Automatic (Gradual) Upgrading of Units

[Öjevind Lång]

I dont know what game ur playing but u can most certainly pillage ur own territory in civ IV.

You are fight - I was thinking about the way your bombers sometimes pillaged your own improvements in Civ III when you wanted them to hit the enemy. Still, no one in their right mind would pillage his own towns in order to upgrade units. As for pillaging your own farms and mines - well, that vcosts you, so I don't think peolpe would do that except when desperate, and the money you get from pillaging frams etc. are not really much.

Öjevind Lång

 

[Öjevind Lång]

Just delete them and build new units, or throw them away in pillaging raids. Having lots of obsolete units just adds more variation and tactics.

That may be true for a warmonger; its isn't true for a builder who may spend mos (or all) of the game without fighting. At least for peaceful players, upgarding units can at times turn into the most horrible kind of micromanagement - the boring kind. As you can see from my original post, I suggested that the AI would only gradually upgradesobsolete units, and always pick the least valuable ones, so there would still be quite an incentive for the player to do upgrading of the best units on his own bat.

Öjevind

 

[Öjevind Lång]

Think of them as Riot police

Or Home Guard units - Dads' army.

Öjevind

 

[ShadowWarrior]

How about this following proposal?

Nothing changes. We can still choose to upgrade our units through spending gold, which is how its done now.

Alternatively, when we want to build in a city a new unit that becomes available with discovery of a new tech, we are given a choice of whether or not we want to build an unit entirely from scratch, or do we want to simply upgrade an existing unit. The latter choice will enable us to build the new unit at half the cost.

For example, I discover Feudal and want to build a longbowmen in City XXX. When I click on longbowmen, I am asked if I want to build it from scratch, or if I want to take an existing archer unit, and simply upgrade it. If the first option takes...six turns, then the second will take only three turns to complete. If I choose the upgrade option, I will then be asked to choose a unit physically located within the empire boarder for upgrade.

Also, obviously, if I want to build a longbowmen in a city through upgrade, then I must have an archer unit first, and that must be located within my empire boarder. Lacking this, the upgrade option will not be available at all to me.

Also, perhaps having barrack in a city will further reduce the turns needed to upgrade the unit.

 

[corazone]

Imagine the polish 1939... they still had their cavalry from 19th century when they got blitzed by the nazis... no auto upgrade there

 

[Mewtarthio]

Technically, they only didn't upgrade because everyone knows Cavalry is most easily retrofit into assault helicopters.

 

[Blckbrd]

Alternatively, when we want to build in a city a new unit that becomes available with discovery of a new tech, we are given a choice of whether or not we want to build an unit entirely from scratch, or do we want to simply upgrade an existing unit. The latter choice will enable us to build the new unit at half the cost.

For example, I discover Feudal and want to build a longbowmen in City XXX. When I click on longbowmen, I am asked if I want to build it from scratch, or if I want to take an existing archer unit, and simply upgrade it. If the first option takes...six turns, then the second will take only three turns to complete. If I choose the upgrade option, I will then be asked to choose a unit physically located within the empire boarder for upgrade.

Also, obviously, if I want to build a longbowmen in a city through upgrade, then I must have an archer unit first, and that must be located within my empire boarder. Lacking this, the upgrade option will not be available at all to me.

Also, perhaps having barrack in a city will further reduce the turns needed to upgrade the unit.

Not a bad Idea. alternatively you could go back to the Civ 2 version when you build Leo's workshop the units upgrade automatically for free not a bad option either really

 

[KrikkitTwo]

well actually upgrade with production would be easy... the cost equals difference in cost plus about 5

 

[Suspiria]

I think if you discover a new tech which makes your units obselete you should either have a few options of

A) automatically putting aside some of your civs total resources to upgrade them over 5-10 turns

B) only be able to upgrade them when they are inside your cities at the cost of that city's resources

C) same as now, but not as expensive as currently is and should take 2-3 turns to make the transition to a new unit (I believe automatically upgrading a unit which only disables them for one turn is unfair, it should be more like 2 or 3 turns - this would change the current exploit of changing a unit automatically when an enemy approaches your territory).

I also think their needs to be the option where if you have an onselete unit in your city you can use some of the city's resources to upgrade them over 5-10 turns but also pull resources from that current unit to upgrade to the better one, thus rendering that unit disabled until it has taken the time to change to that new unit. This would get rid of the silly concept now of upgrading a galleon into a destroyer merely in one turn.

 

[Öjevind Lång]

I dont know what game ur playing but u can most certainly pillage ur own territory in civ IV.

You don't get any money for it, that's the crucial difference.

Öjevind

 

[ProfessorK]

I agree with the general idea posted here. It is monotonous, time consuming and expensive to upgrade units, as well as ridiculous to have an army with tanks and catapults.

First of all, they should lower the costs of upgrading a unit. After all, it would be cheaper to re-equip troops than build them from scratch. Secondly, there should be an option on the Customize game screen to enable the program to upgrade units after X number of turns after the discover of a tech that makes them obsolete. It it were optional, those who wanted more control over which units are upgraded when could still do it manually if they chose to do so. I also like the ideas of requiring that the units be in the civs home territory and that the upgrade happen over a couple of turns rather than instanteously, but I wouldn't make it more than two turns. After a new technology which antiquates units has been discovered, the obsolete units should no longer be available after a few turns.

It was very wasteful, but in my last game I found that it was just easier to apply the old skull and crossbones to my catapults rather than mess with upgrading them to cannons and then from cannons to artillery. When the upgrade to cannons was available I was having a cash flow problem and couldn't afford to do it, so I just eliminated them when artillery became available. The player should also be able to choose, via the Custom game option to automatically destroy units which would require to upgrades to make them no longer obsolete, as in the case of my catapults in the age of artillery.

The main thing, however, is lowering the cost of upgrades, which could be balanced out by not making the upgrade instantaneous.

 

[caramac]

I think I posted in my Sport in Civ? thread my view on this situation.

As time goes by upgrading a unit costs less gold. Simple. Naturally, making machine guns now cost less money than they did in 1914, for example. This will encourage you to upgrade your units instead of just leaving them and building new ones. After a certain number of turns/certain date the cost to upgrade the unit will reach its lowest e.g. by 2000 warriors only cost 20 gold to upgrade but in 1600 they cost 120.

 

[Öjevind Lång]

I think I posted in my Sport in Civ? thread my view on this situation.

As time goes by upgrading a unit costs less gold. Simple. Naturally, making machine guns now cost less money than they did in 1914, for example. This will encourage you to upgrade your units instead of just leaving them and building new ones. After a certain number of turns/certain date the cost to upgrade the unit will reach its lowest e.g. by 2000 warriors only cost 20 gold to upgrade but in 1600 they cost 120.

That's a neat idea.

 

[Pitboss]

If you can set the priorities, to upgrade crucial defending units in the cities first.
It would be a great addition

 

[Titus]

I don't mind it the way it is, except that you should be able to upgrade from the military advisor's screen, like in Civ 3.

 

[DaviddesJ]

You are fight - I was thinking about the way your bombers sometimes pillaged your own improvements in Civ III when you wanted them to hit the enemy. Still, no one in their right mind would pillage his own towns in order to upgrade units. As for pillaging your own farms and mines - well, that vcosts you, so I don't think peolpe would do that except when desperate, and the money you get from pillaging frams etc. are not really much.

The cost of pillaging your mines in the midgame is trivial---you usually have plenty of workers sitting around with not much to do, anyway. If you could pillage your copper and iron mines to build warriors, and then rebuild them to get all of your warriors upgraded for free to swordsmen and macemen, then everyone would do that.