The Civ IV Combat System

[Proteus_MST]

Hm,
having an Anti Tank Promotion (of course not much, maybe 1-3 Steps with 15-20% increase each) wouldn´t be a bad step.
And it would even be realistic as Infantry against Tanks has much to do with training (especially true for WW2-Style battles)
The german Wehrmacht for example had a special booklet to train its soldiers in Anti Tank tactics, the so called "Panzerknackerfibel" which covered everything, from recognizing tank types and know their blind spots to tactics how you can use specialized and also makeshift weapons to take them out.
Here you can find some pages of the Panzerknackerfibel, as well as from some other manuals (like the Tiger and Pantherfibel). But it´s just an excerpt; I have the whole booklet somewhere on my Hard Disk, but I don´t know anymore, where I downloaded it from.

Ah, found a source,
this thread has links to all the Pages of the Panzerknackerfibel (look further down the thread, the postings from Claudio)

http://63.99.108.76/forums/index.php?showtopic=9314

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Proteus_MST
Hm,
having an Anti Tank Promotion (of course not much, maybe 1-3 Steps with 15-20% increase each) wouldn´t be a bad step.

I would be a good idea for a WWII mod... in mainstream CIV it won't get a place. If you have 3 stacking promotions for anti-tank (the first one is in, btw, it is called ambush), you need 3 stacking promotions for cover, pinch, etc. too. Too many promotions... the current system is so good because with few promotions it creates loads of possibilities.

DeepO

[Sirp]

Each round inflicts a fixed amount of damage. This damage is subtracted from the hitpoints, where hitpoints start at 100.

Do hitpoints in a battle always start at 100, or only if the unit is at full strength?

i.e. if I have a horse archer, normal strength 6.0, but it has been wounded half way, down to 3.0, does that mean that the horse archer's strength in a battle will be 3.0, with 100 hitpoints, or its strength in battle will be 3.0 AND it will only have 50 hitpoints?

-Sirp.

[Proteus_MST]

Hm I think it keeps track of you Hitpoints.
After all it has to do as your units heal over time (if you give them rest).
So I´d say, if your unit is at 50% strength prior to battle, it also starts the battle with 50% of its HP

[xxFlukexx]

Yeah, it keeps track of your hitpoints, you can see it in your combat log(ctr-tab then hit the combat log tab) whenever your injured unit gets into a fight.

We don't need an anti-tank promotion line, we need another helo to be on par with the modern armor. I guess you can just hit a tank with a stealth fighter then with your own modern tank or mech inf but that's hardly an effective counter.

I dunno why people are complaining about tanks rarely losing to spearman. You should be worried about not being able to kill cavalry(especially with pinch, and omg cossacks, don't expect to win many battles vs them) and modern armor being godlike in a 1v1 battle(I only need modern armor + SAM inf to take a city late game, air can take down city defenses + collateral damage, wish I had more unit types to play with in the end game)

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Sirp
Do hitpoints in a battle always start at 100, or only if the unit is at full strength?

Only when at full health. They will start at 50 if your unit is wounded to half.

I'm sorry, I haven't found time yet to correct that post in all details, I think I mention it somewhere but I'm not consistent. It's on my To Do list, though.

DeepO

[DeepO]

Fluke, use gunships against tanks and MA. That's the counter vs armor... and as they are in general upgraded from cavalry they can get very high promotion levels.

You don't need another unit, you just need to use what's there.

DeepO

[Sirp]

Originally posted by DeepO

Only when at full health. They will start at 50 if your unit is wounded to half.

Okay, so if I understand correctly, a horse archer who is wounded down to 3 strength is actually easier to defeat than a full-strength archer who has 3 strength?

Likewise, a knight wounded down to 3 strength is even weaker again.

-Sirp.

[DeepO]

Originally posted by Sirp


Okay, so if I understand correctly, a horse archer who is wounded down to 3 strength is actually easier to defeat than a full-strength archer who has 3 strength?

