Thoughts on Unique Units

[Warlord Sam]

I like where Unique Units have come, in regards to PTW and Conquests. They went from being normal units with slightly better stats and a unique graphic, to having some that are entirely unique, possessing abilities that are truly reflective of their reflective cultures. (i.e. Berserkers with the ability to attack from sea, and Meso-American warriors that enslave their opponents.)

I would like to see all the unique units in Civ 4 possessing very strong versatility. I would especially like them to all have an ability that is completely useable even during peace; Roman Legionaries ought to be able to build roads, like in the Conquest Scenario. I liked the Crusader concept, as well, with their ability to build fortresses. Things like this allow a unique unit to be powerful even to a builder or a civilization that finds itself at peace (and wanting to stay that way) during the time of their unique unit.

Another idea, one that I think might be a lot less popular and therefore might not be as important of an idea, is the concept of a unique unit for every era. This would certainly require some imagination on the implementation, (Ancient American units? Modern Babylonian units?), but at the same time I think it would provide a lot of flavor for each era. Not sure if this is too grand of a concept or not, but I like it nonetheless.

 

[judgement]

I like the idea of more "uniqueness" in the unique units, as opposed to simply modified A.D.M stats.

However, one thing to be concerned about: better A.D.M can always be useful, but certain special abilities aren't always as good in some circumnstances as in others. For example, the Chasqui Scout currently has the "ignore hill & mountain movement cost" ability, which is great if you're near lots of hills and mountains, but useless if you aren't. Likewise, the Berserk's amphibious assault isn't as useful on pangea maps as on archipelago maps. For those who like to play random maps, its a bummer when you wind up with a UU that's hard to make proper use of, not to mention the questions like "why would my Mongol civilization develop Keshiks that cross mountains easily when there's no mountains anywhere near my territory?"

Don't get me wrong, I'm all in favor of this idea. I think the game is more interesting if each civ feels significantly different to play, and having UUs with actual unique special abilities instead of simple improved statistics would help this. I think the solution may be to control the starting locations a bit more for different civs. If I'm not mistaken, in C3C, seafaring civs have a greater chance to start near water. This idea should be expanded so that all civs are more likely to start in territory suitable for their traits (commerical, seafaring, etc) and their UU's special abilities. Naturally, the option to turn off "Appropriate Starting Terrain" should exist for those who's like to try a seafaring civ starting far from the sea or some such.

 

[tossi]

In this case i would say: Quantity over Quality! I prefer one UU per age .

 

[toh6wy]

Originally posted by tossi
In this case i would say: Quantity over Quality! I prefer one UU per age .

Definitely will have to be creative for this. Maybe it would be better if each civ had more than one unique unit - but not necessarily one per age or even four of them. In fact, I think it would be cool if some civs had more unique units, but other civs had more powerful unique units - or maybe even that their traits are stronger, or they have more of them. Just not this "one per age" thing.

 

[Jake5555555]

I think that each Civ should have one UU per age, and you can always just make up a unit. For example the Elite Roman Tank Legions, they can smash through any defense and move quickly all over the empire.

 

[Kaboth]

Give Rise of Nations a look it has many unique units per civ. I'm not sure about their historical correctness but dl the demo and find out. Maybe if Civs experienced extended golden ages more UU could appear then.

 

[wlievens]

I disagree on the one UU per age thing. The Cure For Cancer, the SpaceShip and the SDI aside, there isn't any fictional history in Civ3, and it should remain that way.

 

[Terrinix]

who says they have to be fictional?

 

[RegentMan]

Well, the talk turned into modern Roman Tank legions so he probably didn't want to get into fictional stuff. Besides, you can't beat real history like the awesome Aztec stealth bomber!

 

[judgement]

I'm not in favor of a one-per-age concept, for a variety of reasons. Most obvious is the strangeness of ancient american UU or a modern babylonian UU. Less obvious, but almost more important, is that the game would get silly with that many different units to keep track of, especially if they increase the maximum number of civs as a lot of people are asking. Even if there's only 32 civs, at four UUs each, thats 128 UUs! Are they really all going to be very unique?

I like the current situation in which a civ's UU corresponds roughly to when its golden age was historically. It makes it interesting when picking a civ to have to consider when your golden age might be triggered.

I guess you'd have to say I prefere Quality over Quantity

If they're going to add a bunch of new units to the game, I'd rather have them be units that everyone can build, not UUs. Optional, dead-end techs that allowed interesting but non-essential units would create situations where some civs built a type of unit that not every civ chose to research and build, but who built it would change from game to game. That would be better, IMHO.

 

[Shyrramar]

I don't like the idea of one-UU-per-era. One of the most interesting aspects of the UUs is that they make the civ more dominant in certain eras. I fear different civs at different times. When the Ottomans get their Sipahis, I usually go and pick on someone smaller until I get infantry and tanks . If every civ would have an UU per era, this aspect of the game would disappear. And I would indeed have a hard time accepting American ancient time UUs...

 

[AdHHH]

Im in favour of one UU per Civ, as all Civs have not been around all the time - USA a classic example. How could the USA have an Ancient Age unique unit when the country is barely a few hundred years old? How could the Inca have a modern unique unit when they no longer exist?

