Unit Ideas for Civ VII

[Boris Gudenuf]

There has been much discussion of the units in Civ VI and Humankind (much by me, in fact) and the distinction between Technology and Civic 'trees' in Cv VI, and I've commented on the use of Social Policy to effect how and how many Units can be formed.

Here goes the first attempt to tie a bunch of that all together.

Here are my Basic Premises:
1. Even more important than the weapons are the skills and skill levels of the individuals and unit at using those weapons. Those skill sets and levels, in turn, are affected most by the amount of time the individuals and the unit have spent training and working with their weapons. In other words, a basic characteristic of any Unit is whether they are an Amateur, or part-time, Unit or Professionals, who spend the majority of their time training for war.
In Game Terms:
Amateurs are raised when War starts normally, and are disbanded when war ends. They never get Promotions, because they don't stay around long enough. They usually provide their own weapons and do not require maintenance, but the longer they stay active, the more it will cost you indirectly in the removal of Population from your 'working slots' in your Civ and Cities. Amateurs are frequently limited by the number of people whose 'civilian' occupation requires them to develop individual combat skills, so the number and types of Buildings, Districts, and/or Improvements may govern the number of them you can easily form.
Professionals can be raised by simply keeping Amateurs around longer, but then they have to be Maintained. Professionals can get Promotions and they are generally better at combat (increased Combat Factor) than Amateurs with the same weapons. Some Units require continuous practice to be any good with their weapons, so these Must be raised as Professionals - making them more expensive both to obtain and keep. Especially early in the game, certain Social Policies like Comitatus, Warrior Ethic or Aristocracy will also affect how many and what kind of 'Professionals' are available.

Bottom Line: Your Military will reflect your Civilization and its Society to a much greater extent than Civ or any other game has ever done before.

2. In addition to or instead of providing for new Units and Unit types, some Technologies/Social Policies also allow other Units to be Upgraded with improved weapons, armor, equipment or Tactics. The advantage of Technical Upgrades over simply forming a newer and more ‘modern’ Unit is that Upgrades allow a Professional Unit to keep all the Tactical Skills it has developed - nothing is so new about the Upgrade that they have to start over learning new ways of using their primary weapons.
3. Assigning characteristics to Classes of Units restricts the way in which Units actually developed and were used. Specific attributes should, therefore, be specific to individual Units. A number of Units may share the same Characteristic, but they should not be restricted to Upgrade or 'Promotion' along a single line: Social Policy, Technology, situation may require something different, and that should be allowed (Freely admit, this is a straight-up Borrowing from Humankind, in which each Unit has its own set of 2 - 3 Attributes one or more of which may be shared with other units both Normal and Emblematic - an extremely flexible system)
4. Everything that follows assumes a Tactical Combat System in which Battles between multiple Units take place on a separate Tactical Map as opposed to the Game (Strategic) Map. This does not mean that many of the ideas presented can't be used for a 1UPT or Strategic Map Battle system similar to what Civ has always used in the past. I just don't happen to think that is the best way to go anymore.
5. Finally, many Units that have been 'standards' in Civ are not, in fact, normal Units. All pre-gunpowder Siege Weapons, for instance, were almost always built on the spot to attack a city, and did not roam the countryside looking for a fight. Likewise, a great many archers and other City Defenders were the mobilized local city dwellers, and not available to go wandering outside the walls looking for a fight. Units labeled "Siege Unit Only" in the lst below are formed only to conduct or defend against a Siege or attack on a city and have no separate existence as ordinary Units.

I will not (yet!) attempt to set out a complete Unit Table and Tech/Civic Tree for a game. What follows is a list of regular Units that have been used in Civ VI or Humankind (or both) and some suggested additions of my own with comments on how they could be implemented, including actual dates when they first appeared and suggested Tech or Social Policy triggers - and restrictions - on forming the Unit, and suggested Technical Upgrades for the Units, most of which would require different Technologies and/or Social Policies or Civics. Likewise, Unique Units are not included, because that would be another Unit List even longer than this one, just for the Units in Civ VI, let alone all the possibilities for Civs that have been suggested for a future game.

Here goes:

Key to the List
Format of first line:
Title of Unit, Code, Date of approximate first appearance
1. Units are listed by date of first known use rather than ‘Eras’
2. Code:
- * Indicates a Unit used in Civ VI;
- + indicates a unit used in Humankind
- # Indicates a unit used in both Civ VI and Humankind

Land Units:
Tribe + (Hunting Party?) (200,000 BCE)
- Mixed Tribe of hunters, gatherers and fishers armed with simple hunting weapons
No Upgrades, No Professional Status
NOTE: First basic Human Population Unit, for a Neolithic or earlier Start if desired.

Scout # (6000 BCE)
- Small group of young men, explorers rather than fighters
Initial Equipment:
- Light hand weapons
Technical Upgrades:
- Light Throwing Spears
- Light Shields
Requires:
- Population - no requirements
- Tech - none
- Social Policy - none
- Resources - no requirements
NOTE: An artificial Unit, but a mainstay of the game genre. Initially has very little combat factor, because represents probably no more than a few dozen men, but could be upgraded to a skirmishing combat force as:

Javelinman (6000 BCE)
- Men with throwing weapons, relying on speed rather than armor or formations to survive
Initial Equipment:
- Light throwing spears
Technical Upgrades:
- Light Shields
- Melee Weapon
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - none
- Social Policy - Heirarchy
- Resources - no requirements
NOTE: The throwing spear or javelin was actually a far more common missile weapon than any other, both for hunting and combat skirmishing. Would be as fast as Scouts and could really take their place initially, but can be upgraded into a decent light infantry also, at which point they become the equivalent of Greek Peltasts or Roman Velites.

Warrior # (6000 BCE)
- Men prepared mentally and physically to fight the enemy up close and personal.
- Initial Equipment:
- Metal-weighted Melee Weapon (Club, Mace, Axe, short Spear)
Technical Upgrades:
- Light Shields
- Leather/cloth Body Armor
- Bronze Melee Weapon (Professional Only)
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - Agriculture
- Social Policy - Heirarchy
- Resources - can raise 1 Amateur Warrior per Farm or Plantation
NOTE: The old standby First Unit: initial armament a weighted club or short thrusting spear, but could add padded cloth, leather, or even wooden armor, copper or bronze axe or mace, and leather-covered shields, making them a very effective infantry melee force - except against later types like iron-equipped Swordsmen or close-order Spearmen

Slinger * (6000 BCE)
- Men with a simple leather sling throwing rocks
Technical Upgrades:
- Light Shields
- Lead Bullets (Professional Only)
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - Animal Domestication
- Social Policy - Heirarchy
- Resources - can raise 1 Amateur Slinger per Pasture with Sheep or Cattle
NOTE: The sling was only used by a few ‘regular armies’, notably the Inca, but it was the ‘default weapon’ of any herdsman on foot, being both cheap to make and easy to practice with while you are watching sheep or cattle graze. Un-Upgraded, then, they could be the easiest troops to raise as long as you have lots of Pastures or Herds and no horses.

Archer # (5200 BCE)
- Men with simple stave bow and stone/metal-tipped arrows and no desire to get close to the enemy
Initial Equipment:
- Simple Bow
Technical Upgrades:
- Metal Armor (Professional Only)
- Composite Bows
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - Wood Forming
- Social Policy - Heirarchy
- Resources - can raise 1 Amateur Archer per Camp
NOTE: Archers need lots of training to be effective. Of almost all types of troops, they are the ones most needing a division into Professionals and Amateurs, where you can conscript all kinds of Archers and equip them very cheaply with simple bows - but they aren’t necessarily very good.

(Scout) Riders + (3700 BCE)
- Earliest horse-riding men without effective mounted weapons
Initial Equipment:
- Light hand weapons
No Upgrades, No Professional Status
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - Animal Domestication (Horses)
- Social Policy - Heirarchy
- Resources - Horses, can raise 1 Rider per Horse Resource in territory
NOTE: This would make a good very early ‘Barbarian’ Unit, since they were found (as far as we can surmise from the archeology) exclusively among the early pastoral groups, not the city-builders. Low combat factor, because they had no decent weapons to use from horseback, but very fast and very good at pillaging - stealing everything not nailed down and guarded, basically

Spearmen # (2600 BCE)
- Men with long spears and tight formations effective against cavalry or chariots
Initial Equipment:
- Heavy Thrusting Spear, Light Shield
Technical Upgrades:
- Metal Body Armor
- Heavy Shield
- Secondary Melee Weapon
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - Bronze Working
- Social Policy - Civic Identity
- Resources - Copper/Bronze, can raise 1 Spearman per Population, temporarily
NOTE: The first spearmen in tight anti-cavalry formations appear simultaneously with the earliest Bronze weapons, which has been reflected in Civ forever. The earliest of them, however, were largely unarmored and equipped with only light hide or wicker shields (from the archeological evidence). Making the shields out of wood with metal fittings, metal body armor, and a good short sword, long knife or axe for when the spear broke made them far more effective, right up to the end of the Classical Era and beyond into the middle of the Medieval Era. This is the basic, anybody-can-do-it Non-Professional infantry Unit.
But also Note: a Spearman with all the Upgrades and Professional status would be a Spartan Hoplite Unique Unit: as an Amateur without the Secondary Melee Weapon, he would be almost all other Greek Hoplites. The system will easily accommodate many Unique Units this way.

Heavy Chariot # (2000 BCE)
- Earliest fast vehicles with spoked wheels
Initial Equipment:
- Heavy Thrusting Spear, Heavy Shield
Technical Upgrades:
- Metal Tired Wheels
- Iron Weapons
Professional Only
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - Wheel
- Social Policy - Heroic Warrior
- Resources - Warhorses
NOTE: “Heavy” is a relative term, but basically, the Chariot was a fast transport for melee warriors or a melee weapon itself long before it appears to have been used as a combat archer platform.

Battering Ram # (1900 BCE)
- Earliest indication of protected wheeled ram against stone or brick walls
Siege Unit Only
No Upgrades, No Professional Status
Requires:
- Population - 0
- Tech - City Defense
- Social Policy -
- Resources - no requirements
NOTE: The earliest specific ‘siege’ weapon, but only effective against gates or stone ‘curtain’ walls or brick/mud brick walls. The earth mounds or rammed earth defenses were impervious to it.

Light Chariot (1700 BCE)
- Earliest fast vehicle with composite or regular bowmen on board
Initial Equipment:
- Simple Bow, Light Shield
Technical Upgrades:
- Metal Tired Wheels
- Composite Bow
Professional Only
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - Advanced Wood Forming
- Social Policy - Comitatus
- Resources - Horses
NOTE: Appears to have been a Royal/Aristocratic Hunting weapon before it was used for war, so originally almost exclusively Aristocratic, Royal or Royal Bodyguard weapon system

Horse Archer # (1100 BCE)
- Earliest combination of horseman and composite bow
Initial Equipment:
- Composite Bow, Light hand weapon
No Upgrades, Always Barbarian Hire
Requires:
- Population - Pastoral recruit
- Resources - Horses
NOTE: Horse archers were almost exclusively a Unit of the pastoral groups, not the settled cities - it takes much too much time to learn both how to ride a horse and how to shoot a bow from a ridden horse accurately, and only mounted herders, who had to do both every day, had the time to maintain those skills. On the other hand, many Civilized peoples hired Horse Archers from the pastoral “barbarians”, including Athens, Rome, China, and Byzantium

Horsemen # (1100 BCE)
- Riders with weapons to charge the enemy and beat him in melee
Initial Equipment:
- Light throwing spear, Light hand weapon or low-carbon Long Sword
Technical Upgrades:
- Metal Body Armor (requires Warhorses)
- Light Shields
- Heavy Spear/Lance (requires Warhorses)
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - Iron Working
- Social Policy - Comitatus OR Aristocracy
- Resources - Horses, Warhorses
NOTE: The first military horsemen were simply those citizens/aristocrats who could afford to keep a horse, which wasn’t easy in a city! That meant they were armed with throwing spears, swords, might wear armor, but had no shields or lances or bows or any knowledge of how to use them. All that came later, including armored men on warhorses with lances that in practice and effect are indistinguishable from later “Knights”.

Siege Engines (850 BCE)
Siege Unit Only
No Upgrades, No Professional Status
Requires:
- Population - 0
- Tech - Iron Working
- Social Policy
- Resources - Iron
NOTES: Includes Towers, Cranes, devices for overcoming walls, moats, and some including Battering Rams and (small) Catapults - all built on the spot to attack a city, with only the metal parts being carried with the army

Swordsmen # (800 BCE)
- First iron ‘long swords’ over 60cm inches long
Initial Equipment:
- Low-carbon Long word, Light Shield
Technical Upgrades:
- Metal Body Armor
- Heavy Shields
- Throwing Weapon
Professional Only
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - Iron Working
- Social Policy - Comitatus, Aristocracy, Heroic Warrior OR Civic Identity
- Resources - Iron
NOTE: The first swordsmen with a 30 - 34” long iron sword were not much more effective than a fully Upgraded Warrior or Spearman with metal armor and heavy shields, but Swordsmen quickly started wearing metal armor and carrying heavy wooden shields themselves. The drawback is the same as for the Archer: it takes continuous practice to stay proficient with a sword, so they are expensive to maintain. Most Swordsmen (notable exception the Roman Legions) were nobles who maintained themselves or a small body of ‘comitatus’ retainers of the King.

