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  • #31
    Updated: added the city economics differences (Civ 3 fixed big X vs. CtP2 economic radius) and specialists. Three screens as well .
    Solver, WePlayCiv Co-Administrator
    Contact: solver-at-weplayciv-dot-com
    I can kill you whenever I please... but not today. - The Cigarette Smoking Man

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    • #32
      Civ3 quite certianly is, and is aimed at the mainstream market, there is no doubt about it

      This IMO results in one of the reasons it is generally such a poor Civ game and game in general (unlike its predocessors) which where NOT mainstream orientated
      Oxygen should be considered a drug
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      • #33
        It is a mainstream variation of a non-mainstream game. I repeat, a game strategic to such a high elements does not appeal to just every player who wants to shoot anything that moves. However, there are obviously enough people who like Civ the way it is, an intellectual game, which made the game absolutely famous - and not only that. Civ 3 was, of course, slightly simplified in order to appear more to the mainstream or the average gamer.
        Solver, WePlayCiv Co-Administrator
        Contact: solver-at-weplayciv-dot-com
        I can kill you whenever I please... but not today. - The Cigarette Smoking Man

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        • #34
          I believe Civ3 vanilla version alone sold 2+ million copies. If that's not mainstream, I don't know what is...
          Administrator of WePlayCiv -- Civ5 Info Centre | Forum | Gallery

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          • #35
            Yes, but in my definition, games such as quake are much more mainstream.

            Though I must say I am glad that a civ title is getting good sales. Civ 3, with all of its shortcomings, is still a very good game. After all, we all want to see the civ genre developing, and good sales are the key for that.
            Solver, WePlayCiv Co-Administrator
            Contact: solver-at-weplayciv-dot-com
            I can kill you whenever I please... but not today. - The Cigarette Smoking Man

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            • #36
              Then you have an odd definition of mainstream. Mainstream means that the average gamer plays the game. For Civ3, that's definitely true. I know quite a few gamers (some very fanatic, some very casual) and each and every one of them at least knows about Civ3 (and they didn't learn about it from me, I can assure you), most of them have played it at some point (if they're not still doing so).

              I would go as far as to call Civ more mainstream than Quake, since pretty much everyone played Civ at some point in their life, while Quake is just one of a gazillion shoot-'em-ups out there, not everyone has played every one of those. Especially the younger gamers have not always played the game, having instead stuck to the likes of Unreal Tournament, Soldier of Fortune, Counter Strike, etc.
              Administrator of WePlayCiv -- Civ5 Info Centre | Forum | Gallery

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              • #37
                OK, that's a good perspective. Another thing that interests me is about how many hardcore civers are there among everyone who's played Civ...
                Solver, WePlayCiv Co-Administrator
                Contact: solver-at-weplayciv-dot-com
                I can kill you whenever I please... but not today. - The Cigarette Smoking Man

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                • #38
                  Updated with new info, spelling corrections.

                  I need a tip from someone. The second post is now just two characters short of the post limit, had to remove some words to get it to fit. If I do another update, I'll run out of space to post it there - will I have to start a new thread or what ?
                  Solver, WePlayCiv Co-Administrator
                  Contact: solver-at-weplayciv-dot-com
                  I can kill you whenever I please... but not today. - The Cigarette Smoking Man

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                  • #39
                    CTP2 vs. Civ 3 Combat

                    Originally posted by Solver
                    Stack Combat: CtP2 feautures a combat model completely different from that in Civ 3. In Civ 3, every unit acts on its own. Imagine a city defended by a spearman (defense value of 2). If it’s fortified in a small town, then it gets the +25% bonus from fortification, and the inherent 10% bonus from defending – thus the bonus is 0.5 + 0.2 = 0.7, and so the Spearman has a defense value of 2.7. Now, you have a stack of 3 Swordsmen and an Archer outside the city. You attack with your archer (attack of 2). It loses to the Spearman, which gains an additional hit point. Now, you attack with one of your Swordsmen (attack of 3). It isn’t lucky, and dies, as the Spearman has one hit point remaining. Then, you attack with another Swordsman, and kill the spearman. So, that one spearman has managed to kill two of your units. Does it make sense that while your archer was attacking the swordsmen stood there and did nothing? Hardly.
                    Before I start, let me make it clear that I got my start civving with the original Call to Power. So to the extent that I'm prejudiced by what I got used to in my original Civ play, my prejudices would tend to be in favor of the ways Call to Power does things, not against them. And now for my thoughts on how the combat systems of Civ 3 and the Call to Power games compare.

