Jedoc
Warlord
So I was playing Civ this morning before work. I'd had control of my home continent since the Renaissance, and I was minding my own business while gunning for a Cultural victory. I had three rings of Frigates around my continent giving me visibility over practically the entire ocean. However, then I discovered Combustion, oil started flowing in from several forts, and I spent a few turns of intense micromanagement tuning my cities to deal with the new Factory unhappiness.
While I was thus distracted, Joao merrily sailed a lightly-protected stack of Galleons through my picket lines, declared war, and took a coastal city through an amphibious assault during the first turn of the war.
Now, this happens. You take the city back, you bombard his coastal cities for a while, and after a while he pays you some gold to make the whole thing go away. But there was no reason for him to reached my cultural borders at all. I had enough Frigates to send his entire fleet to the bottom in two turns, and I had the cash and technology to upgrade half a dozen ships to Destroyers. Heck, just upgrading the defenders in the targeted city to Infantry the turn before would have been enough to completely wreck his dastardly plan.
So I started thinking about what elements would make up my ideal early-alert system for the second half of the game.
The first element is a user-controlled threat index in the Foreign Advisor screen. Clicking each leaderhead should bring up a pair of radio buttons which you can switch from the default, "Mostly Harmless," to "Backstab Ahoy." This setting will affect the information you get from recon missions.
The second element is an air patrol system. Basically, I would like to be able to set a continuous mission, similar to "Intercept," which causes a fighter to perform a recon sweep on the same tile at the beginning of each turn. This serves two functions: first, it allows you to use your air force for recon without clicking a dozen times per turn. And second, it pops up a message in the Event Log if a rival transport ship appears in the recon area. This does not include caravels, and only applies to civs you have tagged with the "Backstab Ahoy" label. The patrol mission uses up a fighter's turn, making it unavailable for intercept duty or bombing runs.
The third element is a naval patrol system. Let's face it, the Sentry mission is pretty useless, since ordinarily your enemy isn't actually your enemy until he's pulling a Pearl Harbor on your least-defended coastal city. Instead, your ships patrol between two set points or a circuit. There are two missions available for this purpose. Patrol merely flags Backstab Ahoy transports with an event log. Combat Patrol "wakes" the unit as soon as a Backstab Ahoy transport enters the field of view, halting the patrol and conferring control to the player. Three buttons are required: Set Patrol Point, Patrol, and Combat Patrol. This will allow the player to resume patrols without having to reset all the points every time a Combat Patrol spots an exploring Galleon. Any series of patrol points will comprise a linear, back and forth patrol unless the final point is laid overtop the initial point, which will create a circuit.
Since galleons and transports are really the only vessels of interest in overseas invasions, this system communicates all relevant information with a minimum of message clutter or gameplay interruption. What do you all think? Is due diligence a part of player strategy, or should it be delegated to your units? Did I deserve to lose Iron Bay, or should I have my Frigate captains flogged for failing the Motherland? Is this mod possible (or, even better, already built and ready to download) or do we have to wait for Civ V to see it?
While I was thus distracted, Joao merrily sailed a lightly-protected stack of Galleons through my picket lines, declared war, and took a coastal city through an amphibious assault during the first turn of the war.
Now, this happens. You take the city back, you bombard his coastal cities for a while, and after a while he pays you some gold to make the whole thing go away. But there was no reason for him to reached my cultural borders at all. I had enough Frigates to send his entire fleet to the bottom in two turns, and I had the cash and technology to upgrade half a dozen ships to Destroyers. Heck, just upgrading the defenders in the targeted city to Infantry the turn before would have been enough to completely wreck his dastardly plan.
So I started thinking about what elements would make up my ideal early-alert system for the second half of the game.
The first element is a user-controlled threat index in the Foreign Advisor screen. Clicking each leaderhead should bring up a pair of radio buttons which you can switch from the default, "Mostly Harmless," to "Backstab Ahoy." This setting will affect the information you get from recon missions.
The second element is an air patrol system. Basically, I would like to be able to set a continuous mission, similar to "Intercept," which causes a fighter to perform a recon sweep on the same tile at the beginning of each turn. This serves two functions: first, it allows you to use your air force for recon without clicking a dozen times per turn. And second, it pops up a message in the Event Log if a rival transport ship appears in the recon area. This does not include caravels, and only applies to civs you have tagged with the "Backstab Ahoy" label. The patrol mission uses up a fighter's turn, making it unavailable for intercept duty or bombing runs.
The third element is a naval patrol system. Let's face it, the Sentry mission is pretty useless, since ordinarily your enemy isn't actually your enemy until he's pulling a Pearl Harbor on your least-defended coastal city. Instead, your ships patrol between two set points or a circuit. There are two missions available for this purpose. Patrol merely flags Backstab Ahoy transports with an event log. Combat Patrol "wakes" the unit as soon as a Backstab Ahoy transport enters the field of view, halting the patrol and conferring control to the player. Three buttons are required: Set Patrol Point, Patrol, and Combat Patrol. This will allow the player to resume patrols without having to reset all the points every time a Combat Patrol spots an exploring Galleon. Any series of patrol points will comprise a linear, back and forth patrol unless the final point is laid overtop the initial point, which will create a circuit.
Since galleons and transports are really the only vessels of interest in overseas invasions, this system communicates all relevant information with a minimum of message clutter or gameplay interruption. What do you all think? Is due diligence a part of player strategy, or should it be delegated to your units? Did I deserve to lose Iron Bay, or should I have my Frigate captains flogged for failing the Motherland? Is this mod possible (or, even better, already built and ready to download) or do we have to wait for Civ V to see it?
