The List - Combat

[lajzar]

Bashing it? I thought I was praising it.

[Awsric Armitage]

Congratulations! You have just redescribed the basic fortify command.

Took that as being in a sarcastic tone meaning that you thought there was little worth to the following explanations of no attacking out of the tile but bonus to offensive attack if someone enters the tile. In other words instead of a fortify command it is an ambush command giving offensive attack initiative and invisiblity to the ambushers while staying in the ambush position.


If I mis-understood your tone and the results of the rest of the post then I am sorry for misunderstanding your intentions.

Yes, I agree that subs should act in the same manner.

[Kramsib]

Ok, let's talk about the Ambush concept.

Well, the idea is taken from Colonization and the strategic point is that as the Royal forces are stronger than the Continental Army, the units in your colonies have to take advantage of the terrain.

In Colonization, the ambush bonus is justified because Royal forces don't know the terrain as well as the colonists. This idea inspired me to limit ambush bonus only to player's territory. But here is a problem, if the enemy conquers one of your cities you cannot use ambush bonus to recover it, due to when a city is conquered the adjacent tiles are part of the enemy's territory. This fact prevent "Civ II Partizans" from working, in order words, I would like to combine ambush bonus with resisting guerrilla units rising after an invasion. This rising units should use their ambush bonus to make the invasion more difficult.

If the battle takes place in the defender's tile, Why give bonus for the starting tile?, it is easy, the unit who carry out the ambush, use the starting tile to hide, so, the better hiding properties the tile have, the higher bonus should be given. Attacking a grassland from a hill should have an attack bonus, higher than attack a grassland from another grassland. In "Shogun Total War" your armies were more powerful attacking a plain from a higher position.

Of course, invisibility is a good and an essential concept for an ambush. In Colonization your units weren't invisible but the ambush bonus worked anyway, but we should think more about it.

An ambush is based on surprise factor. You have to move stealthily, hidden by the trees of a forest or by the mountains.

So I am thinking about turning some units in an ambush mode, all the units with ambush mode on receiv ambush bonus but they have the following peculiarities:

1º. Stealth: Stacks, armies and noisy machines of war should not be able to be turned on ambush mode. Ambushes are carried out by small groups of guerrillas.

2º. Mobility: With ambush mode activated, your unit cannot use roads so you lose mobility bonus from them. Your mounted units have to go slower (their extra mobility is reduced to the same as feet units).

3º. Invisibility: Is only possible in forests, jungles, hills, mountains, ... When ambush mode is activated your units get invisibility on these terrain types but they are visible and vulnerable in plains, grasslands, ...

4º. Extra vulnerability: your units are vulnerable when discovered. If they are discovered your units lose defensive bonus.

[Awsric Armitage]

In Colonization, the ambush bonus is justified because Royal forces don't know the terrain as well as the colonists. This idea inspired me to limit ambush bonus only to player's territory. But here is a problem, if the enemy conquers one of your cities you cannot use ambush bonus to recover it, due to when a city is conquered the adjacent tiles are part of the enemy's territory. This fact prevent "Civ II Partizans" from working, in order words, I would like to combine ambush bonus with resisting guerrilla units rising after an invasion. This rising units should use their ambush bonus to make the invasion more difficult.

If you want partisan units to form from taking cities there is a way to accomplish this and have it also be linked to cultural influence which should symbolize the amount of local resistance to the changes. The initial cities cultural influence is used as a base line to determine how many partisan units are formed by the cities capture to join in local resistance. This makes sense as people culturally tied to the owners previous regime and culture resist intial city taking and can retake cities not garissoned with strong defenders as higher culture total gives more partisans units.

Second part, ambushes are static non-moving things not something that is a mode for units to enter into and have automatic surprise and ambush on every other unit as they move. An ambush is set in a certain tile and if sprung you get the bonus if not you can decide to remain hidden in ambush waiting for another victim to pass by or move cancelling the ambush status.

