No Arms Race

[Dryden]

I know that this would probably be impossible for a simple mod to change, but I have one problem with the game.

Like most other world building strategy games, this one boils down to who can build the most units the fastest. And I was hoping for a more passive game.
Of course, this was true in history, but there are other options besides the obvious.
The game Black and White 2 for instance. They did exacly this. If your city or civilization builds up a huge amount of culture and happiness, people from other cities begin to migrate to your city. Eventually stripping the opposing cities of workers. It seems to me that Civ 4 has the potential to do this, it already has the two values to work off of, I just wish it could have been implemented.
The manual does say that Civ 4 is very moddable, but this option probably goes to the core of the game.

Oh, and one other oddity that I noticed. Putting many units in one square adds no bonus to defense or attack. Everything still works on a one on one basis. Kinda counter intuative to me.

 

[mrmistophelees]

Actually, it is very much the case that you don't have to have large standing armies. You can deal with the game more diplomatically as well. Of course, as in the real world, a combination of some military power, diplomacy, and other stuff is often the key to meeting your nation's interests.

In reply to your B&W2 method of people flocking to your city, CivIV can kind of do that too. If you have some very cultural cities around a cultural-poor city of an opponent, there is always a chance that the opponents city could suddenly become yours because they like your culture better.

Finally, CivIII had what was called "armies" where if an elite unit was victorious, there was a chance to become an army (I would think that Firaxis wouldn't get rid of them, so I assum they are in CivIV). You could then fill an army (kind of like a boat, but on land) with 3 units of your choice, and then they would fight together, helping each other and being more effective. In the real world, this is very accurate. If you have a single army battalion that was designed to fight together, they will tend to be very good at communication and tactics. But units that are not associate with an army may lack team coordination. If you look at the US army, the different branches can't talk to each other at all. There is no standard communication method between them, so they do not tend to work together well at all (comparatively).

 

[Matches10]

I wrote a fairly comprehensive summary recently on how the fundamentals if immigration and "National Attitiude" could be implemented using some already-existing mechanics. But I'm not sure if I posted it here or not.

With the addition of religion I believe that ethnicity and immigration is the one thing still missing from the series that would make it truly engrossing and add an unprecendented "real" feeling to the game.

 

[Tidus4444]

I know that this would probably be impossible for a simple mod to change, but I have one problem with the game.

Like most other world building strategy games, this one boils down to who can build the most units the fastest. And I was hoping for a more passive game.
Of course, this was true in history, but there are other options besides the obvious.
The game Black and White 2 for instance. They did exacly this. If your city or civilization builds up a huge amount of culture and happiness, people from other cities begin to migrate to your city. Eventually stripping the opposing cities of workers. It seems to me that Civ 4 has the potential to do this, it already has the two values to work off of, I just wish it could have been implemented.
The manual does say that Civ 4 is very moddable, but this option probably goes to the core of the game.

Oh, and one other oddity that I noticed. Putting many units in one square adds no bonus to defense or attack. Everything still works on a one on one basis. Kinda counter intuative to me.

You could toggle the "always peace" icon in the custom game screen. Makes it so that you never have to worry about military units, though expansion is possible if you can culture flip.

 

[Dryden]

That sounds like agreat idea Matches10, I hope you have the ability to mod (unlike me).

mrmistophelees, thanks for your comments, but you didn't actually seem to give me a straight answer on why they didn't give bonuses to large armies. But thinking about it a little further, it actually relates to my earlier critique of the game.
If they did give bonuses to large armies then people would create huge unstoppable armies. Without bonuses there really is not a big need to create large armies. Whether or not this was their intention or simply not given attention to is anyone's guess.

 

[tofof]

To answer your question, the advantage of armies in civ3 is that no single unit within the army died unless the army was completely destroyed. In effect, an army acted as a 15-20 hitpoint unit instead of the normal 3-5 hitpoint units, and could attack more than once in a turn. This was a huge advantage, as you could throw it at a town alone, have it take 18 points of damage while dealing a similar amount to the defenders, and have it be able to heal completely.

However, MM is completely misinformed about civ4. Armies, as they existed in civ3, do not exist in civ4. Stacked units also work slightly differently - the computer always chose the pairing of the defending unit to be the strongest in civ3. In civ4, this is the case as well - the computer defends automatically with the unit best suited to defeat the individual attacker. With multiple specialized promotions, it's possible to have a stack that has a defender that has bonuses against nearly any attacker. However, if you do this, units such as catapults and cho-ko-nu (which cause 'collateral damage') can damage every single unit in the stack during their attack. This makes them invaluable for attacking cities, for instance, and helps limit the strength of swamping with vast numbers. If the defender splits his units into smaller stacks, you may well as an attacker be able to exploit pairings that favor you.

 

[Dryden]

Thanks tofof, thats some good info I'll take into account when building armies.