For example, Rome is not an (extremely) effective conquering Civ in their Unique Unit era.
Rome's advantage was *not* that their legions were significantly better than the opposing forces. Their advantage was that their state and their economy was robust enough to through enough adaptable hordes of well-equipped Heavy Infantry - in an age where most forces would have comparatively lightly armed/armoured Heavy Infantry, or Medium and Light Infantry - at their enemies until they won.
Or the fact that the Mongols have a UU that is no better than a knight in attacking, despite the fact that their horse archers in real life were the terrors of the middle ages.
The Mongols fared very poorly when drawn into close-quarters engagements with Europeans, however. They used feigned retreats and huge maneuverability to simply avoid contact - the only way I can see making the Keshik 'realistic' in the terms you're implying would be to make them a 3-move Unit with a high offensive Bombard, but weaker combat stats.
China is the true warmonger Civ, despite the fact that they, in reality, never invaded another country, and were content with what is undoubtedly a building strategy in real life.
Eh, they fought amongst themselves for quite some time, and it took the Mongols a long time to subjugate them as well. And China was a pretty dominant cultural force in the area as well, 'conquerors' or no.
Looking past the Civs themselves, we see that assaulting cities is a completely different approach than in real life. Fully cutting off a city in real life is essential, while in Civ 3, it's completely impractical t do so.
In a real siege, 'fully cutting off' a defending city/fortification isn't essential - what's essential is preventing enough supplies/reinforcements from reaching the defender. They basically boiled down to starving the defenders out, taking it by treachery, or being forced to withdraw (due to their own supply problems or other logistical issues, or due to enemy reinforcements). Of course, Civ is fairly incapable of properly depicting logistical issues and a real siege anyway ....
First, I'd add a worker ability. This would be called "Combat Engineer", and would be available with Invention. The worker takes two turns to shift into a combat engineer, a unit with a different set of abilities. Combat engineers are affected by the industrious trait. Stacking CEs do improve efficiency, but not as effectively as workers, due to their actions usually being in enemy territory. Each added CE improves workforce by +50% percent
A combat engineer is a 0.0.1 unit that can perform the actions:
Better (IMO) would be to simply make a new unit (I'm not sure it's even possible to 'morph' a unit as you're suggesting).
*"Siege" base (10 turns)
No enemy tiles except for the city tile can be worked. Citizens inside the city all become specialists known as "Refugee" that requires only one food per turn to survive, and produces one shield. Corruption immediately skyrockets. Citizens of different nationality may actually abandon your city to join the invading army if they are of the same nation, or they really admire the army's culture, when faced with siege.
The CE (or CEs) that created the siege are forced to remain in the tile they created the siege from. Taking even one CE out will lift the siege. Sieges then become a balance between tying up your workers and creating one quickly.
The CE, when adjacent to a city, can begin setting up road blocks, tearing up bridges and destroying roads to effectively isolate the population into their city.
This ability is researched with invention.
(On a side note, one can replicate this ability before Invention by placing units over every one of the adjacent land tiles of a city, sea tiles included if the city has a harbor)
(When you enter the Modern age, units have progressed to such a small, unitized degree that sieges of full cities are no longer possible or feasible. However, your cities are no longer affected by siege, either, happily.)
(Siege takes longer when enforced from a hillside, and is not possible from a mountain.)
The CE essentially creates a Pillage and Bombarded effect on every square, *and* makes the city useless? I think you're overpowering them quite a bit. I mean, the way you've written it, one CE unit can set up a Siege, then you just stack a few Defenders with him and you've neutralized a city. The only 'drawback' is the 10 turns it takes to set it up ... and outside of the Modern Age (and even in that!), any city should be taken in much less than 10 turns.
* "Minefield" Base (6)
Whenever any unit with HP enters this tile, spends a turn or moves out of it, they are bombarded by an attack that is 3/4s their defensive strength, rounded up. Workers can clear minefield, but CEs are more effective at it.
The CE can begin burying landmines all over crucial routes in the area. Civilians are maneuverable enough to avoid the mines well enough, but troops must enter the minefields, thus are damaged.
This ability is researched with replaceable parts. Guerrillas and TOW infantry can maneuver the minefields well enough.
There are only two issues I see with this: First, the variable Bombard damage is not something I think can be done (it may ... I don't know); it'd be far simpler to simply make it a 12 or so Bombard value with 1 Rate of Fire. Second, the Repeating effect is something else I don't think is possible; if it is possible, I think it should only be when units enter or leave the tile.