EXAMPLE: A “Unique” or ‘specialized’ Unit:
Bronze Crossbow (650 BCE)
- Crossbow with simple wood or composite bow and bronze trigger mechanism
Initial Equipment:
- Bronze crossbow
Technical Upgrades:
- Leather Body Armor
- Drill (Professional Only)
- Volley Firing (Professional Only)
Requires:
- Population - 2
- Tech - Bronze-Working, Mechanics
- Social Policy - Civic Identity
- Resources - no requirements; automatically generated to defend Cities when attacked
NOTE: The first archeological evidence for bronze trigger mechanisms for Chinese crossbows is from about 650 - 600 BCE, the gastrophetes or ‘Belly Bow’ crossbow was invented in the west in 400 BCE in Syracuse, Sicily. These early crossbows had no particular advantage in range or force over an ordinary bow, and were much slower-firing, but had one major advantage: they required very little training or practice to use, and so could be used by masses of amateur warriors - as in China from the Warring States Era on. Their other common use, in the west as in China, was for city dwellers to protect their city by firing crossbows from wall positions, providing a major component of any city wall’s ‘ranged fire’

Peltast (500 BCE)
- Improved Javelinman who can become an Improved Spearman
Initial Equipment:
- Light Throwing Spear, Light Shield, melee weapon
Technical Upgrades:
- Heavy Shields
- Heavy Spear
- low-carbon Iron Long Sword
Requires:
Population - 1
Tech - Iron Working
Social Policy -
Resources - no requirements; can frequently be hired from Barbarians/City States
NOTE: Peltasts were originally ‘barbarian’ warriors from Anatolia, Thrace, and other parts of the Balkans, but once adopted by the Greeks and other ‘settled’ groups, they got steadily heavier. Always able to fight in either a loose or close formation, they were very flexible, could fight off cavalry almost as well as heavier spearmen, and pretty much outrun any infantry heavy enough to hurt them, and hurt anybody light enough to catch them. Later types with heavy wooden shields, thrusting spears and longswords as ‘sidearms’ were the basic infantry of the late Roman Empire and early Byzantium.

Catapult # (400 BCE)
- The first mechanical Heavy Weapon, useful against both men and fortifications.
Technical Upgrades:
- Torsion Propelled
- Cart-Mounting
Professional Only
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - Mechanics
- Social Policy - no requirements
- Resources - Iron
NOTE: Catapults were primarily siege weapons, both mounted on new ‘catapult positions’ in and on walls and towers and constructed on the spot to attack the city. Only later did Roman and Chinese armies develop cart-mounted light catapult weapons that could stay with the army in the field and be used to pick off the enemy at long range, but those also required a large body of men trained to use them well, and that was expensive

There is now a Historical Gap in new UNits, so it makes a good place to pause for digestion . . .

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Later (Medieval, Early Modern) to Early Gunpowder Units:

Knights # (900 CE)
- Armored horsemen with heavy spear
Initial Equipment:
- Low-carbon Steel Sword, Mail/Lamellar Armor, Heavy Shield
Technical Upgrades:
- Couched Lance (1100 CE)
- Barded Horses
- Articulated Plate Armor (1300 CE)
Requires:
- Population - 2
- Tech - Steel Forging
- Social Policy - Feudalism
- Resources - Warhorses, Steel, Castle Improvement
NOTE: As mentioned above, the earliest Knights were indistinguishable from earlier Heavy Cavalry/Horsemen. The Knight was different because of the social/civic structure that supported him: given land to support him so that he could train constantly with sword, lance, and horse and later, pay for someone else to take his place in the army while he managed his lands and castle. Correctly modeling Knights requires as much attention to the Social and Civic structure as the Unit.
But NOTE that there are numerous Armored Lancers available that are not Knights: it is one of the most common Unique Unit types and in many parts of the world available to hire as Mercenaries from Barbarians or City States

Counterweight Trebuchet # (1100 CE)
- The last advance in mechanical Heavy Weapons, primarily anti-fortification
Siege Weapon only.
No Upgrades, No Professional Status
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - Wood Trusses
- Social Policy - no requirements
- Resources - no requirements
NOTE: Everybody loves the Trebuchet graphics, but IRL they had very little effect on either sieges or defensive architecture and were too hard and slow shifting their aim to be effective against groups of men

Man-at-Arms (Great Swordsman) # (1250 CE)
- First mention of 2-handed “great swords” was above date, but for at least 200 years before men were appearing with 2-handed axes in full armor with much the same characteristics on the battlefield
Initial Equipment:
- Steel Great Sword, Mail Armor
Technical Upgrades:
- Articulated Plate Armor
- Halberds (1280 CE)
Professional Only
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - Crucible Steel
- Social Policy - Aristocracy, Warrior Ethos
- Resources - Steel
NOTE: The earliest men on foot with two-handed weapons are almost all depicted with long-shaft Axes. The two-handed Great Sword is a little later, but both weapons had the same purpose: to be heavy and powerful enough to crack through plate armor or chop through pike/spear shafts before the pike/spearmen could put a point through your face. These men could also be dismounted Knights, because using their weapons required a great deal of constant training and so were reserved for professionals or nobles. Within fifty years or so some of them started carrying Halberds instead, which combined the effect of a Great Axe and short Pike and so were much more useful, adding an Anti-Cavalry effect.

Pikemen # (1300 CE)
- The best Anti-Cavalry weapon and formation, also dangerous to infantry when attacking
Initial Equipment:
- Steel-Tipped Pike, Mail or Leather Armor
Technical Upgrades:
- Articulated Plate Armor
- Mixed Formations
Requires:
- Population - 2
- Tech- no requirement
- Social Policy - Guilds OR Clan Summons
- Resources - no requirements
NOTE: The earliest Medieval pikemen were amateurs, militia, farmers and herders ‘called up’ to fight off invasion. Since it was the perfect weapon against knights and other horsemen, it became the ‘standard’ infantry weapon of the late Medieval, early Renaissance period, especially in Mixed Formations with Halberds, Great Swords, or ranged weapons.

Bombard *(1362 CE)
- First mention of a cast iron or bronze gunpowder wall breaker
Manufactured Siege Weapon only
Technical Upgrades:
- Iron Cannon Balls
- Corned Powder
Professional Only
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - Iron Casting, Gunpowder
- Social Policy - Guilds
- Resources - Cast Iron or Bronze, Saltpetre
NOTE: The first really effective gunpowder weapon: even with the early stone cannonballs they could smash through stone curtain walls, gates, and towers. They made all earlier stone fortifications obsolete almost instantly, but were much less effective against earth or rammed earth defenses and far too slow-firing to use against troops.

Crossbowmen # (1370 CE)
- Metal steel-spring arbalests
Technical Upgrades:
- Articulated Plate Armor (Professional Only)
- Volley Fire (Professional Only)
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - Crucible Steel
- Social Policy - no requirements
- Resources - no requirements
NOTE: Earlier Crossbows with wooden ‘prods’ or bows were no more effective than contemporary bows, so the really effective Crossbow is a short-lived phenomenon, superseded by gunpowder in about 200 years and requiring advanced spring-steel metallurgy to construct.

Bedded Cannon (1400 CE)
- Cast or built-up cannon fastened to wheeled carts, able to fire at troop Units or Fortifications
Technical Upgrades:
- Elevating Quadrant
- Corned Powder
Professional Only
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - Gunpowder, Cast Iron
- Social Policy - no requirement
- Resources - Saltpetre, Cast Iron, Warhorses
NOTE: A ‘transition’ Unit between the earliest ‘hand gonnes’ and Bombards to the trunnioned Field Cannon. These weapons could be as small as large-caliber arquebuses or Hackguns or as larger as 24 pounder Siege Guns, but they were very slow to aim and fire compared to later artillery.

Field Cannon *(1465 CE)
- Smoothbore cannon with trunnions and trailed carriage
Technical Upgrades:
- Elevating Screw
- Cannister Ammunition
- Precision Bored Barrels
Professional Only
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - Ballistics
- Social Policy - no requirement
- Resources - Bronze OR Iron, Warhorses, Saltpetre
NOTE: The ‘balanced’ trunnioned cannon with much longer and more precisely-made barrels, better ballistics, and vastly improved mobility was so useful that it remained basically unchanged for almost 400 years.

Arquebusiers +(1472 CE)
- Shoulder stock and matchlock firing mechanism for ‘handgonnes’
Initial Equipment:
- Matchlock Musket, Light hand weapon
Technical Upgrades:
- Drill
- Mixed Formations
- Volley Fire
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - Ballistics
- Social Policy - no requirement
- Resources - Saltpetre
NOTE: The matchlock musket/arquebus men had no real melee factor: their weapons were clumsy clubs when unloaded, so they were always either used from fortifications or combined with melee weapons like Great Swords, Pikes, Halberds, or combinations of all three in Mixed Formations.

Note that contrary to both Civ in all iterations and Humankind, "musketmen" or arquebusiers were not the earliest effective gunpowder weapons by a century, and if we include Chinese/East Asian flamethrowing gunpowder bombs, grenades, and rockets even the primitive 'hand gonne' was preceded by over 250 years!
- And 'hand gonnes' are not included here as Units because they were almost incredibly ineffective: shorter range and worse accuracy than either simple bows or wooden crossbows, made ineffective by any weather condition short of sunlight, and prone to occasionally blowing up or setting fire to the careless user.

Next (after a short pause for Normal Life): Gunpowder and other Modern Weapons, Naval and Air Units.

 

[HorseshoeHermit]

One question of a more underscored confusion at the start. You mean at the start of point 3 here that "As a designer, assigning characteristics to classes of units restricts the behavior of game Units from recreating the way arms actually developed and were used." ?

Here goes the first attempt to tie a bunch of that all together.

Here are my Basic Premises:
2. In addition to or instead of providing for new Units and Unit types, some Technologies/Social Policies also allow other Units to be Upgraded with improved weapons, armor, equipment or Tactics. The advantage of Technical Upgrades over simply forming a newer and more ‘modern’ Unit is that Upgrades allow a Professional Unit to keep all the Tactical Skills it has developed - nothing is so new about the Upgrade that they have to start over learning new ways of using their primary weapons.
3. Assigning characteristics to Classes of Units restricts the way in which Units actually developed and were used. Specific attributes should, therefore, be specific to individual Units. A number of Units may share the same Characteristic, but they should not be restricted to Upgrade or 'Promotion' along a single line: Social Policy, Technology, situation may require something different, and that should be allowed (Freely admit, this is a straight-up Borrowing from Humankind, in which each Unit has its own set of 2 - 3 Attributes one or more of which may be shared with other units both Normal and Emblematic - an extremely flexible system)

If so, I think what's going on here is that the equipment held by the unit IS what makes it of the unit class as named in your list? Individuals can be refitted with the associated "upgrades", which are equipment, or changes to the technology in their equipment. If the upgrade is technologically available you can do it at [the appropriate place and trigger for giving the upgrade]. Transformations of that sort preserve a continuity of the unit's veterancy because it is still fighting in 'primarily the same way'. I can turn a Warrior into a Spearman but only in the sense that the people shed their training and all I keep is the people themselves.

The equipment style that the unit has makes it able to retrofit itself and maintain its battle-readiness. And it's not the tools themselves, it's that primary way of fighting defining that class. The "primary form of battle" is the truer idea than a mere conjunction of the equipment (technologies).

It's a mouthful, so I'll say "primary combat" or "primary forme".

Your proposal is that the armaments unlock with technology, but each armament is declared as being used on one or more formes, or an upgrade of a forme; a set of armaments is the technical requirement for that base class or upgrade. Two formes could use the same -technology- but that doesn't mean that the unit classes can become each other. Logically in this model, even if the two classes had the same set of equipment, they could be specified to do different primary combat. Have different upgrades, or not.

Getting a different forme into your militia's hands requires starting anew with training. Some militias are the amateurs who show up and this isn't even a difference; but at a certain point, those armaments themselves have the attribute of "requiring considerable training", restricting them to being borne by a division of such trained troops.
Training can happen on the job (by keeping initial amateurs in service), but what you mention as needing to "be raised as professionals" makes an anomaly out of the population requirement value. You have the ability to say there's a unit requiring 0 population but only trained professionals. That's fine for raising the unit in construction but it can't make sense letting it change to or from a populated professional class. There needs to be some other entity between the professional sourcing concept and populations. Even in general, population # requirements look odd if you upgrade to having more people needed. When veterancy is carrying over, they'd be showing up and having training that the first half actually learned.

This system of paying in moving people from civilian to armed detail makes sense but I think something else should exist between the unit and its underlying population. I keep thinking of Caveman2Cosmos' "size matters" system that has broad categories for whether you're talking about a few guys, one figure, hundreds of go-getters, or tens of thousands. It factors into combat resolutions, but unlike there, you would get numbers from civilization populations instead of hammers.

That's all about analyzing this preview.


*~*~*~
The equipment has resource requirements, like iron or horses, or even worked resources like steel. I like that the resource requirement is put as a factor of the unit's equipment instead of just the unit "existing", because that gives us some decoupling in which to design what it means to lose the resource. You lose the equipment! (or the horse) And then you're just militia you were before, minus that equipment.

About the combined technological and social requirements: It's easy to see how the technology requirements tie to the armaments. One can picture the symbols in a tech tree saying this "Metal tired wheels" is available, or that your [Unit] can be upgraded with [Name] for [Combat effectiveness]. The social requirements almost make me think that the Unit class itself should be drawn on the social stuff diagram. The basic structure of being allowed the Light Chariot would be there and it would say "Light Chariot - [stats gloss]. (With Advanced Woodworking.)" Unfortunately, this breaks down if you tell me that after the classical ages, we have crossbows(1370c.e.) and later things that don't require a social innovation. A minor frustration. You aren't just assuming any social reqs are there by the time of Crucible Steel; the crossbowman really needed no particular form of society?

