Inspiration from People's General

[Alyosh]

If anyone has played SSI's People's General, you'll know where my suggestion is coming from.

Instead of having separate artillery or archery units, why not have the ability to add or remove various specialty contingent units to basic infantry and cavalry units. These specialty contingent units (such as catapults, archers, skirmishers or headquarters) would give the units to which they were added additional benefits and penalties. For example, a catapult contingent unit could give the base unit additional strength vs. cities/fortresses but decrease its speed to 1 hex. A skirmisher contingent could decrease the base unit's overall strength but prevent enemy units from passing by.

I've always loved the combat model of the Panzer General series, so I think it's really exciting that Civ 5 is using that game as a template for combat.

 

[MrHan]

IMO, your opinion sounds like fun. What with the weird scaling of tiles in civ and insane ranges that archers now have, your suggestion sounds pretty reasonable.

But this mechanic, if applied word for word as said in your post, sounds incompatible with Civ; just because it worked in another game doesn't mean it will necessarily work for civ. There's so much you need to manage already in civ that additional unit micro would bog the game down more. On top of that, applying such a mechanic would take away from the available variety of units, of which there is barely enough as it is.

There's going to be unit promotions, though, which will be enhanced in Civ V. It could be nice if they incorporated some of your suggestions (additional strength in exchange for speed, etc) and added variety to available promotions. Aside from that though... I'm not so sure.

 

[Alyosh]

My suggestion would involve a reduction in the array of units - there would just be a single type of infantry and cavalry unit per time period. The specialty contingent is what would provide variety. The way I see it, tech progression would also allow for upgrades to the types and strengths of contingency units (like a spearman contingent replaced by a pikeman contingent or the emergence of anti-air specialty contingents later in the game.) This would provide for much more variety than simply increasing the number of base types available.

I don't see this as too much to keep track of. Certainly not as difficult as keeping tabs on the myriad promotions available in Civ4. If you add a specialty contingent, it could easily be graphically represented in the unit itself so you could tell at a glance if that unit of rifleman has a contingent of skirmishers or a headquarters contingent.