Unrealistic Combat: What side are you on?

[Drachasor]

Originally posted by eljeffe
We could have won, but we didn't wanna.... Such a childish revision of a conflict. Sad that this thinking is so prevalent about all of the US's missteps. It's what makes it so easy to continue to misstep.

It is perfectly true that we were not willing to adopt a strategy that would win the Vietnam War. There were real concerns about the situation escalating into a global conflict if we adopted such strategies, such as bombing areas outside of Vietnam where supplies for the enemy were going through.

It also shouldn't need to be said that a few nukes would have won us the war, but we weren't willing to use them--don't interpret this as advocating that we should have tossed nukes around in Vietnam however. Part of the reason, certainly, was that if we tossed nukes around in such a conflict then Russia would probably also start to use Nukes in relatively minor conflicts.

True, there were many misteps in our handling of Vietnam, that doesn't change the fact that fundamentally we had no real way to win given what we were willing to do and what we weren't willing to do.

In any case, my main point was that the Viet Cong were being supplied with arms by Russia, so they had the advanced technology the needed to successfully attack us. Even in a jungle spearmen would have a massive disadvantage against troops with automatic weapons. Heck, just look at the Aztecs and Cortez to see how a little thing like a bit of advanced armor can make killing someone very difficult.

Originally posted by eljeffe A spearman is really a just a man with a spear. Put the spear down and he is a man. Give him a bottle filled with kerosene, an oily rag and a zippo, plop him down in Stalingrad and suddenly he is a match for a Panzer. There is a reason why civ gives defense benefits to units in a city. They can hide. They can plan. They have friends. It is no longer about a "Spearman" and a "Tank" It is a tank trying to enter a city. This is difficult to represent in a game that boils it all down to unit vs. unit combat, so the game designers do what they can, which is a defense bonus.

Modern Tank + Molotov Cocktail = Amused Tank Crew

Modern Tanks are pretty much immune to your suggested attack. WWI era tanks are a different story, of course. I suppose a Molotov Cocktail might make it hard to use infrared detectors on a modern tank, but that's about it. You really need the highly advanced modern anti-tank weaponry to take out a tank. Though it is probably possible to use even primitive gunpowder to destroy a modern tank's mobility (but not harm the crew).

Originally posted by eljeffe
Frankly, I'd feel robbed if modern units won over primitive all the time. There are all sorts of thing that go wrong in combat. Supply issues, mis-communications, mechanical failure, i could go on and on about this. Civ uses probabilities to represent all this. A tank cannot win every time, no matter how weak the defender.

Much of the whining that goes on with this topic is about people's inability to come up with a strategy. You all site realism? Give me an example in history where someone sent a tank unit into a city or a jungle or what have you, all by itself, no air support, no combined arms, and this unit was expected to weed out some defender. This doesn't happen. It is not sound strategy.

Well you can't really send a tank into a city in Civ IV with infantry, now can you? You send in one unit, by itself, at a time. That's how the combat system works.

Anyhow, I am perfectly willing to accept the abstract nature of Civ IV combat, and the unrealistic elements of it as well. Gameplay balance trumps realism as far as I am concerned. If you want it more realistic, then you'd have to do several things:

1. Have more units and more gradual technology upgrades. The first tanks you get are WWI era tanks, then WWI, then mid-cold war, then Modern tanks. Other units progress similarly over all eras.

2. It is cheap to upgrade units. Even if you don't upgrade your units, they will upgrade on their own to technology two steps behind your best research. So if you have 20 WWI era tanks and develop modern tank technology, those WWI tanks will become WWII tanks (still grossly inferior to a modern tank).

3. Technology in general would have to spread more. Very basic technology for your civilization, such as Chemistry when you have Modern Tanks becomes extremely cheap for other civs to research, almost free. You essentially can't keep such technology hidden, since it is so readily available to people in your country (hence easy to smuggle out). Essentially it should mean that you can get about 2 technological steps ahead of everyone in military terms. 2 steps should be a fairly significant disadvantage, but nothing that having larger numbers couldn't handle.

4. In addition to gifting units you should be able to have your cities partially build a unit, and then you gift that to another civ. In essence your are supplying them with weapons. You build say 10 "infantry equipment" and give it to another civ. They can now build 10 infantry, but no more unless they gain the technology on their own. (I suppose this isn't strictly necessary for a more balanced combat system, but I'd like to see this). This would be a way to split the cost of building between you and a more primitive civ.

This would make things more complicated, but with high upgrade costs, relatively few units, and the ability to get far ahead of other people technologically....game balance demands some give and take. Hence things are far from realistic.

Originally posted by eljeffe
So, please, everyone just shut up about this and learn to play the game. Abandon your old civ3 modern armor exploits and get a strategy.

I hated Civ 3, and I think you are thinking of Civ II. Civ III had a more random combat system than either II or IV. Modern tanks will win more often against primitive units in IV than in III. You will, of course, need to heal your unit it now and then, though often a modern tank can kill a very primitive unit without taking damage, especially with the right upgrades.

[SpencerH]

I would guess that the people who have posted about various ways for virtually unarmed inf to attack tanks have never actually been near one. If they had, they wouldnt be making such absurd comments. At close range tanks are ****ing scary **** even when they're on your side. Tanks have been incapacitated (usually through track or road wheel damage) by satchel charges or very occasionally by "Molotov cocktails" but IMO this is mostly a myth. Even a WWII era tank is not usually gonna be effected by a bottles-worth of burning gasoline except that it may stop if the crew cant see.

I remember one brit tank commander speaking to us about the chieftans saying "dont shoot at the tanks, you wont hurt the men or the tank but you will put holes in their sleeping bags which tends to piss the troops off".

