The List - Combat

[Mad Bomber]

Originally posted by Trifna
1- About tanks and such units, I would not see them as going as well in a dense forest as in a plain. In Civ though, a forest tile is not by default a dense forest. I never read about how it is to drive a tank though.

Tank warfare would be more difficult in a forest to be sure but not impossible as in a jungle. Most forests have natural lanes large enough to be able to drive a tank through and with the German Heavy tanks of WWII you could actually remove most of the trees in your path.

2- I do not expect CiV to have modifiers for every single terrain and every single unit since Civ always have been a pretty general game. I would rather expect a few general modifiers.

Not for every unit but the units can be grouped together into 4-5 groups and terrain could have modifiers for those groups. For example the types of units could be:

Offensive foot units
Defensive foot units
Horse units
Armored units
Bombardment units

Not really much of a change as CIV 3 has most of these distinctions already in place. Unit abilities could also be added to fine tune the combat system (pikes +10% def against horses, Aegis and Mobile SAM systems +50% defense against missle attacks)

[Trifna]

Battles: the effect of tech

This is not really complete, but here's what is done until now. It is simply a little list of battles that were fought between opponents having very different levels of technology. It permits to see the effect, and to which extent it changed something. Of course, it also shows in which situations weaker tech units won and at which cost. It is coming from http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...0&pagenumber=6 Here is what was done until then:





Upgrade of what I found in Britannica encyclopedia. What is not in what I said but would have been interesting simply are things I didn't found in Britannica (such as weapons used). Infos that have an asterisk (*) next to it are from people on the forum.


-Glorious victories through Superior Technology, Training, Organization, or Industrial Base

Thermopylae
August, 480 BC
Greek (300 Spartans, their helots and 1100 Beotians) vs Persians
Greek lost: all
Persians: considerable losses

Notice: Persians won but it was a good resistance for the Greeks. The troops I named here (Greeks) are what was used to let all the others escape.


Salamis
480 BC
Persians (800 galleys) vs Greeks (370 triremes)
Persians lost: 300 galleys
Greek lost: 40 triremes

Notice: Greek lured Persians in the narrow waters of the strait of Salamis where the massed Persians ships had difficulty maneuvering.


Operation Desert Storm (Iraq)*
1990-1991
USA (1848 tanks + air power) vs Iraq (4230 tanks)
USA troops: Abrams M1, M1A1 and M1A1(HA)
Iraq troops: 50 T-72, 1600 T-62, 700 T-54 (Soviet tanks)
USA lost: 9 permanent lost, 9 had to be repaired, no casualty within crewmen
Iraqi lost: 4000 tanks

Notice: USA losts are mostly due to mines. On average, an Abram outranged an Iraqi tank by about 1000 meters.
My comment: Informations are not complete. Anti-air, others? What's about air power?
Sources:

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/land/m1.htm

http://www.desert-storm.com/War/

-Ruinous defeats in spite of Superior Technology, Training, Organization, or Industrial Base

Isandhdlwana
January 22nd-23rd, 1879
Zulu (20 000 men) vs British (1700 men)
Zulu lost: 3000 to 4000
British lost: 1580

Notice: Zulu advanced unnoticed. A part of them that was willing to die for the others was on a drug making them feel invincible.
My comment: This is partly because they attacked all at the same time (stack unit someone? )


Battle of Adwa
March 1st, 1896
Italy (14 500 men) vs Ethiopia (100 000 men)
Italian lost (killed, wounded or captured): 70%
Ethiopian lost: not said

Notice: Italian columns were disorganized and Italians lack adequates maps of the area. Part of the Italian losts are due to a retreat in difficult terrain, harrassed by hostile population.
My comment: Seems partly due to terrain and number of men all there at same time (almost 1:7 ratio)


Dien Bein Phu
November 20th* to May 7th, 1954
France (15 709 men*) vs VietMinh (socialists Viets) (40 000 men)
France troops*: tanks, artillery and air support
VietMinh troops*: guns (light to heavy), anti-air, mortars
France lost*: 1800 killed, 5000 wounded
VietMinh*: 8 000 to 12 000 killed, 15 000 to 30 000 wounded


Notice: French (fortified) taken by surprise. Roads were cut so troops and supplies could only come by air. VietMinh were popularly supported (dunno if it changes anything). Heavy artillery broke French lines.
My comment: I guess 40 000 men is alot, espescially if they had the jungle advantage where French and American were seriously not trained to.


Little Bighorn
June 25th, 1876
USA vs Amerindians (cleary overwhelming Americans)
American troops: cavalry
American lost: more than 200 (they only talk of Custer's 7th cavalry who was completely vanquished)

Notice: Part of the cavalry was surprised to see some encampment where they weren't thought to be and it caused some problems to the tactic. Unaware about it, the other part of cavalry arrived alone with the group they were supposed to attack. Lost of strtegic edge that they thought they would have (river). Amerindians were alerted of Custer's attack because of other attacks they already had (Custer is the one that was surprised to see some troops where he didn't thaught). Other than Custer's 7th cavalry, the other retreated (they had attacked before him).
My comment: Here again we see a common factor: more troops at the same place. Also terrain advantage/disadvantage that got a place.


Spartacus
71 BC
Rome (8 legions=54 000 men*) vs Spartacus (ultimately, Spartacus had at least 90 000 men)
Spartacus lost: erm... alot including the 6000 crucified

Notice: They lost this battle (and died), but they also beated 2 consuls in 72 BC it is said. But I'd say they were the ones with more troops, and not the romans. 90 000... Not every consul has 50 000 men, no? Notice that not all slaves are combatants.*


Agincourt
October 25th, 1415
French (20 000 to 30 000 men) vs English (5900 men)
French troops: many of the troops were mounted knights in heavy armor
English troops: 900 men-at-arms and 5000 archers
French lost: 1500 knights and 4500 men-at-arms
English lost: less than 450 men

Notice: French unwisely chose a battlefield with a a narrow frontage of only about 1000 yards of open ground between the two woods, making large maneuvers almost impossible.