Also I do not think you are considering range into your ambush concepts. Two tiles of space, the one the ambushers occupy and the one the ambushies occupy is a very large space. Ambushes are smaller more localized events not grand ZOC type force projections over several tiles surrounding the hidden ambushers giving the ambushers an inherent mobility and adaptability that is not realistic. If the exact cirmcumstances do not occur that the ambush was set to take advantage of it will definately not be as powerful in effect if possible at all.

[Kramsib]

Another Idea from the Spanish Forum, from Alfonso.

"GET THE SUIT".

When a unit defeats another unit (which is in the same evolutive line), it has a chance to get its "suit".

e.g. If a warrior defeats a swordsman, and the warrior becomes veteran, it also gets swordsman status.

If a rider defeats a knight, and the rider becomes veteran, it also gets knigh status.

And so on, ...

NOTE: This ability only works until Nationalism is achieved.

[lajzar]

The get the suit idea is barmy. In my humble opinion.

Armour is supposed to 'die' in the process of protecting its wearer. That is why you should always buy a new bicycle helmet after having an accident. The internal structure is no longer good enough to protect you. Ditto with more ancient forms of armour.

Consider. You kill a knight wearing armour. The only way that will happen in the vast majority of cases is to cut open the suit somehow. You wanna wear a suit that has demonstrably failed to protect its wearer when new, and now has a big hole in it? You're braver than I am.

Now certainly, after any battle, a small amount of useable weaponry and armour can be scavenged. But this is never enough to even begin to equip an army.

A larger amount of material can be scavenged and later reforged into new arms and armour (or ploughshares...). But this is dependant n your own technology base. In effect, you still have to build the unit. That metal only has value as scrap in almost all cases.

Experience is one thing. Picking up the equipment from defeated enemies is another. Broken arrow, bent shield.

[Gen.Dragolen]

Interesting ideas continue to trickle in...

After having skimmed the latest additions, it occurs to me that we really need to define the scale of the units in the game. This would solve a couple of issues like stacking and the complexity of the logistics model.

From my perspective, it seems that the game in it's default form is based on division level units, hence the idea that it should be a strategic and relatively abstract thing. Having said that, this means that you are looking at units of roughly 10,000 bodies. This corresponds to about the maximum effective units size for basing your logistical and deployment decisions. And it has been a historically consistent grouping since ancient times. The Pharaohs had armies of 100,000 to 120,000 men when they campaigned around 1000 BC. The Roman Legions were about 10,000 men each, and even Sun Tzu's Armies had similar large groupings. Fast forward to WWI and WWII, and again divisions were roughly about 10,000 especially when you consider the logistics tail for Armour units and Aircraft.

Now this leads to the option of keeping smaller units that are cheaper to maintain, but much weaker in combat, much like many countries do. That implies Regiments and Battalions with reduced strengths. Add in the ability to combine these sub parts into a Division and you are starting to get somewhere useful. This would suggest allowing a Division to behave like an Army unit in the current game. With a stacking limit of say 12 divisions of all units in a given square (less for rough terrain like mountains and swamps) and you have something workable fof the developers to build into the game.

However, it means that you will need some better differentiation of units values. Having such close values for units like 1.2.1 and 3.2.1 makes it hard for you to reproduce how effective certain organizations are: putting your spearmen infront of your archers and having cavalry to protect your flanks. And it doesn't do anything for the effects of fortification or terrain. We need to improve the effects of these things to make it a more significant to the strategy you employ.

To that end, we really need more terrain types, and some details like river fords, mountain passes, and forests that make it impossible to form up cohesive units. Most battles take place at terrain features that give a decided advantage to one side or the other. Since we don't want to go down to a CTP style battle arena, then we need to have some more unit options for their offensive and defensive status. From a basic posted sentries, down to having dug in with prepared obstacles to mobile warfare.

This leads to the potential for more advances in Tactics and Organization to be added to the Tech Tree. In ancient times, units needed to form up in open ground to get the best results from their tactics and technology. If you were caught on the move, then you were likely going to get into the ambush scenario. Smaller units can fight effectively in certain types of terrain where larger units would be useless. This could mean that certain units would not be able to fortify properly and shouldn't be able to.