[Drachasor]

Originally posted by SpencerH
I would guess that the people who have posted about various ways for virtually unarmed inf to attack tanks have never actually been near one. If they had, they wouldnt be making such absurd comments. At close range tanks are ****ing scary **** even when they're on your side. Tanks have been incapacitated (usually through track or road wheel damage) by satchel charges or very occasionally by "Molotov cocktails" but IMO this is mostly a myth. Even a WWII era tank is not usually gonna be effected by a bottles-worth of burning gasoline except that it may stop if the crew cant see.

Earlier tanks were susceptible to them, even some Soviet Tanks after WWII. Basically the fire could get to the undercarriage of the tank and ignite the fuel. It works better on gasoline tanks than on diesel (which is harder to ignite). Also, more modern tanks don't have this vulnerability.

Such attacks could potentially blind a tank as well; soot from the fire covering the viewports of the tank. Still, not as easy on modern tanks.

-Drachasor

PS. And yes, I hear tanks are pretty dang scary, and it takes a lot of guts to get close enough to attack them with even these ineffective devices.

[Egress1]

Ok I can buy a tank going down to a ground unit but someone explain how a Gunship gets taken out by a Knight??????? I took out an enemy gunship with three of my knights.

Let me guess someone here is going to say the Knight can throw his sword into the Chopper Blades and bring it down that way.... or the Gunship runs out of fuel during the duel in which apparently the Gunship has no ammo and no missiles.

In some cases some units should have NO EFFECT on other units. Caravels vs Battleships or Destroyers is simply lame.

[Tiberius]

Originally posted by Egress1
Ok I can buy a tank going down to a ground unit but someone explain how a Gunship gets taken out by a Knight??????? I took out an enemy gunship with three of my knights.

That's an easy one. I modified my gunships to have a strength of 26 instead of 20, and I reduced the antitank bonus from 100% to 50%. This way a gunship will be just as strong against tanks as before (or almost, 26+(26*0.5)=39 as opposed to 20+20=40 before) but all other units except the antichopper ones will have a hard time killing a gunship. No more elephants taking out these flying beasts.

Of course for balancing I had to modify a bit the SAM infantry (18->20) but that's all. The overall result is much better than before IMHO.

On the other hand I never had to modify the vanilla game so early, which is troubling.

[Xerxes712]

Tha is a good idea for balancing the game. Air units should not be touched by a ground unit (except for rifle guns couls shoot it down but this for gameplay). Good for putting into a Mod.

Airplanes attacking ground units never get damaged, I wonder if there is a qualifier in there. I guess the Gunship must be classified as a ground unit? So it cannot fly over water or mountains?

[Tiberius]

The gunship is classified as a ground unit, and it cannot fly over water and mountains, so I'm not sure what you mean by that. Anyway this reminds me another change I made: gave gunships the amphibious promotion so they won't receive the 50% penalty for attacking across rivers, which is ridiculous.

[Guardian]

Originally posted by Bhruic


That makes it sound like you didn't watch The Last Samurai. I mean, the 'swordsmen' even had Tom Cruise on their side, and they still couldn't win!

Bh

...but those weren't musketmen they were fighting against either!

[CrispyCritter]

Originally posted by Egress1
Ok I can buy a tank going down to a ground unit but someone explain how a Gunship gets taken out by a Knight??????? I took out an enemy gunship with three of my knights.

By attacking when the gunships were on the ground? Your combat with the knights versus the gunships took a year, didn't it? Surely you're not claiming the gunships were in the air the complete time.

[Xerxes712]

Gunship is treated as a ground unit. This should be changed. Someone post a quick mod to the file that helps alot.

[baronzilch]

If you like certainty based combat please mod it in; hardcoding it would ruin the game for anyone interested in strategy. MP would especially blow - it would be a tech rush to whatever arbitrary break point in military might, then near-insta conquer. Poor starts would mean a higher /quit rate if the low-tech society didn't have at least a minute chance 1v1, or a slim chance by massing outdated troops.
Complete drain of any fun.
And besides, it's pretty freaking rare that a spear beats a tank.
Civ is not an RPG, and never has been, get over it.

However, I'd love to see the outdated units' graphics upgrade on some era advances, like workers do, so that it would stop offending the 10% of people who want to play in easy mode (no judgement, play what you like, but a change like that would ruin the game for strategy fans).

[Tiberius]

Regarding MP: I'm impatiently waiting for the moment when you will lose a perfectly played game bacause of a bad dice roll. Let's see what you will say then, how fun is that.

That's one observations. The other one would be that no one is aking for certainty based combat. This is just a badly worded poll with bad choices.

[Mergle]

Originally posted by Tiberius
Regarding MP: I'm impatiently waiting for the moment when you will lose a perfectly played game bacause of a bad dice roll. Let's see what you will say then, how fun is that.

That's one observations. The other one would be that no one is aking for certainty based combat. This is just a badly worded poll with bad choices.

If your victory relied on one dice roll, it wasn't perfectly played.

[Drachasor]

Originally posted by Mergle


If your victory relied on one dice roll, it wasn't perfectly played.

Depends on the game. Early on it might be just one bad combat.

Though, usually you need a string of bad luck to upset a well-played game however.

-Drachasor

[Veritass]

If I missed any of these points when I was scrolling through the flame wars, I apologize in advance.

1. A tank is not a tank; it is a tank group. A spearman is not a guy with a spear; it is a group of spearman. Desparate and suicidal spearmen could probably do damage to a tank group in a number of ways, and will probably get wiped out in the process.

2. Any time any military unit goes into the field, there is some small probability that it will suffer from weather, malfunction (think aborted Iran hostage rescue here), pilot error, etc. and damage itself or damage others of its kind in "friendly fire" (think "Courage Under Fire" movie here).