More ideas from 2008. I just copy our "crazy list", some may not be doable.
Graphics engine
- Play an animation when a plane is performing a recon mission (just the run, like before a bombardment). Currently, the tile is just revealed, making recon aircraft animation useless
- For unit with AA defense, allow to select which animation they play when intercepting unit (not only the missile). Would be done when a new entry in the .ini files
- Allow to set in the ini which animation to play when using bombardment / attack. Currently, it’s not possible to have a different animation for ship attacking another ship, or firing cruise missible far away. We want to change that.
- Allow to set in the ini a different “bomb” animation depending if the target is land/sea (so a torpedo plane doesn’t torpedo a tank unit…
- Allow to set in the ini a different animation for irrigation and clear pollution. For some fan made units, having the same animation look strange (like an harvester...)
- Add a “boarding” animation atack for ship in the ini
- When a file is missing, list it in a log, display a "blank" picture or do nothing, but do NOT exit the game immediately (it would make modding so much easier)
- In the CivPedia, handle properly the case where to many links are visible in the screen. Currently an error message is displayed individually for every extra link...
- Problem with the display of resources when there are to many (some “disappear” in the advisor screen)
- Make it possible in the PediaIcons to have civ specific animation and icons for units, without to have to copy them (same unit, same stats, one entry in the editor, but graphics change)
- More cycle options : Cycle cities that are building something, cycle cities that are only building Wealth, etc
Music
Make it possible in the music.txt to decide what musics are played for era/civilization. This would add to the flavor for some scenario, where the music would change depending on the civilization you picked
Barbarians
- Allow the possibility for Barbarians to capture a city. The city would then produce only Barbarian units, no other production.
- Allow for more types of barbarians:
• Allow at least one type of land and sea for each era
• Or use the possibility to assign units to the barbarian chiefdom civ, and use the upgrade path to get the most recent barbarian
- Allow for Barbs to have diplomacy enabled
Units attribute
- Add a "bribe / charm" flag for some units (or fix the one in the "cracked" editor to work properly
- Add a "unit type" flag, like "mounted", "submarine", and add a "bonus against” flag, so pikemen can have a bonus vs. cavalry for instance. The bonus can be positive or negative. Ideally, the unit type can be expanded, or if it’s too much to change we can just have a pre-set list.
- Add an "helicopter" flag and make them work properly: unit are land units, but can cross a narrow body of water.
- Change the "ignore terrain", which is useless (or all units need at least 2 MP) into a "preferred" terrain that would give movement and Combat bonus. Add cities in the list.
- Same as "ignore terrain" flag, add an "impassable terrain" for each unit
- Chance to lose HP in specific terrain
- Add a notion of fuel/supply.
• Amount of remaining supply, consume when moving
• Or range the unit can reach from a friendly city
Units like tankers could resupply a unit, or extend the range.
- Give a withdrawal chance to each unit (variable, instead of depending on MP)
- Instead of a ZOC checkbox, make it a number, with a variable chance to intercept enemy unit
- Add a “Partisan” flag : automatic creation of partisan unit when capturing a city (like Civ2)
- Variable radar range (i.e. how far away can the unit see?)
- Add a "peacekeeping" rating for units, to see how much they keep happiness or can reduce riots.
- More "spy" options for units, like sabotage building, steal technology
- Add a “healer” or “repairer” flag to units, allowing them to give HP back to friendly unit in the same tile, even in ennemy territory.
- Introduce a “morale” level. A unit could “flee” a combat if it takes losses, depending of its morale.
- Be able to limit units to RailRoads (armored trains)
- Add “patriotism” feature. When the unit fights (both attack and defence) within its national borders he gets bonus vs enemy unit of the civilization-agressor.Only for the units of the civilization being aggressed.
- Add an ‘Ambush” rating, with a bonus if in home territory, or if in favoured terrain. If success, unit is allowed a free attack, without risk or retalation, before normal combat starts.
- For Amphibious unit, add a “rating”, so some units can be better than other at that.
- For paratrooper, add a “Drop training” rating.
When a unit is dropped:
• The rating is used to check the unit drops where planned. In case of failure, the unit drops in an adjacent tile
• The rating is used to check if the unit loses its MP, or if it can keep it (and thus attack in the same turn as it drop)
• If the unit can attack, the rating is used as a strength modifier (until next turn).
- Modify the “capture” flag, so a unit can be captured after losing a fight (can be used to capture ennemy tanks for instance). Captured units can heal only if the civilization that capture it is allowed to build it.
