Civ-specific Combat Unit Change (America)

[spazman80]

I wish I could have been the one with the idea originally; however, I do feel that F-15 seems like a lame unit for America. I tend to agree with those who think that the new Civ-specific unit for America should be Navy Seals. I mean lets face it almost every country now has an F-15 counterpart. I don't however agree with their ideas as to it's function; so, here's my input for anyone who cares!
Let's break this down. What do Navy Seals do? Eliminate or Capture right. Now for the purposes of the Civ game itself these two elements are one in the same and the target will always be the leader of the city a.k.a. the Governor. The final outcome would be the equivalent of the Governor being OVERTHROWN.
The thing that sets these units apart from the others in my mind is that they must attack from a sub by SDV insertion or from a bomber by HALO jump and they may only attack once if they fail they die. The twist is that they are incredibly expensive and they attack directly on the city, no moving in from an adjacent square, this will give the illusion of approaching by stealth.
Consequences!!! First the bad, if they fail this expensive combat unit is dead and the Civilization he was deployed on now knows what you were up to. It's basically the same as a failed spy mission only it doesn't just anger that Civ it causes immediate war. Now the good, if successfully completed the city falls under your control as do all enemy combat units under garrison in that city.
I feel that the good that could come from this unit are well worth the risk which I believe should be around 1 chance in 4 since they are so expensive to make and probably would not come available until Amphibious Warfare. Please let me know what you all think of my idea.

 

[Garbarsardar.jr]

First, WELCOME, to CFC forums
I totally agree that F-15 as a UU sucks big time...
but let's not carried away by that. The unit that you describe would give IMHO an unfair advantage to America and furthermore it would not reflect the true nature of SEALS or their British (SAS) or russian (Spetsnaz) counterparts since their main mission is not to capture cities...
I would think that a statistically beefed-up Marine unit would represent a much better UU for America and that comes with AW.The only special unit at the time was the SAS and in a much broader scope the Fallschirmjagers. Seals and Spetsnaz are probably cold war units...

 

[spazman80]

I see where you might think it's an unfair advantage, but look at it this way. Since the unit would not come available until late in the game and it is so expensive and there is only a 1 in 4 chance of success; then, for all intents of purposes you would probably only be able to gain control of about 2 or 3 cities in this way on average per game. Also, since it is similar to initiating propoganda lets say you can't use them on Democracies, and this would be the effect of removing a dictator from power.
I understand where you are coming from with the SAS but America really doesn't have anything else that it is really known for. Maybe the Huey Helicopter, but I don't see how that could be used in this case. Perhaps it could carry more than two units.

 

[Garbarsardar.jr]

The Huey seems brilliant! Or the apache check this thread http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=22289&page=7&pp=20
the apache is at the middle of the page, You can mod as a land unit with the same attack as modern armor but less defence and Allterrain asroads features
This link will help you add it http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=71114
so you dont have to wait 1 year for a decent UU

 

[rcoutme]

IMHO, the best UU for the American player (and I am all for a different system of combat units which would make UU's invalid anyways, but let's not get into that here!) would be the Minuteman. The minuteman unit would be a draft unit that would not cause unhappiness in the city from which it was drafted. Only one per city (or perhaps one per city and two per metropolis) would be allowed. These units could only be drafted during a war and would automatically disband after the war was over.

The United States was founded by people who greatly, GREATLY, distrusted standing armies. When President G. Washington had problems with Native Americans ~1793 he had to have someone form an army to deal with them! When this army died (and it did!) Washington was originally beside himself on what to do.

When the US went to war with Britain in 1812 all the troops were militia! In fact, these troops did so badly (initially) that the commanders in Canada believed that they could take on any American force with impunity. The unit that I joined in 1986 (2nd Bn, 22nd Inf) had its history in one of the New York national guard units (the 22nd Infantry Regiment).

