Hi, folks!
Well, i got all wonders/city improvements to work, added the civilepedia (sp) entries without having a major stroke, and all seems to work fine, so.......I've been trying some new things out and found some brick walls.
1) Well, first, did you know that when you make the relatively worthless paratrooper unit into a mobile, invisible tacticle nuke he becomes really scary? But he can be loaded on nuke subs, because of the tact. nuke flag, but if you make him a foot unit, he should only be able to board regular ships.
2) Anyway, those railroads are just way too fast. Maybe three times as fast as regular roads would be better. Is there any way to change the movement value of railroads, or to add a new worker terrain improvement that you can assign a move value to?
I've upped the move vaue for roads to 5 from default 3, and made railroads require uranium and aluminum, take 20 turns to build/square and the last tech in the game, intergrated defence. That way, railroads may have teleport speeds, but shure not gonna be many of them around.
Also, I've been trying to get the warfare in the game less city-based, and throttle each other with as many modern armor and mech. infantry as you can stack up, and make the combat more strategic. I've tried this by making most units NOT upgradable (I mean, c'mon, you can transform a decrepit old spearman into mech. infantry for 120 or 160 gold?? not realistic), made the more advanced units much more expensive, (like would training and equipping an infantry unit really be only 20% or whatever cheaper than building a modern armor with radar, etc, etc? If infantry costs 120 shields, than modern armor should at least be 240). Not being able to upgrade many units (okay, okay, you can upgrade the freakin' musketman to a rifleman, just give him a better gun!
) should help to keep units from being outdated because of fast tech research and the time it takes to build them. Finally, very few railroads, and only late in the game, should keep the wartimes more real...you find 30 enemy units stacked and heading towards your westernmost cities, then you had better get a move on and send your troops there ahead of time; no more of this "this tank defends this city this turn, then next turn appears in battle halfway across the continent."
3) any other thoughts on making land battles more, uhm, engaging to the chessmaster in us all?
4) Oh yeah, and those battleships need to be able to carry at least cruise missiles, think what they were able to do during the Gulf War, for instance. Likewise, if nuke subs can carry tact. nukes, why not cruise missiles too? A bit of a waste that is, but you may as well have the option.
5) Finally, for now, I've been offline too long, helicoptors traditionally have been good for both insertion AND extractions, that's their primary functions in a war. Being able to pick up the wounded or blokes who need a lift outta Heck is possible in Civ3, and so I offer this suggestion:
In civ3edit make these changes to helicoptors:
its still an Air Unit,
give it all Stardard orders,
NO air missions should be checked unless you want a mega-helicoptor,
check Special Actions: Unload and Airdrop only,
AI Strategy should be: Air Transport,
suggested values: Moves: 5, Operation Range: 5, Attk: 4, Defence: 12 (see below), HP Bonus: +2,
finally, check the following Unit Abilities in the oh-so-annoying check box that erases all abilities already checked if you click it and forget to have the CTRL key pressed: Radar, Transprt only Foot Units, and UNCHECK Immobile.
The gameplay with this unit will be a mobile air unit that land units can kill if given the chance. Upping the HP Bonus and giving an ATT/DEF of 4/12 will help somewhat keep the bird up in the air if you are unable to get it out of enemy-swarming territory, but they will go down sometimes. They will be able to "land" on the square where the foot units are to be extracted, the foot units then Load on to the helicoptor, and then your off. Yea, unlimited fuel, true, not like in Civilization II, but then when was the last time you had to dock your battleships for refueling?
Take care, all! Hope to be back online again soon
Willow...know Her, love Her, WORSHIP HER!