Transport
- Give transports the ability to transport other transports. The Aircraft Carrier should be able to transport Blackhawk helicopters with 1 foot soldier onboard each helicopter. Troop transports should be able to carry LCACs, APCs, etc, etc.
- Modify the AI so it can use land transport properly.
- Give the possibility to define more “can transport” flags for transport, and “type of transport” for units. If it’s not possible to make the list expandable, propose a pre set list with enough option.
- For transports, indicate the capacity for each type of transported units.
Example : an aircraft carrier can carry 4 air unit, 1 infantry unit.
- Fix AI Naval Strategies so that its submarines actually load and carry SLBMs and that they're used effectively/properly.
- Fix AI Naval Strategies to properly load and maintain its carrier units (ie replenish them effectively, load them to capacity)
- Fix the "Requires Escort" flag or enforce this flag more emphatically for sea units
- Introduce an effective aerial transport element via transport aircraft and possible tanker units in conjunction with a 'fuel' component.
Unit creation and maintenance
- Make the maintenance cost variable for each unit
- Add a "required building" for units
- Add a "resource must be in city radius" for units. Can be very useful to force some units to be built only in specific cities for some scenarios, with a pre placed resource (ex: highlander buildable only in Scotland)
- Add an "obsolete tech" for units so they can be removed from the build queue without upgrading to something else or having to manipulate it in the editor (ie 'Upgrades To' unit selected but no unit action to 'Upgrade').
- Add a "number of required city" for all units, not only leaders (so we can have only a few elite units for instance). The flag would no longer be in the general settings for armies.
- Add a "cannot capture city" flag
- Make it possible to have 2 (3?) tech requirements for units. This can serve two purposes:
• Simplify the tech tree (instead of “nuclear power” + “submarine” that can give “nuclear submarine”, that gives the attack sub units, we can just have the two techs as requirement).
• By making a “non-era” tech as requirement, we can limit the units to a specific group of civ (the one starting with the tech).
- To build a unit, you need the resource for the whole building time. If you can hold iron for only one turn, you should not be able to start building 10 tanks in 10 cities, and continue building them the next turn.
- Limit the number of units from the number of available resources (ex: 5 tanks allowed for every oil in your resource pool)
-Add a concept of “Manpower”. Creating a new unit take some manpower (without reducing the population of a city). The max “nominal” manpower is proportional to the total population (proportion varies with the current government).
Each unit correspond to a certain manpower. It is possible to create a new unit only when the sum of the manpower of every existing unit + every unit being built is < max manpower.
When a unit is destroyed, the max manpower decrease, and will increase the following turns to go back to nominal.
Some techs could increase the manpower (like “female workforce”
.
- odify the resource requirement for units, with, instead of 3 resources:
• One “fuel” resources (could be for instance oil, coal, uranium). If the resource is not available, then the MP and operational ranges are halved for this unit for this turn.
• One “combat” resources (saltpeter, iron for shells). If the resource is not available, then the unit strength is reduced for this turn (halved? 75%?)
• 1-3 “build” resources, working as they currently are.
This way, we could have Tanks units that require Iron to be build, and then Oil and Iron to be operated at full strength.
- A unit can heal only if the resources required to build it is available : A cavalry unit cannot be reinforced without access to horse!
Bombardment
-Have the ROF play a role in defensive bombardment, and the bombardment strength also
- Make the bombardment strength different when bombarding naval/land units
- Add ability for nuclear bombardment to remove cities completely (if population is low enough)
- Allow destruction range of nukes and/or cruise missiles to be altered (currently only nukes can cause damage outside of ‘ground zero’, if this is adjustable it gives options for ‘strategic’ nukes which effect a two square radius, or ‘tactical’ nukes which effect a one square radius or only ground zero)
- Add a "no effect on building" flag, so we can make chemical weapon that can only damage unit
- Make possible for nuclear weapons to be delivered with methods other than tactical missiles
- Add ability to have tactical missiles without having nuclear warhead. Example, V-2 missile cannot be used without having it as a nuclear weapon.
- Have the (land) bombarding unit occasionally bombard units instead of terrain improvements
- More effective and agressive AI use of land artillery
- Add a derivitive of a "precision bombing" flag for the missile units; it would simulate a conventional tactical warhead
Aviation
-Add a "can load on carrier" and "carrier" flag for planes and ship
- Add a flag allowing a bombarding aircraft to select their target (same as stealth attack for land units but for aerial bombardment); in other words, a "Strike Aircraft" flag
- Allow for air units on "Recon" missions be able to detect invisible units; this would allow for effective ASW, sea scouts, and spy planes.
