{The List-} Movement, supply, etc.

[wrylachlan]

Originally posted by Spiffor
I see the point you raise when you say "raising costs will lower the overall amount of units". This is clear.
I don't see your point when you relate the unit's power and quantity of units.
I could see your point if you were advocating to raise the power exponentially of past-bronze unit (such as giving 4 attack to the swordsman, 6 to the knight, 10 to the cavalry etc.).

But a flat stat raise would have no effect whatsoever: the raised attack stats would be simply cancelled on the raised defense stats. Don't forget battles are calculated as ratios. If an archer attacks a spearman, it will have half of a 2 (archer's attack) / 2 (spearman's defense) chance to win. If you raise all stats flatly, the archer will have half of a 4 (boosted archer attack) / 4 (boosted spearman's defense) chance to win.
See the difference between the two cases? No? That's because there is none. The archer has exactly as many chances to win as before.

I see. I should have been more clear. Yes, I'm talking about increasing both the power and cost relative to the previous unit. So if a unit is currently 1.5 times as powerful and costly as the unit before it, I'm suggesting making it 2x. And yes this is an exponential increase, which makes sense since your economy increases essentially exponentially.

[Spiffor]

Oh OK. Then your point is very valid. I support it

[wrylachlan]

Another suggestion for limiting the amount of troops is to increase the upkeep the older the unit is (you can think of it as the cost of spare parts going up because they don't make them anymore). That would cause the AI to disband units if it couldn't afford to upgrade them, especially in peace-time.

Obviously this would involve careful balancing, but how many times have I had cavalry attacking my Mech Infantry? The AI would be much better served disbanding them and pooling the gold to buy a single tank.

In general, anything that encourages the AI to disband 2 earlier units to get the gold to purchase 1 new unit, will help with the total units in the end game problem.

[DarkSlayer]

Having old units is a part of the game. It should be cheaper to create and maintain old units, and that would be a good reflection of real world conditions too.

Reducing the number of units... It is actually the early days that is the problem, because you are never able to build an "Roman army" that can conquer as it did. It is both strategic and economic silly to do it in todays Civ.

It should be easily to create an large army fast.
The quality of the army should base itself upon the spending.
Maintaince of the army should be noticable.
When no money is left - Then the units disband itself based upon Patriotism/loyaly.

But then you need tools to maintain large number of units. But then battles will be more army focused, the need for eliminating THE army.

[wrylachlan]

I think this "total number of units" thing deserves its own thread so that we don't continue to threadjack the movement supply thread. So I'm about to start one...

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by wrylachlan
I see. I should have been more clear. Yes, I'm talking about increasing both the power and cost relative to the previous unit. So if a unit is currently 1.5 times as powerful and costly as the unit before it, I'm suggesting making it 2x. And yes this is an exponential increase, which makes sense since your economy increases essentially exponentially.

Ok, I was under the same misunderstanding as Spiffor. But still, isn't this just a technical issue (technology should be more important in war than it is now), not a conceptual issue (combat should involve many/few units).

[keybounce]

Ok, this is supposed to be movement and supply. I'm talking movement, supply, and combat here; I can't really seperate combat out.

My thoughts on the topics of movement and combat, after reading discussions in several threads, including some archived topics.

First, I've never played CTP. I've never seen stacked combat. I have seen the concept of Armies in C3C, and I like them -- the combining of units into something that is more powerful because it fights as a unit. I strongly dislike the idea of "Two massive opposing armies fight in column formation, one at a time, and cannot ever use any other formation". I'm very used to hex based war games where you fight stack vs stack, with bonuses for cutting off supply, etc. As long as C3C has to see itself as a wargame where units improve/change over time, that's what I'd like to see.

Second, someone mentioned the idea of supply points, with units having full mobility over their supply range. I like this. Combine this with ZOC, and I seriously thing you've got the movement and time problem of the scale solved.

I know people have complained about railroads. I don't know the details of these complaints; I'm too new to the board. From what little I've seen, the complaint is about the tedium of building them everywhere because of the commerce bonus, and the need to keep up. There is a simple solution to this -- roads extend supply lines a certain distance; railroads extend supply lines even farther. (Similarly, harbors extend supply over explored water). Mod makers can indicate the length of roads (10? 20?), rail (256? That's "infinite"), and harbors (10? 35? Depending on ships? Hmm... I like that. Harbors enable shipping supply; the ships built determine it's length.) Suddenly, you aren't building them everywhere; you only build them into areas where you need to go.

So how do you attack, or explore, when you have supplyline based movement? Well, how about a "Portable Supply Depot", a unit that would have a movement point allowence, that could move and bring combat units with it. Maybe it would have no supply needed; maybe it would have extended supplable range. Or explorer units, units that have a movement point allowence, with no supply need.

This doesn't do anything for naval movement, though.

The idea of a ZOC is needed to keep some limit on enemy units as you advance. With ZOCs, you can cut off enemy supply lines, restrict the movement of enemy troops, suround them, and attack with cut off supply for a big advantage.

