You know what Civ III's missing?

So I was reading Michael Howard's ``Strategic Deception in the
Second World War'' and realized, that's just what Civilization III or
similar games need -- the ability to create, like the First Unitd States
Army Group, phony units designed to give the enemy bad information about
your strength and movements.

  (This may be in Civilization II: Call To Power, which I missed
entirely.)

  The fake units would cost somewhere around what the lowest real
military unit available was, or perhaps be things constructed by one's
engineers/workers. No attack value, minimal defensive value, movement
maybe one block higher than the corresponding real unit, since (say) an
inflatable tank is easier to haul around than the real thing. To the
opponent they look like the real thing *unless* they employ enough spies
to break through the deception. (Even then maybe they get only a count
of how many fake units there are, or where they currently are.)

  As prerequisites we could demand a new Deception advancement,
which follows up on Espionage; it'd take rubber as a strategic resource.
Perhaps a fake unit has a regular cost equal to the ordinary cost of a
unit -- this reflects that it *did* require some complex accounting to
make sure the fake military units `behaved' credibly, and serves as a
deterrent from one player making three real units and 400,000,000,008
fake ones.

  The goal of the fake units would be, well, strategic deception;
make it harder for the opponent to tell which prong of the campaign is
the actual one that needs to be defended, and which one can be mopped up
with one cavalry unit and some sternly worded telegraphs. It'd also add
to the debate about whether it's safe to go to war, or to continue, as
the military advisor would have to further hedge his estimates about the
relative strength of your and their empires.

  What do you think, sirs?

    Joseph Nebus
------------------------------------------------------------------------------<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->

Joseph Nebus wrote:
<snip>
 > The goal of the fake units would be, well, strategic deception;
 > make it harder for the opponent to tell which prong of the campaign is
 > the actual one that needs to be defended, and which one can be mopped up
 > with one cavalry unit and some sternly worded telegraphs. It'd also add
 > to the debate about whether it's safe to go to war, or to continue, as
 > the military advisor would have to further hedge his estimates about the
 > relative strength of your and their empires.

It certainly needs _something_. The military advisor does seem to know
rather a lot, and the computer _always_ knows my weakest points.

(I sometimes leave a deliberate weak spot with units waiting some way
away, connected by rail, ready to swoop down if an enemy does come in
that way.)

--
Richard P. Grant | Hey diddle diddle, The cat and the fiddle;
0x5F9559B1 | The cow jumped over the moon.
| The little dog laughed to see such fun
<a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.rg-d.com/BioLOG" target="_blank">www.rg-d.com/BioLOG</a> | And scored some more stuff on a spoon<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->