- Add a variable "intercept" , “avoid interception” and “avoid AA” chance for each aircraft
- When a city is captured, their is a chance that the planes inside are:
• Destroyed
• Captured
• Rebased automatically to the closest friendly base
- Add a “AWAC” flag, that increase the change of interception for units in the “detection range” of the plane.
- Add use of aerial tanker to increase range of combat aircraft.
- Add the ability to set a “Patrol Point” or a set CAP pattern on the map for a unit which it automatically follows until turned off
- Fix “Precision Bombing” and possibly expand it to target only buildings and/or certain types of units
- Add EW planes, that could decrease the change of intercepting unit.
- Add "SEAD" flag for air units (supperession of enemy air defenses); it would be able to hit and possibly knock out only enemy anti-aircraft units such as flak and sam units.
- Add "Can Deliver Nuclear Weapon" flag for certain bomber and strike aircraft
- Add an effect of experience to aircraft : veteran planes have more chance to intercept for instance.
- Decrease the efficiency of planes with the range: at extrem range, bombardment, attack and defence should be reduced.
- Give planes different altitude of operation: High, Medium, Low.
= Planes can only intercept planes in their altitude or below (makes high-flying bombers only interceptable by fighters capable of reaching that altitude)
- Add a “VTOL” flag for planes and helicopters, make ships able to chose between “carry only planes”, “carry only VTOL” or “carry VTOL and planes”
- Allow air units to rebase/repare/refuel at friendly air bases and cities of the AI/human player
- Allow for two different ranges : bombardment, and interception
- Prevent aicraft from flying other neutral territory (only above ennemy, or ally)
Navy
- A special "submarine" and "see submarine" flag, as only one hidden flag for submarines / spies is to limited
- Fleet unit, similar to army but for navy
- Add an interception chance for navy. As naval unit can be fast, when a ship becomes adjacent to an ennemy ship, there is a chance is get “stuck” and lose the remaining movement points. This would limit some tactics of “come close, bombard, and escape”.
- Add an “amphibious” flag. Amphibious assault can be done only from ships with this flag on.
- When a city is captured, their is a chance that the ships inside are:
• Destroyed
• Captured
• Moved automatically in an adjacent sea tile
- Add a “Boarding strength” attribute to ship, that could be used with an icon (like bombard).
The boarding animation is played, the boarding strenght is used to solve combat, and the winning unit has a chance to capture the losing one, or sink it.
- Add a “naval escort”, “asw patrol”, “naval bombardment” and “aa defense” flag to determine the use of the ships, similar to the existing “naval power” etc. flags. Add a “head of battle group” flag, that will tell the AI to group some smaller ships with them (e.g. DDs to BBs). Add a flag “No Convoy Duty” to prevent BBs grouping with Transports
- Add a type of "stealth bombardment" flag for certain sea units (e.g., subs with a bombardment rating).
- Allow friendly sea units to share the same tile.
- Allow friendly ships to refuel/repair at foreign and friendly ports
- Introduce a naval "Zone of Control"
- Fix naval AI strategies to better employ SLBMs - building and deploying them.
- Add in a variable "chance of detetction" rating for sea units; destroyers and sub chasers would be on the high end while other ships, especially the early era ships/pre-sonar, would be less inclined to detect the invisible units.
- Add in a "sonar" flag; it would give sea units without the "Detect Invisible" a better chance of detecting submarines (assuming there's a variable rate of detection).
- Add in a "noise" rating for submarines; the higher the rating, the more likely they are to be detected.
- Fix AI naval strategies to better emphasize naval transport (i.e., fill the entire transport all the time) and especially better and more effective convoy behavior.
- Introduce "naval minefield" as a type of aquatic tile improvement that could somehow impede/damage enemy sea units which travesre said tile; it'd be done by a "minelayer" or auxilary type sea unit and would act as a type of 'aquatic worker' unit. A 'removal' type unit like a 'minesweeper' could also be introduced.
Army
- Allow unloading units from an army (optional)
- Civ speciffic armies and leader
- Be sure that an army gets the bonus from all its components, to emphasis the importance of combined arms.
- Fix AI tendency to load its fastest units into armies rather than the better offensive and defensive minded units; in other words, load the best units into the armies and not take the movement ratings into account.
