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My post as requested by Nordicus
I'm working on giving each civ a unique set of units that will not distrupt the balance of the game just make it more realistic. Example: Rome would not have knights but rather mounted Centurians. The units would looke different for the most part only a few might have different capabilities. There is the possibility of other civ's being able to produce these units if they trade "primary culture" scientific advances.
Also I'm thinking of adding a few more gov's
If all of you kind people could please email NightEng@juno.com ideas for units and gov's. I'm not looking to recieve the stats for such units simply their anmes and why they should belong to specific civ's.
EKM
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Dark Schwa
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That would be wonderful if it could be made to work. Perhaps each individual civ could have its own personality .aip file listing which advances those civs would/would not research. The civ-specific units could be made available by those advances.
That way the Vikings (for example) would never learn how to make Samurai except from the Japanese themselves.
The unique advance that all civs had could also be used as prerequisites to other advances. eg, the "japan-ness" advance and "explosives" could allow the "meiji restoration" advance which allows zero fighters.
The only trick that I can see is, what would keep a non-AI player from researching the innate advances for each civ? Can you have an advance that's not in the tree? Can you assign advances at the beginning of the game based on the tribe chosen?
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I see two problems with this. One is that many of these units arose because of forces beyond the game's control. For example, there were no mounted Aztec archers, because the Aztec had no horses. But if you skip any mounted units until the Aztec encounter some other civ, they probably won't get those archers until the Mongols have tanks!
The other problem is that many of us play civs that don't exist on the published version of the game. Could you simply adapt, say, the Mississippians by using Maya units?
I think that a partial solution (although I would have no idea how to encode it!) might be to have about five or six "civ types", much like the city graphics in Harlan's mod. You could use the "Asian type" of units for Japan, China, Mongolia, and so on. As I say above, balance might still be a problem, though.
Would this only affect ancient units?
Here are some ideas:
Aztecs -- Eagle Knights
Arrow Knights
Aztec Priests
Pochteca (Warrior Merchant)
Maya -- Sahals (Warlords)
Standard Bearers
K'ul Ahaw (Blood Lords)
Arabs -- Dervishes
Assassins
India -- Mounted Elephant
Thugee
Phonecia -Mounted Elephant
Naval Warrior
Any Europe- Crusader
Any Asia -Martial Artist
Ninja (or similar)
Celt/Viking-Berserker
How about war dogs?
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Dark Schwa
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As to the problems of the Aztecs not getting knights 'till the Mongols have tanks...
If that were the situation, I'd make sure that the Aztecs has a full tech tree that extended into the modern ages that didn't require horses.
What if the Aztecs never learned about horses at all? What if nobody did? I think we could get very creative with the "what if's".
As it is, I think tech moves too quickly anyway. I think a) tech should be a lot more fluid. (It should "leak", perhaps through trade routes?), and b) real advances should come much much slower. I should be able to have a whole war with cannons and musketeers. As it stands, by the time I get an army assembled, machine guns are usually invented.
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As to the war dogs, I was thinking of them being a unit slightly more powerful than a warrior (in other words, a warrior with a dog), or a separate unit that might be a little faster than a similar human unit might be. An additional power might be that they can detect lower-level secretive units floating around, such as clerics, lawyers, slavers, and spies.
I envision a "General" unit (or a k'ul ahaw, shogun, or whatever civ-specific name you want) that would fight fairly well, but would also raise the fighting ability of the surrounding units by one. This might reflect the fact that a good warlord would actually lead his troops into battle until the modern age, by which time a general's abilities are merely (?) strategic, and he or she would stay behind lines. (The negligible gain of +1 to a fusion tank would be offset by the inability to add a ninth one, should a general be present.)
I agree that you have to sacrifice some historical reality for gameplay, but as little as possible, I would hope. Perhaps a starting "advances pack" or a forced advances path for the ancient period might be the answer.
I also like the thought that this might force diplomats into play, just to make it possible to trade for needed advancements. It would also force the player to try harder to keep other civs happy, which I only do now if they are significantly more powerful militarily than I.
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Nordicus
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Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Oct 1999
time: 21:13
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DS:
Or, without making extra work, you could simply change the value of Aztec-only units equal to, say, mounted units in Europe: if each civ is at a similar level technologically, then increasing the movement of the Aztec unit, in Units.txt, would solve the problem of unit fairness. Or just give em horses--easy, fair, saves time and work, and besides, it's not meant to be a historically perfect game.  I'd be happy if it just had general types for general civs.
Wes is right--that can be done in the aips--but my way above will also work if you don't want to mess around in those.
As for your second part...it sounds like your game just goes by too fast. I have had a couple full wars with musketeers & canons in a game--this is starting in -5000 and having altered years-per-turn ratios. In the DiffDB.txt file you'll find all this.
