New unit ability/wonder ability request thread

[Optimizer]

1. Variable upkeep cost for units
One thing that I have missed since Civ 1 is variable upkeep cost for military units. The current system gives unfair advantages to those who just build Battleships, Stealth Bombers and other large units. There is a reason why most battleships of the superpowers have been scrapped today!

2. Producing resources
I would really like buildings that produced resources, either just for that city (maybe too weak) or for all the civ (maybe too strong). One could have a Stud Farm that produced Horses, but required Horses to build, or a Fuel Plant that converted Coal to Oil.

No offence American friends, but I don't think that a baseball league qualifies as a national project.

 

[OmniMower]

Right Optimizer!
About Producing Resources:
I think this is a good way to bring an enemy down on thier knees by cutting of thier supply lines. So implement this to city level would work.
No offence US, but getting Texas and Alaska would perhaps give Us some problems.

/kind reg OmniMower

 

[kettyo]

I would like to see a fuel option, especially for air units.

Also it would be really necessary to get the ability to set how railroads work, to take up some movement points.

Also it would be nice to set the maximum range of a rebase mission.

And the possibility to make an air unit capable of flying multiple recon missions in one turn would be very welcome too.

 

[Erocco]

.Strategic resources thoughts!

I would like to see the strategic resources been exhausted not by a dissapearance probability, but depending on the amound of units that a civilization produces. For example: An oil resource will have a number of tonnes when you right click on it. Now depending on how many units you make that need this particular resource it will go down accordingly at every time you build a unit. Let's say you discovered refining and you have one oil resource with 5000 tonnes. Next few turns you discover combustion and you deside to build 3 destroyers. After the completion of the destroyers you have left 4700 tonnes. Same with goes with improvements, wonders, spaceship parts and making railroads.

This will also work when trading with other civs. You can sell a civilization a lump sum of an X amount of a stategic resource or at every turn for the next 20 turns.

All units will need the same amount of a resource otherwise too complicated.
ie. legionary 100 iron, battleships 100 oil, jet bombers 100 oil and 100 aluminum...
Factory 200 iron, Sam missle battery 200 aluminum...
Railroads 50 iron 50 coal
Apollo program 500 aluminum, The Manhattan Project 500 uranium...
SS Engine 200 aluminum, SS Cockpit 200 aluminum and so on so for.

Now I know this isn't realistic when it comes to unit types using a resource. I am trying to say that a bomber uses a lot more fuel than a tank but keep in mind that this is a lot more realistic than what we have now.

This will work with all strategic resources except horses and maybe rubber(give me your thoughts here).

The appearance ratio will still be there because you can still run out of a resource.

Finally every resource that appears on the will have different number of tonnes. Maybe some the same if a huge map.

 

[Erocco]

No #1 thing I would like to see is the increase in the operation range for air units. 8 is just rediculous in a larger map. I know firaxis came up with air fields but to me that's like having another city with an airport.

It would be nice to see SAM missle batteries can attack in the adjacent city squares not only in the city itself otherwise SAMs are useless to build besides that 5 are required to build the Strategic Missile Defense.

The famous Manhattan Project been a small Wonder. (so many people pray for this one I am amongst them)

I think u guys this is the most important thread in the entire CivIII world because we make suggestions that are improvements of excisting things in the game and not things that have to be buils from scratch.

 

[Optimizer]

The problem with aircraft's ranges could be solved if the range varied with map size.

 

[CWRJ]

Hello!!
Thank you for making this thread! I apologize if anyone has already asked for these features.
Whoever said that a good feature would be a 'required improvement' flag for units had a very good idea!
I would like to expand that to also include 'required government' -- in both unit settings and improvement/wonder settings, and also advancement settings. In the case where there is 'required government' (I believe in improvement settings) I would like very much if you could enable it for as many governments as you choose, instead of having only one be possible.
Also, in the Civilization configuration screen, something also like that, where you can set more than one 'shunned' government and more than one favorite. Perhaps putting them in the order of best-liked to least-liked? Or 'favorite', 'friendly', 'cautious', and 'shunned', simply? For Example, America could have Democracy at the top, then Republic, then monarchy, then Communism, in such a set up.
Also, this is a little off-topic, and if the thread-starter wants I'll delete it from my post, but, about the editor itself -- it would take too much work to enable it in this version of Civiliation, but, when Civ 4 rolls around a few years from now, what I think we'd all like best is an editor based upon a system of flags, which could be anything. For example, a lot of 'IF' and 'THEN' and 'GOTO' statements. A bit like basic -- but it would allow for a lot more customization -- you could do anything, to any unit, to any advancement, etc! Instead of just manipulating the settings from the original game, you could make something totally new.
Back to the topic --
I'd like to also have, in improvements, a setting where only a certain unit can build it, by coming into the city and beginning a function. Simply, I guess, it could just require the presence of the unit to build it. In this way, certain types of 'advanced workers' which people may want to include in scenarios would be much more valuable, as they might be required to build things like hospitals, or SAM, or nuclear weapons, etc.
So, pretty much what I'm saying is, expand the ability to set requirements. Let us get as complex with the list of necessaries as we want.
One more suggestion -- the 'specialists'. I'd like to see many more options there, also in the way of requirements, and expanding their abilities, and making certain units and improvements require certain specialists, or certain specialists being enabled by the presence of certain units or improvements.

Thank you!!

