarine could escape from combat unscathed, slightly wounded, or extremely wounded.
Scenario 3: the submarine attacks the destroyer and enters combat with a 30% chance to withdraw if losing.
This new system for subs portrays them more accurately and also ties in some very interesting military research upgrades (more stealth per turn, more stealth reduction for other ships etc...). It's chance to withdraw per round of defensive combat does mean that a sub might withdraw from a battle though it might in the end win, however in the real world subs are not defensive in nature, strictly offensive.
-ranged attacks: Post-industrial age ships do not broadside each other into oblivion. In modern times they often do not even see each other, therefore all post-industrial ships would have a ranged attack. The more modern a ship the longer it's range. This would give an advantage to modern ships when attacking their antique counterparts who might be out of range for a counter-attack. This brings up the problem of modern ships being able to outrange and decimate WW2 era ships, which while real-word accurate, would make for crappy gameplay. A possible solution would be to have the ship with the range advantage gain combat bonuses but attack within the defending ship's range (free move so that you aren't forced to stay at the square the game system forced you to move to).
Ranged naval attacks would also share the same qualities as siege unit's reworked combat system. Meaning they could provide harrasment/interdiction fire, lower enemy defenses, and provide defensive and offensive barrages. The new ranged combat system would allow naval vessels to support each other and would finally give damaged ships a chance in battle, as well as carriers.
Naval ships however would have their regular attack be considered a free fire mission, and not use up their pool of fire mission points available. This mechanic would make naval support as important in CIV as it is in real-life.
-stealth destroyer: no longer possible for enemy units to occupy same tile as a stealth destroyer or to have them run completely past them. Maybe it could be an option, engage or dont' engage, but atm its annoying to have enemy units run straight through stealth destroyers without initiating combat.
-kill unit flag: It is accepted that a naval unit represents a single ship, while a land unit tends to represent an entire division (or less). Currently missiles can destroy entire units but seeing as in modern navies battleships were phased out because aircraft carriers could do the same job they did only better, aircraft should be allowed to destroy naval units completely. This would make aircraft carriers appeal to more players and the AI, as well as make them more than anti-air support. It would also allow aircraft carriers to defend themselves better.
-missile defense: all modern day naval units have a sophisticated missile defense system, however due to the complexity and accuracy involved in intercepting faster-than-sound missiles they have a record of mixed results. Missile defense in modern day navies would allow for some interesting unit customization, with new upgrades to missiles, and missile defense systems being able to be researched by the military researcher.