 

[WildWeazel]

In the mod I'm making I'm trying to give each civ a land UU, and one sea or air UU. That way each civ has more than one but they still don't clutter the game. When possible, I try to make the two UU's from the same era so that the civ will truly be at its golden age. example- Germany has Panzers and U-boats, so that its power reaches its height at the WW2 era.

 

[ComradeDavo]

More unique units would be very welcome.

Several per civ.

Examples:

Vikings -

viking long boat, raider (think mediaval conquest scenario)

English -

Man O war, redcoat rifleman (think napoleonic conquest scenario here)

Romans -

upgradable legionaires like in the rise of rome scenario would be great!

and so on.

Basically what I mean is that I thought it was really good having more unique units in conquests and i'd like to see it expanded on and increased for civ4

 

[Ballazic]

I think you should be able to design your own units and over much use they would improve.

 

[AdHHH]

Giving Civs multiple UUs in one age, especially in the Ancient Age, would give them an enormous advantage that any half-decent player of Civ could take advantage of; two Ancient UUs would be able to kill off any Civ that had it's UUs later on, regardless of traits (imagine Greeks with an attacking UU, or the Persians with a defensive one, see that I mean?!)

 

[judgement]

Originally posted by AdHHH
Giving Civs multiple UUs in one age, especially in the Ancient Age, would give them an enormous advantage that any half-decent player of Civ could take advantage of; two Ancient UUs would be able to kill off any Civ that had it's UUs later on, regardless of traits (imagine Greeks with an attacking UU, or the Persians with a defensive one, see that I mean?!)

In Civ 3, UUs are better than the units they replace, but there's no reason this must be the case, they could simply be different, especially with the use of more special abilities and less simple A/D/M increases (as Warlord Sam hoped for when opening this thread). The unit costs, stats, and abilities could be carefully adjusted so that the overall advantage to the civ with the UUs was only very slight, even if they had more than one UU.

As an example, take the vikings. Currently, the berserk, at 6/2/1 for 70 gold, is not only way better than the longbowman it replaces (4/1/1 for 40 gold) but is cheaper and earlier than any other unit with 6 attack (cavalry cost 80, guerillas and infantry 90), not to mention it has amphibious attack.

In order to give the vikings a Longboat as well, and not make them automatically the superpower of the middle ages, just tone down the berserk a bit, and make sure the Longboat isn't too powerful, either. Perhaps berserks could have the same stats and cost as longbowmen, their uniqueness would be their amphibious assault, and the longboat would be the same as a caravel but wouldn't sink in ocean (or a galley that didn't sink in sea). Or even make the berserk 4/2/1 or 5/2/1, and cost more than the longbowman. The point is, its quite possible to design units such that a civ could have several UUs and not be overpowered. Civs with ancient Golden Ages might be a little harder, but its still possible. If you give the Greeks another UU, make it a 1/2/3 or 2/1/3 Trireme, to replace the galley, and then make it cost 40 instead of the galley's 30, and bump the hoplite cost from 20 up to 25 or 30. Or even more, if you need to, to keep things fair, I don't know. That's what playtesting is for.

I should clarify that I'm not necessarily arguing in favor of the multi-UU idea, just pointing out that it is possible to do it without making civs with ancient age UUs unstoppable.

 

[judgement]

There's another thread going about Unique Units now, in which its been suggested that all or most of each civ's units be unique. The objective raised there, to too many unique units, is along these lines:

Originally posted by Oda Nobunaga
Say I am playing as the Mayans and (in my game) I start the game on wide plains with plenty of horse ressources nearby - would it make ANY sense whatsoever at that point for me to start building javelin thrower and have little or no cavalry units to build?

I think that's a valid concern for this discussion as well. For example, does giving the vikings berserks and longboats force them to try to play as a sea power? What if, in my world, the vikings start near a lot of jungles in the interior of a big continent: why should they have sea-based UUs?

WWWeasel's idea of giving each civ one land UU and one sea UU is worth considering, it might help address this concern a bit. I don't really have any other good ideas, short of giving civs a choice of UUs. That's problematic, though, since the AI would undoubtedly be very bad at deciding which UU was best for the overall situation it was in. The only other way I can think is to have UUs arise based on occurrences during the game, rather than based on which civ you are (it could still depend on your culture-group). Maybe each time a meditteranean-civ spearman succcessfully defends, there's a small chance the civ learns how to make Hoplites, and so on. Each type of normal unit could have a corresponding UU for each culture-group, and if you used the normal unit a lot successfully, you might get to be able to make the unique version. This would still be a problem for the special abilities (which was the thing Warlord Sam was so fond of when starting this thread). Either any European civ could build amphibious berserks if the right normal unit was successful enough, even though they might not be much a sea power, or you'd have to have a regular unit with amphibious assault (raider?) and the berserk would be the European's unique version, with better stats, that would only be possible if you made a lot of successful amphibious attacks with your raiders. I fear this sort of thing would result in way too many units.

Any ideas?

 

[civilleader]

You guys know that RoN gave Rome a tank UU, right. I like the peaceful importance concept. But who gets what? What are War Elephants or Jaguar Warriors going to do?

 

[rcoutme]

How about making some Civ advances give the possibility of getting a UU? When you research iron working, you may get the standard swordsman or you may get legions or immortals. This could be a fixed, low percentage and only one UU would be allowed per civ per age.