Civ 4 - The List of BAD Ideas.

[Kuciwalker]

A question...
What do you mean by shuffling things around in the enemy's turns? If you mean that the AI cannot bring in reinforcements, I've already explained how with a stack limit this is accomplished.

IIRC, you never explained how an AI could have a defensive force in a city of greater than 12 (or whatever the max is) units, WITHOUT moving units into the city as some die, which happens to be impossible when it isn't your turn

[Fosse]

Originally posted by skywalker

A question...
What do you mean by shuffling things around in the enemy's turns? If you mean that the AI cannot bring in reinforcements, I've already explained how with a stack limit this is accomplished.

IIRC, you never explained how an AI could have a defensive force in a city of greater than 12 (or whatever the max is) units, WITHOUT moving units into the city as some die, which happens to be impossible when it isn't your turn

I'll try to answer this with two approaches.

1) 12 units maximum, no matter what.
What to do: Plan ahead! If you see four stacks of 12 units coming toward your city, then get some troops out there to meet them in the field. I think that armies, done properly, can encourage more "in the field" fighting for this reason... and I think that's a good thing.

2) Remove unit limit per tile. Let two or more armies occupy one tile, and let more than 12 units into an army. Now instead of the player building lots of 12 (or 24, or any number) unit armies, the players can choose many small armies, several medium size, one large, or a mix of the above. Perhaps some natural "beuracratic" penalties could make a "soft" limit. One that you can surpass, but at your peril.

How do those answers work out for you?

[Kuciwalker]

Only one army would defend at a time, though, right? Then your goal of smaller armies wouldn't happen, because they would be annihilated by larger stacks.

I like how Civ3 handles armies, and hope it doesn't change.

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by skywalker IIRC, you never explained how an AI could have a defensive force in a city of greater than 12 (or whatever the max is) units, WITHOUT moving units into the city as some die, which happens to be impossible when it isn't your turn

Well you, or the AIs for that matter, currently cannot move units outside their turn...

Are you refering to turnless mode - since I don't have PTW. Is the AI allowed to move units while you are attacking? I'm not quite sure what you are getting at, but I'll give it a shot.

You cannot ever have more than 12 units (or whatever your base number is) on a tile.

For instance, what you can do is have a building type (Call it Garrison or City Guard) that only adds HP to units that are within a city. So if you build it, and you have a unit with 10 normal HP, it will be bumped up to 15 if in that city. Since HP is the way to boost the size of the unit without increasing the number of units on a tile (a single unit has 10HP - A 20HP unit will act as 2 units with 10HP) you have bypassed the limited manpower dilemma - and then you can also add in the normal terrain modifiers and defensive bonus buildings such as wall that add combat defensive modifiers, and a city potentially can be very hard to take - as it should be.

Same idea with a tile improvement - You can have one called Training Grounds that will add HP to units. Make it hard to build though.

Related to this is what happens if a city is building units, but there is already the max. number of units already in the city.

Actually its a very easy and elegant solution, although its not currently in place in CTP1 or CTP2...

When the max. number of units is met, the unit can be generated on an unoccupied tile directly outside the city - but only in that type of situation does that occur. Those tiles are considered as part of the city anyhow. Then you can either use that unit to attack/run away to regroup during your turn if in a siege situation.

And if every tile surrounding the city is occupied by an enemy, then the city is stuck and it cannot complete the unit - which can be attributed as some kind of a demoralizing factor which normally happens in tight sieges. In fact, with enemy units on all surrounding tiles, the city production is hampered anyhow with the current civ3 setup (and I do prefer the city worker setup regarding city tiles in civ2/civ3/ctp1 over the current CTP2 setup).

There is actually one nice thing about current civ3 combat - units do not have to move into the tile they attacked, but I don't see this as something that is required for stacked combat either. It is something that is in CTP2 by design though.

[Kuciwalker]

hexagonian - my problem was that you can't have more defenders, so unless a) the assault on the city lasts multiple turns AND b) the enemy fails to cut off the city from other cities, 12 is the maximum you will EVER be able to defend with. If I see them moving a force to attack my city, I should be able to put more than 12 defenders there.