                    First of all, weight of numbers in Civ 3 is a lot more powerful than you give it credit for. Even when attackers lose, they tend to soften up the enemy for follow-on attackers. Thus, even when the defender has a small advantage in the effective strength of individual units (for example, spearmen fortified on flat terrain attacked by archers), weight of numbers can shift the advantage in overall average losses in the attacker's favor.

                    In evaluating the cost-effectiveness of the Jaguar Warrior compared with other units in the Apolyton University Mod Jaguar Warrior thread, I hurled hundreds of archers at fortified spearmen. Even though the spearmen had a 35% total defensive bonus against attackers with an equal nominal combat value, the attackers averaged suffering less than three fourths of the losses that the defenders did. Granted, a lot of the attackers will come out of the fighting injured, but they can heal.

                    So the overall net effect of weight of numbers in Civ 3 is pretty much what it should be (at least from a game perspective): strong but not completely overwhelming. Even with a very strong weight of numbers, the attacker can expect to suffer some losses, but the defender will generally suffer worse losses if all else is anywhere near equal. In terms of game mechanics, the units don't attack at the same time, but in terms of the probable long-term outcome after the victorious units heal, the benefit of weight of numbers is very much there nonetheless.

                    Also note that the relative unpredictability of Civ 3 combat means that either side can get lucky in any given battle. Every once in a while, the spearman you describe will kill an archer and a swordsman before he dies, but other times, the archer will kill the spearman without the attacker's losing any units at all. Focusing on bad possible outcomes and ignoring good ones paints a seriously skewed picture.

                    Second, the ability to use weight of numbers in the Call to Power games breaks down very badly when the defender is at or near the limit on how many units can occupy a single tile. You complain about how in Civ 3, two swordsmen and an archer can't all attack at once. But in the CTP games, the same basic situation occurs when an attacker has two or three stacks adjacent to a city and is only allowed to attack with one of them at a time.

                    Even if you want to argue that there should be a limit to how many units can physically occupy a given area at once, the CTP system is still highly unrealistic. What ought to happen in a three-stacks-against-one assault is that as units in the attacking stack die, units from adjacent stacks can move in to take their place. Thus, fresh footsoldiers could keep moving up to the front lines, preventing bombardment units from having to fight in the front row until all the front-line fighters from all three attacking stacks are dead. But instead, with comparable technology and healthy full-sized stacks, the CTP system ends up with the defenders killing the front-line attacking units, which in turn forces bombardment units from the attacker's rear rank to come forward and face enemy units that have them hopelessly outclassed.

                    So once the stack size limit is reached, we're back to the situation you complain about in Civ 3 of an attacker's not being able to get the advantage he should from weight of numbers. Worse, my impression is that in the Call to Power games (and admittedly this comes far more from CTP1 than from CTP2 since I have little experience with CTP2), if two militaries are evenly matched, a force attacking a city will almost inevitably be defeated because of the bonuses the defender gets. And if the first attack force is wiped out, the very best that the attacker can hope for is to suffer no losses in the follow-up attack, in which case the attacker does no better than break even in the value of units killed and lost.

                    I'm not sure how CTP2's ability to call a retreat in the middle of a battle would affect that picture because it's been too long since I played CTP2 and I never played it much to begin with. If the timing makes it practical, a player might be able to have the first attack force or two do some damage and then retreat before they start losing units and then launch the real, final assault. But in straight-up combat, I'm pretty sure that once the maximum stack size is reached, weight of numbers actually gives an attacker significantly less advantage in CTP2 than in Civ 3.

                    Third, keep in mind that in Civ games, unlike in the real world, injured units can heal without its costing anything but time. If you lose half the strength of each of two units, you don't have to build the equivalent of a unit to make good the losses.

