A suggestion for the Samurai

[Cyclonic]

Hello civvers...

While pondering the UUs for my mod, I had this idea for the Samurai, and can't decide whether its any good. I haven't implemented it, but I think it's possible.

Firaxis have made a fast unit which can retreat, and which is available with Chivalry. Yet it does not requires Horses. What does this mean? Do they have horses or don't they? Have they invented the Running Sandal?

Japan had horses, but of a small breed and not in great numbers. The default setup seems to iimply a force which 'kind of' has horses, but at the same time 'kind of' doesn't. It plays OK, but it looks a little strange. (As an aside, there is no need for the game to simulate this at all. Japan might have possessed huge numbers of horses, or none. But since Firaxis started it...)

The obvious alternatives are:
1 Samurai do require Horses, and get 2 MP.
2 Samurai do not require Horses, are foot units, and are cheaper to build.
Both are perfectly reasonable. But try this for size:
3 Samurai *are sometimes mounted and sometimes not*.

As the Japenese, on reaching Chivalry you can build either the Samurai or, if you have the resource, the Mounted Samurai. The intention is to create a situation in which some Samurai are mounted and some are not

No extra graphics would be needed, just a new unit in the bic.

Am I...
Propounding a great idea?
Taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut?
Or just barking up the wrong historical tree in the first place?

Cheers
Cyclonic

 

[Smoking mirror]

When PTW comes out there is going to be a set of "Feudal japan" graphics, so I guess you could wait till then, I think the problem was; when to have the Japanese UU, the Chinese have a mounted unit that moves extra fast, so why not have a japanese foot unit that moves exrta fast? You could make the samuri available at the time of the swordsman, there are loads of chivalry UUs already.
Indian units can build war elephants wtihout horses, iron or even (it would seem) Elephants.

The default rules for civ 3 are a little odd in places, the "running sandle" effect is just one of them.

 

[Kryten]

Originally posted by Cyclonic
The obvious alternatives are:
1) Samurai do require Horses, and get 2 MP.
2) Samurai do not require Horses, are foot units, and are cheaper to build.
Both are perfectly reasonable. But try this for size:
3) Samurai *are sometimes mounted and sometimes not*.

But you are missing another obvious alternative:-
4) Some foot soldiers move faster than others.

Remember that the speed of a unit depends not so much on the amount of armor they wore (although this is a factor), but more apon the type of formation they fought in. For example, mounted troops wearing mail or bronze scale armor and carring a large shield but fighting in a loose open formation would move far more quickly than unarmoured and shieldless horsemen who are trying to stay in a tight formation, kneecap to kneecap. So there have always been two basic types of horsemen; open order light cavalry for speed and close order heavy cavalry for shock.

Well....it's the same with foot soldiers. Most infantry in history fought in tight close formation, and so would move slowly. But some, such as the hellenistic peltasts, Roman auxiliaries, Zulu Impis, Aztec warriors, Napoleonic light infantry, and Samurai, all fought in an open loose formation, thus were able to move faster.

As another example, think of British Cavalry of the 1850's Crimean War period, manoeuvring in straight kneecap-to-kneecap lines, constantly stopping to dress their ranks and raining in their horses to stay level with the man either side of them. Now pit these against a Zulu Impi of the same period, with no internal organisation, no dressing of the ranks, just everyone running as fast as they can. I think you'd agree that giving both these units a move of 2 would be about right.

If someone ever gets round to making a Napoleonic scenario, then I'd fully expect to see grenadiers & line infantry moving 1, heavy cavalry & curirassiers AND light infantry moving 2, while lancers & hussars move 3.

(Anyway, if you've ever seen a Samurai film....and "The Severn Samurai" is the best....then you always see them running about at full pelt! )

 

[sween32]

The Roman Legionary is considered mounted in the game... atleast it used to be when there was actually a mounted tag. Don't know if they made it a foot unit now.

I actually think Samarai should be a 3/2 with 4 movement, stay mounted, and replace the swordsman at chivalry.

 

[Kryten]

Originally posted by sween32
The Roman Legionary is considered mounted in the game... atleast it used to be when there was actually a mounted tag. Don't know if they made it a foot unit now.

?

Forgive me, but hasn't the Roman Legionary in Civ3 (and in Civ1, Civ2 and ToT for that matter) always had a movement of 1?

 

[sween32]

yeah, they have one movement. but, they are not foot units as far as tags are conserned. and in the original release of Civ3 the Mounted tag was flagged.

 

[Kryten]

Originally posted by sween32
yeah, they have one movement. but, they are not foot units as far as tags are conserned. and in the original release of Civ3 the Mounted tag was flagged.

Oh, I see. Sounds like 'slippery-program-designer's-finger' to me.
Either that or they intended the Mounted tag to do somethng special and wanted the Legionary to also be able to do this special thing, but it was never implemented.
(I didn't get into modding untill after the 1st....or was it the 2nd?....patch, and it's obviously been fixed/changed since the first release).

 

[sween32]

The mounted flag is for units that move more then one space, so it was obviously a mistake for the Legionary. On flat surface, they go their normal movement, but on mountains, jungle, etc. they only go 1 space. So, basically there is no difference between a foot unit and a mounted unit as far as ability, because foot units go 1 space anyway. It was probably just to differentiate in the editor. They should have kept it, cause that UNUSED flag that replaces it can only do one thing, and that's to be unused.

 

[Cyclonic]

Thanks for the input folks. Yes, it's a shame there's no Mounted flag and bonus vs Mounted in the game. You could reduce the tendency for city assults to be carried out by horses. It looks like the designers tried it but somehow couldn't make it work. I've tried to address this a little by adding a Man-at-Arms to my game (just last night, in fact, so he's not tested yet).

Kryten: your argument about loose formations feels sound. Because the game doesn't feature fast light infantry much I was forgetting the possibility. I'll keep the '2 move no horses' feature. The Samurai is therefore a UU because it has the speed without the lightness. The lack of resource dependency for the Japanese GA is good to keep, as it reflects the lack of natural resources that shaped their history.

Don't you just hate it when you think about something for ages and then finally make no change at all

Actually, I will be changing the Samurai's defense factor, because I've reduced it for all the Chivalry units (Knights with the same defense as rifle Cavalry?).

 

[W.i.n.t.e.r]

Why don't U make mounted Samurai ??? Just take one of the mounted units (I suggest the mounted archer as Samurai had to be able to hit their target with a bow from horseback) and find a decent head to put on top (and perhaps some armour that goes with it) and U R done, and will have both foot soldiers and mounted ones for Japan...

 

[SK138]

I think a mounted samurai unit was one of the extra units included in the PTW pack.

 

[embryodead]

Can you no0bs please stop bringing up threads that are 1 YEAR OLD???

 

[SK138]

lol, i got the link from a different thread, didnt know it was that old

 

[zulu9812]

btw, the Samurai should be mounted - the word originally meant 'mounted warrior'. The Firaxis Samurai is very much an Akira Kurasawa Seven Samurai type figure, from the |Tokugawa period, and from that point in the history the samurai didn't actually have very much to do. In the Heian period, where most of the fighting was done, samurai fought from horseback.

And yes, I'm getting tired of newbies bumping old threads as well. Padma - I believe a few exemplary bannings are in order...