Unrealistic Combat: What side are you on?

[Tiberius]

I am yet to hear how does a tank beating spearman help the game be more enjoyable.

People have given plenty of arguments why this shouldn't happen and I only hear counterarguments why this shouldn't bother me, or how I should imagine Rambo with a spear defeating a tank (although we are talking about divisions here, not lonely spearmen and tanks!) or that tanks are numbers and so on, but no arguments why it's better this way.

How does something like this help the game be more enjoyable or balanced? I simply don't get it.

When I have tanks, and my opponent has only spearmen or pikemen, then the technological (and presumably economical) lead is so big, that I will win anyway and the only thing the spearman accomplishes is that he annoys me.

When the forces are even or almost even, the situation is even worse, because a few unexpected results can ruin the balance of the game and also can punish a brilliant move. The AI (and a human ever more) should be punished for not upgrading his units or not defending vital resources or not being able to research vital techs.

The game should reward clever management, good strategy and courageos moves and not luck.

When you attack a pawn with a queen, you don't lose your queen now and then, do you? Still I haven't heard anyone that he/she wants to give up chess because it is too boring and unbalancing that queens always beat pawns.

[SpencerH]

Originally posted by Tiberius

When you attack a pawn with a queen, you don't lose your queen now and then, do you? Still I haven't heard anyone that he/she wants to give up chess because it is too boring and unbalancing that queens always beat pawns.

Maybe you want to re-think that bit.

[Tiberius]

On her turn, anyway. Or have you heard about situations when a queen suddenly lost when attacking a pawn?

[NanoDingo]

Originally posted by Cort Haus
Are folks proposing that they would like to play a game where a rival Civ with inferior technology ought to be able to be removed from the game with a single superior unit?

If so, I wonder if they have thought through the implications of this.

A Spear-Man's proper response to seeing a Tank on the horizon should be to a) beg, steal and borrow Tech and b) reproduce like crazy.
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[TheArsenal]

I am some one who plays for immersion and fun. My entire decision process is based on maximizing enjoyment, and not number crunching a win. In previous versions of Civ, units which were outdated beating my modern ones frustrated me to no end. To the casual eye (mine) who didn’t calculate odds, it just looked to happen with no rhyme or reason. That said, now that I can clearly see the odds of any battle going in, including the reasons for those odds, I have no problem with the occasional spearman beats tank result (as an example. For the record this has never happened to me. Not once). It feels fairer and far less harsh.

So I guess I come down on the side that I don’t think combat is broken.

[NanoDingo]

Originally posted by Tiberius
On her turn, anyway. Or have you heard about situations when a queen suddenly lost when attacking a pawn?

Have you ever heard about situations when a Pawn suddenly lost when attacking a Queen?
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[Grumbold]

Originally posted by Tiberius
I am yet to hear how does a tank beating spearman help the game be more enjoyable.

People have given plenty of arguments why this shouldn't happen and I only hear counterarguments why this shouldn't bother me, or how I should imagine Rambo with a spear defeating a tank (although we are talking about divisions here, not lonely spearmen and tanks!) or that tanks are numbers and so on, but no arguments why it's better this way.

How does something like this help the game be more enjoyable or balanced? I simply don't get it.

When I have tanks, and my opponent has only spearmen or pikemen, then the technological (and presumably economical) lead is so big, that I will win anyway and the only thing the spearman accomplishes is that he annoys me.

When the forces are even or almost even, the situation is even worse, because a few unexpected results can ruin the balance of the game and also can punish a brilliant move. The AI (and a human ever more) should be punished for not upgrading his units or not defending vital resources or not being able to research vital techs.

The game should reward clever management, good strategy and courageos moves and not luck.

Lets say, for sake of arguement, that this is put in place. Like the primary school history version of Cortés taking over the Aztec empire for Spain, the mere arrival of a handful of high tech warriors is enough to capture the empire. That means that any time a high tech culture discovers a lower, it will be annexed in very short order. Fine, you want it that way.

Then imagine that it is one AI nation that discovers the backward nation first. With a handful of turns lead on you (by having a coastline nearer the backward island, perhaps) they inherit all those extra cities and win the game by a mile. Hardly fair on you now, is it?

I succeeded like that in a recent Terra game, by being first to galleon and finding the 'new world' nearer my seaports than my technological rivals on the other side of 'Eurasia'. It took me 40 turns to dominate the whole of the new continent because the barbarians took a bit of effort to subdue with riflemen, and it quadrupled my national territory. Had it been any easier, a mere 5 turn advantage could have won me what had been a pretty tight game up to that point.

Lets not do the 'chess' version of Civ, where everything has a zero defence stat, eh?