I think that more transitional units are needed--one inbetween musketeers and machine-gunners, one inbetween pikemen and musketeers, et cetera.
------------------
"There can be no maximum of creation without a concomitant maximum of destruction, no supreme good without supreme evil"--Heller, paraphrasing Nietzsche.
"Ich Wollen Antreffen Das Heilmittel!!!"
"I SHALL FIND THE CURE!!!"--me.
"Something"--Someone.
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The admiral wouldn't have to be in a ship; just make him aquatic. This way, he could ONLY aid ships (and not land units), and he'd still be nearly defenseless alone -- even in water.
I'm thinking that the dogs should probably be with trainers, and come about with domestication. (Would it's attack effectiveness drop as its hit points do? When does the dog die, and when does the trainer?!?) I'd add the cow as well, but have it equal 2 or 3 units of food instead of 5, which is unbalancing.
The unit which kind of intrigued me was the berserker, which could (like the general) be adapted to many cultures. He could perhaps attack twice as hard as a warrior, but only every other turn (to recover)....
I also agree that certain units need "in-between units". This would also slow the game down a little bit. Swordsman, spearman (hunters?), chariots, mounted elephants, mounted camels, battering rams, stockades, flaming catapults and light tanks are all possibilities. One might have to slow down the ancient period to do it, though.
While on the subject for units, I think that it'd be nice, before releasing any such mod, that good graphics files go with it. Having little such skill, yet being anal as heck, I don't use CD's mod because the graphics are either non-animated or too large. (No offense to the maker; I'm just an anal retentive kind of guy, as I say!) Would anyone with skill in this area be able to amend these problems?
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WesW
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Florence, Al., USA
Jan 1970
time: 23:13
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All these ideas for special abilities sound great, but do you know if you can implement any of them?
Nord, in my Medieval mod, I introduce Pikemen much earlier, and gunpowder somewhat later, to do what you were talking about. And I am planning a Modern mod, which will implement a bunch of Harlan's WWII units, while bumping back the modern units some. I already have an outline drawn up, and I am going to go at full-time once our ai files work is done.
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Wow, a nice bunch of suggestions. I think that many people put a little too much thinking into the units issue. The only advances needed to build the distinct units would be the special advance that the civ's would start out with and any other already existing advances. The horse thing is moot. The geography in the game is not the same as the geography in the real world. How many people have had the egypians start on an ice plain? So horses could be anywhere. I just want to get the asthetic of each civ down better. No more Aztec Samuri riding the Viking Longships to conqure the Nigerian [roman] legions. Any of the computer oponents could build the other units if they somehow got that starting "cultural" advance. Wether or not theyactually do it is another thing. For example even with cows enabled I've never seen an AI build a cow. Is there something particular about the AI build agenda that doesn't allow this?
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A berserker was a Viking warrior that (perhaps hopped up on something or another) would fight twice as well as any normal warrior, but would fight without concern as to his own safety. Sort of a Nordic Kamikaze.
On second thought, the berserker sounds more like an AD&D character than a CTP unit...! It'd be like naming or giving disctinct personalities to each of your units. In reality, most units are treated like berserkers when I play!
Perhaps we should just stick to changing names and sprites, but I think that it'd be neat to have a special unit for each civ, just as some governments do. How can you play the Phoenicians without elephants, or the Aztecs without Pochtecatl?
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Dark Schwa
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To: ALL
Nice ideas! I had a similar idea to the general/warlord/admiral one (which was very good, BTW). The King! The king (or other head of state) would be _you_. It would give major bonuses to combat, and maybe even have some special abilities, like a super-convert in a Theocracy, a "calming effect" in a Democracy, etc. But if the King is killed -- game over. Assassinating AI king would usually cause the empire to split.
As for the other military leaders, I can forsee great abuse. Rich civs could crank out the warlords and have them with every unit stack, or with every unit. There needs to be a way to limit the number of warlords in play, by restricting the number to 5 per civ, one per city, or perhaps one for X million citizens.
re: the snow-egyptians.
Here is what I would like to see so that continuity is maintained, sorry if it's a bit pipe-dreamish.
Each "civ" is merely a database of people, place, and city names, and Nothing more. The overall "personality" of the civ is determined by 1) their location, as people in colder climes may be more industrious or people in warmer ones may be more agressive. 2) their early interactions with other civs. i.e., a civ that starts out next to a powerful babylon would tend to be influenced by it in terms of religion and disposition. 3) their most plentiful natural resources. Horses would be known to people in areas that have horses.
