marines and paratroopers suck

[Crow T Robot]

Originally posted by zeeter
Its nice to have a unit that can attack from a ship, but how useful is that when all the infantry needs to do is land in an un-occupied square?

That can work too, but not much surprise that way is there? Attacking from the sea directly allows you to capture a city before they can reinforce, especially if they have rail.

Your beach and attack-from-ship comments are interesting, but the same net result is gotten from marines - they attack directly from a ship AS IF they were specially trained to utilize beaches.

 

[Portuguese]

Originally posted by bobgote

Can you define this for me? the discovered bit. eg within one square or something? maybe infantry units can detect them?

Maybe like subs....

But it would be useless if they were in a resource square that I needed, because I'd notice that and immediatly send strong troopers.

I don't see much use of that...

 

[bobgote]

yeh, you'd notice if they were denying you a resource.

Wild Weasel: i been thinking about the wheels idea, and it doesn't seem a bad idea. Combine this with the use of bridges to be necessary for them to cross rivers, and you'd have a use for paratroopers (ie land them on opposite side of rivers to protect construction of bridges). Give helicopters longer range, or the ability to launch from ships and you've made the game a lot more interesting. Now, try to think of something for the privateers

 

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by Portuguese

But it would be useless if they were in a resource square that I needed, because I'd notice that and immediatly send strong troopers.

You'd notice only after they took out the resource, or if you protect the resources, after the roads leading to the resource are taken out. Five or six invisible paratroopers could create a great deal of damage to road networks, before you could locate them and destroy them.

With the current model they are nearly always destroyed before they accomplish their mission, at least with any reasonable defense.

 

[murewa]

so you bombard that coastal city with battleships & bombers 'til kingdom come and when you send in the marines you could very well raze the city automatically. quite risky you know.

 

[Crow T Robot]

Originally posted by murewa
so you bombard that coastal city with battleships & bombers 'til kingdom come and when you send in the marines you could very well raze the city automatically. quite risky you know.

Seems to me that the same risk exists in rolling up on a city with tanks and arty and bombarding until kingdom come.

If you recon with a sub or Explorer and select a lightly defended city, say with Spearmen or Pikemen, you can forego the bombarding at least skip the "to kingdom come" part and capture with marines alone. Maybe bombard just to count defenders.

The problem is overdoing the bombardment, not marine attacks.

 

[bobgote]

Originally posted by Zachriel


You'd notice only after they took out the resource, or if you protect the resources, after the roads leading to the resource are taken out. Five or six invisible paratroopers could create a great deal of damage to road networks, before you could locate them and destroy them.

With the current model they are nearly always destroyed before they accomplish their mission, at least with any reasonable defense.

You'd notice them as soon as they landed on the resource wouldn't you? When no ROP is there, a enemy unit on a tile means you can't use that tile, correct? You notice when you can't build resource specific units.

(EDIT): forgot to say this bit

I think that paratroopers should have their turn after they get dropped. The one turn where they could pillage, or fortify. It would be more accurate. I don't know if this is easily modded or not.

 

[Portuguese]

The real use of paratroopers with invisible landings would be to drop next to a city and conquer it the very next turn. AI howerver would find you, because their units are always going arround...
AI would benifit from it much more than you, unless you move all your units arround like the AI does...
Would you like that?!?

Reconsider your wish... you wouldn't like to see it implemented.
Go by me!!!

 

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by Portuguese
The real use of paratroopers with invisible landings would be to drop next to a city and conquer it the very next turn. AI howerver would find you, because their units are always going arround...
AI would benifit from it much more than you, unless you move all your units arround like the AI does...
Would you like that?!?

Reconsider your wish... you wouldn't like to see it implemented.
Go by me!!!

Not a wish. Just a suggestion. The alternative would be to let the paratrooper pillage on the same turn it lands. Would that be fair to the defender? What other unintended problems would that cause?

 

[zeeter]

To really emphasize the powers of the paratroopers would mean a change to the game. Specifically, the rules would have to change where ground units cannot cross over a river.

In fact, I think that this would greatly enhance the game. Imagine having a river as a natural defense barrier. We could use workers to build bridges - along with a new advance called Bridge Building (wasn't that in Civ2?).

We would have protection from early advancement and settler diarhea by the AI. We would have a need to protect bridges. We could destroy bridges to slow down the enemy. We would need to bring workers along on campaigns to rebuild bridges.

As far as paratroopers go, they would need to drop behind the bridge and try to capture it before the enemy destroys it.

Plus, there should be a defensive bonus when defending from accross a bridge. This is what makes the paratroopers important. They would drop behind the bridge in order to take away the defensive bonus.

