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There I said it. I feel better now.
Feel free to flame away, but please give me a read first, on the off chance I'm on to something. Most of my ideas aren't original, but I don't think they've been put together this way before--at least I haven't seen it.
Plenty of people didn't like CivIII artillery because of how uber artillery Stacks o' Doom were. Nevertheless, the AI didn't use 'em that way, and I thought it was cheese to do so, so I was fine with it. Indirect fire units, capturable if unescorted, I was down with it. But--water under the bridge.
Now, plenty of people don’t like CIV artillery because, frankly they don't make a lick of sense. They’re direct fire units, capable of independently destroying and capturing, suiciding to inflict collateral damage(the exact opposite of why artillery is useful IRL) almost every concept that defines them is flawed. A total mess. People rationalize it a million different ways, the best being that they represent ammunition not guns, but come on. It’s a picture and descriptive text of a catapult or a gun, not an ammo truck or a wagon of rocks.
Now I know I said I welcomed flames, but I won’t accept the “gameplay trumps realism” so-called argument. CIV does require a level of “realism”. It’s the English, not National Group Alpha, they’re Archers not Defensive Unit A, and so on and so forth. This game simulates real life concepts at a certain level of abstraction. Yes, there has to be gameplay or there’s no point, but it’s equally important that each gameplay feature function at essentially the same level of abstraction. We expect a gold resource to give some sort of financial bonus. We expect Legionnaires to be stronger than Warriors. We expect this because it’s realistic, not totally so—it is abstracted—but everything functions in a way related to reality. It’s at this basic level where CIV artillery fails, not at an “OMG that German Armored Division order-of-battle is totally f’ed up” grognard level.
One example because this is already too long: The idea that catapults, Napoleonic cannon and modern artillery are all the same class of unit; and that that class is “Siege Unit” is wack. It’d be like saying Helicopters or just really cool and fast ground units and they can’t cross water—oh, never mind. Point is, field artillery is different. Different enough that if it if your abstraction level is low enough to model an independent, indirect fire siege unit like a catapult there needs to be a mechanism for indirect fire in the field as well.
So why is the solution no artillery units at all rather than more and varied ones? Because at the level of abstracted reality CIV operates at, there’s no such thing as an indirect-fire “unit”. As a rule there weren’t roving bands of catapults independently pillaging medieval Europe, any catapults were attached to invading armies. Same with other indirect fire units throughout history as well. They were/are generally support units attached to other “units” to enhance their combat power or provide completely new capability. I’m sure someone can supply counter-examples, but total realism is not the goal, just appropriate abstraction, and I think that’s the right general description. Now, if only CIV had a gameplay mechanism to enhance base units with additional capabilities…We could call it Promotions or something… Hey!
Now, if you wanted to abstractly represent battering down walls with catapults we could create a Promotion and call it something like “City Raider”. If we wanted to abstract field artillery hammering an enemy before it can shoot back, we could create one called—wait for it—“First Strike”.
Obviously, some tweaking is necessary; they/we can’t just use the current promotions. Nevertheless, I really think that the promotion system is the right level to put what are currently called “Siege Units”. In my opinion, they’re not independent units at all and should be considered potential enhancements to other actual units that we can deploy.
Flame on.
Mr. Lucky
Feel free to flame away, but please give me a read first, on the off chance I'm on to something. Most of my ideas aren't original, but I don't think they've been put together this way before--at least I haven't seen it.
Plenty of people didn't like CivIII artillery because of how uber artillery Stacks o' Doom were. Nevertheless, the AI didn't use 'em that way, and I thought it was cheese to do so, so I was fine with it. Indirect fire units, capturable if unescorted, I was down with it. But--water under the bridge.
Now, plenty of people don’t like CIV artillery because, frankly they don't make a lick of sense. They’re direct fire units, capable of independently destroying and capturing, suiciding to inflict collateral damage(the exact opposite of why artillery is useful IRL) almost every concept that defines them is flawed. A total mess. People rationalize it a million different ways, the best being that they represent ammunition not guns, but come on. It’s a picture and descriptive text of a catapult or a gun, not an ammo truck or a wagon of rocks.
Now I know I said I welcomed flames, but I won’t accept the “gameplay trumps realism” so-called argument. CIV does require a level of “realism”. It’s the English, not National Group Alpha, they’re Archers not Defensive Unit A, and so on and so forth. This game simulates real life concepts at a certain level of abstraction. Yes, there has to be gameplay or there’s no point, but it’s equally important that each gameplay feature function at essentially the same level of abstraction. We expect a gold resource to give some sort of financial bonus. We expect Legionnaires to be stronger than Warriors. We expect this because it’s realistic, not totally so—it is abstracted—but everything functions in a way related to reality. It’s at this basic level where CIV artillery fails, not at an “OMG that German Armored Division order-of-battle is totally f’ed up” grognard level.
One example because this is already too long: The idea that catapults, Napoleonic cannon and modern artillery are all the same class of unit; and that that class is “Siege Unit” is wack. It’d be like saying Helicopters or just really cool and fast ground units and they can’t cross water—oh, never mind. Point is, field artillery is different. Different enough that if it if your abstraction level is low enough to model an independent, indirect fire siege unit like a catapult there needs to be a mechanism for indirect fire in the field as well.
So why is the solution no artillery units at all rather than more and varied ones? Because at the level of abstracted reality CIV operates at, there’s no such thing as an indirect-fire “unit”. As a rule there weren’t roving bands of catapults independently pillaging medieval Europe, any catapults were attached to invading armies. Same with other indirect fire units throughout history as well. They were/are generally support units attached to other “units” to enhance their combat power or provide completely new capability. I’m sure someone can supply counter-examples, but total realism is not the goal, just appropriate abstraction, and I think that’s the right general description. Now, if only CIV had a gameplay mechanism to enhance base units with additional capabilities…We could call it Promotions or something… Hey!
Now, if you wanted to abstractly represent battering down walls with catapults we could create a Promotion and call it something like “City Raider”. If we wanted to abstract field artillery hammering an enemy before it can shoot back, we could create one called—wait for it—“First Strike”.
Obviously, some tweaking is necessary; they/we can’t just use the current promotions. Nevertheless, I really think that the promotion system is the right level to put what are currently called “Siege Units”. In my opinion, they’re not independent units at all and should be considered potential enhancements to other actual units that we can deploy.
Flame on.
Mr. Lucky
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