[Tiberius]

@NanoDingo:
Sure, I could argue that what matters is that units who are in a position to win always win, and yet the game is not unbalanced.

But forget the chess analogy. That wasn't the point of my post.

[Tiberius]

I am not arguing that a stronger unit should always win against a weaker one.

However, when there is a two or three ages difference between two units, the better one should win, period.

If a nation is that backward ( I am only talking about tank or gunship attacking spearman and not knights attacking spearman) it deserves to be wiped out, regardless who does it and who is at the receiving end, me or the AI. Moreover, the civ that wipes out the weak one deserves to take the lead, because they reseached the right tech, took the trouble to discover the world and find the weak one, had tanks ready and put them in transports and did the job.

[kimmygibler]

Niether option A or B is saying that the combat is broken. And I realize that neither may fully represent your opinion. But there seems to be two distinct camps and I just wanted to see the relative size of each.

Why is it more fun to have a tank lose to a spearman? Well for one, it makes it so that you still have to do a bit of planning for war even if you have a huge tech advantage. Take the US and Canadian forces in Afganistan for example. They don't just send in one unit of tanks even though their tanks would completely outclass any type of weapons the enemy has. The possibility of losing at least makes it so that you have the possibility to run a good or bad campaign even with a tech lead.

I have yet to have that much of a tech lead because I have never played on any level below noble. But if I did find a civ that still had archers in the modern age I would expect to send mabye a couple infantry, a couple tanks, and some defensive units. Then you could be assured of victory with minimal losses. If I get down to only one tank against a city I know I'm taking a risk. It would be no fun otherwise.

[Stuie]

Originally posted by kimmygibler But there seems to be two distinct camps and I just wanted to see the relative size of each.

Looks more like a camp, a city, and a banana plantation, judging by the current results.

[NanoDingo]

Originally posted by kimmygibler
Take the US and Canadian forces in Afganistan for example. They don't just send in one unit of tanks even though their tanks would completely outclass any type of weapons the enemy has.

Maybe they sent more than one unit because then they could a) attack more than one target at once or b) attack the same target more times over a given duration.

[Tiberius]

Originally posted by kimmygibler
But if I did find a civ that still had archers in the modern age I would expect to send mabye a couple infantry, a couple tanks, and some defensive units. Then you could be assured of victory with minimal losses.

This is exactly what I am doing. However, this doesn't make a tank losing to a spearman any funnier. I am not complaining for losing, because I never lose a game due to a spearman defeating a tank or two of mine.

I am complaining because odditys like this kill the fun (sometimes, not always) for those people who are immersed in their games, while if a tank always killed a spearman, no one would realize it and no one would ever complain.

"Oh my God, my tank killed a spearman again!" - did you ever see a complaint like this? I didn't, and this is because beginners will always enjoy it while hard core civers will never play it on levels where the AI fights back with spearmen. Heck, I played 2 civ games on warlord and then went to noble, because it was too easy; and I am not a very good player.

It is just not logical that something that annoys some people is kept in, while removing it would go unnoticed.

The only answer I can guess is that during the development Firaxis emphasised MP over SP, and in MP weaker units winning sometimes help the beginners, not the other way round. Basically in MP everything would work vice-versa: skilled players would have better techs and armies and wouldn't mind losing a tank now and then, while beginners/casual players would love winning against the odds sometimes.

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by Tiberius


This is exactly what I am doing. However, this doesn't make a tank losing to a spearman any funnier. I am not complaining for losing, because I never lose a game due to a spearman defeating a tank or two of mine.

I am complaining because odditys like this kill the fun (sometimes, not always) for those people who are immersed in their games, while if a tank always killed a spearman, no one would realize it and no one would ever complain.

"Oh my God, my tank killed a spearman again!" - did you ever see a complaint like this? I didn't, and this is because beginners will always enjoy it while hard core civers will never play it on levels where the AI fights back with spearmen. Heck, I played 2 civ games on warlord and then went to noble, because it was too easy; and I am not a very good player.

It is just not logical that something that annoys some people is kept in, while removing it would go unnoticed.

The only answer I can guess is that during the development Firaxis emphasised MP over SP, and in MP weaker units winning sometimes help the beginners, not the other way round. Basically in MP everything would work vice-versa: skilled players would have better techs and armies and wouldn't mind losing a tank now and then, while beginners/casual players would love winning against the odds sometimes.

[Josquius]

Both options are pretty bad. I am somewhere in the middle.
B suggests pure numbers. If there is a 0.01% chance of a mininum health spearman beating a full health tank then it will happen every once in a while.
On the other hand if your tank is badly injured then you could assume that the spearmen do manage to get together some petrol bombs and knock out the last one or two tanks.