Well, I'm sure anything else would be clarified with your social + technology system in hand yet to be revealed. I think I need to come out with my concept for technology progression in advance of your detail. I was planning to completely leave out weapon technology. Mine's an idea that's definitely not even Civ7 anymore, though.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

A Military Unit of any size has 4 components that combine to measure and define its combat effectiveness:

1. The Weapons and Equipment it is equipped with. This is first here because it is usually the only thing people think about: "It's a tank unit", "It's a battalion of spearmen", etc. In fact, the equipment and weapons may be the least important element of combat effectiveness.
2. The Doctrine of the Unit and the military force (army, navy, Warband) it is part of. That is, How are they supposed to use those weapons and that equipment? Tactical Doctrine, even when (or maybe especially when) it is not written down in manuals, is very, very hard to change. Witness the fact that even after virtually all the weapons had changed between 1815 and 1860, the armies in the US Civil War in 1861 tried using the tactics and doctrine of the Napoleonic Wars - with dismal results.
3. The Training of the people in the unit. That is, How Well can they carry out the Doctrine and use the weapons and equipment. This can be changed faster than Doctrine in most cases: Doctrine may take a generation or more to change, while a rigorous training regimen, depending on the complexity of the equipment and weapons, can dramatically change the effectiveness of the individuals and teams in a unit within weeks or months. As complex as the weapons of World War Two were, both the US and German armies felt that a year was the most it would take to train an entire Division (15,000 - 25,000 men) in all the weapons skills, tactics, and other things they needed to know how to do well. That, unfortunately, is only the first part. It is never enough to train a unit, the problem is maintaining the high level of training you want in the face of the inevitable casualties and the retraining required by changes in equipment, changes in the situation, and changes in the enemy and what he is doing.
4. The Morale of the people in the unit. That is, How Much do they feel like doing what they have to do to make the Unit effective and carry out the tasks and missions assigned. Morale changes constantly, and can change dramatically in minutes. Consequently, it has to be an 'assumed' factor in a game like Civ: there is no way the time scale of the game can accommodate the realities of morale and what effects it except as Abstractions.

But the fact is, a unit of unmotivated (low Morale), untrained people with a bad doctrine will not be successful no matter what weapons you give them. On the other hand, a highly trained group who are also highly motivated and follow a doctrine that makes the most of their weapons in the environment/battlefield they are on will be very, very hard to beat. A good (and relatively recent) historical example of this would be the Finnish reservists called up for the Winter War in 1939: not even professional soldiers, but highly motivated to repel an invasion of their homeland equipped and well-practiced/trained on skis, sniper rifles and sub-machineguns, they virtually wiped out a Soviet Army north of Lake Ladoga that outnumbered them 10 to 1 or more and had all the 'advantages' of tanks, heavy artillery, motorized transport and support and complete air superiority. The 'soft' Factors of Training, Morale, and Doctrine trumped all the inequalities of Weapons and Equipment.

Quite simply, I want to bring the effects of some of those Soft Factors into the game, and also rationalize some of the very un-historical decisions that have been made about Units in Civ games in the past.

I DO NOT expect all or even most of my suggestions would ever be adopted, and I will be throwing in a number of suggestions that are just that: suggestions and alternatives only a few or one of which should be adopted if the gme is to be playable.

 

[Ryansinbela]

Nice job, looks cool

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

And, moving right along with the rest of the suggested Ground Units:

Cuirassier *(1625 - 1675 CE)
- Cavalry with helmet, breastplate, sword and pistols
Initial Equipment:
- Partial Plate Armor, Steel Sword
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - Firelock
- Social Policy - Aristocracy
- Resources - Warhorses, Iron/Steel
NOTE: The Knights’ reaction to blocks of pikemen and arquebuses was to wear heavier armor and then to get firearms of their own - pistols. Still later they went back to swords and lightened the armor again, which kept them at least nominally effective for almost 200 years. No cuirass could protect against rifles, though, so ‘armored’ cavalry disappeared from the battlefield after 1870.

Dragoons +(1640 CE)
Cavalry able to dismount and fight with muskets or rifles
Initial Equipment:
- Smooth bore Carbine, Steel Sword
Technical Upgrades:
- Rifled Carbines
- Squadron Organization
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - Firelock
- Social Policy
- Resources - Horses, Saltpetre
NOTE: Originally not even considered Cavalry, because they weren’t trained to fight on horseback, or charge, but the longer they existed the more they tried to act like cavalry and stay on their horses. They were originally mounted on the worst horses around, so were always cheaper to maintain than 'regular' Cavalry, and especially Cuiassiers. Ironically, the best combat cavalry by the late Industrial Era were those that were willing to dismount and use their rifled firearms effectively

Howitzer +(1690 CE)
- Can lob explosive shells ocer obstacles and into cities - a siege weapon originally
Technical Upgrades:
- Ballistic Sights
- Graded Charges
- Percussion Fuses
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - Precision Clockwork
- Social Policy - no requirement
- Resources - Iron, Saltpetre, Warhorses
NOTE: A gunpowder Siege Weapon, the howitzer quickly became part of the field artillery to reach targets behind ridges on the battlefield, but blackpowder fuses were less than reliable and unless they could see the target the chance of hitting it was very, very small.

Fusiliers (1671 - 1700 CE)
- With smoothbore flintlock musket and socket bayonet, the frequently mis-named "line infantry"
Initial Equipment:
- Flintlock Musket, Socket Bayonet
Technical Upgrades:
- Platoon Firing
- Iron Ramrods
- Mixed Order Tactics
Requires:
- Population - 2
- Tech - Precision Clockwork
- Social Policy
- Resources - Saltpetre
NOTE: The flintlock and bayonet combination gave gunpowder firearms a decent melee capability as well as increased firepower and tighter formations. This made all the older melee weapons: swords, pikes, halberds, both redundant and obsolete. On the other hand, Professionals who were well-drilled in firing and maneuver techniques were far superior to Amateurs, so this Unit has one of the most extreme differences in the factors of Professional versus Amateur units.

Jaeger (1740 CE)
Light infantry skirmishers with muskets
Initial Equipment:
- Flintlock Musket, Light hand weapon
Technical Upgrades:
- Rifled Firearms
- Sniper Weapon
Requires:
- Population - 2
- Tech - Precision Clockwork
- Social Policy - Humanism
- Resources - Saltpetre
NOTE: The original ‘Jaegers’ were enlisted from gamekeepers and professional hunters in Germany. Armed with primitive rifles, they were a very specialized scout unit. By 1740 - 44 Prussia was forming larger units of men with regular muskets, but trained for the scouting, skirmishing, and ‘light infantry’ role. Under various names like Voltigeurs, Light Infantry, Jaegers, they were raised by all the armies of Europe. Later armed with rifled firearms (usually before the regular infantry was), but by the time all the infantry had rifles, the distinction between Jaeger/Light and regular/Line Infantry disappeared and they became essentially indistinguishable on the battlefield in effectiveness and tactics.

Cavalry *(1835 CE)
- Unarmored horsemen with breechloading carbines and pistols
Initial Equipment:
- Breechloading Carbine, Steel Sword
Technical Upgrades:
- Light Lance
- Repeating Pistol sidearm
- Cart-Mounted Heavy Weapons
Requires:
- Population - 2
- Tech - Precision Machining
- Social Policy
- Resources - Warhorses, Saltpetre
NOTE: Once mounted men had breechloading rifled firearms, the old charge sword-in-hand became increasingly less effective and by the mid-19th century, practically suicidal. Mounted fire with carbines or repeating pistols, or dismounted fire with breechloading carbines or rifles from cover, was the far more effective tactic, and very different from any ‘cavalry combat’ before.

Rifleman +(1841 - 1857 CE)
- Black powder rifled muskets or breechloaders in the hands of mass infantry
Initial Equipment:
- Blackpowder Rifled Musket, Socket Bayonet
Technical Upgrades:
- Breechloading
- Metal Cartridges
- Smokeless Powder
Requires:
- Population - 2
- Tech - Precision Machining
- Social Policy
- Resources - Saltpetre OR Cotton (for Smokeless Powder)
NOTE: The black powder rifle changed tactics dramatically, several generations before the trench warfare of 1914 - 1917 made conventional infantry tactics utterly obsolete.

Heavy Machine Gun #(1883 CE)
- Maxim’s recoil-operated water cooled Heavy Support weapon
Technical Upgrades:
- Cart Mounting
- Heavy Caliber
- Quick-Change Barrels
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - Chemical Engineering
- Social Policy
- Resources -
NOTE: For a brief early period, roughly from the 1880s to 1914, the Heavy Machinegun was treated as something separate from the regular infantry. After that it was increasingly recognized as an indispensable infantry support weapon. And integrated into infantry units at brigade, battalion, and even company level.

Infantry #(1883 - 1918 CE)
From the first magazine rifles to light machineguns and light mortars in the units down to squad and company
Initial Equipment:
- Magazine Rifle, Socket Bayonet
Technical Upgrades:
- Light Automatic Weapons
- Light Antitank Weapons
- Assault Rifles
Requires:
- Population - 3
- Tech - Chemical Engineering
- Social Policy
- Resources -
NOTE: Smokeless powder magazine rifles increased the firepower of the individual infantryman by at least 2 times in range and 3 times in rate of fire: when light automatic weapons like automatic rifles and light machineguns were added, no previous infantry assault tactics had a chance of succeeding, and again infantry combat had to be re-examined completely

Balloon *(1898 CE)
- The ‘sausage’ tethered reconnaissance balloon
No Upgrades, No Professional Status
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - Radiotelegraphy
- Social Policy
- Resources - no requirements
NOTE: Once artillery could fire ‘over the hill’ to hit enemy targets out of sight, they needed some way of finding enemy targets out of their sight, and so went into the air. The original ‘air observers’ were strictly stationary, but extended effective artillery ranges and knowledge/vision of the enemy considerably.

Artillery *(1899 CE)
- Ability to use Indirect Fire effectively and recoil mechanisms to stay “on target”
Technical Upgrades:
- HEAT Rounds
- Mechanical Traction
- Terminal Guidance
Requires:
- Population - 2
- Tech - Ballistic Trigonometry (Advanced Ballistic Calculations), Hydraulics
- Social Policy
- Resources - Iron, Warhorses OR Oil (with Mechanical Traction)
NOTE: The combination of recoil mechanisms to keep guns ‘on target’ after firing and the mathematics to determine range and azimuth (direction) to unseen targets were both developed almost simultaneously at the end of the 19th century, and from that time on artillery began to absolutely dominate the battlefield, and kept dominating it for most of the 20th century.

Antitank Gun #(1920 - 1933 CE)
- Earliest 37 - 47mm infantry guns for protection against armored vehicles
Technical Upgrades:
- Hard Core Alloy Ammunition
- Infrared or Night Vision Sights
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - (to be determined)
- Social Policy
- Resources - no requirement
NOTE: Originally, ‘antitank’ guns were just light artillery firing directly at tanks. Very quickly, purpose-built light and mobile guns were developed for that specific task, which then got bigger and less mobile as the tanks got bigger and better protected. They were among the first guns to be motorized.

Antiaircraft Gun (1917 - 1935 CE)
- Converted artillery and heavy caliber machineguns to 76 - 88mm types
Technical Upgrades:
- Dual-Purpose Mounts (Antiaircraft - Antitank)
- Proximity Fuse
- Radar Fire Control
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - (to be determined)
- Social Policy
- Resources - no requirement
NOTE: Antiaircraft protection, like antitank protection (see above) was originally provided by improvising light artillery cannon to fire at aircraft or tanks. Very quickly specialized AA mounts, gun directors, and aircraft detection mechanisms were developed, so that antiaircraft artillery became a very distinct and separate weapons system.

Medium Tank #(1935 CE)
- Tanks over 20 tons weight with cannon firing exploding shells and machineguns
Initial Equipment:
- Cannon main gun, auxiliary Machineguns
Technical Upgrades:
- Powered Turret
- Applique Armor
- Range Finder
Requires:
- Population - 2
- Tech - (to be determined)
- Social Policy
- Resources - Steel Alloy, Oil
NOTE: Once tanks were big enough to carry cannon that could fire explosive shells like artillery and also combat enemy tanks, they became the dominant assault force in any army that had enough of them

Special Forces #(1941)
- Earliest British Commandos, Soviet Spetsnaz, and German Brandenburgers, American Rangers
Initial Equipment:
- Magazine Rifle, Light Automatic Weapons
Technical Upgrades:
- Assault Rifles
- Target Designating radar and lasers
- Helicopter/VTOL insertion
Professional Only
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - (to be determined)
- Social Policy
- Resources - no requirements
NOTE: The first modern ‘Special Forces’ were barely military and frequently recruited from various kinds of civilian specialists: intelligence or sporting types, or just people crazy enough to try to do Strange Things behind enemy lines

Mechanized Infantry #(1941 - 1967 CE)
- 1941 armored halftracks,1967 the first Infantry Fighting Vehicle, the BMP-1
Initial Equipment:
- Magazine Rifles, Light Automatic Weapons, (half)tracked armored vehicles
Technical Upgrades:
- Assault Rifles
- Heavy Automatic Weapons
- Composite Armor
Requires:
- Population - 3
- Tech - Polymer Plastics
- Social Policy
- Resources - Aluminum
NOTE: The earliest Mechanized Infantry were equipped to keep up with tanks and support them, and so were a very small part of the total military forces. In the late 20th century, they became the bulk of the most advanced military forces, since they were both more mobile and could be much more heavily armed than ‘foot’ infantry.

SAM #(1954 - 1981 CE)
- Earliest stationary SAMs to man-carried Stingers
Technical Upgrades:
- Terminal Homing
- Integrated Anti-Missile Systems
- AI Systems
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - Inertial Guidance Systems
- Social Policy
- Resources - Aluminum
NOTE: Once aircraft got too fast for guns, guided missiles took over the task of catching them and knocking them down. The types of AA missiles quickly grew to cover everything from a shoulder-mounted short-ranged weapon to a permanently-mounted city defender with range into the edge of space and anti-missile as well as anti-manned aircraft capabilities.