 

[CWRJ]

Hmm -- reading more, I would like to say, I definately agree about Manhattan project, to some degree. I think Manhattan Project should, instead of giving bombs, enable a civilization to study the advance for making such bombs, which could, theoretically, be stolen by another civ at some point, if they had the money to spend and good spies.
Also, I like the idea about units being built which decrease resources. However, I think that the use of fuel should not happen as soon as one is built, but instead a little taken away every time the unit moves or attacks. And, also, new resources should appear from time-to-time -- and this should be customizable also.

I love you all.

 

[Vdog]

ok

 

[Healz]

New Unit Idea

I think that adding the ability to make a special unit like an army duck that can go across coastal waters from the transport would be a good special unit addition for Fixaris to add. It would be cool to have the ability to have aquadic tanks and APCs rising from the surf to secure a landing-zone for the other units. What do others reckon?

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Actually, I would like to see the terraform strategy divided down to the individual options, not just three groups. Specifically, I would like the ability to do these kind of things, and have the AI use them appropriately:

1. Give clear forest/clear jungle option to elephant units in addition to their normal combat role.

2. Give build fortress option to Legionary and similar units known for fortification.

3. Remove the build rail option from worker and have a rail worker that only had build rail. (Then charge something like 30 shields, no pop, for the rail worker so that rail grids put down slower.)

Finally, I don't see much of a need for a requirment to check AI strategies specifically for a lot of things. (I'm probably missing something here.) It seems to me that no one would ever, for example, give a unit a build fortress ability unless they wanted that to build fortresses. The offense, defense, artillery AI checks all make sense, as does some kind of "non-combat" check for workers and other units with no defense. I can even see a "non-combat" check for no offense, low defense units where the designers wants them to be a little more resilent, but not used for garrison.

 

[Craig_Sutter]

RE: shallow draft naval units able to travel along rivers, inland seas

I would like to see the ability to create naval units able to travel along river tile sides and inland sea areas, and improvements that would allow construction of such units in cities adjacent to thess types of terrain and overlays. This is to simulate things like viking raiders able to travel along rivers a great way inland, or the exploration/conquest of north america, a great deal of which happened along navigatable rivers and the great lakes. A French-English conflict in North America, or a War of 1812 scenario would be very much enhanced with such unit capabilities.

 

[Lab Monkey]

Modern units like tanks don't just need oil during their construction process. An option needs to be added so that a unit will become unusable (0 attack, defense, and movement) and subject to capture if any, or one of the necessary resources runs out for the owning civ.

 

[Lab Monkey]

To enable a purely defensive unit, such as a militia or national guard, certain units can be flagged so that they cannot be moved outside of their civ's borders.

 

[Cyclonic]

A simple one this:

A flag for legitimate target types for bombardment\bombing. "Can bombard land" and "can bombard naval" (or "cannot bombard", however you want to do it).

Example uses:
An artillery unit incapable of hitting ships.
A naval bomber capable of hitting only ships.
A ship capable of bombarding other ships but not terrain improvements.

The target types could be further sub-divided, but this is the basic form of the idea.

Great thread, btw, Cracker. I hope we get to see a good number of these ideas implemented.

 

[ViceRoy]

I tried to check are these already said but I might have missed them...

1. Units that need certain government so they can be produced.

2. Units that can produce certain resource.
This could allow changing certain resource to be changed into something else. And then units could be as "resources" themselves. Example unit called "oil" could be delivered to another town where it could represent "oil"-building ability. Of course the unit could also lose the skill of producing same way the natural resource is sometimes lost.

3. Retreat option for ALL units. Units that have high HP and example high defence can retreat from combat after losing certain amount of HP. Now there's the problem that the fight is always done to the end without chance of survival of both units (unless the other one is "fast" unit).
When combat starts it would be like normal but after few hits there could be chance that combat "ceases"...
one unit runs away OR it ceases into same place it started because the fighting is impossible. This would make it more realistic as battles have to sometimes in reality stop because of weather or units being low on ammo. This could allow also weaker units to be able to defend themselves under threat without killing the stronger unit. Just think of "trench" warfare where you try to kill certain weaker unit for turns to get breakthrough but it just seems to have luck because the attack ceases now and then.

 

[ViceRoy]

4. Unit that can be only produced certain amount of times. Example only one "Napoleon" unit could be produced.
"certain tech makes unit obsolete" option would be nice with that. There could be chance to get certain "leader" unit for different period.

5. Unit option that could enchance the Attack and Defence ratings of other units in the same hex or in the certain range. Example "Napoleon" unit could give nice bonus stats for units in range of two hexes.

I just the idea of leader unit...

 

[Healz]

What about a War Academy which makes all units churned out after one or two battles into Elites, and allows the study of battle tatics and warfare strategy. I would have it appear in the Modern Age with maybe a statue at the front to signify those of your civilization that have lost their lives. What do people think?

 

[Healz]

Maybe with the War Academy, there could be a unique unit like an Elite War Academy Professional Body of Soldiers that have stats that make them worthwhile building but are only available to the Civilization, sort of like how the Manhatten Project makes the Atomic Bomb available to all Civs.

 

[pesoloco]

Originally posted by Smoking mirror
I want to have a Military supply unit for that can be dispanded in cities where it is needed, an essential process for building improvements in high coruption cities.
It would also be good for having a set of liquid resources for warfare, so you could build a fleet of suply vehicles to dispand in newly captured cities to produce walls/barracks/happiness.

What about if you could give units a disband value.

For example:
Unit A costs 10 shields
Its disband value is 8 shields
Unit B costs 5 shields
Its disband value is 2 shields

You could set individual values for disbanding different units.