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Don't we deserve it? Isn't it one of the most important improvements in SMAC, cocnerning the development of CIV? The other one would be the Social Engineering, but why don't the Firaxians implement a flexible unit model as we had in SMAC, why do they bother us with static units as in CIV2? (isn#t that what they intend to do?) That doesn't sound too pogressive to me, even if they include some kind of tech level (AFAIK).... I really wonder what's so bad about the SMAC unit model...
wouldn't it be great to take "Infantry", "Muskets" and "Special Training" to get a nice 18th century Guard Infantry, for example? 
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ahem... 2 people say they removed it, 2 say they didn't... aren't we able to get any 'serious' information somewhere? perhapos we're talking about different things here... 
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Bah. The Unit Workshop invariably hinders people from making custom units. Sounds strange? It's not, really, because the most important customisation feature is not in-game, it's in scenario making.
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well, butt  , I'd like to be able to play a nice balanced and halfway realistic game without changing the rules. I like the SMAC system, it's definitely better than the civ2 onw, so I vote for it. basta.
the same about social engineering... I'm not going to buy a CIV game where I have to deal with static Government forms!
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RonHiler
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California, USA
May 2000
time: 21:12
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I agree with you 100% Chaos and Urban. I think it's an amazingly huge mistake for Firaxis to not put in a unit workshop. For me, at least, that's a game breaker. When I first heard that CivIII was in the works, I was as excited as everyone else. When the announcement came down that the unit workshop was out, I crossed it off my list, with no small amount of regret. Ah well.
Civ, when it came out 10 years ago, was an astonishingly great game, and is among my top favorite five of all time. But the gaming world has moved on, and a lot of Civ's systems are now obsolete. Civ III needs to be more than a facelift of Civ II (as Civ II was of Civ). It needs to update its subsystems to take advantange of the new concepts in gaming today. If it doesn't do this, I fear it will fare poorly with the public.
The deletion of the unit workshop is, to me, the first indication that this reworking isn't going to happen. The static units are one of the biggest and most fundamental systems that needs updating. If they aren't going to fix that, what exactly is it, then, that they are improving?
A lot of people here at Apolyton disagree with me (based on the poll, which has nearly 50% agreeing with Firaxis' decision), and that's fine. Everyone's entiteled to their opinion. In the end, when the game is released, the final judge will be the sales and reviews and such. I wish them well, I really do. But at this point, I'm skeptical.
Anyway, if you want a Civ style game with a unit workshop, there is one in development, which has just entered its Alpha testing phase. I know, because I'm the lead programmer for it Check my webpage if you want to take a look. Sorry, though, we don't have Governments. Take a look at Clash of Civilizations or Guns, Germs, and Steel if governments are more important for you, for those two games have heavy government systems in them (although I am unsure if either has a unit workshop).
Ron
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I think that one of the main reasons people diagree on issues such as the unit workshop (as well as future techs and SE engineering) is that there are to very diffrent views od Civ, and thus what civ3 should be:
1) That Civ is a historical game where you can watch and herald in the history of mankind.
2) That Civ is a game that allows you to re-invent history.
I am of the latter camp.
Just a thought.
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Dan Magaha FIRAXIS
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The Metropolis known as Hunt Valley
Mar 2000
time: 00:12
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quote:
Originally posted by Urban Ranger on 02-11-2001 09:05 AM
I would like to design my own unit also. As I pointed out in another thread, it is rather silly to give every civ the same units.
I rekcon this could be a problem with the computer players. I don't think the AI routines can handle this kind of flexibility.
It's a rather sad day when Firaxis decided to remove the ability to build custom units.
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I think some folks are getting confused about what's happening with units in general. The whole point of not having a unit workshop is that we want you to be able to build whatever kind of unit you want, and the unit workshop actually hampers your choices.
You will absolutely be able to create your own units. You will have the flexibility to do practically anything you want with them: you can give them whatever tech prereqs you want, name them whatever you want, fiddle with their abilities, and *lots* more.
Then you select what image or animation you want to represent that unit, and presto, you've got a custom unit.
The decision not to use a design workshop makes sense when you consider the limitations of that system. With that system, you're forced to use a couple of stock "chassis" or general unit types, coupled with a variety of weapons and armor that don't really look different but just have different stats.
Say you wanted to create a UFO unit for a scenario you were doing. With the unit workshop model, you'd be stuck using whatever the closest chassis in the game was, maybe a tank or an airplane of some type. You could snap some generic weapons onto it, but chances are it wouldn't fit your vision of what the UFO would look like.
If you want a more specific example, go into SMAC and try to create a catapult using the existing unit workshop components. Whatever you come up with, I'd be willing to bet it doesn't look much like a catapult.
When you're not constrained by the unit workshop model, you basically find (or create) a graphic of a UFO that you like, and attach it to the custom unit you've created, complete with your own custom technologies, attributes, prereqs, and so on.
The point of all of this is that we are NOT taking away anyone's ability to create custom units; to the contrary -- we're trying to allow for the maximum level of customization.
Dan
Firaxis Games, Inc.
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RonHiler
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California, USA
May 2000
time: 21:12
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quote:
Originally posted by Dan Magaha FIRAXIS on 02-12-2001 05:30 PM
I think some folks are getting confused about what's happening with units in general. The whole point of not having a unit workshop is that we want you to be able to build whatever kind of unit you want, and the unit workshop actually hampers your choices.
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I don't see any confusion, Dan. I think everyone understands perfectly the trade off here. You have decided to decrease the "out of box" playability in favour of scenario customizability by players.
That's y'alls decision. I disagree with it, but that's just me. I have no interest in "mods". I have never built one, and I have never downloaded them. My interest is entirely how the game plays off the shelf. Therefore I am stuck with your static units, if I want to play, which quickly becomes boring. Thus, I will not buy the game. For others, mods are all important, and they applaud your decision. Different styles, I suppose Good luck with the programming.
Ron
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Here's just a thought... since it seems that customization has won out over flexibilty, perhaps firaxis can complile new units and "modded" units into some sort of "offical" dowloadable expansion... if they release enough of them (say 1 a month for a year), each with a few goodies to add to the "off-the-shelf" game, perhaps this can be seen as a compromise.
I'm not sure of this idea myself, I'd much rather of had a workshop of some-sort (or perhaps an in-game editor like dan spoke of with a lot of extra graphics).
Any comments?
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Dan Magaha posted in MY thread! YAY!
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Yog-Sothoth
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Trondheim, Norway
Sep 2000
time: 06:12
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I think this is great news. I believe as Dan said that a workshop would be a limitation, and wouldn't fit well into a game with such a long timespan.
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11-02-2001 03:00
We have that expression in Norway 
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