Antitank Missile (1955 CE)
- First: the SS-10, Malkara types
Technical Upgrades:
- Terminal Homing
- Fire and Forget
- AI Systems
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - Solid-State Electronics
- Social Policy
- Resources - Aluminum
NOTE: As with antiaircraft, once tanks got big and powerful enough, the best counter (besides another tank) was a guided missile with extreme range, extreme accuracy, and massively powerful warheads

Main Battle Tank #(1960 - 1964 CE)
- First dedicated MBTs: US M60 and Soviet T-64
Initial Equipment:
- Large Main Cannon, auxiliary Heavy Machineguns
Technical Upgrades:
- Integrated Night Vision and Electronic Fire Control
- Composite Armor
- Stabilized Firing
Requires:
- Population - 2
- Tech - Carbon Composite Materials
- Social Policy
- Resources - Specialized Alloys
NOTE: Even the earliest of the Main Battle Tanks in the 1960s had twice the effective range and almost 6 times the lethality of the WWII Medium Tank, and advanced fire control, protection, and other systems just increased their capabilities into the 21st century.

Rocket Artillery *(1963 - 1983 CE)
- Multiple rocket systems from post-WWII Soviet to US M270 MLRS
Technical Upgrades:
- Sub-Munitions
- Pod Flexibility
- Top-Attack Anti-tank Munitions
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - Carbon Composite Materials
- Social Policy
- Resources - Specialized Alloys
NOTE: The rocket artillery of WWII was primarily used to enhance or reinforce regular artillery, but by the 1980s multiple rocket systems had capabilities in range, massed firepower and flexibility far beyond what conventional artillery could do.

Helicopter Gunship #(1966 CE)
- Cobra, first purpose-built attack helicopter
Initial Equipment:
- Heavy Automatic Weapons, Antitank Missiles
Technical Upgrades:
- Composite Armor
- Stealth Systems
- Integrated Enhanced Vision and Fire Control
Professional Only
Requires:
- Population - 2
- Tech - Advanced Avionics
- Social Policy
- Resources - Aluminum
NOTE: Originally just a short-range transport with weapons added, during and after the Vietnam War the helicopter gunship developed a whole range of attack capabilities against all kinds of targets, including enemy tanks, infantry, and even antiaircraft and radar systems.

Augmented Infantry (2005 - 2022 CE)
Initial Equipment:
- Individual weapon, Vision devices, personal armor
Technical Upgrades:
- Stealth Systems
- Individual GPS & Communications
- Robotic aids
Requires:
- Population - 3
- Tech - (to be determined)
- Social Policy
- Resources - Composites
NOTE: Starting in the late 20th and accelerating in the early 21st century, the classic ‘ground-pounder’ infantry has become far more capable: night and low-vision sighting and detection devices, individual communications and GPS locators, self-guided bullets for his weapons, body armor, his own UAVs and Robotic auxiliaries.

That last Unit is an attempt to show trhe Present and Near Future of Units: Civ has almost always stopped short of showing the latest things on the battlefield, but I think the game (Civ VII) could benefit from dipping its toe into the Near Future waters, murky though they might seem. Among the Near Future (2020 - 2030) developments that might be possible, either as new Ground Units or as Upgrades:
Super Tanks (140mm cannon, missile defenses, Stealth)
AI Weapons (self-operated tanks, artillery, Drones)
Micro-UAV enhancements
Stealth (Quantum camouflage, non-radar-reflecting or Infrared-supressing materials)

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

^ And what will be successor to MBT?
1. UGV?
2. Mecha
- Battletech based which itself derived from Super Dimensional Fortress Macross, featuring 'chicken' combat bipod mechas and VF1 Valkyrie 'third mode' transformation. something which Civ5 Giant Death Robot is modelled after

- Humanoid 'Real Robot' "Mobile Suit" things

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

Later (Medieval, Early Modern) to Early Gunpowder Units:

Knights # (900 CE)
- Armored horsemen with heavy spear
Initial Equipment:
- Low-carbon Steel Sword, Mail/Lamellar Armor, Heavy Shield
Technical Upgrades:
- Couched Lance (1100 CE)
- Barded Horses
- Articulated Plate Armor (1300 CE)

Requires:
- Population - 2
- Tech - Steel Forging
- Social Policy - Feudalism
- Resources - Warhorses, Steel, Castle Improvement
NOTE: As mentioned above, the earliest Knights were indistinguishable from earlier Heavy Cavalry/Horsemen. The Knight was different because of the social/civic structure that supported him: given land to support him so that he could train constantly with sword, lance, and horse and later, pay for someone else to take his place in the army while he managed his lands and castle. Correctly modeling Knights requires as much attention to the Social and Civic structure as the Unit.
But NOTE that there are numerous Armored Lancers available that are not Knights: it is one of the most common Unique Unit types and in many parts of the world available to hire as Mercenaries from Barbarians or City States

Where's Cataphracts that exists between Heavy Chariots and Knights? Does it actually deserves a place as a distinct units to Horsemen and Knights since they were the firsts to use mailed horse armor?

Crossbowmen # (1370 CE)
- Metal steel-spring arbalests
Technical Upgrades:
- Articulated Plate Armor (Professional Only)
- Volley Fire (Professional Only)
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - Crucible Steel
- Social Policy - no requirements
- Resources - no requirements
NOTE: Earlier Crossbows with wooden ‘prods’ or bows were no more effective than contemporary bows, so the really effective Crossbow is a short-lived phenomenon, superseded by gunpowder in about 200 years and requiring advanced spring-steel metallurgy to construct.

Then 'Medieval ranged choice' should be named 'Marksman'. Basically superior 'archers' that should also represents 'crossbows' as well.
This unit is quite a recent additions to Civ series. First introduced in Civ4 as distinct unit to Longbowman (in that game. both are generic units available to all). In civ3 Longbowmen are GENERIC units.
The uses of crossbows are heavily associated with Peasant Levy actually (and a civ's penchants of using conscripts ALOT with weak institutions of Warrior Caste or Warrior Cultures). because crossbows are very very easy to learn.
Interesting bits is that Japanese NEVER use them AT ALL. not only because key materials required to make a Chinese style crossbow (same one that makes short composite bows for pastoral cultures) did NOT exists in Japan. Also a strong warrior culture that churns out a variety of 'Samurais' of different kinds (Samurai swordsmen, Samurai halberdiers, for example) and this included Archer Samurai that interestingly coexisted with arquebusiers well into Boshin War which Mid-19th Century 'Riflemen' Imperial Army finally beat these warrior cultures (with these officiers also a Samurai but chose to serve the Emperor over the Shogunate).

Bedded Cannon (1400 CE)
- Cast or built-up cannon fastened to wheeled carts, able to fire at troop Units or Fortifications
Technical Upgrades:
- Elevating Quadrant
- Corned Powder
Professional Only
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - Gunpowder, Cast Iron
- Social Policy - no requirement
- Resources - Saltpetre, Cast Iron, Warhorses
NOTE: A ‘transition’ Unit between the earliest ‘hand gonnes’ and Bombards to the trunnioned Field Cannon. These weapons could be as small as large-caliber arquebuses or Hackguns or as larger as 24 pounder Siege Guns, but they were very slow to aim and fire compared to later artillery.

Sometimes this cannon is called 'Bombard' . Is this the same thing that generally referred to as Culverin? 'Tiller based cannon'

Field Cannon *(1465 CE)
- Smoothbore cannon with trunnions and trailed carriage
Technical Upgrades:
- Elevating Screw
- Cannister Ammunition
- Precision Bored Barrels
Professional Only
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - Ballistics
- Social Policy - no requirement
- Resources - Bronze OR Iron, Warhorses, Saltpetre
NOTE: The ‘balanced’ trunnioned cannon with much longer and more precisely-made barrels, better ballistics, and vastly improved mobility was so useful that it remained basically unchanged for almost 400 years.

No 'Rifled barrel' as tech upgrades? And whatchu think of Rifled Field Cannon of 1860s? Does it worths any place in your unit lists?

Arquebusiers +(1472 CE)
- Shoulder stock and matchlock firing mechanism for ‘handgonnes’
Initial Equipment:
- Matchlock Musket, Light hand weapon
Technical Upgrades:
- Drill
- Mixed Formations
- Volley Fire
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - Ballistics
- Social Policy - no requirement
- Resources - Saltpetre
NOTE: The matchlock musket/arquebus men had no real melee factor: their weapons were clumsy clubs when unloaded, so they were always either used from fortifications or combined with melee weapons like Great Swords, Pikes, Halberds, or combinations of all three in Mixed Formations.

Note that contrary to both Civ in all iterations and Humankind, "musketmen" or arquebusiers were not the earliest effective gunpowder weapons by a century, and if we include Chinese/East Asian flamethrowing gunpowder bombs, grenades, and rockets even the primitive 'hand gonne' was preceded by over 250 years!
- And 'hand gonnes' are not included here as Units because they were almost incredibly ineffective: shorter range and worse accuracy than either simple bows or wooden crossbows, made ineffective by any weather condition short of sunlight, and prone to occasionally blowing up or setting fire to the careless user.
.

What are more correct names of this unit? (Arquebusiers or Musketeers) actually is there any differences between Arquebusiers and Musketeers (This should be the name chosen. F'xis made a big bad mistakes using 'Musketman' as a unit name WITHOUT giving France 'Musketeers' (Mousquetaire du Roi/ Mousquetaire de la Garde, which itself Light Cavalry rather than footsloggers) ) beyond their firearms and armor (or lack of)?
Should it be upgraded to Jagers (Chasseurs/ Rangers. Why you chose German names rather than French or English names despite that it referred to the same light infantry with fusils?) as well as Fusiliers (Linear Infantry)?

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

@Lonecat Nekophrodite, one post for all your questions.

First, while there have been a lot of experiments and even a few prototypes of 'super tanks' with 140mm cannon and automatic loading systems and lasers and anti-missile and even stealth technologies, I'm not so sure any of them will ever be produced, except possibly as AI weapons. There are just too many things that can destroy a tank today- from heavy missle-carrying Drones/UAVs to Top Attack rocket and mortar warheads. Tanks have come to represent simply too many assets in one target to be viable on the battlefield much longer, so I think the development trends are going to be towards making the individual human infantryman more powerful with exo-suits, armor, UAVs, AI sub-systems, etc.

Next, the early Cataphracts are best represented as Unique Units. They were used by only a few Civilized States: Sassanid Persia and Byzantium, but were most prevalent among the nobility of pastoral 'Barbarian' groups like the Massegetae, Sarmatian, Alan, Khazar, etc. = all of which should be hirable by the Civs, as Rome did with the several units their army had of "Equites Sarmatii" catahracts.

Why would the Medieval Ranged unit be a generic "Marksman"? The archery, except for the Unique Welsh/English Longbow (which was as much a product of a Social system of Yeomanry as the weapon itself, which dates back to early Classical times in the Gedrosiii of the Zagros Mountains, according to Xenophon)) is no different between 6000 BCE (the first stave bow found in a bog in northern Europe) and 1900 AD in simple bows except the quality of metal in the arrow points, so an Archer is an Archer is an Archer except for possible specific Upgrades.

Rifled barrels in cannon before recoil mechanisms meant nothing without reliable explosive shells, which would be represented by the Percussion Fuse Upgrade from Howitzers applied to Cannon. In fact, at the longer rifled ranges, solid shot is actually Less Effective because the barrel has to be elevated for range so the shot drops and stops instead of ricocheting along the ground causing damage for hundreds of meters.

The 'Bedded Cannon" is also called 'Tiller Cannon", but Bedded is more descriptive, since they were permanently fastened to a timber bed - a sort of very enlarged Stock on a 2 or 4-wheeled carriage. Cuvverin is a deceptive term, because it was used to describe anything from an enlarged hand gonne to a siege cannon, and was not regularly applied to a specific large cannon until after Trunnions were introduced, making it inappropriate for this weapon.

Finally, the use or application of the Crossbow is very much affected by the Social/Civic Policies of the State or Civ. Nobody with a Warrior Aristocracy or Warrior Ethos - like most of the states of Europe - ever adopted it, because it was too easy for any clumsy peasant with a crossbow to shoot down the Aristocratic Warrior. Also, being slow-firing, a Crossbow was not very effective on the battlefield unless the crossbowmen were protected by somebody else with a Melee weapon - Chinese armies from the Qin on, where we start to have some written records, had about 2 spear/primitive halberd-carrying men for every crossbowman, and all of them were conscripted peasants - Amateurs in my proposed/suggested system. Note that the Crossbow was known to the Greeks and Romans in the early Classical Era not long after the Chinese had it, but there is no evidence of it being used on the battlefield in Classical Europe or the Middle East, only as a hunting weapon or for Wall Defense of cities when the city population was organized to defend themselves.

The earliest effective gunpowder battlefield personal firearm was the Arquebus, which evolved around 1470 - 1475 from the Hackbus, or 'Hook Gun' that was a wall mounted or wall-braced defensive weapon for fortifications (or Hussite wagons). The original Arquebus fired a relatively (by later standards of black powder weapons) small bullet which could not always reliably penetrate steel plate armor, so a heavier weapon was developed (up to .7 inch bore) by the 1520s that could fire a heavier ball and penetrate any steel armor that a man could wear and still move in. The terms 'Musket' and 'Arquebus' then became virtually interchangeable, since the lighter, original arquebus disappeared and only one weapon was left with two names. Arquebusier has the advantage as a Unit name that it is specific to the matchlock musket/arquebus whereas Musket was also used for the flintlock musket and Musketry is still occasionally used for any small-arms fire by infantrymen.

LIne Infantry, by the way, is a bad, bad choice for a Unit Title. The Line Infantry tactics grew out of the attempts to maximize fire from arquebusiers in the 1590s and later, was adopted by flintlock musket-armed troops and every fire-arm equipped infantry since. Cavalry also charged in a thin (2 - 3 ranks) lines from the 15th century on, but I don't hear anyody suggesting "Line Cavalry" as a Unit (although the term was used to refer to Non-Guards Cavalry in many European armies) However, the flintlock-armed infantry, starting in the Napoleonic/French Revolutionary Wars, also adopted Mixed Order tactics in which they moved and charged in column of companies mixed with line formations for fire and skirmishers to 'cover' their advance, and this mix of line and column has been used ever since by all kinds of military units for optimum movement and firepower as required.

