Land Units proposal

[Drunk-Monk]

The mod suffers from a lack of historicity, with an 18th century military available and coexisting, with units from 1492. To solve this discrepancy, here is my first attempt to model a more realistic progression. As we don’t yet have a tech tree, or model for one, this just includes categories of units. Units would upgrade automatically, but to prevent the ‘Leonardos workshop’ problem typical of other Civ games, early units should be more expensive than later units. This would also reflect the fact that the initial conquests were undertaken by a force numbered in the low thousands, compared to the tens of thousands that were sent to put down the Atlantic revolutions. It would also represent the falling cost of military equipment, due to advancements in manufacturing and the increased capabilities of the state that led to larger armies taking the field, with a larger proportion of the soldiers bearing firearms.

I think eventually, we should work to change some of the civilian models as well. There are many existing models and skins, but to reduce work we should have units grouped in three different styles; Northern European, Southern European (including France) and Russian. For example, Holland and England would share the same Elder Statesman model, but this would be a different from the model for Russia and Portugal.

Here is my tentative proposal for a progression tree, for the moment I have decided to give general names for units, though we could give them nation specific names. I have decided to rename the Conquistador unit, to the Adventurer.

Key:

Blade Units (B)

Gun Units (G)

Horse Units (H)

Cannon Units (C)


15th - 16th Century 16th - 17th Century 18th - 19th Century


Town Guard (B) City Guard (B) Colonial Militia (G)


Footman (B) Pikeman (B) Late Pikeman (B)


Harquebusier (G) Musketeer (G) Line Infantry (B) (G)


Early Ranger (G) Late Ranger (G)


Native Warrior (B) Native Mercenary (G) Native Auxiliary (G)


Horseman (B) (H) Early Dragoon (G) (H) Late Dragoon (B) (G) (H)


Man-at-arms (B) (H) Cuirassier (B) (H) Cavalryman (B) (G) (H)


Demi-Cannon (C) Cannon (C) 18 Pounder (C)


Falconet (C) Saker (C) 6 Pounder (C)

Mortar (C)


Continental Guard (G)


Adventurer (B) Mercenary Regiment (G) Hessian (G)

Some possible sources for models include:

https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...-delectat-v9-2-civ-specific-unit-sets.237192/

https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/russian-renaissance-age-unit-pack-cossacks.16295/

https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/russian-renaissance-age-unit-pack-pre-petrine.16294/

https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/holy-roman-renaissance-age-unit-pack-habsburg.12616/

https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/viking-renaissance-age-unit-pack-swedish.12614/

https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/celtic-renaissance-age-unit-pack.12615/

https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/hungarian-renaissance-age-unit-pack.11990/

https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/andean-medieval-swordsman.6108/

https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/mesoamerican-heavy-footman.6098/

https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/spanish-middle-age-unit-pack.14432/

https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/brazilian-bandeirantes-pack-renaissance-units.18663/

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/units-early-renaissance-cannons.363687/

https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/russian-orthodox-priest.16388/

https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/russian-great-merchant.16389/

https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/alexis-of-russia-russian-warlord.16391/

https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/russian-worker-pack.16387/

https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/count-duke-of-olivares-spanish-warlord.14447/

I welcome your comments and contributions, especially of unit models.

Edit - The format for the table has messed up, but I think you get the idea

 

[Schmiddie]

In general this is a nice idea. I never gave up the dream that one day early and late game military graphic units will be implemented.

But what happens with the unit when the next level will be reached? Will the unit change into the new one or will the old one simply disappear or will both exist beside each other?

By the way: The graphics are not the problem. I have graphics for all such units made years ago. One example here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/new-units-for-colonization.524860/

All my graphics have good quality and have been prepared/amended/updated to work in Civ Col2. And I have prepared them in a way that they work for different nations - this is important.

Please don't take this as a personal offence but most of the Civ4 graphics you mentioned have such a low quality that they would ruin every CivCol 2 mod...

 

[raystuttgart]

In general this is a nice idea.

I agree.

I never gave up the dream that one day early and late game military graphic units will be implemented.

Yes, but ideally - to my opinion - we should first build something like a "Tech" / "Inventions" system.

But what happens with the unit when the next level will be reached?
Will the unit change into the new one or will the old one simply disappear or will both exist beside each other?

That is actually not really the problem - considering the coding side.
We could reuse / adapt the BTS code for upgrading old Units / Professions to new Units / Professions.

By the way: The graphics are not the problem. I have graphics for all such units made years ago.

Yes, but there might still be small graphical issues where the help of a graphical modder would be needed.
We currently do not have that graphical modder on the team.

All my graphics have good quality and have been prepared/amended/updated to work in Civ Col2.