Here's how it could work:
The AI Japanese build their first city, and name it from a name in their Japan-only database. Their first unit (a warrior) leaves the city and discovers a river. Since the Japanese unit found it first, he would get to name it. He names it Edo-gawa, and the name shows up on the map. Pretty soon the Japanese run into the Nigerians, who live a bit further north and have knowledge of reindeer domestication. Japanese and Nigerians trade tech, and the Japanese get Nigerian reindeer-cavalry units. The Nigerians have not yet developed a state religion, they learn Shinto from the Japanese and start building roadside shrines. The Polynesians who live in the Southern jungle have already domesticated the elephant, so they have no need of reindeer cavalry and spurn Japan's attempts to trade. The Polynesians settle on the river the Japanese discovered and call their settlement Edogawa. The Persians who have had a continent all to themselves for the past 1000 years have a very well-developed theocracy, and a well organized church. Their very advanced form of Zoroastrianism sweeps through Japan, Nigeria, and Polynesia and all three start importing Persian technology and start building large Zuggurats to Ahora Mazda, who finally promises the local animists an afterlife.
Etc.
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Nordicus
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Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Oct 1999
time: 21:13
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JM:
I like the idea of this berserker type. I agree that one shouldn't get too carried away, though; after all, one can only put these in the aips (i.e. personality types), so you can't really have one for each civ without a lot of time and effort. Yeah, if you don't mind that, I say go for it. I have six new personality types (in production but on hold until this mod is complete) which will make it so each AI type can have a generic unit. But I for one would not wish to make a specific aip for every civ type--designating personalities to types of civs or races (as unpopular as it might seem) may be the easiest way to do this.
Here are the default types:
1. slaver........."Slaver"
2. cleric........."Religious"
3. milmany........"Militant"
4. milfew........."Aggressive"
5. scifew........."Agreeable"
6. scimany........"Peaceful"
7. barbarian......"Barbarian"
And here's the one's I'm including:
8. democrat......."Democratic"
9. imperial......."Imperialist"
10. expans........"Expansionist"
11. neutr........."Neutral" ("Passive")
12. xenoph........"Xenophobic" ("Reclusive")
13. errat........."Erratic" ("Unpredictable")
Now, these might do--maybe a couple more.
But, like I said, if anyone wants to go ahead and make one for each civ, hey, that's great. I'll help if I can.
Dark Schwa:
Interesting ideas, I'll say that  A tech tree for each civ! Aye corummba! I like the idea of a "King," although there's no way I'd hang my arse in the wind like that! Plus, that sounds immeasurably difficult.
Wes:
D'oh!
I missed your comments...gettin to be a habit
I'll have to try that mod...no, *hangs head in shame*, I haven't yet. 
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I really like that "King" idea... It adds a whole new dimension to the game. Imagine holing your "civ leader" (a more generic term) in your capital, and having to race him to another city when your capital is under siege! Cool! Having to waste resources just to guard the guy! Realistic!
Of the discussed units, I like the following:
The "king" (Only one allowed, a starting unit along with the settlers)
The "general" (no more than 1 per 3 cities? Is this possible?)
War dogs
War elephants
The berserker
The assassin (this could get tricky, with the King unit running around...)
Would it be possible to give a personality type to a government instead of to a civ? It would seem more realistic to me....
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Nordicus
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Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Oct 1999
time: 21:13
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Hey, John...
Yeah, I sorta liked the idea of a "leader" unit--many possibilities, but the more I thought about it, the more problems came up. If it could be done, it would work for all-human multiplayer games, sure, but the trouble is placing importance on it for the AI. The AI will treat it like any other unit and so it'll be a matter of finding what city it's in and blast away until its dead, end of civ...way too easy.
If we're talking one for the human player only, not the AI...well, then, that's something different.
I think a General, Admiral, and Air Marshall (Commander, whatever) unit would be cool. If it could be implemeted (and if the AI knew how to use them), I'd like to try it.
quote:
Would it be possible to give a personality type to a government instead of to a civ? It would seem more realistic to me.... |
Nope.
I would like that, esp. since, say, for example, your best ally goes to war and changes govs, then it's basically a new leader you're dealing with.
I don't see that this can be done.
It has to be for AI types, maybe 8 extra ones including the CTP default types.
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WesW
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Florence, Al., USA
Jan 1970
time: 23:13
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Regarding the King; I think the designers tried the implement this same idea, but ended up not including it, for whatever reason. There are numerous references in various files to spies having the ability to assassinate leaders, parliaments, and/or cabinets. I don't know exactly what effect this would have had, perhaps thrown the civ into chaos for a number of turns, like when changing governments.
Also, I ran across a help string for a combat engineer unit (out-commented, of course). I guess that unit would have allowed you to build tile imps. outside the range of your cities (roads, presumably).
If someone were to go through all the files, and list all the things that they didn't implement in the game, there is no telling what-all they would come up with.
Nord, I think you are beginning to think like me, in that whenever someone proposes something new, the first thing you think about it whether or not the AI can be taught how to handle the new ability. Imo, anyone who comes up with new ideas needs to think this way, too.
