What EquinoxOmega said.
Generally, I think the idea behind Civ2's ZoC is to simulate the effect of a unit 'intercepting' and enemy unit trying to get past it. It is more of a strategic concept: imagine the unit trying to pass won't do it to begin with because he knows he will be intercepted by the enemy unit.
The ZoC combinations (e.g. placing 2 units on either side of an enemy unit to prevent it moving is meant to simulate flanking--or rather, the strategic threat of being flanked, thus eliminating retreat as an option) are quite appropriate to the TBS genre as they imply what could only be done in RTS; you can't actually intercept an enemy unit because it isn't your turn so this implies that you are. Like chess in many ways.
Personally, I prefer the Civ2 system over the Civ3 system, although the former could be tweaked to take in other strategies (and the AI made to use them)--hence the petition.
The problem with the Civ2 system is that you can block a rival's units when at peace (good for keeping out those bloody irritating AI units from entering your territory during peacetime but bad because units can be 'locked' into one square by the flanking tactic I mentioned above) when technically, there is no threat when at peace.
[Perhaps, if the source code gets released, we can tweak things so that ZoC only works when at war.]
The Civ3 system is very simple (too simple actually for a game that is meant to be better than Civ2): a unit with the ZoC flag checked
may--rarely does--take a free shot (i.e. same effect as bombardment only limited to taking off 1/3 HP...or 1 HP, or limits unit to 1 RoF, or some lame thing) on units that pass from one adjacent sqaure to another adjacent square. Not very effective because although damaged, the enemy unit can still move past. Bad because the only way of preventing enemy units from entering your territory is to literally block every square that gives land access to your territory. Good because it doesn't work during peacetime. Also, ships can exert ZoC in Civ3.
In Civ2, I like to use ZoC for ALL units (that is, not give any unit the Ignore ZOC ability), even diplomatic units. The reason is that ZoC does not affect enemy units travelling to sqaures within the ZoC that contain other enemy units. So an exploit is to use Diplomats/Spies to 'escort' units through the ZoC. Though irritating under certain circumstances, it is strategically relevant to be able to move into territory held by friendly forces--just not a few unarmed members of your diplomatic corps.--even though surrounded by the enemy (equivilant to making an opening in the enemy lines that you can escape through. Of course, the AI doesn't use these strategies--even some human players have trouble using ZoC strategies. ZoC something that a lot of designers seem to ignore (pardon the pun) in their scens; quite a few scens I've played in the past have simply given the Ignore ZOC ability to all units, thus eliminating the ZoC strategy from the scen, either because it's too complicated or because it interferes with the needs of that scen.
Another relevant strategy is to use air units to allow your ground units to bypass ZoC (i.e. move an air unit into an adjacent square within the enemy ZoC to your land unit and move the land unit into the square occupied by the air unit). It is strategically 'realistic' as it implies the effect of having air support cover preventing enemy forces from intercepting your forces, thus allowing you to move.
I really use this a lot in a WW2 scen that I'm working on; Fighter units serve the air superiority role in this way by having 2 fuel so they can stop in a square during 1 turn thus providing a 'bridge' through enemy ZoC.
(Another strategy that I use is to have air units block choke points thus temporarily preventing enemy land units from passing though certain areas of the map. The only way to counter this is if the enemy has Fighters in the area or the land units are accompanied by Anti-air land units.)
Another thing you can do is distinguish between fast units and slow units by giving fast units (cavalry, armored cavalry) the Ignore ZoC ability, thus impling their advantage of speed on the field (i.e. they can outmanuver the enemy thus cannot be intercepted--must be chased by other fast units). This also means that they can expoit 'gaps' in the enemy's lines and allow slower units to move there (a number of scens use this).
If it weren't for the fact that it lacks bombardment and air units can be blocked by land units, Civ2's combat system would be superiror to that of Civ3 IMO. (Again, refer to my sig.
) The best thing of course, would be to have both (e.g. artillery have Civ3 system and infantry have Civ2 system).
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