                    In Civ 3's combat model, that advantage and the fact that units attack only one at a time more or less offset each other. The end result is that in any but the most unbalanced situations, even a side with a significant numerical advantage will generally suffer real, meaningful, permanent losses. The game mechanics may not look quite right from a realism perspective, but the end result fits pretty nicely.

                    The question is, is that also true in CTP2, or are there situations where an attacker can use a combination of technological and numerical superiority to attack with zero risk of suffering damage that can't be healed? I'm not sure, but I'm inclined to suspect the latter.

                    Fourth, while Civ 3 does not give the defender an advantage for having more units than the attacker, that is probably a good thing in terms of keeping the AIs competitive. Unless the AI could be made just as good as human players at maximizing concentration of force, AIs will be a lot more likely than humans to attack enemy forces that outnumber them. So while a case could be made that Civ 3 would be more realistic if defensive forces that outnumbered their attackers had an extra advantage, not providing such an advantage probably makes for a better game. (On the other hand, it would be nice if the Civ 3 AI had been programmed to use concentration of force a bit better.)

                    And finally, consider the impact of the different combat models on the need for artillery in taking well-defended cities. In Civ 3, there are times when it is fully practical to engage in blitzkreig-style offensives without artillery support, especially against technologicaly inferior opponents. That makes for an interesting choice of whether to try to fight quickly without bringing along artillery and slow-moving defensive units or more slowly with them. That choice was even more interesting prior to the Conquests expansion pack because artillery was so likely to destroy buildings you very likely wanted to keep instead of killing units.

                    In contrast, in the original Call to Power, I almost never tried to capture a city that I expected to be well defended without bombarding it heavily first. The cost in lost units was simply too high. That resulted in less flexibility in playing style. And my impression is that CTP2 shares that trait.

                    In conclusion, I think the stack combat system in CTP2 looks great on paper. The idea of mixed forces with different units serving different roles sounds very good in theory.

                    But in practice, I think the system is absolutely lousy when the defender is at or near the limit on the number of units per tile. With equal technology, attackers need a numerical advantage to overcome the bonuses defenders in a city get, and the CTP2 rules don't allow the attacker to have a direct numerical advantage against a 12-unit defensive force.

                    In contrast, even though Civ 3 does not implement stack combat as such, it does allow an attacker to gain a considerable advantage from a superior weight of numbers no matter how large a force the defender has on a particular tile. So where it really counts, I think Civ 3 does a better job of reliably giving whichever side brings a larger force to the party an advantage.

                    If I'm missing something, please tell me. I never frequented the CTP and CTP2 forums back when I was playing those games, so there may be important combat strategies that I never picked up on. But from my own experience, in spite of having been exposed to the CTP approach to combat first, I like the Civ 3 combat system better.

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                    • #40
                      By the way, there is one other troublesome quirk to a CTP/CTP2 style stack combat system. In theory, it ought to be possible for two forces to attack a target simultaneously from different directions and have much the same impact as if they were a single force (since the defenders would have to divide to meet the two attacks). There is even a name for that kind of attack in the real world: a pincer movement.

                      But with the CTP approach, the two halves of the pincer movement would have to attack separately, each at an enormous disadvantage against the enemy's superior numbers. Thus, attacking in a pincer movement instead of with a unified force creates a huge disadvantage with the CTP approach. In contast, in Civ 3, a pincer attack with units converging from multiple directions is just as effective as a unified attack with all the attackers coming from the same direction.

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                      • #41
                        Originally posted by nbarclay
                        In contast, in Civ 3, a pincer attack with units converging from multiple directions is just as effective as a unified attack with all the attackers coming from the same direction.
                        Several things that need to be clarified...
                        First off, both games do not run simultaneous combat, so neither game can ever truly simulate combat as it actually happens. Each system makes the player resolve combat in a turn-based format. Send a unit in civ3, send a stack in CTP2. Repeat process...

                        Secondly, the use of a pincer maneuver implies that there should be a bonus for using that maneuver. Coming at an enemy from multiple directions should cause confusion and fear (and you imply that in your statement).