Get into modern times and mechanized units would not suffer any deficit in defensive strength for being attacked when on the move. Most training involves meeting the enemy while on the move. Again there are openings for tactical advances and technologies that allow improved communications and control which should improve a units performance in the field. The German Panzer Divisions usually had fewer and poorer quality tanks at the start of WWII, yet they rolled over superior French armour with ease, mainly because they had radios in each tank and better field control systems where as the French tanks were not equiped with radios and the C&C structure couldn't react quickly. Gotta love der Blitzkrieg!

As for Lajzar's idea of using captured equipment, it's not a bad idea. Not sure how to use it with a strategic level combat system though. It seems to me that you might get a bonus to production for a similar unit type for a nearby unit under construction, kinda like chopping a forest. Sun Tzu recommended adding captured troops who were willing to fight in a 3 of your own to 1 volunteer to keep units up to strength when on a long campaign. The Germans made excellent use of old Czech and Russian equipment to suppliment their meager production for their mechanized units.

But like I said, this is all dependent on what scale you want to have the units. If you want a division level structure, you can add the combined arms by making divisions like an army and allow divisions to stack into an army, and then prevent the Stack o' Death by adding a stacking limit that is partially dependant on the terrain.


D.

[ThePlagueRat]

Originally posted by Kramsib
But here is a problem, if the enemy conquers one of your cities you cannot use ambush bonus to recover it, due to when a city is conquered the adjacent tiles are part of the enemy's territory.

One way to solve that problem is by introducing annexations rather than the single city capture-and-get, which is the current system. To annex one or several occupied cities you have to make the deal with the owner and offer them a peace treaty. If they agree to the treaty, they will have to leave you half of the occupied cities (perhaps even 2/3 or whatever balances out best) or they will pay indemneties which can be a tech or gold, and then reduce it to 1/3 of occupied cities... then you will get owner status and may start using them to production, etc. Or if you want you can occupy all their cities and then they will be totally annexed, but that should leave a big scar in your reputation.

This way cities, forts and colonies will be used at keypoints during the war. In real wars, the objective was either to just run in and destroy the enemy forces, or to control as many keypoints as possible while advancing.

[edit]
An occupied city could then be used as a supply cache for the advancing troops, as well as providing defensive bonus to infantry units, but the cannot be used to anyhing else until annexed by treaty. This will be more realistic...


Ok, outside the occupied city, RR and roads would have to be functional to the invader once their tiles have been "occupied". Think about the eastern front during WW2... Germany could use RR in Soviet after the territory was under control, therefore partisans blew it up and made a run for it.

There could also be new supply rules in "occupied" territory, where certain units are favorised. (such as partisans, guerillas, etc.) To get "occupied" status you could simply move into a tile and control it for say... one round. That could be hard for a fast and weak unit, so partisans could rather pillage it, thus break up the invaded infrastr. instead of trying to occupy it. Would that be a nice feature ?

[Xorbon]

Somebody (I can't remember who - I'm too lazy to look back ) made a passing mention of (re)introducing firepower and armor as unit stats. I'd like to endorse that idea. Firepower would be the (base) amount of damage a unit does when it wins a round of combat, while armor would reduce damage taken in combat. A unit's 'effective firepower' would therefore be its firepower minus its opponent's armor. Then, a unit's 'effective hit points' would be its remaining hit points divided by its opponent's effective firepower.

The way I envision it, attack/defense strengths would increase through the ages roughly the way they do now. Hit points would remain constant for most units thoughout the game, and would vary mainly by experience level (as it is in Civ 3). However, hit points would be much higher than they are now (being in the tens instead of single digits) to take into account the addition of the firepower stat. Firepower and armor would increase at roughly the same rate as each other as technology advances.

