There will be mech units.

[12agnar0k]

Well actually the "future" of warfare will most likely be robots, anything automated. Whether that be "cyborgs" or "androids" or radio controlled tanks, this is current science and is implemented into the military and it will only advance.

Now while Mechs are awesome, walking things aren't massive practical, they are in some things such as scalling a mountain, but then again a flying tank would be even better, with better propulsion systems we may well have "hover tanks" which while capable of sustained high speed flight can also hover stationary off the ground and move slowly through combat zones assiting other troops. This would be more realistic than Mechs. But!!! Realism is not needed in Civ, Mechs are cool and welcome. Bring on the future tech, I would like to see what Civ has done with it, I hope to see the late game stagnation removed with the addition of more futuristic and exiting technologies, Hover tanks perhaps that take up both the Land and Air slots of the 1UpT limit and can travel at full speed over land/mountains/sea without stopping. The future stages will really open out with advanced futuristic technologies really mixing up gameplay. If this kind of initiative hasn't been taken with Vanilla I hope somone very good at modding will create an amazing future mod, to really spice up games that enter the late stages, you want your game to end with a bang as it were if it goes on so long that you fear it could stagnate. I don't mean by everything blowing up but by gameplay being taken up a notch, meaning that the game does not stagnate but interest and fun increases if you still are playing at a certain point, having this intuative and awesome "end zone" to the technology increment of the game may even make it enjoyable to start a game in the future era if you want to "get right to it" as it were.

 

[Schuesseled]

The cool thing about the concept of mechs, is that they are very large, but thier bulk is vertical so they can move through infrastructure that we silly 21st century people have built. A tank is limited to a horizontal spread of bulk, it goes up vertically too, but only with horizontal growth (imagine slapping 5 shermans together and 2 on top) this massive thing would be able to pick off mechs like a child kicking a labradour, but hows it ever gonna get through that road.

A hover tank (and im talking giant hovering fortresses, hundreds of cannons) would basically make mechs obsolete, but these magic hovering thingies would come later in the tech tree no?

 

[Tomice]

Hover Tanks need a propulsion system we have no idea how to build, so they are rather in the category of units I wouldn't like to see. We have not even the slightest hint this will work one day.
While I would not hate them as last unit (antigravity needed for warp flight or something), I would really love them to do some research on cutting-edge prototypes rather than using every available sci-fi cliche.

Please no stuff like glass domes over cities...

 

[Schuesseled]

Glass domes are cool!

 

[lietkynes]

If this is confirmed, I like it
I always found it weird that future techs did nothing, except happiness and health.

 

[Tomice]

Glass domes are cool!

So are elves and orcs

 

[Schuesseled]

Exactly all should be in, you can't beat by elf mech units, with your stinky orc tanks! pklus i have a glass dome.

 

[SGRaaize]

You hate the future.....

I love games in the future
Civilization doesn't fit, though

 

[Schuesseled]

sure it does, why wouldn't it.

 

[Zero V]

walking tanks aren't very practical.

quite the contrary. Walking mechs are actually the path the military is taking! I know I was in the army.

See current treaded tanks are becoming ineffective. The amount of anti-armor weaponry out there is so vast, that your standard terrorist can take out a single multi-million dollar M1-Abrams with a 60,000 weapon.

There are many programs going on, private and not so private, to work towards a mobile walker for combat. The future of war will be based off the ability to dodge the attack, not withstand it as tanks were meant to do. Originally with unguided weapons systems a good tank crew/commander could out maneuver a dumbfire weapon. Today with weapons like the Javelin, dodging is nigh impossible. They are trying reactive armor, and mounted CPU controlled turrets and pods that can lock on and intercept incoming projectiles, but they are finding to just not work as well as it does in theory.

A walker, say with the ability to carry even a shielded mobile portion of itself that can be maneuvered, will ultimately replace the tank for its abilities to actually react in a mammalian fashion. A pilot, or group of pilots as may be likely for the first batch that will actually hit the fronts, will be able to react far better than a tank on treads.

Why my buddy in Iraq seen an M1-Abrams get a hole punched straight through the engine block by an enemy IED. Tanks are just not what they once were on the battlefields and are admittedly losing the ability to wage war effectively especially in urban environments. Thus enter the walkers. Likely we are going to see onces using 4-6 legs for maneuvering over a bipedal one. We are not talking gundams here lol, we are talking about walkers able to outmaneuver a tank yet maintain the same potential for causing offensive damage.

Believe it or not, its coming, and much sooner than you likely think.

 

[brianshapiro]

quite the contrary. Walking mechs are actually the path the military is taking! I know I was in the army.

Rather than risk a walker losing its legs (and becoming useless) wouldn't it be better to build rover type vehicles which are more versatile than tanks but have their support operating closer to ground level

 

[Intellectus]

Truth. there has been a staggering amount of technological progress on "future techs" since civ4 came out, i hope Civ5 reflects these advances, it didn't really seem like Civ4 aknowledged many of the advances that had happened since Civ3 was released. IMO Reaper drones should be USA's modern era UU

We are not living in the future at all. Just because you can teleport a particle does not mean you are living in the future.

You think its amazing now but sooner or later you're going to be bored when all this stuff comes out and it is not even close to being the savior of man.

 

[Me,myself,and,I]

Teleportation, robot planes, and cloning. We live in a world with very futuristic stuff. And our grandchildren will wonder about how we lived before holograms and virtual reality.