                        You get no actual numerical bonus by attacking from multiple directions in civ3. All of the bonuses are on the defensive side, due to terrain and river defense. And in most civ3 combat situations, there is no benefit gained by splitting up your forces because you are better off maintaining them in infinitely-large stacks - you can cover your attackers with a huge number of defenders better in a large stack. (and with a weakened ZOC rule in place, this makes maintaining large stacks even more desirable because you cannot stop attackers from simply going around you) So the true nature of pincer maneuvers is not portrayed in civ3 at all.

                        On the surface, the same can be said for CTP2. There is no inherent advantage for attacking from multiple directions in CTP2. The same type of terrain bonuses are in place that are in civ3. Both games do not accurately portray pincer maneuvers on the strategic level.

                        But in CTP2, at least have the simulation of using a pincer manuever on a strategic level more often than in civ3, because you cannot simply pile infinite units into a stack in CTP2 like you can in civ3. The very nature of a cap means you have to split forces.

                        And CTP2 does portray pincer maneuvers on a tactical level with the use of flanking bonuses when you do actually engage in combat.

                        civ3 does not at all, because there is no such thing as flanking in the civ3 combat system.
                        Last edited by hexagonian; August 2, 2004, 23:40.
                        Yes, let's be optimistic until we have reason to be otherwise...No, let's be pessimistic until we are forced to do otherwise...Maybe, let's be balanced until we are convinced to do otherwise. -- DrSpike, Skanky Burns, Shogun Gunner
                        ...aisdhieort...dticcok...

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                        • #42
                          Re: CTP2 vs. Civ 3 Combat

                          Originally posted by nbarclay
                          First of all, weight of numbers in Civ 3 is a lot more powerful than you give it credit for. Even when attackers lose, they tend to soften up the enemy for follow-on attackers. Thus, even when the defender has a small advantage in the effective strength of individual units (for example, spearmen fortified on flat terrain attacked by archers), weight of numbers can shift the advantage in overall average losses in the attacker's favor.
                          No disagreement there...In fact I have said that numerical superiority is generally what you strive for in civ3, even over tech superiority. The game is slanted to favor numbers over tech.

                          When civ3 was first released 3 years ago, I recall a player posting here saying that he stayed in a lowtech mode (he did not research or trade for any techs) and winning the game with spearmen and sheer numbers - even over modern units.


                          Originally posted by nbarclay
                          Also note that the relative unpredictability of Civ 3 combat means that either side can get lucky in any given battle. Every once in a while, the spearman you describe will kill an archer and a swordsman before he dies, but other times, the archer will kill the spearman without the attacker's losing any units at all. Focusing on bad possible outcomes and ignoring good ones paints a seriously skewed picture.
                          I do not have a real problem accepting that a spearman can beat a tank in civ3, or any game for that matter, at least from a gameplay standpoint. It doesn't happen all that often. But civ3 could have used FP/Armor and a greater range of HP to better simulate combat differences between units of different ages.
                          The funny thing is that this argument was thrown at CTP1 when the same type of results were happening. So CTP2 fixed it.


                          Originally posted by nbarclay
                          You complain about how in Civ 3, two swordsmen and an archer can't all attack at once. But in the CTP games, the same basic situation occurs when an attacker has two or three stacks adjacent to a city and is only allowed to attack with one of them at a time.
                          Both games cannot fully create a realistic combat model.
                          However, CTP takes a step in the right direction to better simulate a more accurate combat model with the use of stacked combat. It is never going to be perfectly implimented as long as there is no ability to simultaneously send every unit you want to into combat with a single push of a button.


                          Originally posted by nbarclay
                          But instead, with comparable technology and healthy full-sized stacks, the CTP system ends up with the defenders killing the front-line attacking units, which in turn forces bombardment units from the attacker's rear rank to come forward and face enemy units that have them hopelessly outclassed.
                          Which gives a player a dilemma - should he have fewer ranged units in a stack in order to allow his stack to take more of a pounding on the front line, by allowing replenishment of wounded frontliners with fresh frontliners, or sacrifice frontliners with more ranged units to have the ability to inflict greater damange in the early part of the battle which may potentially allow you to get rid of your opponent's frontliners faster.