Again, the titles I chose for Units are as specific as I can make them, because other specific titles will be needed for Unique Units. If French titles seem to predominate in the 16th - 19th century, thats because French was the international language of Europe at the time and the French Army from the 17th century on innovated the mass use of may of the new military weapons and tactics. If you look at the military vocabularies of European (and English) languages today, you will find a host of words of French origin - like regiment, platoon, company, battalion, brigade, division, corps, etc. I've posted before about the fact that Fusilier was a specific term applied to units and troops with a flintlock musket, and therefore appropriate to use for a specific unit compared to the arquebusier or rifleman. Light infantry were originally a German invention, raised from professional gamekeepers and hunters and therefore called Jägers or Jaegers (Hunters in German) but later referred to as Light Infantry by the Englis/British), Chasseurs (a Pied) by the Royal French Army, Voltigeurs by the Imperial (Napoleon's) French Army, Yegerskii (Jaeger in translation) by the Russians and as specialized units, Rangers by the Americans

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Finally, the Naval and Air Unit suggestions and Notes:

Naval Units:
Galley *(2330 BCE)
- earliest depiction of Egyptian rowed coastal ships
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - Woodfitting
- Social Policy
- Resources - Fishing Boats and/or Sea Trade Routes

Transport Galley +(2330 BCE)
- Earliest depiction of Egyptian rowed ships transporting troops
Requires:
Population - 0
Tech - Woodfitting
Social Policy
Resources - Fishing Boats and/or Sea Trade Routes
NOTE: The same wall painting in Egypt shows both early oared (as opposed to paddled) 'galleys' used to carry troops along the coast and other galleys escorting them. ALL Galleys or rowed ships are essentially coastal ships: having a bunch of holes in the hull for oars is scarcely compatible with High Seas. Early Galley-building could be limited by allowing only as many Galleys/Transports as you have Fishing Boats or Naval Trade Routes, because those are the only parts of your population with the skills needed for the ships. Note that simple travel by civilians over coastal waters comes much, much earlier: the islands of the Aegean, Cyprus and Crete were settled by people and their domestic animals between 9000 and 6000 BCE, and Formosa/Taiwan off the Chinese coast at least that early. so a Pre-Sailing Neolithic 'Tech' may be needed to allow Settlers, Workers, Tribes or other 'civilians' to move over coastal waters from near the beginning of the game.

Liburnian (600 BCE)
- a sail and oar combination craft for extreme mobility over coastal waters
Initial Equipment:
- Oars and sails
Barbarian/City State Only at first
Requires:
- Population
- Tech - Naval Geometry
- Social Policy
- Resources - no requirements
NOTE: Invented by the Liburnian tribe of the Dalmatian coast as a pirate craft, this makes a perfect ‘first Barbarian/Pirate specific’ naval vessel, available early in the Classical era.

Trireme (550 CE)
- successor to the Pentekonter, which was apparently the first 'dedicated' warship-type, but more famous
Initial Equipment:
- Metal Ram
Requires:
- Population - 2
- Tech - Naval Geometry
- Social Policy - Civic Identity
- Resources - Bronze/Copper

NOTE: The most famous of the Polyreme warships with oars on multiple levels, and also the first ship to be by itself a weapon, with a metal ram at its prow with which to smash enemy ships without requiring any warriors in its own crew.

Quinquereme (400 BCE)
- the most ubiquitous of the larger Polyremes.
Initial Equipment:
- Light Catapults, Metal Ram
Requires:
- Population - 2
- Tech - Naval Architecture
- Social Policy
- Resources - Bronze/Copper
NOTE: The most common of the Large Polyremes, and compared to the trireme able to carry bolt or stone-throwing catapults, 5 - 8 times more marines, and for the first time enough ranged weaponry to take out an enemy ship without having to ram or board her.

Cog +(948 CE)
- Used as transport and warship
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - Clinker-Built Hulls
- Social Policy
- Resources - Fishing Boats and/or Sea Trade Routes
NOTE: A coastal freight carrier developedc from the Scandinavian Knorr, by adding temporary or permanent superstructure castles fore and aft, it became an effective warship, its combat power based on the type and number of land troops fighting from the castles.

Carrack +(1420 CE)
- By 1489 CE carrying heavy cannon, first ship-type to do so
Technical Upgrades:
- Gun Ports
- Short Gun Carriage
- Caravel-built Hulls (required for Naval Cannon)
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - Gunpowder, Ship-Rigging
- Social Policy
- Resources - Timber, Cast Iron OR Cast Bronze
NOTE” The first type of hull to be able to carry heavy cannon and thus destroy an enemy ship instead of merely decimating its crew with lighter hand guns.

Caravel #(1450 CE)
- High Sea Scout Ship that grew big enough to carry trade and cannon both
Technical Upgrades:
- Heavy Hulls (required for Naval Cannon)
- Gun Ports
- Short Gun Carriage
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - Ship-Rigging
- Social Policy
- Resources - Fishing Boats, Harbors and/or Naval Trade Routes
NOTE: The quintessential ‘Scout’, originally too small to carry big guns, but later hulls could sail all the way from Europe to Southeast Asia and outshoot anything they found there. Since the type was developed from earlier fishing boats, they could be recruited from the Fishing Boat numbers in your Civ for little Cost.

Brigantine (1525 CE)
Barbarian/City State only at first
Requires:
- Population
- Tech
- Social Policy
- Resources - no requirements
NOTE: developed from a medieval Mediterranean oar and sail craft into a fast, maneuverable small sailing vessel, used extensively by pirates until the early 19th century, so anther potential Barbarian-Only warship.

Galleon (1530 CE)
- The ship that spells Early Modern to most people, courtesy of Errol Flynn and Hollywood
Technical Upgrades:
- Race-Built Hull
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - (to be determined)
- Social Policy
- Resources - Timber, Cast Iron ORCast Bronze
NOTE: A merchant or warship, as warship evolved into the ‘race-built’ hulls that became the Ships of the Line, as Transport a potential Spanish Unique

NOTE: Caravel, Carrack and Galleon are altogether probably too many ship types too close together in time for a good game. The Carrack and Galleon, however, could be replaced by the Great Ship, a specialized Unit buildable at Great Expense and Effort as a prestige warship - a good transition if numerous separate ship Units all within less than 150 years of each other seems like too much.

Ship-of-the-Line (1660 CE)
- Both capital ship and major source of Influence and Prestige
Technical Upgrades:
- Metal Reinforced Framing (1805 CE)
- Shell-Firing Guns (1837 CE)
- Auxiliary Steam Propulsion
Requires:
- Population - 2
- Tech - (to be determined)
- Social Policy
- Resources - Timber, Cast Iron OR CastBronze
NOTE: The most complex mechanism built by men up to that time, an integrated combination of sails, hull, cannon and crew which remained virtually unchanged for 150 years and then rapidly evolved into extinction as wooden ships became too fragile to withstand modern explosive artillery shells.

Frigate *(1740 CE)
- One of the best combinations of speed and firepower in Naval History
Technical Upgrades:
- Metal Reinforced Framing
- Shell-Firing Guns
- Auxiliary Steam Propulsion (1840 - paddlewheels, 1846 - propeller)
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - Crucible Steel
- Social Policy
- Resources - Timber, Cast Iron
NOTE: The most versatile of traditional wooden warships: fast, long ranged, and after the 19th century upgrades, more powerful than anything from the previous centuries. Note that with all three Upgrades, this becomes the Steam Frigate, which could also be a separate Unit

Ironclad #(1854 CE) (first sea-going: 1859 CE - French Gloire)
- The first new sea-going construction material since the Ehyptians stopped using reed bundles in favor of wood
Technical Upgrades:
- Steel Hull (1876 CE)
- Rifled Artillery
- Alloy Armor Plate
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - Industrial Steel
- Social Policy
- Resources - Iron OR Steel
NOTE: Ironclad covers a wide range of ships, from coastal-only Monitors, ocean-going ships with full sail rigs to supplement primitive steam power, and by the 1880s, steam only Battleships with guns 10 times more powerful than anything available just 20 years earlier.

Destroyer *(1894 CE)
- originally a specifiv Torpedo Bat Destroyer, later a naval jack-of-all-trades
Technical Upgrades:
- ASDIC/SONAR
- RADAR
- Antiaircraft Missile Systems
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - (to be determined)
- Social Policy
- Resources
NOTE: Originally designed to counter torpedo boats, these evolved to be the premier anti-submarine ships, antiaircraft pickets, escorts for capital ships, and all-around versatile successors to the frigates.

Submarine *(1900 CE)
- Originally, the 'poor navy's' answer to the Battleship
Technical Upgrades:
- Schnorkel )1945 CE)
- Homing Torpedoes
- Streamlined Hull
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - Advanced Steel Alloys
- Social Policy
- Resources - Steel Alloys
NOTE: The great merchant destroyer of the 20th century, and in the 21st century conventional submarines are still extremely dangerous to other ships, being faster and harder to detect than ever.

Battleship #(1906 CE)
- the Dreadnaught all-big-gun type
Technical Upgrades:
- Oil-Fired Boilers (changes Maintenance Resource from Coal to Oil)
- RADAR spotting and Fire Control
- Light Antiaircraft
Requires:
- Population - 2
- Tech - Central Gun Direction
- Social Policy
- Resources - Steel Alloys
NOTE: The way all navies were measured: requiring a huge investment in industrial capacity to build and maintain, but capable of smashing any other surface warship of their time.

Aircraft Carrier #(1921 CE)
- first dedicated aircraft-carrying, launching and recovering ships
Technical Upgrades:
- Damage Control Systems
- Steam Catapults
- Armored Flight Decks
Requires:
- Population - 2
- Tech - - (to be determined)
- Social Policy
- Resources - Steel Alloys, Auminum
NOTE: Many early aircraft carriers were converted from Battleship-type hulls, but by the 1940s they had made Battleships virtually obsolete as a measure of naval strength.

Supercarrier (1955 CE)
- USS Forrestal, angled deck, steam catapults, can carry heavy jets
Technical Upgrades:
- Nuclear Propulsion (changes Maintenance Resource from Oil to Uranium)
- Point Defense Systems
- ECM
Requires:
- Population - 2
- Tech - (to be determined)
- Social Policy
- Resources - Steel Alloys, Aluminum
NOTE: The shift from prop to jet aircraft required much larger and stronger aircraft landing decks, and so an entirely new and much larger aircraft carrier to handle them.

Guided Missile Ship #(1962 CE)
- Frigate, Destroyer, Cruiser, the terms seem to be used interchangeably
Technical Upgrades:
- Stealth Technology
- Multi-Purpose Missile Launchers
- Point Defense Systems
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - Solid-State Electronics
- Social Policy
- Resources - Aluminum, Composites
NOTE: Whatever they are called: frigates, destroyers, or cruisers, the two characteristics of these ships are that they carry multiple missiles for every purpose and increasing arrays of electronics with which to find the enemy at extreme ranges and hide from his systems at all ranges.

Nuclear Missile Submarine #(1959 CE)
- More than just new propulsion, the first truly, completely Underwater vessel.
Technical Upgrades:
- ASW, SSM Missile Launch Tubes
- Multiple Warhead Missiles
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - Nuclear Propulsion
- Social Policy
- Resources - Steel Alloys, Aluminum, Uranium
NOTE: There are non-missile nuclear submarines, but the submarine carrying IRBM or ICBM nuclear-tipped missiles is the modern Capital Ship: almost impossible to find or stop and capable of obliterating nations.

Air Units:

Biplane #(1908 CE)
- nothing complicated, because initially just staying in the air was complicated enough
Technical Upgrades:
- Light Weight Engines (requires Aluminum Resource)
- Light Bombs
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - Aeronautical Crafting
- Social Policy
- Resources - no requirements
NOTE: The earliest aircraft had very little ability to directly attack ground targets, but a huge ability to find and identify the enemy so that artillery and other ground weapons could attack him

Zeppelin Rigid Dirigible (1908 CE)
- a very Long range bombing and reconnaissance aircraft
Technical Upgrades:
- Light Bombs
- Helium Lift
Professional Only
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - Aeronautical Crafting
- Social Policy
- Resources - Aluminum
NOTE: The first Long Range Bomber - light on the bombs, but with unequalled range compared to anything before the multi-engined jets of the 1960s.

Tactical Fighter #(1935 CE)
- Low wing monoplanes, usually single engine
Technical Upgrades:
- Dive Bombing
- Antitank Cannon
- Superchargers
Professional Only
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - Light Alloys
- Social Policy
- Resources - Aluminum
NOTE: Mostly single, occasionally 2-engined aircraft, the premier air attack fighters but also ground attack specialists and the aircraft carried by all aircraft carriers.

Strategic Bomber #(1941 CE)
- 2 or 4 engine types, like B-17, Ju-88 or Lancaster
Technical Upgrades:
- Gyroscopic Bombsights
- Electronic Navigation Aids
- Powered Cannon Turrets
Professional Only
Requires:
- Population - 2
- Tech - Advanced Aero-Engines
- Social Policy
- Resources - Aluminum
NOTE: Like the Battleship, a fleet of these required a huge investment in industrial capabilities and highly-trained manpower. But, even with conventional bombs they could smash entire cities.

Cruise Missile #(1956 - 2001 CE)
- first deployment of Matador to Tomahawk
No Promotions, No Professional Status
Requires:
Population - 0
Tech - Solid-State Electronics
Social Policy
Resources - Composites
NOTE: Really a shorthand for all the various sub-orbital missiles, which can be fired from submarine, surface ship, fixed or mobile ground or aircraft platforms

Attack Jet #(1961 CE)
- “Multirole” fighters, Phantom II and Tornado were first to ber deployed
Technical Upgrades:
- Stealth Technology
- Phased-Array "Look Down" Radar
- Multi-Role Missiles
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - Advanced Composite Materials
- Social Policy
- Resources - Composites
NOTE: The modern jet aircraft really isn’t just a fighter or attack type, it combines the two, able to change its suite of weapons and gear to attack ground targets of all types, engage enemy aircraft, and operate from either ground or aircraft carrier bases.

