Unit Strengths by Era

[danimal]

Originally posted by Theseus
I sympathize with Arrian's disclaimer.

Back on point:

I STILL say Immortals... with all the defense of a spear-chucker.

heh heh

The term "spear-chucker" is a degrading racist term...surely you are not that ignorant.

[captaincurt]

Arrian, I definitely agree that Expansionist is solid on large maps. On the right map, with a good initial placement, it almost feels like cheating.

On a huge/pangea map (as long as it's not endless jungle and forest), I've had my expansionist Scouts net me the ENTIRE set of Ancient techs, one or two settlers, numerous warriors, and many 25 or 50-coin "gifts" from goody huts.

For the Iriquois in particular, this early tech boost also means you get Horseback Riding very quickly, and are able to start producing Mounted Warriors, which are decisive attackers in the early game.

It has been monstrously effective for me... mind you I'm only playing on Monarch.

[Theseus]

danimal, you didn;t read the preceding posts.

The reference is specifically to the defensive capabilities of Spearmen.

I used the term for humor, explicitly NON-racist.

In the context of Civ3, the only people I would denigrate are the French.

heh heh

[SirSebastian]

I for one, will claim to have never heard the term "spear-chucker" and I don't consider myself ignorant... I have no idea where you guys live where people would interpret or say that as a derogatory term. I'm in CA and there isn't a race that makes up more than 50% of the population... so... it's kind of pointless. Didn't that stuff go out of fashion a long time ago?

The post made sense to me as originally intended.

To pretend that this post is on topic. First, let me say that I don't think Civ needs more land units... maybe an extra naval unit here and there. *shrugs* Marines also just need to be able to land without wasting their movement point.

[Gen.Dragolen]

A Simple Suggestion

After having taken the hour or so to pile through all 9 pages in this thread, I came to some conclusions about what the combat in this game really means and where improvements are warranted:

1. Scale.

The maps show each city's area of influence. Political and economic. Think of what each age's best known cities were like. Ur, Athen, Jerusalem, Rome, Carthage, Constantinople, Venice, Antwerp, London, Paris, New York, Los Angeles, etc... Each is almost a country unto itself, and that is the scale on which the game appears to be based.

Combat units are in the same realm as abstract constructs. Ancient Egypt raised armies of 100,000 men from an over all popluation of a million or two. They would be in 10 divisions and a division would equate well to an ancient spearman. This would include the logistics tail that is already too ignored in the game. Can't have an army if you don't have food and fodder.

2. Technologies

Yes, Firaxis tried to make the modern technologies deadly to the previous age's units. After extensive experince with horribly lopsided casualties taking out ancient units with more modern, I think that the units from each age should be roughly twice as potent as the older unit. And the idea of old/obselete units doing damage to a more modern unit is simply a tribute to the skill and determination of the leaders. Never underestimate the power of morale and determination.

3. Balance

And to balance the increased power, certain units should be able to counter others with defensive bonuses: Pikemen vs Knights, Archers vs any infantry unit (kevlar armour still can't stop an arrow at close range) and Infantry vs Tanks. Cannons should be able to chew up foot soldiers every time, but not kill the unit entirely. They worked by breaking the morale of the enemy. And they should have an increased bombard value as siege weapons. Most of the casualties in a siege should be buildings, not the populace. And the cannon's nemesis is cavalry.

4. Organization

Adding the ability to stack units would solve the problem of controlling a battle/campaign, but it should have a limit to how many units can be in a stack. 4 or 5 would be appropriate, and assigning them a # would be useful. There should not be a limit to how many units you can have in one square, but an Army should be given a significant combat bonus, as the men are supposedly trained to fight as a team. And teamwork is a slow thing to build in any age. This organization should allow an army to have support units attached to allow artillery to travel with the troops. With all of the units travelling as one, it should also slow the stack down, by reducing movement by 1, with 1 staying as 1.

5. Movement

Movement on railways is over done. Reducing the costs to 1/8th or 1/12th would better reflect the logistic difficulties in moving large numbers of troops. And it is reasonable to see the RR as an abstraction as well: modern highways have matched and superceded them for movement of goods and people. Hitler built the Autobahn to allow his armies to cross Germany from East to West faster than he could using the existing railways. Airports should allow redeployment from point to point with no movement cost as the next step in the developement of movement.

Well that's all I have time for now, so let me know what you think of these ideas.