 

[bobgote]

infantry should cross rivers, but not wheeled units (without bridge). It would bring more tactics into the game without a doubt. And more historically accurate too. Maybe a new unit that is amphibious, but has lower ADM. Think about it tho everyone, it would make the game a lot different and bring in an entirely new dimension.

Another alternative for paratroopers would be to make them able to sabotage stuff, set traps etc etc. And air superiority would be the defence to paratroopers, as should be. A mobile SAM unit would be a good idea too.

 

[zeeter]

I agree that Infantry should be able to cross rivers [EDIT], but they it should take two turns to do so. Without a bridge, that is. Wheeled units shouldn't pass at all without a bridge.

 

[Tassadar]

i remember in civ 2 it was easy to take an ai city with para. you lauch a few cruise miisile first then a para and the city was yours.

 

[zeeter]

That was the old nuke-drop tactic. The AI used it all the time. They'd nuke-drop a few cities, then contact you to ask for peace. The stupid senate would force you to make peace before you even had a chance to fight back.

 

[GI Josh]

Originally posted by zeeter
To really emphasize the powers of the paratroopers would mean a change to the game. Specifically, the rules would have to change where ground units cannot cross over a river.

In fact, I think that this would greatly enhance the game. Imagine having a river as a natural defense barrier. We could use workers to build bridges - along with a new advance called Bridge Building (wasn't that in Civ2?).

We would have protection from early advancement and settler diarhea by the AI. We would have a need to protect bridges. We could destroy bridges to slow down the enemy. We would need to bring workers along on campaigns to rebuild bridges.

As far as paratroopers go, they would need to drop behind the bridge and try to capture it before the enemy destroys it.

Plus, there should be a defensive bonus when defending from accross a bridge. This is what makes the paratroopers important. They would drop behind the bridge in order to take away the defensive bonus.

I don't think building bridges is the answer - all of your extra workers who are currently building RRs on every single tile will simply bridge every single river tile. The solution is to have distinct transportation corridors. There have been threads on this, but the problem is that RR/road gives huge advantages and no disadvantages. My humble suggestion is to make road/RR an exclusive improvement, i.e. you can irrigate *or* mine *or* road/RR a tile. Irrigate is +1 food, mine is +1 production, and road is +1 trade. Now you won't put a road on every single tile - you have to balance it out. RR should not give you any additional bonus over a road. In addition, roads and RRs should have an upkeep cost, say 1gpt/5 tiles of road and 1gpt/1tile of RR. Failure to pay causes there to be a certain % chance that RR will degrade to road and road to disappear. This will help prevent the road/RR-ing of all non-city radius tiles.

What's the bottom line result? There will be defined road/rail links between cities/resources. Players will have to balance the increased speed and security of multiple transportation corridors with the increased cost and decreased production/food of roads/RRs. Want to make sure that city won't be cut-off? Then have several RR links, but now you have to pay a price. Much combat will take place of the transportation grid. Helicopters and paratroopers will become very important units for the initial assault because they will have the realistic ability to cut-off access between cities or to resources.

I dislike ideas that require additional units with additional commands - the end-game is tedious enough with all the clicking and micromanaging. I think making road/RR an exclusive improvement with some sort of upkeep cost will add a lot of strategic depth to the game with no increase in tedium.

 

[GI Josh]

. . . I forgot to mention that I really like making mech/tank units flagged as wheeled. I wish there was some way to modify the attack and defense value of units idiosyncratic to the terrain, e.g. make tanks suffer a big disadvantage when attacking/defending in mountains.

 

[zeeter]

I agree that a problem is that the worker automation will simply make the workers build bridges on every square. A solution to this would be to take bridge building out of the automation sequence. IOW, they would have to be manually built by the player. Furthermore, they should have an upkeep cost. Maybe five Gold per turn. This will prevent players from just building railroads on every river square.

 

[bobgote]

5gpt is too high, but i like the concept. GI Josh's idea of roads/RR as exclusive is interesting, and would be one way of solving the problem, but it changes the whole game entirely.

 

[thisismysn20]

I believe all infantry units are very useful. I changed all my transports to only carry infantry units, artillary units, and missiles. This way the only way to invade another country is via infantry. Of course I upped the Marines and other so on's strength some.

I also upped the hellicopter to transport 5 foot units, and also made another transport that could move 12 foot units. I used one of my bombers to be capable of transporting 10 troops as well.

This way it made invasions a lot more relastic. At least in my opinion.

 

[MightyMick]

Zeeter - Amphibious assaults on cities aren't as common as beach landings, but there are still a few examples in history. Dieppe during WW2 was one such assault, albeit not a terribly successful one. Also, I thought the Inchon landing took place in a pretty built-up area, but I could be wrong.