[Fosse]

Originally posted by skywalker
hexagonian - my problem was that you can't have more defenders, so unless a) the assault on the city lasts multiple turns AND b) the enemy fails to cut off the city from other cities, 12 is the maximum you will EVER be able to defend with. If I see them moving a force to attack my city, I should be able to put more than 12 defenders there.

I would argue that if you see them moving a force to your city, you should meet them halfway with more than 12 units.

It could be argued that if you allow several stacks of enemy units to get in range of one of your cities, that the enemy deserves that city.

[Kuciwalker]

What if it is a border city, for example? They would quite probably be able to move in massed forces quickly enough to lay seige.

[Fosse]

Probably.

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by Fosse
I would argue that if you see them moving a force to your city, you should meet them halfway with more than 12 units.
It could be argued that if you allow several stacks of enemy units to get in range of one of your cities, that the enemy deserves that city.

Wholeheartedly agree!!!

Which also makes scouting and perimeter defenses all the more important too. End result - more pre-planning and more tactics.

As for border cities the same principle is in place - If you plan on taking a border city, you have to prepare to also set up perimeter defenses.

[Jon Miller]

show me examples

please, someone reasonable show me examples

Jon Miller

[hexagonian]

Because I think I am more than reasonable, here's a pic...

A. Setup without a perimeter defense. As pointed out by Fosse, the defender deserves exactly what he gets because of carelessness. His troops are out of position, and his city, even with a full 12-unit garrison should fall. The general in charge of the defense should have his head on a pike.

B. With a perimeter defense and a well-placed scout unit in place to track incoming stacks, the defender has time to mobilize his forces and move to (and here is the key point) intercept the invaders BEFORE they can hit the city.

C. With troops in place, the defender can bring the battle to the invader to either defeat or seriously weaken the heathen attackers. The city is safe for another day! Huzzah!!!

Bottom line - with no limit on number of units in your army, defense is simply a matter of size as the main determinating factor (strength of unit type is secondary - after all you will need some high-level defenders), but more importantly, no FIELD tactics are necessary. Keep your (infinite-sized) armies safely in cities.

You could argue that you need to protect workers/tile improvements, but that is the only reason to have units outside of a city, but I'm assuming that as soon as a war heats up, workers are brought back to the cities if they are vunerable - anyhow, that is the same issue you have to deal with in CTP2 (at least the tile improvements).

Oh I forgot...you have to maintain a large front of units to stop the 'VERY irritating to gameplay' AI trespassing element. In fact, that is the only reason to maintain a frontline, because all the AI needs to do is punch a hole into a front and slip on through because of the weakened ZOC setup in place.

Clear enough for ya...????

[Jon Miller]

I like a large front

I do not like Civ3's infinite stacks

I will peruse this more, and provide my owne examples later

one other thing I would request

because it is not apparent on casual perusal, could you post the contents of the armies?

JOn miller

[Jon Miller]

actually I will repeat it again

I do not like the way Civ3 does combat

Jon Miller

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
one other thing I would request
because it is not apparent on casual perusal, could you post the contents of the armies?
JOn miller

The illustration is a simulation of what occurs in a stacked combat situation. I have cut and pasted in units into a screen capture to show the positioning of units - so army composition is not pertinant to the point I'm making.

Assume that each stack is the same strength if it came to battle, and the two attacking stacks in 'A' would be strong enough to take the city with a full 12-unit garrison.

[asleepathewheel]

My list of bad ideas in no particular order (Ignoring the entire rest of this thread)

1. Caravans, supply crawlers. hello tedium. hello instawonders.
2. Death of top defender, death of entire stack
3. Civ2 Zoc-a lazy man's tool. Tell me how a warrior unit in 4000bc can prevent another unit over a hundred miles away from moving? We can't even do that today in RL with fancy radar and GPS crap.
4. absence of scripting. Surely there can be some form of this, right?
5. overpowered spies bribing entire cities to join them for cheap.
6. underpowered spies which are only useful for 3 operations which cost a king's ransom
7. public works. I prefer workers, its a staple of the Civ series and should stay in.
8. hardcoding of 4 eras. Why?
9. Sea cities, space cities. Mod them in if you want, but this is a civ game, not some nancy boy sci fi game.
10. the old howitzer/engineer army
11. To irrigate or to mine. Surely there can be something else to do with the land that would be feasible for the ai?