Your Unit graphics are awesome considering quality and detail. Some of the best I have ever seen.

And I have prepared them in a way that they work for different nations - this is important.
Please don't take this as a personal offence but most of the Civ4 graphics you mentioned have such a low quality that they would ruin every CivCol 2 mod...

Definitely - I really don't want to ruin the great quality of graphics achieved in RaR and still existing in WTP.
That is why I am so afraid of starting something like that without graphical modders on the team.

 

[Nightinggale]

Please don't take this as a personal offence but most of the Civ4 graphics you mentioned have such a low quality that they would ruin every CivCol 2 mod...

This is my main concern regarding using existing graphics made for another mod or even imported from some none civ4 source. Getting hold of graphics, which fits the needs is hard. Getting hold of graphics, which is both what we need and is of the correct style and quality is even harder.

That is actually not really the problem - considering the coding side.
We could reuse / adapt the BTS code for upgrading old Units / Professions to new Units / Professions.

I don't view this as an issue. Adding new units/professions isn't an issue as it will just be about adding something new to the build/profession menus. The question is what to do about the old ones. To keep it simple I would remove them from the build menu/choose profession menu while existing units will remain unchanged. It would make sense that if you invent a new gun, your soldier will have to go to a colony, drop the old guns and pick up new guns in order to benefit.

The "Leonardo's workshop issue" would be a real issue if we just change the professions right away. We could end up changing a profession to something else, which is twice as expensive. I remember one civ game (forgot which version of civ) where it said Leonardo's workshop upgraded my warriors to musketmen. That opens up for a rather obvious exploit. One of a kind I wouldn't want in WTP.

Yes, but there might still be small graphical issues where the help of a graphical modder would be needed.
We currently do not have that graphical modder on the team.

This is my main concern as well. We can get quite far with the python UI without new graphics, but new units and "out of colony" professions absolutely need new graphics.

Your Unit graphics are awesome considering quality and detail. Some of the best I have ever seen.

I absolutely agree, but paradoxically it has become a problem. Now we have a high standard of graphics to live up to, which restricts us regarding using existing graphics from other mods.

Definitely - I really don't want to ruin the great quality of graphics achieved in RaR and still existing in WTP.
That is why I am so afraid of starting something like that without graphical modders on the team.

I'm not afraid of starting or adding dll support for tech progression without any graphical modders. However I would be concerned regarding actually using it without access to new graphics of decent quality. I view it a bit like a chicken and egg issue where the motivation for graphical modders might be restricted if the dll doesn't actually support the feature, which requires the new graphics. The issue is if or how we enable the feature in xml, not if the dll supports it or not. If we don't get new graphics, we can do stuff like letting techs unlock free promotions.

Still I'm not that eager to start coding because we don't have graphics, don't have a plan for what to do if we don't get graphics and haven't figured out how we want to progress through the techs. In fact the only thing we really have so far is a partial dll implementation for adding unlockable contents without adding a performance penalty.

We need to figure out something more specific than "wouldn't it be cool if we can unlock late tech units during the game". Also I feel like we focus too much on just units. I wrote the code to support well everything, including routes, buildings and improvements. Right now the thinking of what we can use techs for is limited to way less than even this early stage of dll development already supports.

I can think of multiple ways of making tech progression interesting without the need for new graphics. Naturally we can do more and get better results if we can get all the graphics we need, but no new graphics might not be the tech progression killer as some people make it out to be right now.

If nothing else, we can unlock the current units/graphics. There is no need to allow frigates from turn 1. That's another way to add a tech progression to the game. We have plenty of options. What we need is a proper plan.

 

[Drunk-Monk]

But what happens with the unit when the next level will be reached? Will the unit change into the new one or will the old one simply disappear or will both exist beside each other?

My idea is that the unit would upgrade automatically, and transform into an upgraded unit either automatically or after making a small payment.

The "Leonardo's workshop issue" would be a real issue if we just change the professions right away. We could end up changing a profession to something else, which is twice as expensive. I remember one civ game (forgot which version of civ) where it said Leonardo's workshop upgraded my warriors to musketmen. That opens up for a rather obvious exploit. One of a kind I wouldn't want in WTP.

I agree, that why I think early game units, should be more expensive to prevent this abuse and to better reflect colonial warfare, we could also make the player make a payment to upgrade.

Still I'm not that eager to start coding because we don't have graphics, don't have a plan for what to do if we don't get graphics and haven't figured out how we want to progress through the techs. In fact the only thing we really have so far is a partial dll implementation for adding unlockable contents without adding a performance penalty.