The commander of the 22nd made all of his troops (even Majors and Colonels) practice marching throughout the winter (I think of 1812, maybe 1813). When they faced the British in the spring, the British generals "knew" they were facing more militia (they were--actually). As the 22nd Brigade marched its way upon the British in a hail of gunfire, the British commander was purported to have said something like the following:

Militia--Hell! These are Regulars, by God!

So this unit would seem to make a lot more sense as a UU for the Americans. It would be a unit that they could easily conscript, regardless of government, and would still have the conscript values. However, the advantage would be that if someone was moving into a 'soft' region on the American player, they would find that most of the cities would be armed.

Another way that the unit could be used is that any 'empty' city on the first turn might automatically produce a minuteman (or maybe just make it that all cities do this on the first turn of a war) during the attacker's turn! This would make sneak attacks much harder.

In case you think that militia popping up out of nowhere is hogwash, try investigating the quantity of civilian 'militia' groups in the United States. There are at least scores of private para-military militias all over this country. These are in addition to the actual National Guard (which are officially sactioned by the US Army, although run by the individual States). Also, picture what would happen if a foreign army were stupid enough to try to occupy New York City or Los Angeles.

I can almost guarantee that 5 divisions would get waxed if they tried to occupy New York. The amount of privately owned guns in the United States (legally) is well over 200,000,000!

 

[spazman80]

OK, I just had a brainstorm. How about the M1 tank? It's more powerful than modern armor, and that's all there is to it. Simple and easy!!! I'm for the UU system but I'm against them being able to become outdated such as the Jaguar Warrior. So instead of building modern armor America builds M1, and all of it's stats are pumped up a little, say maybe one figure or two in each category.

 

[rcoutme]

Not a bad idea, spazman80, but unfortunately not accurate. The M1 Abrams tank and the British Challenger are about equal, so this is not really a UU of America. It would probably also not be that good of a choice in civ since it would still come very late in the game. If this is done, though, the values would need to be significantly higher. As it stands now, the ratio of tank units is tank: 16/8, modern armor 24/16. In AA terms this means that you have a 2/1 vs a 3/2 with the 3/2 being in the next age! I, for one, would want my UU to have at least another notch on this ratio, thus the M1 would probably need to be 32/16 (not just a couple of notches higher).

 

[Vizurok]

Well, I must agree with the change... the F15 is a great example fo useless UUs...
The new can be all of the late industrial and modern units, the Americans were always different from the others and usually better. Personally I would like to see a Marine UU for the USA (such as RoN).

 

[spazman80]

But don't you guys at least agree that the UU for any Civ should never become outdated? Or else why have one?

 

[America444]

i like rcoutme ideas the best as much as i think it would be cool to have a special forces unit like SEALs i think rcoutmes idea works the best and makes most sense

 

[phil87]

I think it would by nice to have an SAS equivalant unit for all civs- a weak unit by modern age standards but one that could capture towns without destroying all cultrue buildings. Culture would still be set to 0 obviously but I dont think it would unbalance the game by that stage anyway. Good Idea or Not?

 

[croxis]

I'm going to be a party pooper and say that these small issues are going to be irrelevant to Firaxis. To talk about specific units and thier stats is only going to work for Civ III, NOT Civ IV. Civ IV should be a very different game, not a Civ 3.5. Talk about UU in general (should we have them, should each civ have one per age, should we even have the age system...) would be something more relivant

 

[BassDude726]

I'd say this isn't all that irrelevant... how many people do you know that choose their civ using the UU as a major deciding factor? I don't think Persia got all that popular without the help of those beeeautiful immortals. The result is that America is a civ that's intimidating even to intermediate-level players, and one of the least popular in the game.

 

[croxis]

Yes but this is relivant to Civ III mechanics. Fraxis isn't remaking Civ III but Civ IV. A different game that will have different rules. Until we know how the game will even exist we can't even realy argue over unit statistics because we don't know how they game will even work. Civ III was a drastic change from Civ II by removing the hit point and firepower statistic, so any discussion on unit stats really didn't do anything.