                          Originally posted by nbarclay
                          Worse, my impression is that in the Call to Power games (and admittedly this comes far more from CTP1 than from CTP2 since I have little experience with CTP2), if two militaries are evenly matched, a force attacking a city will almost inevitably be defeated because of the bonuses the defender gets.
                          This is exactly the case in civ3. Modifiers greatly favor defense, meaning if you want to attack, you generally have to bring more units to the party...as well as be prepared to lose many of them. And in my civ3 gameplay, that occurs as much as it occurs in CTP2.


                          Originally posted by nbarclay
                          And finally, consider the impact of the different combat models on the need for artillery in taking well-defended cities. In Civ 3, there are times when it is fully practical to engage in blitzkreig-style offensives without artillery support, especially against technologicaly inferior opponents. That makes for an interesting choice of whether to try to fight quickly without bringing along artillery and slow-moving defensive units or more slowly with them. That choice was even more interesting prior to the Conquests expansion pack because artillery was so likely to destroy buildings you very likely wanted to keep instead of killing units.
                          Again, this is exactly the case in CTP2 - you face the choice with pros and cons on either side. Arty will destroy buildings, and kill population, so a long, slow, bombardment will gut a city in CTP2. Plus if a CTP2 defending city has arty, there is a counterbombard trigger (easily modded in) that will autofire against your own arty.


                          Originally posted by nbarclay
                          In contrast, in the original Call to Power, I almost never tried to capture a city that I expected to be well defended without bombarding it heavily first. The cost in lost units was simply too high. That resulted in less flexibility in playing style.
                          Bombardment is a solid tactic...
                          I find I use bombardment as heavily in civ3 as you do in CTP, so this is a player style issue, not a game design issue.


                          Originally posted by nbarclay
                          But in practice, I think the system is absolutely lousy when the defender is at or near the limit on the number of units per tile. With equal technology, attackers need a numerical advantage to overcome the bonuses defenders in a city get, and the CTP2 rules don't allow the attacker to have a direct numerical advantage against a 12-unit defensive force.
                          This is the first time I have heard of a complaint regarding the unit cap from the attacking side of the equation, and I'm not convinced that these are really flaws in the CTP setup.

                          A cap is not an issue with the attacker. A cap works in the favor of the attacker.

                          I can understand why players may have an issue with a cap on tile occupation due to defensive limitations - because an attacker can bring into an attack a near-infinite amount of units on a turn (not a single battle, but a single turn with multiple battles) He simply throws a stack at a time into combat until he wears down the defending stack.

                          I have mixed feelings about the cap. On the one hand, having a cap forces a player to play smarter, because it places a limit on what he can do. But it also works against the AI because a smart player can usually and effectively deploy against it, because it is a limit.

                          No cap means no limits on defense and offense...

                          Want to hold a city???? Great, I'll just fill it to the brim with near-unlimited units. No need to play a field game, because all of your defenses are inside your cities (which almost always offer the greatest defensive bonuses with city-size modifiers and walls). Historically, cities were places that you didn't want to get attacked, so you usually met on the field well before the enemy was in range of your cities and a cap simulates this reality much better in gameplay. Furthermore, why even set up outside your cities in civ3 with an almost non-existant ZOC rule??? The only other place is to set up Forts on strategic/lux goods and at choke points if you haven't already set up a city there.

                          And it's too easy to simply stack 'o Doom in civ3 because of the cap. This works for the defense especially when Rails come into play. Want instant defense??? Zip your stacks anywhere in you empire instantaneously.

                          No thinking required AT ALL!!!

                          With all things taken into account, I'd take a cap over no cap, because it offers the best gameplay.

                          But I could actually live with an unlimited cap if civ would allow a stacked combat-style resolution for battles.