 

[Ex-Cop]

Robo Cop had a distaste for them too.

Best thing I've heard all week. Well done

 

[Tomice]

quite the contrary. Walking mechs are actually the path the military is taking! I know I was in the army.

See current treaded tanks are becoming ineffective. The amount of anti-armor weaponry out there is so vast, that your standard terrorist can take out a single multi-million dollar M1-Abrams with a 60,000 weapon.

There are many programs going on, private and not so private, to work towards a mobile walker for combat. The future of war will be based off the ability to dodge the attack, not withstand it as tanks were meant to do. Originally with unguided weapons systems a good tank crew/commander could out maneuver a dumbfire weapon. Today with weapons like the Javelin, dodging is nigh impossible. They are trying reactive armor, and mounted CPU controlled turrets and pods that can lock on and intercept incoming projectiles, but they are finding to just not work as well as it does in theory.

A walker, say with the ability to carry even a shielded mobile portion of itself that can be maneuvered, will ultimately replace the tank for its abilities to actually react in a mammalian fashion. A pilot, or group of pilots as may be likely for the first batch that will actually hit the fronts, will be able to react far better than a tank on treads.

Why my buddy in Iraq seen an M1-Abrams get a hole punched straight through the engine block by an enemy IED. Tanks are just not what they once were on the battlefields and are admittedly losing the ability to wage war effectively especially in urban environments. Thus enter the walkers. Likely we are going to see onces using 4-6 legs for maneuvering over a bipedal one. We are not talking gundams here lol, we are talking about walkers able to outmaneuver a tank yet maintain the same potential for causing offensive damage.

Believe it or not, its coming, and much sooner than you likely think.

That's exactly what I want to see! Technology experts are thinking about now, not something a real scientist would laugh about. If the ingame tooltip tells me that by 2050 light walkers with 6-8 legs have replaced tanks because they can dodge attacks I'd find that interesting and believable. If between this walker and the abrams tank we'd have a light tracked vehicle with "active protection system" I'd applaud them for their in-depth research on the topic.

Walkers like the "titan" from C&C are what I find unrealistic for civ:

Spoiler :

This thing looks cool, but it's covered with weak spots, it's slow, it can fall over, it's an unstable gun platform, the cockpit has no more than 10 inches of armor (a quarter or less compared to an abrams or leo2). Not to forget that actual tank engineers desperately try to give their product a low profile, so it's harder to hit.


What's wrong with CIWS-type defense anyway? I thought the biggest restriction for land-based vehicles is the enormous collateral damage an automated gun tower firing at incoming missiles can cause?

 

[Abremms]

We are not living in the future at all. Just because you can teleport a particle does not mean you are living in the future.

You think its amazing now but sooner or later you're going to be bored when all this stuff comes out and it is not even close to being the savior of man.

I didn't say anything would be the savior of mankind, only that science has come a long way since Civ IV came out in 2005 (?)

how can you be so pessimistic? how can you look at whats going on in the scientific world and not be awed? I don't mean to offend, but a life without a sense of wonder must be a drab boring thing. science is always marching forward, some of today's research may not pan out, but some of it will! thats exciting! it might be the copper oxide super-conductor research i read about last week, or the diamond-gun fusion the chinese are working on. it might be something else entirely. by the time those things either work or don't, there will be new developments to get excited over!

"He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed." - Albert Einstien

 

[tom2050]

Walking Mech's will never happen. There would be no use for them now or in the future. First of all, the amount of moving parts required to make 2 legs or 4 legs walk, run, and hold the platform steady would be enormous. 1 direct hit would disable the whole Mech.

Therefore to protect it's legs, an enormous amount of armor would have to be applied, adding incredible weight (even if armor is lightweight) because as armor get's better, so does ways to defeat it. A massive hit from a single infantry with a missile could disable what would cost Billions of $ to create.

How is the mech better than an attack Helicopter? It's not, no real advantages.
It would be cheaper to create a Hovercraft type tank vehicle/ACV (like they have now) and refine that to travel over rougher terrains... would be cheaper but noisy.

With Guerilla tactics being a more common warfare tactic than large WW2 style battles, units' such as Mech's would be completely useless in any type of city style battle, and in open ground would be sucker to things such as roadside bombs and Guided Missiles.

Mech's are almost a pipe-dream that will never come to fruition as a war machine. On a battlefield, large targets that are insanely expensive targets are always a bad idea. It holds true, that small targets are harder to hit, and this will not change in the future.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

I counter your walking tank with my Ewok unit.

 

[Me,myself,and,I]

I'm sorry, I gota' take the army guys word for it. Expert > non-expert.

 

[tom2050]

I'm sorry, I gota' take the army guys word for it. Expert > non-expert.

Take histories word for it... Look at the Huge Tanks that Germany was developing or planned to develop like the Landkreuzer P. 1000 Ratte and P. 1500 Monster or the smaller Panzer VIII Maus (still 188 tons).

There is a reason why continued development after WW2 has pushed for smaller profiles and less weight to improve speed and mobility. Less moving parts is always a consideration for everything because with all else equal, there is less parts to possibly break down.

Strictly based on common sense alone, smaller vehicles (smaller target) with good speed and mobility with minimum moving parts will trump a larger vehicle with good speed and mobility with a huge number of moving parts and a huge price tag.

The Army may be developing that for specialized uses, but I seriously doubt they are planning anything for a direct front-line combat attack roles to replace tanks.