A Method To The UU Madness

[Pembroke]

Now cross your heart: Do you build F-15s? Man-O-Wars? (Except to trigger a GA, that is)

And that pretty well sums up the problem.

Land units are the real thing in civ. Air units are nice but not a necessity. Navy is something you build when you are bored.

Having a crappy UU really robs a civ of its potential.

My suggestion: Make all UUs land units.

And before you cry out let me say that having special ships available to some is a nice feature. But they shouldn't be the civ's UU.

So how about expanding the concept of Unique Units:

Every civ has a Unique Unit and that unit is always a land unit.

In addition there are trait specific units. These units are all naval units and available only to civs sharing the trait. Thus each civ has access to two trait specific units and with the addition of Agricultural and Seafaring traits there are 8 special naval units.

BTW this is not a new idea. Many mods have the concept of trait units so why not import the concept to the standard civ, too.

For example, the trait specific naval units could be:

Expansionist: Canoe. Or some other early sea vessel. The idea being to give expansionist civs the ability to expand early. And to get them out of a bad isolated starting position.

Militaristic: War Galley. Dominate the early seas.

Seafaring: Longboat. An early sea vessel discovered before caravel that is suitable for long range exploration in the viking style.

Religious: Galleass. An improved caravel that is suitable for colonization style exploration a la the Spanish.

Commercial: Man-O-War. The dominant ship for all those commercial colonial empires.

Industrious: Monitor. A better ironclad.

Agricultural: RO-RO Ship. An improved transport for the modern ages.

Scientific: ECM Cruiser. State-of-the-art modern warship capable of countering aerial and missile attacks.

 

[snowmelk]

I would even go further. Why restrict trait specific units only to naval units? As you said, a navy is something you build when you get bored (it's a shame that it is that way, but that's another topic...)
The scout is already a trait specific unit, and there could be more. Units are one of the key features in Civ, and some diversity would add a lot of fun.
Maybe trait specific buildings would also be a good idea?

I don't want to say get rid of UU, and trait specific units should not dominate the UU. In contrary, as you said, every nation should have a good land UU. Maybe UUs should always be good military units and trait specific units more for the "exotic" stuff.

 

[Ivan the Kulak]

Better to give each civ 2 UU and make sure one is a land unit.

 

[alpha wolf 64]

I would have made the English UU the Redcoat, and the American UU the doughboy.

 

[Bane Star]

What about Each having thier own Land UU, and a secondary Air or Sea or even Settler/explorer/worker UU depending on the civ.

 

[Pembroke]

That would be great! Except it would require creating 30+ new UUs... Of course, there already are mods around there that have plenty of UUs. I remember even one where the plan was to have unique graphics for each civ for each unit effectively making every unit a UU! (Don't know whether it was finished, though.)

The snowmelk's idea of having 1 land unique unit + 1 exotic trait unit is a good one. There already is the scout, and some of these exotics could be ships like the Man-O-War.

Hey, I like this. If Firaxis doesn't do it I will probably mod my game to just that.

Anyone have good ideas for Firaxis as to what to have for trait units?

Expansionist: Scout (already there)
Commercial: Man-O-War (already there)

Seafaring ought to have the viking longboat, I think. But others could be really something exotic. But not _tremendously_ good units to keep things in balance, though.

How about restricting the new trebuchet unit to Scientific civs?

 

[Bane Star]

Originally posted by Pembroke
That would be great! Except it would require creating 30+ new UUs... Of course, there already are mods around there that have plenty of UUs. I remember even one where the plan was to have unique graphics for each civ for each unit effectively making every unit a UU! (Don't know whether it was finished, though.)

If it was a Fantasy Mod, then your talking about mine, Yes I'm still working on it, Yes I still have UU's for each unit for each race, Yes they are all new Graphics,

 

[Xen]

The best American UU would be the ranger- arguabley the most potent subsect of soldires in the US military, even more so then the marines

 

[Lord Beverage]

I believe the choice of UU for each civ was the most exceptional military unit with regards to other equivilent military units during the time when said civilization was at the hieght of its power. The F-14 and Man-O-War would therefore be obvious choices.

What good would a Redcoat have been without the ship that dominated the seas for ~300 years. Others might say the Longbowman but I believe it would be hard to argue that England was anywhere near the apex of its power during that time. The Doughboy? What was exceptional about them compared to other infantry of the time other than thier lack of experience? Likewise we were hardly near the apex of our power then as well. The ranger? Perhaps, but you would have to argue that the Army Rangers would surpass all other special ops units in all regards. The F-14 did just that when it was first built, and in still does in some areas. The B-52 or Nimitz-class carrier are the only other two I would consider for the title.

Now considering the relative usefulness (or lack thereof) of air and sea power in Civ3 I believe they should have been made more exceptional in thier respective fields to compensate, but I do not disagree with thier selection.