This actually solves the "Massive stacks overrun everything" problem. If player A relies on a single massive stack, while player B has a line of units, then B's units will be able to pass right by A's stack, and A, since each unit cannot attack more than once, has to break that stack apart to fight, and (if B has done the job right with ZOC and supply), will not be able to attack all of B's units. In order to stop that massive attack line, A has to use a defensive line, not a stack; by having ZOC's, you do not need units every space and every diagonal (although hexes would help here, as then you only have 6 adjacents to defend instead of 8 adjacents).

[Incidently, while reading more topics/threads, and a lot more pages, I've seen a few posts from Wrylachlan that I really like. Are you an SPI board game vet?]

Combat, and stacks. Anyone else remember the PPG (or was it the PGG) system? In a nutshell, you had a combat result which indicated the total number of unit steps (two steps per full strength unit, hey -- I'll get back to that) or hexes that you had to retreat.

*** Retreat ***

Attacking units results in retreats; or, if that unit has a "do not retreat, hold your position" order (not the same as fortification -- an attacker can have a "do not retreat, take that hill no matter what" order), they will fight it out.

The current system doesn't have enough retreating, nor anyway to say "Don't retreat".

== Basically, there needs to be some way to indicate how quickly a unit will retreat when it's losing.

*** Unit steps ***

A unit that has taken damage still has full offensive and defensive ability, just less duration. How about some sort of "This unit is damamged, and fights weaker"?

I mention this (step losses and retreats) because I saw a post that said "attacking with stacks should result in either one stack being eliminated, the other stack being eliminated, or both stacks losing units". Partial retreat is also possible.


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Years ago, in the days of the Atari 800, there was a war game with an interesting twist. You gave your units orders -- they did not move during the order phase. You took as much time as you needed; the AI plotted its movement orders at the same time that you were ordering your units. Eventually, you said "Go", and your units did your orders.

Fans of Diplomacy will recognize this idea -- in Civ3/Civ4 terms, on the simultanious turn, everyone gives orders to their units. After everyone is done giving orders, only then do the units move. Attempting to give a movement order past visual range has potential problems/unexpected fights/etc. Your units can target not only hexes, but also enemy units (so they will follow and engage); "patrol" is now explicitly target enemy units that come into . This also does a great deal of solving of supply vs movement -- units can have a large movement allowence, but without spotters or visual help, they can't afford to move large distances into unknown/enemy territory (but moving around the inside of your own territory isn't a problem).

This also solves the "simultanious" question/problem.


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Simultaneous movement, movement based combat, etc:

Traditional war games were based on a movement phase, followed by a combat phase. When you had stacks of units attacking, they would attack whole enemy stacks, not individual units. You could get multiple attacking units/stacks to attack together.

SPI made one game, I belive it was "The Next War", where combat was a function of movement (like Civ-n), instead of being a seperate phase. But even here, you had modifiers and bonuses for having more units adjacent to the target, in every case EXCEPT for cities.

The point? If Civ is supposed to be a wargame, abstracted over time and tech improvements, then it needs to not pretend that no other wargames have been made, nor that there's nothing out there to learn from. How to handle movement and combat has been done in many ways -- move, then attack; attack, then move; two phases (move-move, attack-move, move-attack) only restricting no double attacks ("Green Fields Beyond", a WW1 tank game -- yes, WW one); everything simultaneous/plotted movement and attacks; sequential with bonuses to simulate aid. Civ happens to have ignored ALL of the history of wargames, and choosen the worst possible model.

[MrBaggins]

You should definitely give CTP2 (with an Apolyton mod like Cradle) a shot.

It offers a different view on Civ that adds, in my view, a lot.

Some of the statements you've made... like vision range being capped at 1... terrain, rail, road and sea movement being set at X... just don't exist with CTP. You can mod pretty much* EVERYTHING.

If you wished, you could implement a supply system (and pretty much any other part of a WWI battle) in SLIC (the built in language.) Of course, now they released the source code, we can do pretty much anything we choose with the engine, as well as fixing the stuff that Activision didn't have time for.

CTP has a bad rep, and its not perfect, but it certainly has features and a flexibility about it that, in some ways, make it the best.

As for "Civ" being a wargame... its not. Civ is an abstract alternate history. Combat is part of that... but there is a danger in concentrating too much on it, and losing focus on the "whole Civ" part of the game.

* and if you can't now, you will be able to soon

[Rogerdude]

I don't know if this was mentioned before, as I don't have time to read entire threads, but WEATHER should be implemented. We'd have clouds, rains, storms, hurricanes, snows, draught....
I imagine a 3D globe with great zooming capabilites, with the clouds hovering in realistic patterns.

If I go further, there should be seasons, a day/night cycle... but I don't know how could this come to peace with the current time system (leaps of 50-40 years).

[lajzar]

Weather is probably one of the worst things you could implement given the timescales. Given that each turn is between 1 and 50 years, depending on era, I think the attacker could possibly find a fair weather day to choose his attack.

