Another thought on UUs

[Commander Bello]

Most people demand more UUs, with the majority proposing to have era-depending ones.
Although this is fine, my thought is to have a selection to choose from:
At the beginning, you could select if you would like to have the better defender, the better attacker or may be a faster unit with average skills.

After the game started and some requirements have been met, you may have another option to choose your Uniques. Those requirements could be a combination of techs, a given number of improvements built and a certain amount of gold in your treasury. And, maybe, some small wonders.

Since they would be depending on those combinations of factors, all those one-dimensional strategies as "the early bowmen rush", the "settle as fast as you can" and so on would loose their decisive role - at least to a certain degree.

At the next area (Medieval Age), the choice could be made between foot soldiers, mounted soldiers and a maritime unit. Again, it would be based on the combination of factors.

In the Industrial Age, it would be between Infantry, Tanks and Airplanes.

And in the Modern Age, it would be some kind of MechInfantry, Modern Armor and rockets, for instance.

The AI would make it's choice based on the military situation: being at war? More units in enemy territory than enemy units in the own territory? So, go for the better attacker. Or, if defending, choose the better defender. The opponents are far away, maybe on another continent? Go for ships, airplanes and rockets... Not sooooo difficult to program, I'd guess.

There could be either the same UUs per age for all civs to choose from, or (what I would prefer) still a set of individual UUs per civ. The Mayans could get an earlier set in the Medieval Age, than the Germans do, but their specs would be a little bit lower...

Winning UUs could trigger small "golden ages" of maybe just 3 or 5 turns. Maybe, they would trigger this golden age just after the 3rd or 5th win.

Another idea would be to have MGLs just created only by victorious UUs...

Of course, this would require a much higher number of UUs in the total game, especially if there would be civ-specific sets of them. But this shouldn't be that much a problem, if all the current combat stats would be multiplied by 10. Out of a sudden, you would have quite some space to adjust the combat stats. A Russian Cossack than could have an attack value of 67 and an defending value of 35 for instance, while the "normal" cavalry would stay with the 60/30/xx set.

One effort, which has to be taken, would be the creation of the various graphics. In the worst case, this could result in 31 (nations) times 5 (initial choice and per each of the four ages) times 3 (attacker, defender, ship/airplane/rocket) units, totalling up to around 465 units. But 31 of them are already their, and for quite an number of others not much would have to be changed.

Any thoughts?

 

[polypheus]

Back when Civ 3 was announced with pre-destined UUs, I was opposed because I was opposed to the idea that units should be pre-destined to a Civ thousands of years into the future. I still play with them and think that add flavor to the game. However, I oppose pre-destined UUs for the same reason that most players would not want pre-destined wonders that only certain Civs could build.

I would prefer if Civ 4 would implement a way such that UUs would not be pre-destined but instead would be possible to acquire by any Civ just like wonders are. The mechanics would of course need to be worked out to balance it by placing limits or such but the whole point of Civ is creating an alternate history from scratch. So if Civ 4 continues to further the concept of pre-destination I would be opposed.

 

[rcoutme]

This is one of the suggestions that will be proposed in the Civ4 Consolidation Project that some of us are trying to do:

1. Instead of the standard values being 1’s, the combat and bombard values would be 10’s (for a base). Thus a warrior would be a 10/10/1 instead of a 1/1/1 for a/d/m.
2. Each civ would gain a variable (up to +/- 20%) to each attack and defense value. The initial thoughts are that a variable of 1-10 would be rolled. A 1 would be –20%, a 2 would be –10%, a 9 would be +10%, a 10 would be +20%, all other values would retain the nominal combat value.
3. This would allow for the variances that are seen in units even today, where some modern tanks are clearly better than others. At the worst, the variable would allow a 3/2 combat edge for one of the participants. (i.e. and 8 warrior against a 12). Such differences would lend a lot of individual flavor to the game and probably not unbalance the combat in any significant way.
4. This would allow for the player to create his own feel of having a Unique Unit as a unit that happened to get good values.
5. Allowing a player to ‘re-research’ the technology or ‘upgrade research’ the technology could allow the player to gain some of the losses he suffered from a ‘bad roll’ or possibly allow him to maximize the unit (although allowing a player to maximize a unit with the current Ancient Age units and tech costs might be unbalancing).
6. If this system is adopted, the player should be allowed to name his class of unit as well as the individual unit itself (thus, if a civ got a 12/12/1 warrior, he might call them Chasqui Warriors—particularly if he had the Incas).
7. If a civilization were to ‘steal’ the tech, then a penalty might be imposed on the roll variable (perhaps a –1 or –2 ) to reflect that they would not have understood the tech quite as completely.