[Gen.Dragolen]

And About the Navy Ships

some of ideas to fix these inequities:

1. Movement

The naval combat is another case where the units from one age to the next are slow moving and under powered. Consider that the ancients knew the entire Mediteranean after about 2000 BC and Industrial Age steamships could cross the Atlantic in less than two weeks, the movement rates for ships are about half of what they should be. And there should be restictions on Iron Clads as coastal vessels only. However, I think there should be ancient cargo ships that should be able to carry a unit while a galley shouldn't and they should be able to travel into deeper waters.

2. Trade

And increasing their movement would only add to the feel of the ancient world: with a fog of war type shroud, the lands discovered by galleys (even though most ancient vessels ran with sails) would remain a great mystery until a trade route was established. Not to mention that it would make it more important to establish a port or two to trade with your neighbours. Port cities have always been commerce hubs and the usual entry point to a country since overland travel was arduous. Increasing the economic benefits would be a good thing too. Maybe then the AI would actually build a port so you could trade with them and both parties benefit.

3. Trade Routes

This leads to supply/trade routes. CTP2 did a decent job, despite the silly animations, and being able to threaten trade was as important a tactic/strategy as any military option. And yes, the original use for the beloved battleship was to attack other combat ships, until the Germans realized that it made a good tool for sinking convoys. Nothing like taking out a dozen cargo ships before they were aware they were being stalked. That was the Bismark's primary task, and why the British went to such lengths to sink her.

4. Unit Strengths

And since submarines were mentioned before, I'll touch on them too. They are seriously underated as the warheads in the earlies torpedoes were able to punch through the side of any transport/cargo ship, and to do so undetected. Knowing this, the warship designers had plate armour around the waterline with thickness measured in feet. And considering that an iron clad warship with smoothbore cannons had challenges with range, there is no way a torpedo hit could fail to sink an iron clad. Having a deck gun to pound away with was also a major advantage.

So this suggests that again, the ships from a more modern era should be at least twice as power full in attack and defense. Ironclads should make driftwood out of anything older than it, and likewise, a destroyer should put an Ironclad on the bottom everytime. And Battleships should make fairly short work of destroyers for the same reason.

5. Balance

With upgrading the power of naval vessels to better reflect their abilities, there should be two things changed to lessen their uses. First, greatly reduce their ability to destroy irrigation and mining improvements, since they are large areas and artillery is a point attack. The concept of destroying roads and rail lines is expected with modern ships, but impossible with a smoothbore cannon and without HE shells. This would mean that the ironclads and frigates could not destroy improvements as they do now, but modern ships could destroy roads and railways. Second, the bombardment ability should have to first destroy any fortifications in a city before doing damage to buildings and troops. More on that idea in a later post.

Second, to reflect the ability of airpower to sink boats, bombers and fighters should be able to sink ships or severly maul them. Billy Mitchell used a 500 lbs bomb to sink a captured WWI vintage German Battleship in a demonstration. Torpedo bi-planes from the Arc Royal sank several Italian warships in Taranto harbour during WWII, the Japanese did severly damage or sunk most of the ships in Pearl Harbour, and then there was Midway. The whole reason the US keeps expensive aircraft carrier battle groups is to have planes to sink other ships.

In keeping with the abstract unit model and combat, even fighters should be able to sink sub or at least reduce it to 1 hp, 9 times out of 10. Bombers should be able to outright destroy ships including battleships. Of course if you really want to complicate things you can start modifying these settings by culture...

As for making some of these changes, I think I'm going to start playing around with the .bic and the editor to see what effect it would have on the AI's game play.

[Gen.Dragolen]

Final Suggestions

Well just to finish the ideas I had rattling around in my skull, here are the last few changes that might improve the game:

1. Espionage Costs

The costs of establishing spies and other such operations are a little excessive for the effects they produce. While knowing in detail your enemy's overall disposition is nice, you cannot establish spies in specific cities where they would be more useful.

Imagine being able to get a spy in like in SMAC ? Destroy the walls, sabotage an Aqueduct, ruin a factory or forment rioting just before your troops show up to take the city ? Or have a spy in their security organization, like the Russians did with the FBI and the CIA with the KGB ? Considering that the CC's will have a spy in each capital pretty much as soon as they have Espionage, while you can't afford to put even one in place, it would be nice to add some Cloak and Dagger work to the politics. Why can't you assasinate another leader and get a more agreeable leader ?

2. Unit Logistics

Being an old soldier, you know that the first concern of an officer is not what kind of firepower or defense a unit has, but the logistics needed to keep it in the field. To that end, units should have to be able to trace a reasonably short supply line to a friendly city to keep the unit in the field. This gives you another variable to consider when facing a technologically superior enemy: cut his supply lines and the unit should start loosing HP as their resources get used up. Men Horses and Tanks all need to eat and can only carry enough to last for a short while. Add to this the ablibity to forage and you have a way to make war as devastating as it is in real life. When an army is on enemy terrain, it should take one food for each unit from a surrounding square. This reflects the unit's foraging for food and would be devastating to the populace in a besieged city.

