Building(s) required to build unit, how hard to impliment in a patch?

candidgamera

Chieftain
Joined
Feb 19, 2002
Messages
15
Explanation:

Have wanted to see this in the editor to reflect the increasingly large infrastructure required to enable/support modern units - like carriers. Acknowledge that I'm lumping the ability to build certain units together with their bases, but its a concession to the way Civ works.

In example below of course carriers are built in Newport News, sailors trained on the Great Lakes, and the aviators are trained somewhere else, not too mention all the specialty schools people go to for Radar ect.

Example:

For carriers I would require something like the following:

barracks - basic ability to train military units.
harbor - basic ability to handle shipping.

shipyard - basic ability to build ships - requires iron (or a new made resource steel made in mill from coal and iron - a whole subject surrounding resources to be posted on later).
might want to have two types also, one earlier for just building wooden ships say starting with Caravels.

naval base - basic logisitics to support ships.

naval air station - basic logistics to support naval aircraft - they don't spend all the time on the carriers. US has 10-12 carriers so that in normal operation 2 can be training/refitting, and 1 can be on station in one of the major oceans US dedicates a carrier to. This operations tempo of course changes subject to current events. (Any naval aviators out there can quibble with my particulars here :) )

wouldn't have to have all the above as flags on the unit section because some new buildings might be required by each other:

shipyard requires harbor
naval base requires harbor and barracks
naval air station requires maybe naval base (could see going either way here).

Maybe have up to 4 required buildings required for a unit.

Would expect some re-balancing relative improvement and unit costs so improvements + unit costs wouldn't be too prohibitive.

Sidebar and related:
Already putting a damper on infinite modern units in late game by making everything musket man and up mostly cost a pop point just like settlers to build. Logic: to put modern units into the field takes population out of normal city production - think of modern units as specialists, detached from cities: no extra shields, no extra science, but you get a tank or whatever. Think I already see this at work in a game around 1500's - cities seem smaller.

There's a nice tug of war effect with this between large armies and city size and growth and production: its not just paying for the units support now, its now a city square no longer in production, and when they die its population loss that has to be replaced.

Another desireable wrinkle to this would be to allow workers to be expended for the needed pop points - would allow bringing in people and "training" them from throughout the empire - and a mechanism within the general logic of how Civ3 works now.

Further: let units be demobilized into workers rather than disbanded for shields now, allowing "retraining" per above.

Finally, some units might cost 2 or 3 pop - carriers, battleships, bombers (?), tanks maybe. Doing this would make the worker to soldier feature more important.

As a footnote would lift the restrictions on join city subject to keeping current aqueduct, ect building restrictions in place. I let pop cost units join cities so they can become civilians again.

What is thought on all this?

Would appreciate a comment from Firaxis here: is any of this reasonably doable or is this kind of thing going to have to wait for Civ4?
 
This is so weird.

I am currently working on a mod, and was having similar thoughts about the pop cost/join city for certain units. I haven't finished my mod yet, and haven't tried this yet.

Considering how much of a country's population is in the military in many countries, it makes sense to have it cost pop to build a unit; and disbanding rejoining the city also makes sense.

I will give it a try once I decide which units to modify.

For me, I wil probably only modify typical ground units for starters. See how much a dent it puts in pop before deciding on naval and/or air units.

My first units would be mainly infantry types, as these are the largest in manpower usage. Right now, I am still working on the corruption issue. As well as considering the actual effects of the various units and improvements to have.
 
Kring:

I've rationalized which units to do this with based right around nationalism and the ability to draft - just below I take in musket men on this. I also give these units an engineering cability: roads and forts (w/ some exceptions). Also a "divisional artillery" rating for a 1 rof bombardment.

Think its especially appropriate to pop cost air & naval units later on - they should really cost to support when it takes many on the ground or in port to put and keep a plane/ship in the air/at sea. My carriers and battleships cost 2 pop.

Just now modifying on the AI civs am playing with to turn off "build often" on offense and defense units and make these pop cost units non-explorers.

*so ai doesn't build itself to oblivion.
*so tanks don't play Lewis & Clark - they are for warfighting.

Probably going to put legionaires under similar rules. Romans should be given credit for their advanced administration and method of raising troops.

So what do you think of the improvements for units idea?
 
Sorry to sway alittle off topic, but you mentioned Roman's Legions. I edited them to have the ability to build both roads and fortresses (as they did historically), and found to my amazement that the AI actually used them as I intended.
I will have to give your pop idea a go. Anything to help prevent, as you mentioned, the AI building itself into a corner.

A chap by the name of Paul Saunders, I believe it was, had some great ideas on crippling certain nations to achieve an eventual colonization type scenerio in later games. For example, having the Zulus not be able to build workers (and advanced units, i.e., artillary and air units), to replicate the European colonization of South Africa.
Your ideas could really enhance this concept.
 
DBG:

Nice to hear the AI uses it properly if you road/fort ability them.

Rechecked and all my late game units I 2 pop cost them, will have see how this works. Did the same as you with legionaries.

I also do the wheeled settler business too, slows things down nicely.
 
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