Rome
Rome was a big conumdrum for me. I knew from history and Rome Total war that Legionnaires were indeed very balanced troops in their day. I considered making them cheaper, but that didn't make any sense at all. I considered adding an extra attack to their 3.3.1, but that would make it a 4.3.1 unit, completely unrealistic and unbalanced.
Then, I remembered my own addition: the siege.
...
It may be close to broken. But it fits Rome's huge, sprawling empire perfectly.
With this, I felt satisfied I did Rome justice in Civ3.
Frankly, I'd think making them cheaper actually would fit in with historical Rome rather well - well-equipped Infantry were not terribly common. Keep them 3/2/1 like a regular Swordsman unit, but make them 25 Shields to reflect Rome's greater use of them.
If you need to give them a special ability, why not just give them the ability to build Fortresses and Barricades like the Crusader (and I think one of the scenarios gives them that ability as well ...)?
The Mongols
I really did consider making the Mongols a 5.2.2 unit. It would make sense, I told myself, their horse archers were the best in their day. But I didn't feel right with it. It wouldn't encourage the hordes that they were so favored for, and didn't make much sense. They were good attackers, not paper tigers by any degree.
Any assault by the Mongols with a 5.2.2 keshik unit would resemble two reverse slaughters, like watching Scandinavia assault with no pikemen. And the Mongols didn't have anything that could defend and keep up with a 5.2.2 unit anyways.
But then, I was inspired.
Since when did the Mongols ever have longbowmen?
So I changed it. Their UU would instead replace the Longbowmen. It would be a 4.1.2 unit that was more expensive than a LBM, but significantly less than a knight.
This fit perfectly. The Mongols could swarm their Longbow Keshiks until they truly did have a horde, and the take apart other Civs with efficient ease.
Even better, since their Knight unit was not replaced, it could act as a guard for the Mongol's Longbow Keshiks. And the Mongols really did have armored men on horseback, armed with lances and swords as auxiliaries to their horse archers, so this fit in with history, too.
The Mongols could have highly mobile stacks of Knights and Longbow Keshiks, all ready to swarm their nearest victim!
I'm proud of it.
I can honestly say that I don't actually have much criticism for the idea; the most I can think of off-hand is that the only reason the Mongols wouldn't have used many Longbows would be that they're nearly impossible to use on horseback. I tried to find criticism of the idea, but that was mainly because I didn't like the presentation of the idea.
China
China I can do nothing for. At least to shift their perferred strat to a builder strat, I can do nothing. Riders are just too good. Nothing I come up with would change how people played the Chinese as long as couldn't make their UU worse, or change their traits. (An unwritten rule in my head was that I wouldn't make any Civ worse than what the designers made, only better in differently ways.) So I made something that at least represented Chinese Culture in another way.
The Chinese I came up with a second UU, one to replace the Trebuchet. The Rocket Warrior. The Rocket Warrior is a 0.0.1/6.1.1 unit that has lethal bombardment. He does not require any materials, the saltpeter the warrior is using is comparatively unrefined than the saltpeter used by the musketman. It's just a man, with a bunch of rockets that shoot them at other people. Nothing special except for the fact that he's a tad cheaper, and can kill other units.
Hmm ... a weaker version of the Hwa'cha (or however you spell it) that doesn't require any resources and replaces the Trebuchet? Egh. Lose the Lethal Bombardment and I can see it working ... fairly well. If you absolutely must keep the Lethal Bombard, make it a Defensive Bombard on a 1/2/1 unit or something.
What I would suggest would be a unique *building* (I'm fairly sure it's doable, just might require a bit of modification). Possibly the most famous thing about China (aside from its wall and its immense population) would be the bureacracy it possessed that kept it more-or-less running for longer than just about any other civilization has existed, so a building with either a:
Courthouse Effect
or
Happiness Effect
or
Tax Revenue Effect (IE, gives +1 gpt or something).
I would not suggest adding a Cultural effect to it, if only because I'm not sure how that would balance out for a Culture Victory. The building would become available to build with Philosophy.
The part where modding would come into play is that the only way I can think of to allow it to be buildable by only the Chinese would be to give them a hidden, untradable Advance before the game begins that is a prerequisite for the building.
).
It might be an idea to leave the 'Murphy's' until after breakfast.....