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I'm of the opinion that it's a good idea to bounce ideas off of people - people who MAY know how to implement them, even though I'm not "SLIC" enough to do so myself.
Besides, I have a feeling that the designers of CIV III, seeing as they want to sell the game to US, are probably looking at this forum from time to time. They may like an idea (or see that we do!) and add it to the new game, in whatever language they program the sequel in.
In that spirit, I think that the "king unit" idea would be best if used as a gaming option, not as a rule. It really would change the game quite a bit. I assume that it was removed mostly because it changed the slant of the game away from CIV II too much.
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Mark H
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No offense, but I disagree! Since the AI will always be lame (yes it can cheat more, but that's not much of an improvement), I see no reason not to share ideas that will only be used in MP games. Those are the games that will always be challenging.
Just my 2 cents ;-)
Mark
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Nordicus
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Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Oct 1999
time: 21:13
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Hey, everyone...
Here's roughly what I have in progress for AIP-specific units, et cetera--the trouble is which civs will belong to which aip?--:
quote:
1. xenoph (Xenophobic)
2. imperial (Imperialist)
3. expans (Expansionist)
4. meso (MesoAmerican)
5. democrat (Democratic)
6. ccleric (Catholic)
7. mcleric (Moslem)
8. greek (Hellenic)
9. india (Indian)
(default aips)
10. slaver (Slaver)
11. warfew (Aggressive)
12. warmany (Militant)
13. scimany (Peaceful)
14. scifew (Agreeable)
15. cleric (Cleric--or Christian?)
16. barbarian (Barbarian)
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So far, this is just for a modern era, since that's as far I've gotten so far; various aips can be loaded during different circumstances, so these are not eternal!
Here's the civs I've been playing with, so I'll use these for an example (and in order for this to work without an individual aip for 32 civs (!), similar civs must be grouped together...as I said, this is not set in stone and no offense is intended if you feel that your civ has been wrongly included)--I've weighed a lot of things here, and some civs simply cannot realistically be grouped in a modern-type situation, but here are 32 for starters:
quote:
1. China, Korea, Indonesia, Viet Nam (or Thailand or Siam)
2. Japan
3. Russia (or USSR)
4. Maya (or other Central American name, I just prefer Maya), Inca (same, except for a South American name), Aztec (otherwise known as Mexico), *Iroquios and *Sioux
(*Note that in a modern situation, I'm considering not having these last two so that modern civs elsewhere can be used)
5. United States of America, Canada, United Kingdom (or England), Australia
6. Italy, Spain, #France (possibly 13. instead for the WW era)
7. Persia (or *Iran and *Iraq, possibly), Arabia (or Saudi Arabia), Egypt, Turkey
8. Greece
9. India
10. ?
11. Mali, Ethipoia, Zulu (KwaZulu)--and possibly *Xshosa (their civ name different)
12. Germany
13. #France (possibly)
14. Israel
15. Norway, Sweden
16. Barbarians are barbarians, I guess (I'd rather not have them in modern period at all, since they're so absurd and useless, oh well). |
Obviously, depending on what year it is, many of these can be quite different, but like I said, this is not definite and I very much welcome anyone's opinion. I'm not looking for an argument or debate, I'm just trying to have the most realistic feel to a modern earth map situation with the minimum amount of work (which is still quite a bit) without spending months to achieve it.
Generally, I'd like "democrat" types to automatically like ("love") one another, the same for "cleric," "mcleric," "ccleric," "xenoph,"and so on. Alliances would be certain. I feel this would be a great test for the AI to fight along side its Ally.
So, the WW and Cold War eras are what I had in mind for many of these, but they can be adjusted for any period, I'd imagine.
And this makes it possible for "civ-specific" units, or aip-specific: xenoph types will be able to build pikemen, imperial will build samurai, meso will build warriors, etc. Types for each set will likely have to have similar qualities, or at least balanced...opinions?
Anyway, what does everyone think?!
(And what the heck do we do with the Slaver thing--I can't decide--?)
Later.
T.
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DanMc
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Salisbury, UK
Oct 1999
time: 05:13
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Nordicus, regarding the idea of having a wonder for each civ, you'd have to be able to place that wonder in each city of the civilisation, otherwise if you lost your capital city (where the wonder would probably be placed), you wouldn't be able to build any of those units!
Secondly, (I can't remember who suggested it, sorry), if you were to allow (say) the English to build Samuri, they should only be able to do it at a higher cost than the Japanese, reflecting their inate advantage in building such units.
This could lead to some great alliances in multiplayer games (with some sort of modifications to SLIC?) - the Japanese could trade 5 Samurai for a Spanish galleon.....
Dan
Just a thought......
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06-11-1999 15:20
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