Day/night cycles would be equally ridiculous on this scale.

You didn't mean to post this in the bad ideas thread did you?

[MrBaggins]

/me laughs

Yeah... lets have a day/night cycle... have the screen all black for night, and move things around in the dark.

/me laughs some more

[Rogerdude]

* MrBaggins laughs

Come on, that's cheap. There are other games that picture such cycles, and the screen doesn't go dark.


Of course I do realize that my proposals are not in accordance with the current time system. But what if they would change that ?

I mean, the last thing I want would be turning Civ into a RTS. But, what if instead of turns we would have a realistic time scale !
Let's say hours, or days, I don't know.

Let's say movement would require a certain number of time units depending of unit, terrain and environement characteristics.

Improvement building should also be in relation to these factors - time units, production capabilites, and, why not, weather.

How would you cope without turns, then ? Simple, advance the time until the next event that requires human decision occurs.

At any moment of the game, time could be stopped, but you could advance until something happens.
Let's say you just ordered your first warrior. In the classic Civ, you would click End of Turn for 5-10 times until is built. In this concept, you would advance the time, and you would see time/night cycles, clouds passing over, and of course you could halt at any moment to consult advisors and tune your economic settings.

Since there have been cries for some changes in the concept, this is what I came up with.

[Fosse]

A lot of ideas in the last few posts have focused on making Civ 4 more of a war game, and that just doesn't seem like the right direction to take the game.

In many ways, paying increased attention to supply lines and so forth will increase the war game portion of the game, which is fine so long as it does not make combat become the game. Civ is NOT supposed to be a wargame. It is a terrible war game, and it should never be a wargame. It's bigger than that, and too much focus on any one element ruins the big picture.



keybounce, you missed a critical point about railroads. It's true that many dislike them because of the commerce bonus that makes us need to build them everywhere, yes. But you left out the other killer: Infinite movement. Tactical and strategic considerations are instantly reduced to zero. "Invasion in the west? All of my units are in the east? No problem, I'll teleport my army! The day is saved!"

Even getting rid of infinite movement and the combat bonus will not fix rails. Any movement increase will justify building rails in every tile (and the AI will), so the best empire will be the 100% railed empire UNLESS there is a penalty for rails. Perhaps letting the enemy take advantage of your rail system again would help, but some sort of upkeep cost MUST be added to fix rails and roads. There is no other way about it.

As for reducing the time scale to days or hours... Ugh. Playing the modern age at 1 year per turn takes long enough. I'm not in the mood for a 5000 turn game. Scenarios, let turns be one minute, but for the epic game leave it as is.

And weather.... why? How would that help the game? If you tell me that adding atmosphere is that important, I'll tell you that the CPU time adding that atmosphere is better spent elsewhere.

[Bleyn]

I can think of two ways that weather related effects could be added to the game, and not be inappropriate or silly based on time scales.

One, and a form I will only mention slightly as it is really not related to this thread. That is the idea they used in SMAC with weather effects on terrain and terraforming.

The second is something that has been mentioned in relation to naval travel. Ocean winds and currents. Have lines of wind flow and current, that mostly stay the same from turn to turn. Maybe the occasional shift in the strength or position of a wind/water current. And its one that could make the naval part of the game more interesting and realistic. The trade winds and doldrums were very important to sailors for centuries. Even the name trade winds tells you how important those flows were. Everyone knew that to ply the triangle trade route with any speed, you had to catch the trade winds. Indeed the winds themselves probably shaped the triangle trade as much as the commodities traded.

Give sailing ships a base movement for no winds or current(or moving against them), and multiplication factors for moving with. Work with nature and your ship might move three squares for a movement point. Work against it and only get one for one. Sort of like roads in the ocean, which is really what they were. And is a large part of why it was so hard for sailors to abandon the sailing ship even after the steam engine and screw propellers had sounded their death knoll.

Ocean exploration and exploitation would become more challenging. Suddenly one would want to hunt for the currents and the winds. Find the right course and that caravel that you daren't let end in mid-ocean will sail to safety with ease. Pick the wrong course and watch the ship go down.

[Fosse]

That's all well and good, but from what I understood previous talks of weather on this page were along the lines of, "It's snowing this turn in Russia, but in Rome it's sunny." Such changing weather would be silly on Civ's scale, and a waste of resources.

SMAC models CLIMATE, when it talks about rainy or moist squares. Climate is already modeled by simply having a terrain type. Desert terrain has a more arid climate, for example, than does grassland.



Regarding sea lanes and trade winds:
I wouldn't be against having a handful of such "ocean roads" in each map, and to rivers (which are, of course, navigable ) having a current direction. The numbers Bleyn came up with might be a big too big for my tastes, but that idea is fine. I would favor maybe a 50% bonus for traveling "with nature."

I would be against having the currents or winds change, even the slightest amounts, from turn to turn. I shouldn't have to keep track of how many mph the Gulf Stream averages is in any given year.