There are two 'Units' that need a bit of explanation:

Military Engineer *(850 BCE - 1503 CE)
Professional Only
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - (to be determined)
- Social Policy
- Resources - no requirements
NOTE: Military Engineering tasks were being performed as early as 850 BCE: undermining walls, attacking special parts of fortifications, building fortifications and siege equipment. BUT the real formal Military Engineer became predominant when fortification technology had to adapt to the new gunpowder Bombards and artillery and siege warfare had to adapt to near-constant changes in architecture and technology. It should probably remain a Unit from 1503 CE or so, but possibly the earlier Siege Engines should get an Upgrade related to Professional Military Engineering.

Drones *(1962 - 1999 CE)
No Promotions, No Professional Status
Requires:
- Population - 0
- Tech
- Social Policy
- Resources - Composites
NOTE: Drones are used by everybody down to the individual infantry platoon or company: they are flown from the ground, from ships, dropped from aircraft, mounted on light trucks, and enhance capabilities from simple attack to reconnaissance, counter-electronics, communications. The technology should probably best be represented by a general Upgrade or Upgrades to almost every unit in all or some of those activities.

 

[HorseshoeHermit]

Sorry for posting between your stuff. Maybe the mods can reorder the posts?

Finally, the use or application of the Crossbow is very much affected by the Social/Civic Policies of the State or Civ. Nobody with a Warrior Aristocracy or Warrior Ethos - like most of the states of Europe - ever adopted it, because it was too easy for any clumsy peasant with a crossbow to shoot down the Aristocratic Warrior. Also, being slow-firing, a Crossbow was not very effective on the battlefield unless the crossbowmen were protected by somebody else with a Melee weapon - Chinese armies from the Qin on, where we start to have some written records, had about 2 spear/primitive halberd-carrying men for every crossbowman, and all of them were conscripted peasants - Amateurs in my proposed/suggested system. Note that the Crossbow was known to the Greeks and Romans in the early Classical Era not long after the Chinese had it, but there is no evidence of it being used on the battlefield in Classical Europe or the Middle East, only as a hunting weapon or for Wall Defense of cities when the city population was organized to defend themselves.

But you wrote for Crossbowmen "social policy - no requirements".

Again, the titles I chose for Units are as specific as I can make them, because other specific titles will be needed for Unique Units. If French titles seem to predominate in the 16th - 19th century, thats because French was the international language of Europe at the time and the French Army from the 17th century on innovated the mass use of may of the new military weapons and tactics. If you look at the military vocabularies of European (and English) languages today, you will find a host of words of French origin - like regiment, platoon, company, battalion, brigade, division, corps, etc. I've posted before about the fact that Fusilier was a specific term applied to units and troops with a flintlock musket, and therefore appropriate to use for a specific unit compared to the arquebusier or rifleman. Light infantry were originally a German invention, raised from professional gamekeepers and hunters and therefore called Jägers or Jaegers (Hunters in German) but later referred to as Light Infantry by the Englis/British), Chasseurs (a Pied) by the Royal French Army, Voltigeurs by the Imperial (Napoleon's) French Army, Yegerskii (Jaeger in translation) by the Russians and as specialized units, Rangers by the Americans

Makes sense.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

No Social Policy Requirements for Crossbows, but like Spears in the early game, they are the 'classic' weapon for mass armies of Amateurs because neither weapon takes a lot of training to use. The requirement is on the other foot: Amateur mass armies of peasant conscripts require weapons that don't require long, aid training times, which are Spears, Pikes and Crossbows, but all three weapons can also be used by Professionals with no Social Policy Requirement at all. A Social Policy Requirement would be, for example, requiring Heirarchy for early Units because without it no one takes any orders from anyone except the head of their own family or kin-group, and no units become possible (In fact, Heirarchy is also a basic Requirement to keep an early city going, since without it the 'city' is just a collection of separate family groups that will drift away as soon as anything goes wrong, as happened, I am postulating, with the Cucuteni cities and Catal Huyok - neither of which show any archeological signs of Heirarchy, of someone Important enough to give orders and have them obeyed - usually). Another and better-known example is Knights, which are NOT POSSIBLE without the Social system that is Feudalism to support them.

Social Policy requirements get much less common in the Industrial Era and later because by then any manufactured weapon or equipment can be used by anyone with formal training, and the militaries in most of the world had gotten really good at providing the basic training required. What then becomes more important is the difference between Units conscripted for training, sent home, then called up for the war with no other useful experience, compared to the Professional soldiers who keep training and practicing all the time, but being full time soldiers, are no economic advantage to rhe State/Civ, just a massive expense.

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

@Lonecat Nekophrodite, one post for all your wuestions.

First, while there have been a lot of experiments and even a few protoypes of 'super tanks' with 140mm xannon and automatic loading systems and lasers and anti-missile and even stealth technologies, I'm not so sure any of them will ever be produced, except possibly as AI weapons. There are just too many things that can destroy a tank today- from heavy missle-carrying Drones/UAVs to To Attack rocket and mortar warheads. Tanks have come to represent simply too many assets in one target to be viable on the battlefield much longer, so I think the development trends are going to be towards making the individual human infantryman more powerful with exo-suits, armor, UAVs, AI sub-systems, etc.

Next, the early Cataphracts are best represented as Unique Units. They were used by only a few Civilized States: Sassanid Persia and Byzantium, but were most prevalent among the nobility of pastoral 'Barbarian' groups like the Massegetae, Sarmatian, Alan, Khazar, etc. = all of which should be hirable by the Civs, as Rome did with the several units their army had o "Equites Sarmatii" catahracts.

Why would the Medieval Ranged unit be a generic "Marksman"? The archery, except for the Unique Welsh/English Longbow (which was as much a product of a Social system of Yeomanry as the weapon itself, which dates back to early Classical times in the Gedrosiii of the Zagros Mountains, according to Xenophon)) is no different between 6000 BCE (the first stave bow found in a bog in northern Europe) and 1900 AD in simple bows except the quality of metal in the arrow points, so an Archer is an Archer is an Archer except for possible specific Upgrades.

Rifled barrels in cannon before recoil mechanisms meant nothing without reliable explosive shells, which would be represented by the Percussion Fuse Upgrade from Howitzers applied to Cannon. In fact, at the longer rifled ranges, asolid shot is actually Less Effective because he barrel has to be elevated for range so the shot drops and stops instead of ricocheting along the ground causing damage for hundreds of meters.

The 'Bedded Cannon" is also called 'Tiller Cannon", but Bedded is more descriptive, since they were permanently fastened to a timber bed - a sort of very enlarged Stock on a 2 o 4-wheeled carriage. Cuvberin is a deceptive term, because it was used to describe anything from an enlarged hand gonne to a siege cannon, and was not regularly applied to a specific large cannon until after Trunnions were introduced, making it inappropriate for this weapon.

Finally, the use or application of the Crossbow is very much affected by the Social/Civic Policies of the State or Civ. Nobody with a Warrior Aristocracy or Warrior Ethos - like most of the states of Europe - ever adopted it, because it was too easy for any clumsy peasant with a crossbow to shoot down the Aristocratic Warrior. Also, being slow-firing, a Crossbow was not very effective on the battlefield unless the crossbowmen were protected by somebody else with a Melee weapon - Chinese armies from the Qin on, where we start to have some written records, had about 2 spear/primitive halberd-carrying men for every crossbowman, and all of them were conscripted peasants - Amateurs in my proposed/suggested system. Note that the Crossbow was known to the Greeks and Romans in the early Classical Era not long after the Chinese had it, but there is no evidence of it being used on the battlefield in Classical Europe or the Middle East, only as a hunting weapon or for Wall Defense of cities when the city population was organized to defend themselves.

The earliest effective gunpowder battlefield personal firearm was the Arquebus, which evolved around 1470 - 1475 from the Hackbus, or 'Hook Gun' that was a wall mounted or wall-braced defensive weapon for fortifications (or Hussite wagons). The original Arquebus fired a relatively (by later standards of black powder weapons) small bullet which could not always reliably penetrate steel plate armor, so a heavier weapon was developed (up to .7 inch bore) by the 1520s that could fire a heavier ball and penetrate any steel armor that a man could wear and still move in. The terms 'Musket' and 'Arquebus' then became virtually interchangeable, since the lighter, original arquebus disappeared and only one weapon was left with two names. Arquebusier has the advantage as a Unit name that it is specific to the matchlock musket/arquebus whereas Musket was also used for the flintlock musket and Musketry is still occasionally used for any small-arms fire by infantrymen.

LIne Infantry, by the way, is a bad, bad choice for a Unit Title. The Line Infantry tactics grew out of the attempts to maximize fire from arquebusiers in the 1590s and later, was adopted by flintlock musket-armed troops and every fire-arm equipped infantry since. Cavalry also charged in a thin (2 - 3 ranks) lines from the 15th century on, but I don;t hear anyody suggesting "Line Cavalry" as a Unit (although the term was used to refer to Non-Guards Cavalry in many European armies) However, the flintlock-armed infantry, starting in the Napoleonic/French Revolutionary Wars, also adopted Mixed Order tactics in which they moved and charged in column of companies mixed with line formations for fire and skirmishers to 'cover' their advance, and this mix of line and column has been used ever since by all kinds of military units for optimum movement and firepower as required.

Again, the titles I chose for Units are as specific as I can make them, because other specific titles will be needed for Unique Units. If French titles seem to predominate in the 16th - 19th century, thats because French was the international language of Europe at the time and the French Army from the 17th century on innovated the mass use of may of the new military weapons and tactics. If you look at the military vocabularies of European (and English) languages today, you will find a host of words of French origin - like regiment, platoon, company, battalion, brigade, division, corps, etc. I've posted before about the fact that Fusilier was a specific term applied to units and troops with a flintlock musket, and therefore appropriate to use for a specific unit compared to the arquebusier or rifleman. Light infantry were originally a German invention, raised from professional gamekeepers and hunters and therefore called Jägers or Jaegers (Hunters in German) but later referred to as Light Infantry by the Englis/British), Chasseurs (a Pied) by the Royal French Army, Voltigeurs by the Imperial (Napoleon's) French Army, Yegerskii (Jaeger in translation) by the Russians and as specialized units, Rangers by the Americans

I've forgot one thing. 'Light Melee Cavalry'--the likes of Stratiotai, Cossacks, (Both are lancers), Spakhi, (Lancers or mounted swordsmen), Hussars (Referring to Hungarian 'Armoreless' swordsmen with fur caps or Shako (Did they invent Shako in the first place? they wore Shako while many others in Europe wear Tricornes). What will you do with it?

Finally, the Naval and Air Unit suggestions and Notes:

Naval Units:
Galley *(2330 BCE)
- earliest depiction of Egyptian rowed coastal ships
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - Woodfitting
- Social Policy
- Resources - Fishing Boats and/or Sea Trade Routes

Transport Galley +(2330 BCE)
- Earliest depiction of Egyptian rowed ships transporting troops
Requires:
Population - 0
Tech - Woodfitting
Social Policy
Resources - Fishing Boats and/or Sea Trade Routes
NOTE: The same wall painting in Egypt shows both early oared (as opposed to paddled) 'galleys' used to carry troops along the coast and other galleys escorting them. ALL Galleys or rowed ships are essentially coastal ships: having a bunch of holes in the hull for oars is scarcely compatible with High Seas. Early Galley-building could be limited by allowing only as many Galleys/Transports as you have Fishing Boats or Naval Trade Routes, because those are the only parts of your population with the skills needed for the ships. Note that simple travel by civilians over coastal waters comes much, much earlier: the islands of the Aegean, Cyprus and Crete were settled by people and their domestic animals between 9000 and 6000 BCE, and Formosa/Taiwan off the Chinese coast at least that early. so a Pre-Sailing Neolithic 'Tech' may be needed to allow Settlers, Workers, Tribes or other 'civilians' to move over coastal waters from near the beginning of the game.

Liburnian (600 BCE)
- a sail and oar combination craft for extreme mobility over coastal waters
Initial Equipment:
- Oars and sails
Barbarian/City State Only at first
Requires:
- Population
- Tech - Naval Geometry
- Social Policy
- Resources - no requirements
NOTE: Invented by the Liburnian tribe of the Dalmatian coast as a pirate craft, this makes a perfect ‘first Barbarian/Pirate specific’ naval vessel, available early in the Classical era.

Trireme (550 CE)
- successor to the Pentekonter, which was apparently the first 'dedicated' warship-type, but more famous
Initial Equipment:
- Metal Ram
Requires:
- Population - 2
- Tech - Naval Geometry
- Social Policy - Civic Identity
- Resources - Bronze/Copper

NOTE: The most famous of the Polyreme warships with oars on multiple levels, and also the first ship to be by itself a weapon, with a metal ram at its prow with which to smash enemy ships without requiring any warriors in its own crew.

Quinquereme (400 BCE)
- the most ubiquitous of the larger Polyremes.
Initial Equipment:
- Light Catapults, Metal Ram
Requires:
- Population - 2
- Tech - Naval Architecture
- Social Policy
- Resources - Bronze/Copper
NOTE: The most common of the Large Polyremes, and compared to the trireme able to carry bolt or stone-throwing catapults, 5 - 8 times more marines, and for the first time enough ranged weaponry to take out an enemy ship without having to ram or board her.

Cog +(948 CE)
- Used as transport and warship
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - Clinker-Built Hulls
- Social Policy
- Resources - Fishing Boats and/or Sea Trade Routes
NOTE: A coastal freight carrier developedc from the Scandinavian Knorr, by adding temporary or permanent superstructure castles fore and aft, it became an effective warship, its combat power based on the type and number of land troops fighting from the castles.

Carrack +(1420 CE)
- By 1489 CE carrying heavy cannon, first ship-type to do so
Technical Upgrades:
- Gun Ports
- Short Gun Carriage
- Caravel-built Hulls (required for Naval Cannon)
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - Gunpowder, Ship-Rigging
- Social Policy
- Resources - Timber, Cast Iron OR Cast Bronze
NOTE” The first type of hull to be able to carry heavy cannon and thus destroy an enemy ship instead of merely decimating its crew with lighter hand guns.

