Military Edits

[lorddread]

I got tired of fighting wars with the AI having pikeman and cavaliers while I spent the money and went for infantry and tanks, and the battle remained tight.

So I tweaked the game so that combat is more realistic:

Ancient foot

Warrior 1/1 Cavalier 6/3
Tribal Guardian 1/2 Dragoon 10/5
Spearman 1/3 Calvary 15/10
Swordsman 3/2
Legion 6/4

Arquebusiers 4/10
Musketeer 6/12
Musketmen 8/14

Line Infantry 15/20
Rifleman 15/22
PArtisan 10/22

Infantry 20/30 Air Cav 16/20
Grunt 22/30
Marine 25/30

Tank 25/15
Armor 30/25
APC 15/30
Mech Inf 30/40
Modern Armor 40/40
M1A1 50/65


As you see the units get progressively meaner and are able to defend against lesser units quite well. No wierd battle outcomes. Seriously can anyone really see a tank going up against an M1A1? I mean they couldn't stand against the infantry in WWI.

[gunkulator]

Civ3 is a balance between realism and gameplay. Sid has always said that when the two clashed, he always went for better gameplay over more realism. Of course modern units are superior to ancient ones. The question is how much of an advantage do you want to give them and still make the game a decent challenge?

If you make progressively better units have dramatically better stats, you reduce the game to a race to those units. Whoever gets them first overwhelms their neighbors. Game over. Civ2 was full of this and it made winning boring since the AI never understood this as well as a human player.

Apparently a lot of that expectation is still around for civ3 players. They expect to mount a campaign and suffer little to no casualities because after all that's what you could do in civ2.

In the realism department, you are absolutely correct and noone will dispute you. However in the gameplay arena, I personally feel that large stat disparities are like giving yourself a huge advantage.

[lorddread]

Edits

Hmmm.. I disagree. For civs that do not or cannot upgrade, it makes it easier. But for civs that do upgrade, it is a level playing field with the realism that some of us want.

I personally like realism.

[Dis]

another vote for realism here.

I'd rather them design an AI that can upgrade units.

It's not too big an issue in my games. I'm usually fighting rifleman anways. it's good these do not require resources.

[GePap]

I have never liked the notion of losing Armor to Pikeman- but the easy solution was to double Hitpoints, and giving modern units HP bonuses-that way in the end, combat is a lot more realisict without sacrificing the gameplay elements.

[lorddread]

I do not like doubling hitpoints. The reason for this is simple; a pikeman should never be able to stand against a tank. It should be a loosing propistion for a pikeman to go againt a musketman. Musketeer maybe, arquibusier ok, I can see that.

Realisticly what I would like to see is the AI upgrading to "modern" units when it reaches a new tech level.

[joncnunn]

AI is not particularly good at coping with the following:

increasing HPs across the board: In that case, certain units with minor damage retreat to safety early.

adjusting HPs in a fanshion that increases the difference between better trained units: The AI loves to draft regardless, and does not choose to designate certain cities with baracks to build all it's units doing more than functioning as police.

If the AI has a vast sum of money and lots of baracks, then it will keep it's army up to date. But the AI is programmed to keep science as high as possible non-deficit at all times when in a non-cash rushing govt, and even in a cash rushing govt, the AI is very suspectable to human schemes to get money out of the AI's tresury and into the humans.

[gunkulator]

Tanks beat Pikemen 98% of the time anyway. If that rare 2% ruins your notion of realism, I'm not sure any solution will be satisfying.

[GePap]

Originally posted by joncnunn
AI is not particularly good at coping with the following:

increasing HPs across the board: In that case, certain units with minor damage retreat to safety early.

I have never seen a unit retreat unless they were at 1 HP, and given there are more HP, this makes the surviving unit even weaker in comparison to others than before.

I think retreat only works if the unit has 1 HP left, whether it began with 3 HP or 30 HP.

adjusting HPs in a fanshion that increases the difference between better trained units: The AI loves to draft regardless, and does not choose to designate certain cities with baracks to build all it's units doing more than functioning as police.

The difference between conscript and veteran needs to be significant. In my standard Mod, conscripts have 5, regular units 7, veterans 9, and Elite 10.

[Solomwi]

I think he meant move into a city to heal, GePap, as opposed to retreat in the course of a battle. You're right on units only retreating at 1 HP in the course of a battle, though.

[GePap]

Well, it really does not make a difference because all HP's are higher in comparison, which matters more than the actual HP's, I think. The only difference in combat I have seen from the higher HP's is more realistic outcomes- that still sometimes means a Tank looses 4 HP attacking some Pikeman on a metrolpolis on a hill accross a river, but in the end wins because the streak runs out.