reworking the UU concept

[bhiita]

I've been pondering this for along time.
Regarding UU's I've wanted it to be more random and more realistic.. the whole premise to to the civilization games is that you're able to 'rewrite history' as it is, but many aspects are still preordained, like your UU.

I just had a simple idea to try and solve this the first step is to make the UU's tech dependant, whoever gets to the tech first, gets the corisponding UU and everyone else gets the regular version. Second to make the UU's atributes modifiable by the civilizations civis at the time they get them or by the leader's traits.

Well, at least the tech dependant part is good I think. how hard whould that be to acomplish?

 

[bhiita]

OR... for every UU tech... there are certain criteria to meet.
For example: whatever you're most pormoted unit is.. or most numerous unit type.. you would get a UU version.

 

[Kushan]

How about making all units unique to a Civilization?

Kushan

 

[MRM]

I've been pondering this for along time.
Regarding UU's I've wanted it to be more random and more realistic.. the whole premise to to the civilization games is that you're able to 'rewrite history' as it is, but many aspects are still preordained, like your UU.

I just had a simple idea to try and solve this the first step is to make the UU's tech dependant, whoever gets to the tech first, gets the corisponding UU and everyone else gets the regular version. Second to make the UU's atributes modifiable by the civilizations civis at the time they get them or by the leader's traits.

Well, at least the tech dependant part is good I think. how hard whould that be to acomplish?

Well I would make it different ( if I was skilled enough ) - IMO you should get an UU only if spend more research effort on a certain tech - for example if you want a UU archer, then you have to research advanced archery, after you have researched the normal archery.

With your idea the tech leader would grab all UU and would get even more powerfull - no change for someone you lays behind in the tech race to turn the game to his advantage again.

If you have to spend more research for UU than for normal units, then it is more balanced, because someone who tries to grab every UU will fall back in the tech race because he can not improve his normal techs so fast any more - but I guess this would be harder to implement ( because you have to tell the AI how to handle the new rule ... )

 

[TBox]

With infinite resources, you *could* make it so each civ only gets one UU, and as they research a UU producing tech, they're presented with the question: Do you want UU instead of X? If they answer yes, they'll never get any more UUs, no matter how hard they research, and if they answer No, the next civ to research the tech answers the same question.

How to handle who gets Fast Worker, though?

<threadjack>
Personally, I think some civs should get Unique Buildings instead of Unique Units. Some people (ahem) don't play aggressively enough to care about any of the UUs.
</threadjack>

 

[Colonel Kraken]

Some very interesting proposals here (unique buildings too!). My only concern is the one MRM brought up. If this problem could be handled, it would be great!

 

[bhiita]

on thinking more about it... I think the extra research would be the most realistic way. maybe..... as a seperate tech tree that was only available to a new GP which led to buildings that earned UU points (same type of scale used for culture and GPP) and when you reached the certain amount of UU points you were able to choose what unit you wanted to upgrade to UU and then, to build it, you have to build a coresponding realtively inexpensive building.

all that just poured forth out of the blue while typing. and I'm a little tired so pardon me if my articulation is off.

 

[Quinzy]

i like this idea. it brings in a more realistic aspect.

how to handel fast worker? random picking when game starts.

 

[Adam7Eight]

I like the idea as well.

Something I thought of I wouldn't mind seeing is era-specific UU's- each civ has a UU for each era. I've never really liked the idea of some civs getting their UU's within the first 1-3 techs in ancient times who can totally dominate compared to a civ that gets a UU in late-industrial, early-modern times when it really won't make that much of a difference. Remember the American UU from Civ3? Yikes. This isn't as bad in Civ4, but the whole approach to UU's could be a lot better and a little more balanced.

 

[MikeC]

I've been contemplating unit designs lately. Instead of specific units like Warriors, Spearsmen, Axemen, Swordsmen, etc, I was looking at generalizing to Light Infantry, Heavy Infantry, etc. Since I'd be taking away the unit-specific bonuses vs unit types, I was also looking at revamping the Promotion system to allow specialization into a variety of "specialty units" such as city defenders, city attackers, first strike, etc. Anyway, I was thinking instead of giving a single UU, a civ might have bonuses to certain unit types.

For example, the UU of Rome is the Praetorian unit. Praetorians are a symbol of the real strength of Rome, namely the Legions. If Rome had continued into the 20th century as a major empire, they would have built upon their success, instead of looking at the glory days of the gladius. So, instead of giving the Roman Civ an era-specific elite Swordsman unit, I'd give them a promotion bonus for any Heavy Infantry built - so they'd have the UU bonus no matter what era or weapons used.