                          I've said it before...civ3 is not a bad game, and it does many things well. CTP2, even modded, is not perfect. But the CTP combat setup creates more involved and interesting gameplay than the civ3 model.
                          Last edited by hexagonian; August 2, 2004, 17:09.
                          Yes, let's be optimistic until we have reason to be otherwise...No, let's be pessimistic until we are forced to do otherwise...Maybe, let's be balanced until we are convinced to do otherwise. -- DrSpike, Skanky Burns, Shogun Gunner
                          ...aisdhieort...dticcok...

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                          • #43
                            Player1 patches!

                            Well player1 has made a patch for ptw and C3C comes with a read me file as well. Rebalanced many of the units fire power so the battles should be won with who every has the highest tech.

                            But still the feeling of defending a empire is felt most in CtP2. Its not just about a city or a group of units . Its a national management of many elements. I have yet to find a game that gives so much detail and allows ease of play

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                            • #44
                              I wasn't trying to say that there were, or should be, special bonuses for using a pincer maneuver instead of attacking with one large stack. Rather, I was pointing out that in the CTP games, players are penalized for mounting a converging attack with two smaller stacks striking from different directions instead of concentrating their units into one large stack before attacking.

                              In Civ 3, there is no concept of units attacking together as a group (except in the case of armies, which function more or less as a single unit and cannot be subdivided once they are formed). Since units that attack starting from the same location attack one at a time, having units that attack starting from different locations attack one at a time does not create any disadvantage. The results of a turn of combat are exactly the same whether the attackers all come from the same direction or whether they converge from two or three different directions.

                              Thus, in Civ 3, strategic pincer movements are completely practical. Forces can start off split up to attack multiple targets and then have their survivors converge on another target from different directions without placing themselves at a disadvantage (except perhaps in that the smaller forces may be more vulnerable to counterattack). Similarly, if a player has two cities on opposite sides of an enemy city, he can draw half his attackers from positions stationed inside each city and have them attack from opposite directions instead of needing to join the two forces together before attacking.

                              Granted, Civ 3 does not accurately portray any special confusion that a strategic pincer movement might (or might not) cause. But it does accurately portray the fact that "simultaneous" attacks by units converging from different directions can be just as effective as "simultaneous" attacks where all the attackers start from a single place. You just have to keep in mind that in Civ 3, the only concept of attacks’ being “simultaneous” is their occurring the same turn.

                              In contrast, the CTP games only partially implement the concept of units attacking simultaneously. Their implementation works fine as long as the attackers all come in from the same direction and can be joined into a single army short of the target, but their implementation is very seriously flawed when, for some reason, it makes more sense for the simultaneous attacks to come from different directions.

                              That can throw a monkey wrench into the works in cases where a converging attack from multiple directions is what makes the most sense. Either the attacker has to send in the smaller forces one at a time, risking defeat in detail because the entire defending force can focus on each attack force separately, or the attacker has to waste time putting the two forces together before he can attack, thereby giving the enemy more time to prepare for the attack.

                              Thus, where Civ 3 makes pincer attacks a perfectly viable option on a strategic level if that is what makes sense in a particular situation, the CTP games do not. The CTP rules essentially require players to take whatever extra time might be required to organize their units into a single assault force before they attack.

                              But in CTP2, at least have the simulation of using a pincer manuever on a strategic level more often than in civ3 because you cannot simply pile infinite units into a stack in CTP2 like you can in civ3.
                              That simulation may possibly have some merit if the enemy wants to come out and launch a preemptive counterattack against one of the attacking forces on its way to its target before it gets a chance to converge with the other attacking force. But when two or more prongs of a pincer launch their attack, the alleged "simulation" is a travesty. In a real pincer, the defense would have to be split between the two attacks, so each offensive force would only have to face about half the defenders. In contrast, in the CTP "simulation," the entire defensive force can potentially be used against both prongs of the pincer (albeit having taken some damage by the time it faces the second prong). That is a very, very serious flaw in the simulation, a flaw that makes the simulation worse than useless in my opinion.

                              Further, I do not view forcing the attacker to split the attack force into multiple prongs as particularly realistic. In a real war, there might be a limit to how many troops it is practical to involve on each side at any one instant, but additional units can come forward to replace casualties during the fighting. To make that work in a Civ game, you would have to allow (for example) a 24-unit stack of which only twelve units can be involved in combat at any given time. But setting things up so bombardment-oriented units have to move to the front lines when there are plenty of infantry-type units prepared to attack the same turn makes little sense to me.

