swordsman to rifleman!

[murewa]

damn i did not know this was a possible upgrade! AFAIK this was not possible in the unpatched version. i should read the civilopedia more carefully.

 

[sabo]

huh? I thought Swordsmen were the end of the road, I thought it upgraded from warrior to swordsman and that's it... what patch do you have?

 

[Zouave]

Why SHOULD swordsmen NOT be upgradeable? Because the jokers at Firaxis said so?? They know so little about history it's a joke.

Last December I made swordsmen upgradeable.

In my mod no UU can be upgraded to, but they can upgade.

 

[sabo]

Hey Zouave,
I tried your mod again with your suggestions and it worked fine..
thanx!!

 

[murewa]

oops i'm sorry, i forgot i was playing someone else's mod. hehe... hmm... nice thinking tho'

 

[sumthinelse]

A pikeman is a "defensive" unit while a swordsman is "offensive" (historically, probably with multiple meaning for the word "offensive"). But they didn't think that upgrading a swordsman to a tank made sense, whereas upgrading a pikeman to a musketman was more plausible. Probably the thinking was something like that.

Still, I think it is a weird restriction not to be able to convert a swordsman to a musketman etc. You end up with lots of obsolete, non-upgradeable units.

 

[cracker]

I think it is very logical and appropriate to have some defined breaks in the upgrade chain for offensive units.

This creates some distinctive decision processes that create offensive surges at different time phases in the game instead of supporting just a continuously upgradeable chain of woarmonger death. It requires a bit more thought and some more appropriate matching of resources and technology to the challenges of the specific map and opponents in the game.

I do believe that obsolete offensive units have a very valuable set of roles in the game and have modified my early gameplay approach to use them actively even in the later stages of the game. A swordsman has the same garrison power and movement as an infantryman but at 1/3rd the cost. Swordsmen, Longbowmen, and Cavalry make better transferrers (sp?) of production value and rushing potential than converting excess production to wealth (NEVER, Never, Never build Wealth except under special conditions).

 

[cracker]

Also for Murewa,

Do yourself a favor and try to separate the game of Civ3 from any of the strange permutations that may crop up in MOD games.

Mod games can be lots of fun, but often they are not well thought out or tested for balance. The changes in mods can be poorly documented and may even conflict with important strategies that can be used in real gameplay.

If you are new to the game, and play too many mods as your base game then you will never develop an understanding of some of the key strategies that can make the real game enjoyable.

Try playing the base game at regent and/or monarch levels with some minor (and I mean minor and well understood) modifications untill you can get to where you can play reasonably well AND THEN move off to modder's never-never-land. Otherwise you will have all sorts of weird crapola showing up in your games and you won't have a clue if its you or the game that is screwing up.

 

[murewa]

Originally posted by cracker
Also for Murewa,

Do yourself a favor and try to separate the game of Civ3 from any of the strange permutations that may crop up in MOD games.

Mod games can be lots of fun, but often they are not well thought out or tested for balance. The changes in mods can be poorly documented and may even conflict with important strategies that can be used in real gameplay.

If you are new to the game, and play too many mods as your base game then you will never develop an understanding of some of the key strategies that can make the real game enjoyable.

Try playing the base game at regent and/or monarch levels with some minor (and I mean minor and well understood) modifications untill you can get to where you can play reasonably well AND THEN move off to modder's never-never-land. Otherwise you will have all sorts of weird crapola showing up in your games and you won't have a clue if its you or the game that is screwing up.

hey i just found out ok! geez man chill out! i, myself, was surprised when the civilopedia showed me an upgrade for swordsmen. this is my first time playing with changed rules and it's definitely better than than the original rules. still, you all did give good arguments why the swordsmen shouldn't be upgradeable for power-balancing. But truthfully, even a high school girl can shoot a rifle so why not a full-grown, musclebound, hulk of a man?

 

[Hawkster]

Back to topic - I think it is a major limitation that swordsmen can't be upgraded - if you build a lot of them for early war/defense you then have to disabnd them and build new units rather than upgrade - personally I think it is a limitation!
Most other standard units can be upgraded why not swordsmen - bah!

 

[Doc Mahem]

Originally posted by cracker
I think it is very logical and appropriate to have some defined breaks in the upgrade chain for offensive units.

This creates some distinctive decision processes that create offensive surges at different time phases in the game instead of supporting just a continuously upgradeable chain of woarmonger death. It requires a bit more thought and some more appropriate matching of resources and technology to the challenges of the specific map and opponents in the game.

I do believe that obsolete offensive units have a very valuable set of roles in the game and have modified my early gameplay approach to use them actively even in the later stages of the game. A swordsman has the same garrison power and movement as an infantryman but at 1/3rd the cost. Swordsmen, Longbowmen, and Cavalry make better transferrers (sp?) of production value and rushing potential than converting excess production to wealth (NEVER, Never, Never build Wealth except under special conditions).

The problem with not upgrading to anything is that the AI leaves them lying around. This situation is unrealistic, and alters gameplay to the human's advantage.

 

[sumthinelse]

Originally posted by cracker


Mod games can be lots of fun, but often they are not well thought out or tested for balance. The changes in mods can be poorly documented and may even conflict with important strategies that can be used in real gameplay.

You are saying that the default values are well thought out? Wow!

I guess I and many others would disagree. And configuring the game the way I like to play is not any less "real" than playing with default values. For one thing, some default values for resource appearance are OK in some games and wrong in others, depending on map size and # of civs. The reason that they made the game configurable was that they realized that different players wanted different game characteristics.

What makes you think your games are "real" and modded games are not? If you don't like to upgrade swordsmen, great! I haven't bothered to change the upgrade path, but I don't think there would be anything wrong with doing that.

 

[DrJambo]

what about swordsmen to marines? At least then you keep it in the offensive strategy...?

swordsmen to riflemen, while equally logical, unfortunately results in a change of strategy from offensive to defensive.