As some good examples: the French armies and Vikings laid waste to northern France with repeated campaigns where most of the damage done was the results of starvation when the armies ate all the food the people had. Stalin used the scorched earth in the face of the Germans. The biggest problem the Germans faced was that there supply bases were all in Poland because there was nothing left in the occupied Russian lands. And yes, the people starved there too.

3. Zone of Control

Not having fought as a Roman Legionaire or an Egyptian charioteer, I cannot say much about how they controlled the area they were operating in. In a modern army, units are constantly on patrol and maintaining a precense in the areas they are operating in. Any significant troop movements are readily detected and maximum force can be brought to bear in a few hours.

I would suggest that a ZoC would be appropriate for modern units starting with Riflemen and Cavalry. One square should be sufficient and still allow Blitzing units to exploit a breach in enemy lines.

So Soren, if you are reading this, let me know what you think of these ideas and if any are possibilities for a future expansion/update.

I'm still going to change some of the terrain and improvement settings to reflect the difficulties in attacking walled towns and cities (according to one of Sun Tzu's contemporaries, attack a walled city and it will cost you half your troops) and a couple of other little changes. Just to see what happens.

[lmtoops]

Re: Final Suggestions

[SIZE=1] 2. Unit Logistics

Being an old soldier, you know that the first concern of an officer is not what kind of firepower or defense a unit has, but the logistics needed to keep it in the field. To that end, units should have to be able to trace a reasonably short supply line to a friendly city to keep the unit in the field. This gives you another variable to consider when facing a technologically superior enemy: cut his supply lines and the unit should start loosing HP as their resources get used up. Men Horses and Tanks all need to eat and can only carry enough to last for a short while. Add to this the ablibity to forage and you have a way to make war as devastating as it is in real life. When an army is on enemy terrain, it should take one food for each unit from a surrounding square. This reflects the unit's foraging for food and would be devastating to the populace in a besieged city.

As some good examples: the French armies and Vikings laid waste to northern France with repeated campaigns where most of the damage done was the results of starvation when the armies ate all the food the people had. Stalin used the scorched earth in the face of the Germans. The biggest problem the Germans faced was that there supply bases were all in Poland because there was nothing left in the occupied Russian lands. And yes, the people starved there too.

.

It is i bit unfair when I have 20+ troops on a ships. The ships are on the open sea for years (just outside my enimies zone). They are just waiting for the right opportunity.

What are these soldier eating and drinking for all those years? I don't even want to think about it...Yuck

[Jerry Sindle]

Why can't you assasinate another leader and get a more agreeable leader ?

I you can do it to a computer opponent, then they should be able to do it to you.

Now imagine, you are sailing right along in the year 1854, you lead all civs, and suddenly the you lose screen appears with a note - "you have been assassinated! Game over". How much fun is that?

V/R

Jerry

[Gen.Dragolen]

The Lone Gunman Theory, etc...

Jerry,

The idea of possibly assassinating a Computer Civ Leader and getting assassinated is an idea to add some more options and depth to the Espionage meta-game.

In CTP2 you could do that and it sometimes was a nuisance to get one between the eyes, but if I hadn't taken sufficient precautions with good Intel operations to keep an eye on the enemies of the state, I had been asking for it. Especially if I was pasting all the computer players in the game and was almost unstoppable: air superiority, large numbers of bombers and tanks, they were loosing cities each turn, etc...

I guess not everyone realize just how vulnerable people are, and that if someone or some group is that determined, they will get you. Think of it as the terrorist option for Civ3, and yes it was fun to take out another leader. It usually took 50 years of game time in the modern age to manuever into place to do the deed, but it was a nice payoff for the patience.

And you have forgetten the first rule: All's fair in love and war. And we have some doozies in Civ3...


D.

[jshelr]

No one has mentioned the power of the Babs bowmen in the ancient era, particularly on the higher difficulty levels. During the land grab phase, Babs can deal with raging barbarians and then crush any attack by archers. They also do well even against swordmen, since they can wait for the swordmen to approach and attack them on even terms. They are available nearly immediately and not subject to finding any resources. When you are set up with iron/horses, the bowmen become valuable companions on the offense. Assuming you take survival through the early period seriously, and don't just reload when the AI wipes you out, the bowmen are not a bad UU. This is true especially on the highest difficulty levels where you will sometimes be scrambling to survive the early stage. The good UU is and added feature for Bab, a civ that has great characteristics for competing in tech and culture once you get rollling.