Caravel #(1450 CE)
- High Sea Scout Ship that grew big enough to carry trade and cannon both
Technical Upgrades:
- Heavy Hulls (required for Naval Cannon)
- Gun Ports
- Short Gun Carriage
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - Ship-Rigging
- Social Policy
- Resources - Fishing Boats, Harbors and/or Naval Trade Routes
NOTE: The quintessential ‘Scout’, originally too small to carry big guns, but later hulls could sail all the way from Europe to Southeast Asia and outshoot anything they found there. Since the type was developed from earlier fishing boats, they could be recruited from the Fishing Boat numbers in your Civ for little Cost.

Brigantine (1525 CE)
Barbarian/City State only at first
Requires:
- Population
- Tech
- Social Policy
- Resources - no requirements
NOTE: developed from a medieval Mediterranean oar and sail craft into a fast, maneuverable small sailing vessel, used extensively by pirates until the early 19th century, so anther potential Barbarian-Only warship.

Galleon (1530 CE)
- The ship that spells Early Modern to most people, courtesy of Errol Flynn and Hollywood
Technical Upgrades:
- Race-Built Hull
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - (to be determined)
- Social Policy
- Resources - Timber, Cast Iron ORCast Bronze
NOTE: A merchant or warship, as warship evolved into the ‘race-built’ hulls that became the Ships of the Line, as Transport a potential Spanish Unique

NOTE: Caravel, Carrack and Galleon are altogether probably too many ship types too close together in time for a good game. The Carrack and Galleon, however, could be replaced by the Great Ship, a specialized Unit buildable at Great Expense and Effort as a prestige warship - a good transition if numerous separate ship Units all within less than 150 years of each other seems like too much.

1. What will you do with pre-sail river barges?
2. A little bit of history that relates to the Argo (Greek's "First Galley"), a ship where Jason and some fifty men joined in their adventures to Colchis (Clearly a Scythian domain) did the Greeks got the Argo designs from Egyptians?
3. What will you do with 'Boarding' rules? Actually Boardings were prominence in naval combat BEFORE the advent of Mid-Industrial shellfiring cannons and associated percussion shells (and shortly followed with rifled cannons), and is a risky business. This involved 'Prize Ships' rule where a player can capture enemy ships but BOTH attackers and defenders can either capture or lost ships in boarding actions. Early 'Melee warships' in Civ5-6 setting actually do boarding actions. The advent of Ironclads, and 'Heavy repeaters' (hand crank repeating point defense weapons--Proto MGs like Gatlings and Nordenfelts) installed on these vessels eventually prevented successful boarding attacks. The last time boarding action is done in battle was Boshin War. particularly the last desperate effort of Japanese Republican Separatist (The Ezo Republc actually, Shogunate successor but i'm not sure if they really were or simply those who had different views towards New Japan that should discard ages old Monarchy completely but instead should run on American style republic. The republic itself was allied with Napoleon III) to capture Imperial Ironclad (IJN Kotetsu, actually the last oceangoing Confederate ironclad but changed hands too often, finally ended up in the Imperial Japanese Navy posessions), an attempt that's doomed completely (and later the Republic itself was doomed, Napoleon III never has any reliable ally, everyone he allied with were all defeated particularly in their respective civil wars), since then Naval tactics shifted away from boardings and and focused on sinking enemy vessels only.
4. Should 'Great Ship' / Man of War be a separate unit or a different names to Carracks (Particularly English Mary Rose, Big Harry. and French Valois counterparts which I've forgot their names) or Galleon? Crammed up time spacing in 4x gameplay means one proper name has to be chosen. I'd like 'Man of War' more actually.

5. What are 'Brigantines' actually? What are roles usually assigned to them? (Cruisers or Battleship)

Ironclad #(1854 CE) (first sea-going: 1859 CE - French Gloire)
- The first new sea-going construction material since the Ehyptians stopped using reed bundles in favor of wood
Technical Upgrades:
- Steel Hull (1876 CE)
- Rifled Artillery
- Alloy Armor Plate
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - Industrial Steel
- Social Policy
- Resources - Iron OR Steel
NOTE: Ironclad covers a wide range of ships, from coastal-only Monitors, ocean-going ships with full sail rigs to supplement primitive steam power, and by the 1880s, steam only Battleships with guns 10 times more powerful than anything available just 20 years earlier.

A very shifty character. In other posts you've proposed two different Ironclads, how will you do with wide varieties of designs (which also expressed their 'evolutions', with early ships didn't have mid ship superstructure where command bridge is, while later ships had tower bridges)?
OFF TOPIC: What did the US Navy do after American Civil War? what did they do with Ironclads and pre existing wooden warships still left while Britain and France constantly evolving theirs? Within spans of some 45 years these warships evolved alot, some 'unusual' desings were even invented (even the lateral asymetric 'En echelon' battery layouts like those bought by either Argentina or Brazil (The Riachuelo) or Imperial Qing Navy Dingyuan and Zhenyuan) before earned a final form in 1900 with 'Pre Dreadnought' designs (Mikask is the last surviving example, ironically a foreign built warship preserved in Japan)

Destroyer *(1894 CE)
- originally a specifiv Torpedo Bat Destroyer, later a naval jack-of-all-trades
Technical Upgrades:
- ASDIC/SONAR
- RADAR
- Antiaircraft Missile Systems
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - (to be determined)
- Social Policy
- Resources
NOTE: Originally designed to counter torpedo boats, these evolved to be the premier anti-submarine ships, antiaircraft pickets, escorts for capital ships, and all-around versatile successors to the frigates.


Submarine *(1900 CE)
- Originally, the 'poor navy's' answer to the Battleship
Technical Upgrades:
- Schnorkel )1945 CE)
- Homing Torpedoes
- Streamlined Hull
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - Advanced Steel Alloys
- Social Policy
- Resources - Steel Alloys
NOTE: The great merchant destroyer of the 20th century, and in the 21st century conventional submarines are still extremely dangerous to other ships, being faster and harder to detect than ever.

Where's swooping attack torpedo boat?

Battleship #(1906 CE)
- the Dreadnaught all-big-gun type
Technical Upgrades:
- Oil-Fired Boilers (changes Maintenance Resource from Coal to Oil)
- RADAR spotting and Fire Control
- Light Antiaircraft
Requires:
- Population - 2
- Tech - Central Gun Direction
- Social Policy
- Resources - Steel Alloys
NOTE: The way all navies were measured: requiring a huge investment in industrial capacity to build and maintain, but capable of smashing any other surface warship of their time.

Where are 'more affordable' cruisers with shore bombardment capabilities?

Aircraft Carrier #(1921 CE)
- first dedicated aircraft-carrying, launching and recovering ships
Technical Upgrades:
- Damage Control Systems
- Steam Catapults
- Armored Flight Decks
Requires:
- Population - 2
- Tech - - (to be determined)
- Social Policy
- Resources - Steel Alloys, Auminum
NOTE: Many early aircraft carriers were converted from Battleship-type hulls, but by the 1940s they had made Battleships virtually obsolete as a measure of naval strength.

Supercarrier (1955 CE)
- USS Forrestal, angled deck, steam catapults, can carry heavy jets
Technical Upgrades:
- Nuclear Propulsion (changes Maintenance Resource from Oil to Uranium)
- Point Defense Systems
- ECM
Requires:
- Population - 2
- Tech - (to be determined)
- Social Policy
- Resources - Steel Alloys, Aluminum
NOTE: The shift from prop to jet aircraft required much larger and stronger aircraft landing decks, and so an entirely new and much larger aircraft carrier to handle them.

Should there be options to convert Battleships into Carriers? and should there be options that converted ship also created 'Battle Carriers'?
https://www.history.navy.mil/conten...e-coral-sea/usn-ships/uss-lexington-cv-2.html
^ USS Lexington (CV-2). one of my favorite warship.

Nuclear Missile Submarine #(1959 CE)
- More than just new propulsion, the first truly, completely Underwater vessel.
Technical Upgrades:
- ASW, SSM Missile Launch Tubes
- Multiple Warhead Missiles
Requires:
- Population - 1
- Tech - Nuclear Propulsion
- Social Policy
- Resources - Steel Alloys, Aluminum, Uranium
NOTE: There are non-missile nuclear submarines, but the submarine carrying IRBM or ICBM nuclear-tipped missiles is the modern Capital Ship: almost impossible to find or stop and capable of obliterating nations.

1. The Nuclear powered, non-BM carrying subs are called Hunter Killer submarines. solely dedicated towards sinking other enemy ships (and later on, even submarines, something WW2 subs can't do)
2. Should BB upgraded to Nuclear Missile Sub?
And what are near-future naval units?
Will there be fancy things similiar to Space Battleship Yamato? or 'railgun' ship?

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I've forgot one thing. 'Light Melee Cavalry'--the likes of Stratiotai, Cossacks, (Both are lancers), Spakhi, (Lancers or mounted swordsmen), Hussars (Referring to Hungarian 'Armoreless' swordsmen with fur caps or Shako (Did they invent Shako in the first place? they wore Shako while many others in Europe wear Tricornes). What will you do with it?

Early Modern/Renaissance Cavalry Units are dicey to game, because they were experimenting for almost 200 years trying to find a way to stay relevant: they tried lances, pistols, mounted arquebus fire, charging all out, or at the trot, or not charging at all - nothing really worked very well until they basically gave up the firearms (except for Dragoons) and started practicing to make solid accelerating charges with a mass of close order cavalry sword or lance in hand - and that only worked for about 100 years until rifled firearms made it obvious that a man on a horse was just too big a target to survive for long once the enemy spotted them.

The Technical Upgrade system can handle a lot of the marginal Units though. Note that the Classical Horseman has an option to use a Lance. - and a light horseman with or without a shield, with a lance covers everything from Alexander's Prodromoi Scout Cavalry to Comanches of the 19th century. Throw in an Upgrade of basic factors due to Better Materials, and most of the light cavalry can be represented right up to the 19th century.

Note on Better Materials:
Ideally, you start using Wrought Iron/Low Carbon Steel around 1000 BCE, progress to Forged Steel in the early Medieval (which makes Medieval and later Swordsmen like Samurai or Conquitadores better equipped than their Classical predecessors) so that your Early Modern Cavalry are a little better off Factor wise than their ancestors a thousand years earlier.

1. What will you do with pre-sail river barges?
2. A little bit of history that relates to the Argo (Greek's "First Galley"), a ship where Jason and some fifty men joined in their adventures to Colchis (Clearly a Scythian domain) did the Greeks got the Argo designs from Egyptians?

Colchis is the modern North Caucasus at the eastern end of the Black Sea.
The 'Greek' galley with sail is virtually identical to ones depicted in frescos from Akrotiri, so is Minoan or earlier. It probably doesn't owe much to Egyptian boats, because Greeks and Phoenicians and, presumably, Minoans before them, had much more advanced wood joining techniques than the Egyptians did. Remember, the Egyptians started making river boats out of bundles of papyrus reeds and never had a lot of large timbers in Egypt to build boats from - they imported most ship timber from the area of the Phoenician city-states, in fact!

River vessels of all kinds is left out because there is no telling if river traffic of any kind will be depicted in a future Civ rendition. It's been left out of the last 3 at least and never made it into Humankind either, so I'm not holding my breath, or using up any time formulating rules for 'river units' that may never see the light of day.

3. What will you do with 'Boarding' rules? Actually Boardings were prominence in naval combat BEFORE the advent of Mid-Industrial shellfiring cannons and associated percussion shells (and shortly followed with rifled cannons), and is a risky business. This involved 'Prize Ships' rule where a player can capture enemy ships but BOTH attackers and defenders can either capture or lost ships in boarding actions. Early 'Melee warships' in Civ5-6 setting actually do boarding actions.

I don't have to do anything with Boarding because, as stated, that's what Naval Melee means. Once you have effective naval cannon, ships get boarded only after they've been half shot to pieces - after Trafalgar, the British lost almost half the prizes they had captured because they were too shot up to make it back to shore before sinking. After the early 17th century, Ranged covers most naval combat vessels: all you need is an option to Strike Colors after a certain amount of damage has been inflicted without adequate reply.

4. Should 'Great Ship' / Man of War be a separate unit or a different names to Carracks (Particularly English Mary Rose, Big Harry. and French Valois counterparts which I've forgot their names) or Galleon? Crammed up time spacing in 4x gameplay means one proper name has to be chosen. I'd like 'Man of War' more actually.

5. What are 'Brigantines' actually? What are roles usually assigned to them? (Cruisers or Battleship)

Great Ships were almost all Carrack or early Galleon hulls - I threw the idea out because that one term, Great Ship could cover both of the other types, so that the Early Modern Era isn't completely water-logged with ships: Caravel, Carrack, Galleon, Race-Built Galleon, Ship-of-the-Line all coming within 200 years.
The most iconic French Great Ship was La Couronne, launched in 1636 on a Galleon hull with 72 guns.

Definition of a 'Brigantine' depends on When. Back in the 13th to 16th centuries it meant any small vessel with sails and oars, most commonly a two-masted ship with 8 - 12 oars on a side so it was very fast and very maneuverable,, so very much used by pirates. The word, in fact, comes from the Italian 'brigantino', which comes from the same root as Brigand. BY the 17th - 18th centuries it had come to mean a 2 - masted sailing ship with a combined rig of square topsails and gaff or lateen-type main sails. It was one of the most popular sailing types in the American colonies, being more maneuverable than a sloop and cheaper to run than anything larger like a brig or Galleon hull - and therefore, one of the most common pirate vessels during the "Golden Age' of Caribbean piracy. It would, in fact, be one of the last of the Naval Melee ships since they generally weren't big enough to carry guns as heavy as even a Frigate's.

