Civ 4-idea TACTICAL BATTLES like in MOO2

[Eagle Scream]

Having THE OPTION to actually fight out the battles like you did in Master of Orion 2, where it takes you to the combat screen (if you wish) where you would start off on the terrain you were on (so mountains on one side, plains on the other etc) and battle it out (either turn vs turn, or real time (for the battles only) like in AOE2). Again just an idea though having the option to actually fight all your battles I think would be an awesome addition to Civ 4 as it would give you more control then just moving a unit into a space controlled by an enemy unit and having the computer figure out who wins

[Harry Tuttle]

Interesting. Sort of like in the game Legion, where you can control your troops, place them, and they attack and defend based on their abilities and commands.

[realpolitic]

I'm not familiar with MOO2, but I like the battles in ctp2. Often I'll battle until I get maximum advantage, then retreat, with reinforcements protecting me from counterattack.

[LDiCesare]

Master Of Orion (and Master of Magic) tactical battle was interesting because you built your ships yourself and equipped them with weapons that you would want to use in a certain way. It was interesting for instance to combine a warp dissipator ship with a long range ship or regenerating tank because they could act as a team. There were many tacitcal options due to special ship equipments (black hole generators, self healing ships, finite number of missiles, ion stream projectors, warp dissipator, increased range, and I may forget some of them). The same in MoM, where you could equip heroes with weapons and cast spells during the battle.
I Civ, there is no such thing. In order for tactical battles to have any kind of interest, they would have to provide the same range of options and involvement as MoO and MoM offered. I can't see such a thing happening unless you make each battle a real wargame, which means the game would last forever. So I think it should definitely be left out of Civ IV, and coding effort better spent elsewhere.
CtP2 had a nice, if simple, system. Unfortunately, the retreat option was somewhat broken because the dumb ai never used it.

[Trifna]

I think that in a game as Civ, we'd be better off with strategy being automatically included in the battle automatically.

Ex:
- Better odds if you attack ONE enemy units with many of your units in a single turn
- Better odds when you attack ONE enemy units from different sides
- Worst odds if you fight in a dense forrest with tanks/legions/etc (legions were comparatively not very adapted to forrest. 15 000 men lost against the Germanic tribes like that... Augustus was not happy)
- Different situation in a valley / on the other side of a river (-> bridge/boat crossing) / defending a hilltop

[realpolitic]

If you implement modularity, don't do it until you've gone down the tech tree, somewhat. Modularity is a concept that didn't originate, or at least wasn't popular in the stone age. Also, I think the early game should be simple, from the standpoint of teaching newbies the game, especially as Soren is so dead set on it.

[Trifna]

What do you mean by "modularity"?
And yes, I agree that the advancement of the civilization matters.

[Maquiladora]

Originally posted by LDiCesare
CtP2 had a nice, if simple, system. Unfortunately, the retreat option was somewhat broken because the dumb ai never used it.

It wasnt that dumb, because the AI mostly didnt start any battle unless it thought it had a good chance of winning. It was broken because it was too effective for the human to retreat and come back with a better attack later, when they should really have been totally slaughtered for going in blind the first time.

[hexagonian]

...and the player could simply choose not to use it, knowing full well that the AI was incapable of using it.

Self-control...

[Maquiladora]

It was kind of pointless anyway since you could send in one obsolete unit to scout whats inside first, so you never even needed retreat.

I'm not sure how you'd get around that, except for limiting the battleview to when a certain number of units initiate the battle.

[LDiCesare]

I agree that not using the retreat option was something easy to do, and I always did so. Anyway, it's probably rather hard to code a retreat option that works well for the ai, and it's not that useful imo.