Similarity: more troops on the winner's side at the same battle at the same time. (stack unit someone? )
Not surprising, since one strategy is trying to catch the opponent's troops by little parts.

That's what I found. You guys should all look at getting this encyclopedia. Encarta is peanut compared to it. It's marvelous


About Napoleon in Russia, I read about this war and I know that troops were frozen (winter). Many died because they hadn't enough supplies or from frost. All this not helping morale to make things worst. I guess going from France to Russia in winter is a great change of temperature...

[trolluscaius]

like CTP2>>if we have 10 units in one fortress it'stupid they defend from a opposant'unit one by one ...

the visibility, situation (camouflage or unit in moutain by example) should be ameliorate

[bayraven]

any thought of adjusting city population when garrisons are in the city, or huge military units are drawn from the locals?

[bayraven]

Originally posted by bayraven
any thought of adjusting city population when garrisons are in the city, or huge military units are drawn from the locals?

[The diplomat]

Originally posted by bayraven
any thought of adjusting city population when garrisons are in the city, or huge military units are drawn from the locals?

Yes, I'd like to see a system like that. I would suggest making advanced units (swordsmen, cavalry etc.) cost 1 pop to build. Primitive units (warrior, spearmen) would cost no pop. This would mean that small cities could still have some defense, but larger cities could afford the better units. A city could regain a population point when you disband the unit.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

I have always felt that the demographic effects of war should be better simulated in some fashion, but to do what you are suggesting I feel would require a wholesale change to how a city's population is determined-either what each pop point represents OR perhaps by implementing an X.ab system for population measurement and, thus, having units cost not WHOLE pop points (the X), but incremements of pop points (the .ab)

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

[bayraven]

Would it cause other gaming problems to ditch the standard 'city digit' representation of population, and go with actual population stats per turn? Say the city had a population of 35,000 and you wanted to raise an infantry unit of 1000 men. When you have purchased or fabricated infantry weapons and armor for the 1000 recruits, they would train for an amount of time (boot camp). The city pop drops to 34,000 (plus whatever population growth the city would experience per turn) once the unit is deployed.
If it were to be a settler unit from a city of 200, the population would drop by whatever size settler contingent you send out. The new city would begin with the number of people in the settler party, less attrition from the journey.
This approach would also allow you to allocate people to the different factories or farms in governments below republic / democracy.

[lajzar]

Problem with simply taking population directly out as soldiers is that if you are going to go into that much detail, you'd also need to account for the fact that most armies (especially modern ones) have a huge amount of personnel tied up in support structure. Today, or each soldier in the field, 3 people are employed by the military in purely support roles.

Also, this model takes no account of the fact that armies traditionally employ only males as soldiers.

Anything that goes into breaking down population into numbers will either have some glaring anomalies like teh two I highlighted, or else be too complicated to be fun.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

You wouldn't need to go into too much detail-after all, it IS just a game-however, you could have a population model that does reflect the cost of war on the population! Thats all I am asking for!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

[Addled Platypus]

this might be to much, but WTH....

placing units in reserve??

[Fosse]

I don't think that having 1000 generic people move to an army is too bad... It's less abstract than "pop point" and not so focused as to be a headache.

I don't really understand why making an idea less abstract automatically forces making it extremely detailed and elaboratly modeled. Settlers can cost 10,000 "people," workers 5000, and ancient military units 1000. By the end of the game military units can cost as much as or more than workers or settlers.

[bayraven]

As the ages progress the 1000 war fighters WOULD require a total allocation of 3000 people to account for support personnel. When that unit suffers loss, the attack / defense value would drop proportional to the number of fighting men left alive. Decimated units could be amalgamated to form new units. That would address the problem of nearly destroyed units ‘healing’ themselves back to full strength.

Wouldn’t it make sense to have whatever level of industry you’ve acquired at the time produce the weaponry you take into the field? Your build queue wouldn’t reflect every factory you would need, but you could focus on some major areas; furniture, jewelry, munitions, wine, automobiles. This could provide your actual luxury and trade goods (vis-à-vis Colonization). During war time your auto plant could be co-opted to build tanks, and (this is my original point) sending 1000 (3000) boys to war reduces the number of hands you have for the factory and the farms. I would enjoy this level of micromanagement, but it could be toggled off to AI Advisors should the Player not want to make those decisions

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by Fosse
I don't think that having 1000 generic people move to an army is too bad... It's less abstract than "pop point" and not so focused as to be a headache.

I don't really understand why making an idea less abstract automatically forces making it extremely detailed and elaboratly modeled. Settlers can cost 10,000 "people," workers 5000, and ancient military units 1000. By the end of the game military units can cost as much as or more than workers or settlers.

I like this approach in general. The problem seems to me to be that if you get specific real values for population in the military then other game assumptions and models might break down. FE the players start to ask "Why doesn't my million-population modern city produce 1000x more than an ancient-era 10k person city. (1000x comes from 100x for population and at least 10x for efficiency)

Like I said, I'm for such an approach, but it has to be melded with the existing system carefully lest something be broken. And you're right, a "slippery slope" argument can always be uses spuriously to reject change.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Thats easy, Mark. As your population increases, the amount of food and shields needed to sustain them at basic happiness ALSO increases-largely in proportion to population growth. This means that, whilst your mega-city might be producing hundreds of shields/food every turn, a large percentage of these are required to represent the buying and selling of neccessary consumer goods. You could siphon much of this into your military and industrial capacity-of course-but only at the cost of your city's happiness.

Hope that makes sense !

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.