Ironclad: A very shifty character. In other posts you've proposed two different Ironclads, how will you do with wide varieties of designs (which also expressed their 'evolutions', with early ships didn't have mid ship superstructure where command bridge is, while later ships had tower bridges)?

Again, the last half of the 19th century provides us with far more variations on a naval theme than any game could accommodate. In rapid succession you have Steam Frigates, Ships-of-the-LIne with auxiliary Steam Power, coastal Ironclads, oceanic Ironclads, steel-hulled Protected Cruisers, Pre-Dreadnaught Battleships, and the first Torpedo Boats - all between 1853 and 1899!

Note that the Technical Upgrades to Frigate and Ship-of-the-Line include the steam and explosive shell-firing versions, while the Upgrades to the basic Ironclad include the Steel Hulls and long-barreled breechloading steel artilleryt hat were virtually identical to the guns on the first Dreadnaught Battleships. I leave it up to the game design team's graphic artists as to what configuration they want to portray, and only mention (as I did in another thread) that the more Outlandish the better, since some of the French and Italian 'ironclad' designs were positively whimsical looking while the US Monitor and Virginia designs they've been using are among the dullest looking of the period.

Where's swooping attack torpedo boat?

Where are 'more affordable' cruisers with shore bombardment capabilities?

The torpedo boat is consigned to the dustbin of history, as it was within 20 years: the Torpedo Boat Destroyer, or Destroyer, superseded it in every way well before World War One.

I believe Civ 2 was the last version of the game that included Cruisers as a type between Battleships and Destroyers. Basically, why include a ship type which simply does everything a Battleship does, only not as well?

Should there be options to convert Battleships into Carriers? and should there be options that converted ship also created 'Battle Carriers'?

In general, I'm not getting into Unique Unit types, but the Battlecruiser would qualify as a British Unique: they built more of them than all the rest of the world combined, and they converted several into aircraft carriers as well. The Japanese and French navies also converted Battleships into aircraft carriers, so that should also be an option for anyone.
And yes, that unfortunately leaves out the US Navy conversions of two Battlecruisers, the USS Lexington and USS Saratoga, into Aircraft Carriers. On the other hand, I did include Zeppelins with the option to use Helium, which will allow the US airships Akron and Shenandoah, but you can't have everything . . .

1. The Nuclear powered, non-BM carrying subs are called Hunter Killer submarines. solely dedicated towards sinking other enemy ships (and later on, even submarines, something WW2 subs can't do)
2. Should BB upgraded to Nuclear Missile Sub?
And what are near-future naval units?
Will there be fancy things similiar to Space Battleship Yamato? or 'railgun' ship?

1. If people really think it's necessary for the Late Game, the Nuclear Submarine could simply be the Hunter-Killer by default, since the first nuclear subs were not missile carriers. Then the Technical Upgrades would be:

SSM Missile Tubes (which makes trhe sub into a "Boomer" carrying IRBMs or ICBMs)
Multiple Warhead Missiles
ASM Launch Tubes

2. No surface ship converts to any submarine unless you sink it, and then it doesn't usually come back up on its own power. The Nucelar Missile Sub is the Battleship, in the sense that it can do more damage to the enemy than anything else in the ocean - and that the US Navy names such vessels after states, which is the same naming convention that was used for its Battleships.

Space Battleships are pure Science Fiction: for the foreseeable future, we can barely get the equivalent of a speedboat into orbit. Rail Guns, Laser weapons, Autonomous Weapons (sea, air and ground), Stealth, Composite Armor and non-metallic hulls are all things being tested or fielded Right Now, so they are Near Future things that should be in the game, IMHO. I leave it to the designers as to how much of that they want to 'forecast', but one of the great things about the old Call To Power Civ-ish game was the late game potential for things like Force Field defenses, cities under the sea or in orbit, and other Science-Fiction developments.

 

[9gkj548hkm20vk79dj689bnj4]

I've been kicking around my own unit list for a while to. It would be possible to add many more unit types if you are allowed to pick certain attributes for each unit with positive and negative effects.

For example, the "Surface to Air Missile" encompasses a lot of things in reality:
-There are your standard SAMs. Typically fired from some sort of stationary platform, or perhaps a vehicle with heavy tracks that can move it. In game: standard cost, standard power. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2K12_Kub (I think this one was the inspiration for the one in Civilization 5)
- There are shoulder-fired SAMs. In game: infantry can have better defense against air attacks, but will be more expensive to build (because of training needed to use it). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man-portable_air-defense_system
- There are SAMs fired from smaller and generally quicker wheeled vehicles designed to take out helicopters and low-flying aircraft. In game: cheaper, but shorter range; good for escorts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_range_air_defense
- Then there are the huge ones like the US Patriot or the Russian Sa-10 system, each coming with its own vehicle convoy which includes launcher, radar, and command post. In game: expensive, longer range; set them up to attack incoming bombers or cruise missiles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-300_missile_system#S-300P_.28SA-10.29
- There's also the possibility that you can keep older anti-aircraft guns but augment them with radar-guided technology. In game: weaker than SAMs, but can attack ground targets with its cannons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-propelled_anti-aircraft_weapon#Cold_War_and_later

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

I don't have to do anything with Boarding because, as stated, that's what Naval Melee means. Once you have effective naval cannon, ships get boarded only after they've been half shot to pieces - after Trafalgar, the British lost almost half the prizes they had captured because they were too shot up to make it back to shore before sinking. After the early 17th century, Ranged covers most naval combat vessels: all you need is an option to Strike Colors after a certain amount of damage has been inflicted without adequate reply.

So 'Melee ships' will use 'Boarding Rules' by default? With this the 'Prize ship' rule applies to both attackers and defenders (IRL not only the attackers took enemy ships if they were captured, so defenders did if he managed to do counteroffensive before enemy attacking boarders disengage the 'connecters' (planks AND/OR anchored ropes/ chains) and they will normally do.

Great Ships were almost all Carrack or early Galleon hulls - I threw the idea out because that one term, Great Ship could cover both of the other types, so that the Early Modern Era isn't completely water-logged with ships: Caravel, Carrack, Galleon, Race-Built Galleon, Ship-of-the-Line all coming within 200 years.
The most iconic French Great Ship was La Couronne, launched in 1636 on a Galleon hull with 72 guns.

Then the 'Great Ship' / Man of War name is chosen. This should also included Zheng He's Baochuan as well though none of Early Ming mighty fleet seen any actual combat like the European Manowars did

Definition of a 'Brigantine' depends on When. Back in the 13th to 16th centuries it meant any small vessel with sails and oars, most commonly a two-masted ship with 8 - 12 oars on a side so it was very fast and very maneuverable,, so very much used by pirates. The word, in fact, comes from the Italian 'brigantino', which comes from the same root as Brigand. BY the 17th - 18th centuries it had come to mean a 2 - masted sailing ship with a combined rig of square topsails and gaff or lateen-type main sails. It was one of the most popular sailing types in the American colonies, being more maneuverable than a sloop and cheaper to run than anything larger like a brig or Galleon hull - and therefore, one of the most common pirate vessels during the "Golden Age' of Caribbean piracy. It would, in fact, be one of the last of the Naval Melee ships since they generally weren't big enough to carry guns as heavy as even a Frigate's.

Actually this should make Privateers more generic naval melee unit with abilities to earn more when plundering a freight convoy. F'xis decisions to list them in the same class as subs are utterly silly! Two distinct units were geared for different problems in mind--Privateers were pirates recruited by state because the latter's inability to afford and maintain a strong standing navy, and the need to sting enemy shipping lanes particularly Tudor England or anyone else rivaling Castillian/Spanish Empire and already learned of Spanish fleet carrying loots from conquered Mesoamerican Golden Empires. Basically any state that need an 'emergency navy' might issue Letter of Marquee and Reprisals to any 'private ship owners' and fight as 'a navy'. The last attempts to raise Privateers was a war between Peru and Chile sometimes in 1870. since then no one ever tried that again.

. I leave it up to the game design team's graphic artists as to what configuration they want to portray, and only mention (as I did in another thread) that the more Outlandish the better, since some of the French and Italian 'ironclad' designs were positively whimsical looking while the US Monitor and Virginia designs they've been using are among the dullest looking of the period.

Designers should try asymmetric 'en echelon' Ironclads actually


^ IJN Chin En. (Actually Qing Navy's Zhen Yuan, earned by a peacedeal at Shimonoseki. Since the Double Dragons were casted in, IJN couldn't remove Chinese Imperial Symbol out of its prowl. Instead National flag has to be placed there)

I believe Civ 2 was the last version of the game that included Cruisers as a type between Battleships and Destroyers. Basically, why include a ship type which simply does everything a Battleship does, only not as well?

The last Civ game (on PC) to have Early 20th Century Cruisers was Civ3, this unit returns in Mobile phone based Civ Rev (The latter is based on Elswick Designs)
https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Cruiser_(Civ3)
https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Cruiser_(CivRev2)

if people really think it's necessary for the Late Game, the Nuclear Submarine could simply be the Hunter-Killer by default, since the first nuclear subs were not missile carriers. Then the Technical Upgrades would be:

SSM Missile Tubes (which makes trhe sub into a "Boomer" carrying IRBMs or ICBMs)
Multiple Warhead Missiles
ASM Launch Tubes

Space Battleships are pure Science Fiction: for the foreseeable future, we can barely get the equivalent of a speedboat into orbit. Rail Guns, Laser weapons, Autonomous Weapons (sea, air and ground), Stealth, Composite Armor and non-metallic hulls are all things being tested or fielded Right Now, so they are Near Future things that should be in the game, IMHO. I leave it to the designers as to how much of that they want to 'forecast', but one of the great things about the old Call To Power Civ-ish game was the late game potential for things like Force Field defenses, cities under the sea or in orbit, and other Science-Fiction developments.

And then naming problems came. 'Railgun ship' covers Tech only. Also with hitech armor added (externally). After WW2, only Carriers have external armor platings. other 'armed ships' were either 'naked' or reverted to Protected Cruiser armor patterns (Burkes only applies armors on magazines, VLS missile cells and engine rooms, the hulls were 'naked', this left the ship vulnerable to Suicide Bomber boats or other improvised weapons not detectable by AEGIS systems, What happened to the USS Cole in 2000 did sparks a proposals to reintroduce external hull armor after it was discarded completely for half a century!).
Then again this unit is very much a fancy unit. Rightnow i've seen many 3d arts featuring a 'reintroduced hitech BBs' with rail guns, VLS (Did Iowas get VLS upgrades too?), hitech composite armor, laser CIWS and even combat UAV launching facility) Many of which features upsizes Burkes and Ticoes, but some even looked like Zummwalts, some even designed as Catamarans.


Just how Iconic Space Battleship Yamato is. one design is very much resembles Yamato but not of Leiji Matsumoto designs.


When did Vertical Launching Cells came to exists? Before or after 1974? (The year Space Battleship Yamato made a debut)

^ A remake actually but VLS missiles launchers installed in the very ship itself appeared in the Original show as well.

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

I've been kicking around my own unit list for a while to. It would be possible to add many more unit types if you are allowed to pick certain attributes for each unit with positive and negative effects.

For example, the "Surface to Air Missile" encompasses a lot of things in reality:
-There are your standard SAMs. Typically fired from some sort of stationary platform, or perhaps a vehicle with heavy tracks that can move it. In game: standard cost, standard power. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2K12_Kub (I think this one was the inspiration for the one in Civilization 5)
- There are shoulder-fired SAMs. In game: infantry can have better defense against air attacks, but will be more expensive to build (because of training needed to use it). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man-portable_air-defense_system
- There are SAMs fired from smaller and generally quicker wheeled vehicles designed to take out helicopters and low-flying aircraft. In game: cheaper, but shorter range; good for escorts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_range_air_defense
- Then there are the huge ones like the US Patriot or the Russian Sa-10 system, each coming with its own vehicle convoy which includes launcher, radar, and command post. In game: expensive, longer range; set them up to attack incoming bombers or cruise missiles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-300_missile_system#S-300P_.28SA-10.29
- There's also the possibility that you can keep older anti-aircraft guns but augment them with radar-guided technology. In game: weaker than SAMs, but can attack ground targets with its cannons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-propelled_anti-aircraft_weapon#Cold_War_and_later

Nah! AAs and Sams should be 'Ancillary Equipments' permanently attached to units (purchases separately)

 

[9gkj548hkm20vk79dj689bnj4]

I think I get what you are saying...but I envision a system where air units could attack non military targets like trade routes, roads, harbors, whatever. In which case you can defend them with some anti-air units.

Then again, this is just one single example of having more sub-units of the same unit type.

You could also have "artillery" subdivided into things like field guns, howitzers, rockets, and mortars, for example.

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

^ For a game with grandscale like that. Artillery diversifications didn't really work that way. if you refer to 'Mortars' as things like Stoke Mortars which began in WW1 onwards, these are yet another classic examples of F'xis penchants of making Pseudo-units which NEVER fight as HOMOGENEOUS units beyond Platoon/Battery organizational level like Machineguns.
Both MGs and Stoke Mortars functions better as Tech Upgrades OR Ancillary & Equipments purchaseable independently.
Also There's strategically insignificant different between ANY kind of support artillery regardless of FIELD or SIEGE class by the time recoil dampeners were invented for breech loading rifled big guns which permits these things to stay in place rather than getting entire pieces jerking back and requries guncrew to push these back "IN BATTERY", also these guns uses TNT-based shells and shrapnels reguarly which made them 'TWO IN ONE' unit. if there's any, these instances were really rare as it involves Railway Artillery that usually had longer ranges. Railway Artillery actually designed to outranges big guns mounted on Polygonal Fortresses (and capable of whacking these 'advanced fortresses' with ease). These were really rare weapons, and so often began its career as coastal defense guns only to be mounted on rail carriages. In the First World War these were superb weaponry, in the second world war, advanced aviations and ancillary techs and inventions eventually perfected strategic bombers to be able to drop more bombs accurately, these WW2 'Fortress bombers' soon proven a cost efficient weapon compared to these big railway guns.