We need to figure out something more specific than "wouldn't it be cool if we can unlock late tech units during the game". Also I feel like we focus too much on just units. I wrote the code to support well everything, including routes, buildings and improvements. Right now the thinking of what we can use techs for is limited to way less than even this early stage of dll development already supports.

I can think of multiple ways of making tech progression interesting without the need for new graphics. Naturally we can do more and get better results if we can get all the graphics we need, but no new graphics might not be the tech progression killer as some people make it out to be right now.

If nothing else, we can unlock the current units/graphics. There is no need to allow frigates from turn 1. That's another way to add a tech progression to the game. We have plenty of options. What we need is a proper plan.

I agree, I am just trying to make a roadmap of the type of units to include. I focused on land units initially because its the most visually obvious, and would require outside assistance. I am really interested in hearing your ideas for how a techtree / upgrade system could work.

By the way: The graphics are not the problem. I have graphics for all such units made years ago. One example here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/new-units-for-colonization.524860/

All my graphics have good quality and have been prepared/amended/updated to work in Civ Col2. And I have prepared them in a way that they work for different nations - this is important.

Please don't take this as a personal offence but most of the Civ4 graphics you mentioned have such a low quality that they would ruin every CivCol 2 mod...

Your models and skins are great, there is no doubt you have a real talent for creation, I am sure we will include many of them. I am not offended, those were just models I found that would be suited for the period and to act as inspiration, and we are going to need many models for all eight factions and three cultures over three time periods. Although we can of course reuse or slightly alter existing models, for example your Arquebusier model would be well suited for many of the early Professions.

 

[raystuttgart]

Now we have a high standard of graphics to live up to, which restricts us regarding using existing graphics from other mods.

Well yes, but I personally don't see any solution to this other than getting graphical modders on board the team again.
We cannot simply throw the high graphical standards over board again.

I'm not afraid of starting or adding dll support for tech progression without any graphical modders.

Me neither.

We can start to build the system capabilities in DLL (and XML and Python) if a team member is interested.
But that is still far away from making an actual game feature out of it.

And until we build the full game feature, nothing of that System should be visible to players (e.g. in Screens) in our public releases of course.
But with GIT we should have the capability to prepare / code everything as far as possible in a separate development branch.

If we don't get new graphics, we can do stuff like letting techs unlock free promotions.

Possible, but does that alone really justify releasing it as public release for WTP?
(As I said, the development aspect for the base system is ok for me already. And we could share that branch to others of course.)

Still I'm not that eager to start coding because we don't have graphics, don't have a plan for what to do if we don't get graphics and haven't figured out how we want to progress through the techs. In fact the only thing we really have so far is a partial dll implementation for adding unlockable contents without adding a performance penalty.

Yes, without being able to build the full feature with the current team or even having a plan / full concept it is really hard to find the motivation.
But hey, let us wait and see how things develop and our team - and thus our skills for graphics - might grow again.

... but no new graphics might not be the tech progression killer as some people make it out to be right now.

Maybe it is not a killer for this feature. But it would limit our possibilities for the concept and its implementation.
But if we find other concepts that work good enough - sure, why not.

What we need is a proper plan.

Fully agree.

We should probably really try to focus on current capabilities of the team.
Once our capabilities (e.g. creating great graphics) become more again, we can then add further things.

 

[Schmiddie]

Yes, but there might still be small graphical issues where the help of a graphical modder would be needed.
We currently do not have that graphical modder on the team

Hm, let me think about that...maybe I could be persuaded to return just for graphic issues....

 

[raystuttgart]

Hm, let me think about that...maybe I could be persuaded to return just for graphic issues....

That would truly be awesome.

We currently have a quite strong team already for doing DLL coding, Python coding and XML configuration.
Actually even much stronger than in RaR.

I am not worried about texts and balancing anyways, we will get that handled together and with the feedback of community.
For translations we might find some supporters (or even team members) as well to help us.

And also, we do not have any pressure and everybody understands if new features and new releases take a bit of time.
We can do things at a slow and steady pace.

Also everybody will understand if team members take a break from time to time - even if it is longer - and development / finalizing of a feature does not continue during that time.
Since we now have git - the other team members can more easily finish some other work on other branches (e.g. for other features, bugfixes or balancing) in the meantime.

 

[Nightinggale]

Hm, let me think about that...maybe I could be persuaded to return just for graphic issues....

​

We currently have a quite strong team already for doing DLL coding, Python coding and XML configuration.

Pretty much this. Our team has reached a size where it's realistic to get things done even though people focus on their own small field of interest. This is beneficial in two ways because not only will it make modding more interesting (just say no to any unwanted type of task and somebody else will do it) and usually people produce the highest quality when they work within their field of interest. It's a win-win.