Empire:- ?

Remember in Empire, where you couldnt stack any units at all. Well, that was done because of Memory reasons wasnt it? I mean it wasnt in the Game play design document was it?

So if you are making an TBS, (or even a RTS), nowadays could you get away with that? Or do you think that a Plane could be above an army (say), in the same map space. And concider if a battleship (or Even a troop Transport), tried to enter the square a submarine was, it would attack it. Even though it didnt know the sub was there. Would you say that this was down to specific game design, or hardware restrictions? And would it be more (Well better, even though thats gramaticly wrong), that you can only attack an invisable unit if you know its there?

And planes again. A Plane should be able to fly over your tanks, (and its tanks), but it cannot. Is this wrong, (in a modern game sence)?

Now, the sequal to Empire, just didnt have the same feel/game play. (I think I played it twice, then never again). Can anyone who remembers it, please say what was good/bad about it, and Better/worse than the original about it.

Thanks.

What Empire? Empire Earth? Walter Bright's Empire?

I don't think so. You could load armies onto transports IIRC, which is kind of stacking. I'm also fairly certain you could fly a plane over an army. And you could most certainly have multiple armies defending a city. But I might be remembering Empire Plus - or whatever the Amiga version was called - and may have been slightly improved over the PC version due to running on superior hardware.

No. I think it's fair to have SOME limitation to the ammount of units one can reasonably stick on one square. It depends on scale tho'. If one "unit" represents a squad, then you should be able to stick several on a one square kilometer. If one unit represents a regiment, or even battalion, not so much.

Civilization does this aswell (or rather the Submarine attacks the other unit entering its square). Should be by design, although unless your sub gets some sort of "first strike" capability, it shouldn't attack an enemy it cannot possibly hope to defeat.

That's the one.

Aw... :( I was hoping you meant "Empire" cause I know the guy who made it.

Most likely stacking was not allowed since that is a major pain in the butt to get right, from a user interface point of view.

Not really, if you look at transports and carriers, they became another unit that then said how many things were in it, (OK they did remember the Unit number, so lets say yes, they had an array or list). And the cities definatly had a list, but no Planes couldnt fly over other units. (If you remember if you had the planes on patrol, and units were next to the city, the plane would sometimes run out of fuel, cos it had had to go round them.

So, from your post, you would expect to at the least, in a modern "empire" have planes that could fly over units. Allow some stacking of units,(outside cities), limit the number of city defenders to some multiple of the stack limit. Allow more than one ship to be in each ocean square or not?
Have a "what you wont attack if you dont have to list" for invisable units.
The Amiga had both Empire and Empire Plus. The main differece I remember was that some cities were already specialist in some unit prodution.

Hello.

Wouldn't you instead use layers, so you'd have a layer for sub-aqua, one for sea/ground and one for air?

Goodbye.

That is in fact what Im asking. Is it acceptable not to nowadays?
Civ for example doesnt bother, the only thing it does to make it look like subs are at a different level, is allow them to go under ice. Planes and misstles dont works like units at all. And helicopters cannot fly over enemy units. (Even rubbish ones)

You would use layers or Z ordering even today.

Well I don't really. It has to be at least 10 years since I played it last.

Yup. Fleets/Taskforces are definately a good feature (so you don't have to move all units seperately).

No.

And they can actually lose. Like a helicopter gunship is going to be taken down by a longbowman.

Hello.

Weeell, if the longbowman were in the gunship and shot the pilot in the back it might happen.

Goodbye.

At least in the new Warlord(Civ IV) patch it tells you that there is a chance that this might happen. Anything less than 1/1000 chance it used to say no chance, whereas now it at least says 99.999999%
(I personaly dont think A longBow arrow should be able to penertrate the armour on a Tank)
But there you go, Level 3 city defence, Hill defence, 5Turns fortified, Tank crossing river, and apparently Arrow now go though armour.
Oh Um, most of that I think though is for Game balance reasons. (And there has to be a point when its a game, and not a simulation)

Bear with me on this (offtopic):
A problem with the Gunship versus the Longbow is they existed in seperate times and developed for different needs. If a helicopter gunship appeared in 13C England (apart from scaring the poop out of everybody) the 'medievalists would have found *another* weapon to use against it rather than flinging arrows.
I had a quick think and garrisons of geese trained to 'attack' helicopters might have been successful.
I haven't played Empire (put off by the screenshot showing Age of Mix-ups) but I bet the techtree doesn't include a small-holding->farm->terror farm-> AA-farm.

Interestingly (or maybe not), it's been calculated if you'd transported the Longbowman from Agincourt to Waterloo they would have annhilated the French who used muskets. Only training (lifelong) and prestige prevented archers being used up until the mid 19C.

Wow errr, so what you are saying is, if we had had more troops we would have won. Wow, we won anyway.

Hm.... thought this thread was going to be about Kasabian.

*shuffles away*