The 'effective hit points' and 'effective firepower' for units from the same era would stay roughly constant for each age. However, more advanced units would have a high effective firepower against more primitive units; and less advanced units would have a low effective firepower against the more modern units. For instance, firepower, armor, and hit points could be balanced so that tanks and infantry would have 5 or 6 effective hit points when going against each other. Meanwhile, in a tank vs. spearman battle, the tank could have 10+ effective hit points, while the spearman could just have a couple of effective hit points by balancing firepower and armor.

[Addled Platypus]

Formations

The concept from risk could prove interesting?

different formations for attack and defend


What say thou

[Xorbon]

Risk? You mean moving giant piles of units around the game board to conquer the world?

Or are we talking about a different game of Risk here?

[H Tower]

Solver, shouldn't you be collating ideas in the first post?

[grap1705]

The Civ2 and Civ3 military handling is indeed very very poor. A definite drawback in a game where the poor diplomacy gets you so easily at war. A major disappointment to me and part of my opinion that Civ3 has a few interesting concepts, but is altogether badly developped.

- I know there is another thread for this, and I'll post my message on this part there also, but this issue is hard to keep apart from other military aspects: Armies of Civ3 are an improvement over Civ2, but: they give a tremendous and unfair advantage over non armied units or less advanced civilization, while armies have always existed and it is completely unrealistic to link their existence to the appearance of some Hero or the building of some late marvel. CTP2 seems near to perfect regarding the ability to assemble and fight in armies, with specialized units for front lines, back lines, and flanking units. Civ4 developpers: please just play CTP2 and get inspired.

- Unlimited number of units on any square is definitely unrealistic. I like the idea of limiting the number of units according to the landscape. Easier indeed to stack units in a plain than on a mountain. And I think the 12 unit limit of CTP2 is adequate. In that respect, a city, being already stuffed with citizens and buildings, should have a reduced unit hosting capacity.

- wouldn't it be necessary to introduce altitude location concept in unit positionning?
. ground is straightforward
. low altitude makes for air units that can bomb with relative acuracy but can be gunned at by infantry or even archmen
. high altitude makes for less acurate bombing but can only be hit by missiles, SAM or flak like units or defense improvments
. low depth allows submarines to attack ships, but also be attacked
. high depth allows submarines to go unnoticed.
In this respect, if you have a unit limit of 12 for instance for a plain square, you can still have low altitude air units that can give increased attacking power or defense abilities, and as well have high altitude units, participating or not in the fight, if fight there is.

With such a concept, of course, it would make sense that allied civs can have units on a common square or in an allied city. But it would also make sense that non allied civs, or even warring ones, be able to have units on a same square, if at different altitudes. Option should then be given to attack if within reach or to just let go, and same for the AI depending on its mood and evaluation of the local tactical situation. For display purposes, there would be need to be able to represent such melting pot of units: may be by showing units of the various civs close to different angles of the squares (or hexes) rather than always centered. That would make things more realistic.

- The blocking zone of control idea of civ2 has been abandoned and that is good for it wasn’t quite realistic. Civ3 does better but would do even better if the ZOC didn’t just result in a little shooting on the way, close to harmless in most cases. In fact, when an unallowed unit tries to pass by, we should be offered the choice to let it go, be content with the actual little bombing, or engage into full battle. In such case, all units with attacking capacity should be able to have ZOC ability, but if we choose to engage in full battle (and win it), only those with enough moving points can come back to their original position (a protecting fortress for instance, rather than stay exposed and vulnerable given that attacking units often have low defensive abilities...)

[Awsric Armitage]

. low altitude makes for air units that can bomb with relative acuracy but can be gunned at by infantry or even archmen
. high altitude makes for less acurate bombing but can only be hit by missiles, SAM or flak like units or defense improvments

Also for considering air attack effectiveness is terrain height flight restrictions. Mountains should greatly reduce the ability to bombard from the air at lower altitudes for fised wing aircraft because of the limited attack approach and egress.

[Addled Platypus]

Risk

The computer version
If you happen to see the game in a cheap pile some where, pick it up and you will be enlightended