Likewise, a knight wounded down to 3 strength is even weaker again.

-Sirp.

Yep, that's the idea. A 3-strength knight will nearly always lose against a 3-strength archer, even if their strengths might suggest the odds are about equal.

DeepO

[xxFlukexx]

Ha, whaddya know there's a thread about gunships vs tanks now.

Yeah, I know gunships vs tanks are great, but gunships vs modern armor? mehhhhh, that's a 40 vs 40 in power before promotions, but with promotions, the tank grabs the edge since it starts with 40 power. Tanks will win more vs their counter unit and that's not right imho. I figure that if you add in counter units then the counter should be harder so you need to have the correct units and not just more units to win a battle. The chopper does get a 25% withdraw I guess that should count for something, but after playing so much Civ3, anything less than 100% withdraw seems so weak.

Actually a new unit wouldn't be necessary like I first thought, just giving modern armor a -20% str vs helos would make them lose more vs helos. Helos die to pretty much anything that breathes on it and can't kill anything but tanks at the modern age so I think this would be fair.

Sirp: Yeah, that's one of the keys to learning how to attack cities successfully in Civ4. Bombard the city with catapults, then send a couple catapults on suicide missions vs the city and the rest of your units will slaughter what is left inside of the enemy city. The key is that even knocking off .5 hp off of a archer is a huge hit in the effectiveness of that archer.

[DeepO]

Fluke, by the time MA start to arrive, gunships would be at the 4th or 5th promotion. This can include ambush (+25% vs armor), but most importantly this can include a lot of fs. With fs, even if the base strength of both units is the same, the chance of the gunship winning is higher...

The whole point of MA is that they are hard to kill in the open without air support (and than I mean fighter support, as gunships are a landunit in CIV (the only that flies about them is the animation)). But a couple of bombruns, and any chopper or MA should have no problem in cleaning up. And if you don't have any air force, you are making a strategic mistake, but at least you can still suicide catapults, cannons, or arties. These are bet vs stacks anyway.

DeepO

[DeepO]

Originally posted by xxFlukexx
Ha, whaddya know there's a thread about gunships vs tanks now.

BTW, there were 2 gunship threads before you asked your question. This latest one is simply someone else starting the same topic again without doing a search first.

DeepO

[Tulthix]

Just my experience...

I just took a continent in a game last night on noble on an archipelago large map. The war was in the late 1700s to early 1800s.

My attack forces against a city were typically about:
1-2 tanks
1 marine
1 infantry
1 support carrier
3 fighters
2 destroyers

Cities were typically defended with:
2 rifleman
2 longbowmen
1 maceman
(sometimes a catapult)

I attacked with destroyers first to reduce cities defense bonus to 0% while I was moving up / healing my ground forces. Then I had carrier attack with fighters to wear down the better defenders to near 50%. Then attack with the ground forces, and city taken.

I took about 10 cities in this manner without losing a single unit. So, its been my experience that with a tech advantage you really do have overwhelming superiority as long as you really use it to your advantage.

P.s. It is just wrong how destructive it is to move a pillaging gunship behind enemy lines that you have a big tech advantage over.

[Tiberius]

removed. wrong thread

[khumak]

I think the combat system is pretty well balanced currently. It annoys me if I lose a unit in a battle where I had an advantage but I so far I have NEVER lost a battle where I had a huge advantage. Most of the complaints I see are people *****ing about losing those fights where they have 3:2 or so odds. Sorry but you're going to lose some of those. Tough luck.

Careful specialization of your units and good use of bombardment and collateral damage usually means you can fight multiple wars without ever losing a single unit. In my last game most of my conquest happened towards the end of the game after I had Modern Armor. ALL of the other civs had Infantry or better defending their cities. I conquered 3 entire continents and never lost a single unit. Why? Because a MA with 3 city attack and 2 or 3 first strike promotions just flat out doesn't lose against even mechanized infantry fortified in a city provided you reduce city defenses to 0% and bomb every unit in the city to 50% before attacking.