                              And CTP2 does portray pincer maneuvers on a tactical level with the use of flanking bonuses.
                              Sort of. The problem is, the definition of "the tactical level" is itself highly artificial, since in some situations, "the tactical level" only encompasses half or a third of the overall attacking force. Thus, flanking units can get to attack the flank of a stack that's flank really ought to be considered guarded by an adjacent stack.

                              The basic concept of having units attack as a group with different units playing different roles is a good one. But the implementation in CTP2 has some serious flaws.
                              Last edited by nbarclay; August 3, 2004, 02:07.

                              Comment


                              • #45
                                Re: Re: CTP2 vs. Civ 3 Combat

                                Originally posted by hexagonian

                                No disagreement there...In fact I have said that numerical superiority is generally what you strive for in civ3, even over tech superiority. The game is slanted to favor numbers over tech.

                                When civ3 was first released 3 years ago, I recall a player posting here saying that he stayed in a lowtech mode (he did not research or trade for any techs) and winning the game with spearmen and sheer numbers - even over modern units.
                                On what difficulty level? Yes, large enough numbers can overcome technological inferiority, especially in offensive combat where weight of numbers has a greater impact. And I generally view that as a good thing: it makes invading an isolated, backward island civ a lot more of a challenge than it would be otherwise, especially on the higher difficulty levels.

                                I did some experimenting with Zachriel's stack combat calculator, and I figured out two things. On one hand, once offensive units reach a certain level of obsolescence, being more obsolete doesn't seem to make a lot of difference in cost-effectiveness. But on the other hand, technological parity, or especially a technological advantage, can offer a very considerable benefit. Consider the situation of trying to attack five riflemen fortified in a size 7-12 city.

                                A force of 60 archers (cost 1200 shields) can do the job with something very close to a guarantee of success (winning 99.92% of 10,000 tries in my test). But an average of 27 of the archers die in the attempt, so killing 350 shields' worth of riflemen costs 540 shields. The attacker loses more than one and a half times the production in units that the defender does.

                                The same 1200 shields could buy a force of 15 cavalry. The cavalry force would only have about a 75% chance of victory (74.81% in my test run). But the cavalry force would average losing only four units while averaging killing 4.5 enemy units, destroying about 315 shields' worth of enemy units for a loss of about 320 shields. So the attack is essentially a break-even proposition in shield value. Further, with a little bit stronger weight of numbers, success could be virtually guaranteed - with few enough losses that the losses can be replaced quickly and the attack can keep going.

                                Or if the attacker has a really big tech lead, he might use the same shields to build a force of 12 tanks. If the tanks are used in such a way that their blitz ability (the ability to attack twice in the same turn) does not come into play, they have a very remote chance of failing to take the city, winning only 99.87% of the battles in the test I ran. But the average loss is only about nine tenths of a unit, or 90 shields, in exchange for killing 350 shields' worth of enemy forces. If the tanks start next to the city and can thus use their blitz ability, success is essentially a statistical certainty and average losses remain at about nine tenths of a tank.

                                Also note the impact on upkeep costs if a civ uses massive numbers of obsolete units. A thousand shields invested in ten tanks require only ten units' upkeep costs or free upkeep capacity. The same shields as archers would require upkeep for fifty units. Maintaining a huge, obsolete military is a lot more expensive than maintaining an equally powerful smaller, more modern one.

                                So while with a big enough production advantage, it would be possible to win the game with nothing but archers for offense and spearmen for defense, it very definitely pays to have technological parity or preferably a technological lead when launching an attack. It can also make a lot of sense to focus on building the economy during periods when defenders are relatively strong compared with attackers (especially the period between infantry and tanks) and do your fighting during periods of history when attackers are relatively strong.

                                In conclusion, I strongly disagree with your claim that Civ 3 is "slanted to favor numbers over tech." What the game really does is treat both numbers and technology as important, with neither automatically trumping the other.

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