About Hidden Nationality

[Alzara]

Popejubal forget it. Hell sure you are right. It is totally realistic to come in and burn down ships in my port, regardless. There are no consequences or disturbances caused by this action.

Are you happy?

Al

 

[Kasdar]

I still think that barbarians, animals, and those friendly to them should not be able to attack hidden nationality units.

 

[Alzara]

Yeah that does make sense, and there seems to be a consensus that attacking HN units in a city with a stack of defenders is a silly idea.

Magister's "promotions" idea could work quite well if there was a way to allow friendly units to move onto the same city tile as a HN unit. Maybe even just adding the "invisible" status to a HN unit in a city with defenders?

Al

 

[popejubal]

Yeah that does make sense, and there seems to be a consensus that attacking HN units in a city with a stack of defenders is a silly idea.

I do agree that being able to attack HN units in a city full of units that are willing to defend the HN unit is a silly idea. I just expect that if you want plausible deniability, then you need to not defend the HN unit. If you are defending the unit, then the nationality isn't very well hidden, that's all.

I do think that the game mechanic is somewhat limited, but I think that should be addressed by having the unit start invisible or disguised as another unit until it makes its first attack or something like that (disguised as civilians, perhaps).

I just figure that if Canada invites some super-terrorist to hang out in Quebec for a long weekend, they won't defend him if the USA notices him there since that kind of defeats the purpose of hiding a unit's nationality.

 

[WCH]

Units which can turncoat would be a pretty awesome feature, actually. In older Civ games you could "bribe" units to come to your side... imagine if doing so didn't force them to change their flag, and they could pretend to be loyal until the time was right!

Or imagine a unit which, disgusted at the atrocities it has witnessed (after razing 12 enemy cities in a row, say), disbanded. Would work as an event... that way it'd be nice and rare, but still possible.

 

[Witzzard]

Why an easy solution to this problem when you can make it difficult eh?
It would be much more simple to take the HN away, if a unit is built and give them some one time spell, wich re-addy HN (it's don't even necessary for a lot of units, because the most HN units i know, can change between HN - Non HN).
Problems with this idea? - Enemy Players would see that you built an HN unit... but they also would see that, when a HN unit is in your city, while no one can joint that tile, if he isn't at war with you.......

 

[Ecofarm]

Besides boats and a hero (Alaz) being instantly killed on creation, I discovered a 3rd instant-kill that is super annoying:

The nightwatch from teching Deception and founding Esus. It goes something like this:

You finish Deception and get a Nightwatch. Great! Now I can spread my religion (and the unit doesn't die when it does so, awesome!). OOPS!!!

Spoiler :

AI units killed the Nightwatch the turn it appeared. Need bowyers to spread religion now.

Moral of the stories: Make sure there are no AI near a city that is about to get a HN unit.

 

[Alzara]

Lol the amount of times my nightwatch has been run-down in the field when transferring him from one city to another.

I tend to reveal their nationalities as soon as possible. It annoys me when they get attacked in a city, but I really can't fault allied horsemen from mowing down a bunch of shifty archers running around my territory outside of the safety of city walls

Al

 

[Arcite36575]

I agree with Popejubal. If you don't want rival civilizations to be raiding your HN units in your country, it's quite simple: don't sign open borders agreements with other civs. The whole idea of HN units is like pirates or modern day stae-sponsored terrorists. Countries IRL which sponsor terrorism don't have open border agreements with other countries (i.e. Iran).

Countries IRL which resort to state-sponsored terrorism generally have poor relations with their neighbors for a very obvious reason. You can't be having open borders, mutually beneficial trade, AND an undeclared shooting war raging across the same border.

 

[xienwolf]

Well, if you really want it different I changed how HN works in my ModComp so that they cannot attack cities, nor be attacked while in them.

 

[Kasdar]

way to go Xienwolf

 

[xienwolf]

Eh, I just did that one because I was there and happened to notice it while setting up another field. I haven't actually even begun the work I intend to do on HN, but most of that is probably not quite possible to pull off, so I won't say much more about it...

 

[SnowlyWhite]

it's a super unit specially made for hn units... it's called trojan horse and it's one of the greatest things around; especially since your hn units can unload, attack, load back in the horse in the same turn(which definitely seems op. if you ask me, but that's another story...)

what also seems absurd(not that the ai cares about it) is... hn units with special names(like lanun's pirates... if a pirate attacked me, it's a no brainer that from all the civs. on the map, the ship belonged to the lanun which seems rather stupid)

 

[Bad Player]

Except that it's a pirate ship. It is in port flying no flag and not being hostile. Outsiders have no right to come into a city and start destroying ships in port. It's illegal. Osama has no bearing on a boat in port.

Your example falls down when you compare it to two enemy civilisations. If two civs are at war and you are at peace with both, then it would annoy your government supremely if one came burning down ships of the other while they were resting in your port. Although this is technically possible in civ it is still a flaw.

Also, even if you somehow accept that random troops can enter another civilisations' ports and start burning ships down, there is the issue of one having JUST completed a pirate ship, only to have it destroyed before you can use it. How do they know it's a pirate ship? It has never left port, has no reputation, and the flag it flies is irrelevant. Again, very obviously a gross act of vandalism!

Al

It'd be cool if spy type units could go into ports and sink docked ships ships!

 

[Mylon]

It would be nice of hidden nationality was a spell. The ship checks to see if any units can see it, and, if not, it lowers its flag and raises a pirate flag. This way the HN unit can get into position, and then have at it. This really helps, as most HN units are weaker. than other units available at the time.

 

[Willgar]

Well, if you really want it different I changed how HN works in my ModComp so that they cannot attack cities, nor be attacked while in them.

Simple and effective....

 

[Alzara]

Bad Player... that's a good idea. See I don't mind spys etc sinking my docked ships. That's a realism I've experienced from enduring CoE shadow attacks (from my rival players)
Spy-style units are fine for sinking my ships in port, just not random "friendly" units, for obvious reasons

Al

 

[Shadow World]

The idea of HN units (unmask) showing nationality is an awesome idea. Then the unit could start with out HN and player's are not sacrificing endless turns to make units that are destroyed before they have a chance to be used.

Back to Binladin, which is why I'm posting. Wouldn't it be fun to have guilds that would recruit on their own as an event, and mark the unit with it's perspective guild. Say hosting guild, what ever guild give x chance that a unit appears (masked or unmasked.) Or maybe even a great person that allows construction of a building that may generate these type of units.