What do people think of a "vessel" unit that can hold multiple units?

[TruthfulCake]

Basically, a transport unit. I was entertaining this idea when thinking about the limitations of 1UPT (which otherwise is a great mechanic IMO), and the idea resurfaced when I was playing the game.

I think that currently, there is room for improvement regarding unit movement. I think that having a unit whose sole purpose is to contain other units would help a lot in addressing the problems that I have.

1. When you have parts within your territory that your civilians cannot reach by walking/sailing
Like that coal that was revealed to be surrounded by mountains. An air unit can carry a builder and drop it on top of that otherwise un-improvable coal. This kind of air transport can also help archeologists with its mobility, as I doubt archeologists today walk everywhere to their excavation sites.

2. When you are embarking for a naval invasion
Another thread is talking about naval combat and the general resilience of land units. I believe that, since troops do not need to remain in formation when boarding a ship, and therefore should take less overall space, having a vessel that can hold like 6 infantry units in one tile does not defy the principles of 1UPT. It would make sense to make such vessel be more resilient to other ships' attacks, even though it cannot actively attack by itself. And naturally, when you unload the units, you have to follow the 1UPT rules in that the disembarked units have to take one tile each.

3. When you want paratroopers to return, but better
The entire idea of paratroopers is that you can drop units in much less time than it would take for them to reach the destination. But in BNW at least, the planes that carry these troops have no risk of being shot down, and can somehow travel faster than the bombers. Having an air transport that can hold and drop units at a destination would revive the paratrooper strategy, but make it less exploitable by introducing vulnerability.

I think that since limited stacking is possible in this game, it should be possible to implement such an idea by stacking/unstacking units. I wonder if this is something that the community would want too.

 

[Roller123]

I think they got rid of transport units because the AI couln't handle it. Personally, me, i never liked a situation where if you let even a single ship through you suddenly get 20 Knights in your backyard. The 1UPT rule is great in that regard because it gives a huge army a corresponding huge size and visibility.

 

[Ryika]

Stacking units together, moving them, then unstacking them again actually sounds like a lot of extra micromanagement to me. There would be a trafic jam when the units try to enter the transporter, and a trafic jam when the units want to exit the transporter. Would also be an extra level of complication for the AI, and an extremely dangerous one too - don't escort them properly and lose your army in a few turns? Don't think I'd like that.

For Civilian Units... well, not sure if it's really necessary. In general I'd say the cases of unimprovable resources are extremely rare and should rather be solved by having the mapscript not create such formations in the first place. For general mobility they could just enable the "move between cities"-system that great people use if they really wanted, but I actually think it's good to have Civilians be less mobile.

 

[CaiusDrewart]

I think loading and unloading other units into transport units makes for a lot of tedious micromanagement. I like that Civ V got rid of the naval transport unit and had units just magically turn into boats; a bit gamey, sure, but it makes sea invasions less of a clickfest.

 

[TruthfulCake]

Thanks for the feedback. I wasn't aware that this was a feature before Civ V. Although I do think that in the long run, i.e. if you are trying to invade another faraway continent with land units, then the initial micromanagement is acceptable because it beats having to move each of your units separately each turn. Unloading them again can be a tad tedious indeed, but it may be much cleaner than how it currently works.

The current movement model is actually not bad either. However, it does become a problem when land units are as strong when at sea, or when, in another extreme, they are overly vulnerable to naval attacks like in Civ V. I think a naval transport unit would solve both - not making the land units overly strong by clustering them together and making them passive, but not making them overly vulnerable by providing basic ship defenses.

Regarding the rare unimprovable resource problem, another alternative I can think of without the transport units is to allow breaking through impassable terrains (such as mountains) by giving builders the ability to build a tunnel. That too, is a good alternative.

 

[Chinese American]

to get rid of micromanagement, remove the map screen entirely. have a button to directly launch an attack on target city. no more complaints about 1UPT versus stacks.

 

[isau]

At a minimum I think the Encampment should do this.

 

[Takfloyd]

Removing transport units was one of the things I didn't like with V. It removed a layer of strategy for sure, and I always liked the big D-Day invasions with transports swarming the enemy shores and unloading units. I think they could still work well in 1UPT.

Also those first excursions to other continents were a lot of fun, with the various rules for ocean transport that were in play. In Civ 3 for example, galleys, which could carry 2 units, could enter ocean tiles but had a chance to sink every turn, so you could gamble on a Kon-Tiki style suicide settler mission and reach a different continent early on. In Civ 4, caravels could only carry explorers, not settlers or military units, which had to wait until you got galleons.

There used to be both sea and air transports by the way.