 

[SilverKnight]

Gasp! Oh, I just had the worst nightmare... I was surfing the web, and I accidentally ended up in math class with overdue homework! What a weird coincidence, it seems to have come true!

Number punching is a very tempting way to play the game, but too much gets a little dull...

 

[Commander Bello]

Yeap, but the good news is that the machine would do most of the calculations... So, no need to worry...
What I've proposed and what Rcoutme seems to have in mind wouldn't need much intellecual skills on the player's side, but enhance the options of the game and add variety.

 

[Tholish]

Oh, just make all UU available to all civs, but add a separate tech you have to research to get it (ie, all civs get swordsman with Iron working, but if you want Legion, you have to researcht he Legion tech, which has Iron working as a prereq. Then give these prereqs to some civs as free starting techs. If you want the unit to start a golden age, you have to go one extra tech and get a very similar unit with just that difference.

 

[Commander Bello]

Oh, just make all UU available to all civs, but add a separate tech you have to research to get it (ie, all civs get swordsman with Iron working, but if you want Legion, you have to researcht he Legion tech, which has Iron working as a prereq. Then give these prereqs to some civs as free starting techs. If you want the unit to start a golden age, you have to go one extra tech and get a very similar unit with just that difference.

Well, but this wouldn't be a UU anymore.
Currently, you find this implemented already for knights, ironclads and marines (except for the trigger of the GA).
A Unique Unit should really be a unique (or special) unit, mainly replacing a standard unit with some better stats.

 

[CiverDan]

I guess this comes down to how much when want Civs to resemble their real life conterparts and how "Unique" we want thses units to be. There are certain problems with allowing all civs to buils all units with the right tech. Units like knights would never get built anymore. Also, it would clutter up the tech tree.

 

[rcoutme]

I still like the idea of developing my own civilization, so having the variable unit stats would allow me to choose which unit I felt was my 'real' unique unit. As for golden ages, I always felt that having a UU trigger it was rather foolish. They should simply have golden ages triggered by other things.

 

[I-Kaiser]

I personally like the idea of a single U-U. They are really the biggest thing that seperates civs and makes the unique, gives them flavor. Even if it means sacraficing some flexibility on the part of the player, it makes civs that much more unique.

If needed, there could be two U-U's... one for Ancient/Medieval age and one for Industrial/Modern age. Obviously they would be different, but it would give the player more flexibility in the strategies for a civ.

 

[Fake Gustave]

How about being able to trade for "unique" units?
Like Brits Ask the Americans for 5 F-15 for say 40 gold per turn or what ever(make it expensive to do). Brits still cant build F-15 so it still be unique to America(if you lose them you still have to honour your deals, obviously).

This has happened before. We bought some apaches for stupid amounts of American dollars. But now Britain has a few apaches despite being American design/built.

 

[Commander Bello]

That way, the UU would loose it's uniqueness, wouldn't it?

Anyway, a lend and lease ability for the standard units would be a good thing, I guess.

 

[socralynnek]

I personally like the idea of a single U-U. They are really the biggest thing that seperates civs and makes the unique, gives them flavor. Even if it means sacraficing some flexibility on the part of the player, it makes civs that much more unique.

If needed, there could be two U-U's... one for Ancient/Medieval age and one for Industrial/Modern age. Obviously they would be different, but it would give the player more flexibility in the strategies for a civ.

Your point doesn't collide with the initial suggestion, the civs could still have UUs but their final stats would be random.

I also think, the shield cost should be computed randomly, so there is a base cost and a random percentage that is added or subtracted.

 

[Fake Gustave]

I dont know about mulitple UU per civ (might be nice i guess) but i would like to see more mordern UU.

Whatch my Greek Hopilite take out your Panzer..........or not.

Brits----->Royal Marines
Russia--->The SU-37(better than the F-15 anyway or the F-22 at that)
Romans-->What can they get i wonder....i know the Sicilian mobster(replaces Guerrilla but has no nationality markings)

More Modern UU ideas?

Oh and the French can get Gendarmerie Nationale, they replace infantry but have police powers, *2 police power under most govs , only one content under democracy