[rubbersoul16]

i've noticed that in some rare instances, i have lost a technologically superior unit to that of a lesser streangth. There were no major combat advantages (i.e. elite troops and both had full health) and on the two rare occations that it has happened to me, it was a warrior taking down an infantry, and the second may have been a rifleman. I do remember in Civ2, the concept of firepower (which was stated as antiquated and now unnessecary in the civ3 manuel) was supposed to combat this. has anyone else had experiences of this sort?

[Gen.Dragolen]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Amen, DaveV.....having played the Aztec more and more now in my experimentation games, I can honestly say that nobody....Noooooobody can beat them. If there's ever MP, I'd love to see the strat that could stand up to a jag-rush....just don't think it's possible tho....

re: unit costing in light of the auto-retreat ability....I'm not sure, but I'd estimate that a 20-25% increase might do the trick.

Results of a test I ran last evening:

2 Attack Forces, each hitting a size two town (guarded by two spearmen each)

AttackForce 1 - 6 Swordsmen (all vet)

AttackForce 2 - 6 Horsies (all vet)

Results:
AttackForce1 - Lost two swordsmen, town captured. 1 unit promoted to elite

AttackForce2 - Lost no units, town captured, 1 unit promoted to elite.

Now, it's true that ALL my units were banged up after the fight with the horsemen, but pop-rush a barracks in the newly captured town, and they're ready to do a repeat performance.

Costs:
*Assumes that I will want to keep my strike force at a constant size (6).

AttackForce 1: 6*30 (swordsmen) = 180 + 60 (replace two dead swordsmen) = 240 shields

AttackForce 2: 6*30 (horsemen) = 180 (no losses).

Multiply that out over your entire army, and over the course of the entire game, and hold your jaw as you realize the sheer mineral savings that come with building an all mounted force as the rules stand now.

Solutions:
1) Increase the cost of fast units across the board to reflect their increased survivability

or

2) Decrease the % chance of a unit withdrawing from combat (make it something other than automatic)

Thoughts?
-=Vel=-

Vel,

Considering I have seen many a horseman and cavalry unit fail to withdraw from combat (making a speaman/swordsman or rifleman a necessary companion) usually having only 1 hp left, so I don't think they need any changes to their combat specific traits. After all, cavalry was meant to hit and run, and do it all day.

However, it is way too cheap in terms of support to have 40 - 50 mounted units on the go. Crank up their maintenance cost, and that would make them a little less useful. After all a well fed man eats about 1 kg of food a day, while a horse need 10kg+ of feed. Add in the lances, swords, fancy uniforms or armour, and mounted units be like having a large SUV when gas is $10.00/gallon... That's why infantry is still used: it's cheap.

Alot of comments I see mentioned in this thread are the results of their having little or no logistical requirements. In Civ2, having to spread the units around, and forever running out of gold to support them was a bigger challenge than the fighting. It appears to me that simply having a cap on the number of units you can support isn't enough to restrict me from producing 50 Cavalry and letting them romping them all over my enemies who are on the other side of the planet. I know the coding for supply lines and adding categorys for unit maintenance in the Editor would not be a big deal for Soren and company to add.

I know from experience, troops in garrison are expensive to feed an house. Troops in the field are a lot more. Add in the economic impact of an army in an area, and like I suggested before, let the food supply reflect it. Make it 1 food for each unit in the field and take it from the surrounding squares. Seeing cities starve when an army is camped next door (even your own maybe?) would make it a nice terror weapon, not to mention break alot of computer civ's (CC) resolve to keep fighting. And those CC stacks of rifleman and cavalry would be a lot more impressive when they came to visit too. Kinda like seeing a cloud of locusts coming over the horizon...

[Theseus]

General,

I thought of logistics today as well.

I'm re-reading "The Face of Battle" by John Keegan (btw, all of his work is HIGHLY recommended), and in describing the English attack on France that culminated in Agincourt:

"The army embarked... and now numbered about ten thousand in all, eight thousand archers and two thousand men-at-arms, exclusive of camp followers. A good deal of space in the ships, of which there were about 1500, was given over to impedimenta and a great deal to the expedition's horses: at least one for each man-at-arms, and others for the baggage train and wagon teams."

I find that simply amazing... I am a Marine, and now I'm in real estate, so I have a respect of and understanding of logistics, but one ship for every 6-7 men? My God.

No, none of the Civ series have accurately reflected support costs... I like your ideas on the subject. Both sides btw: I want my forward aggressive forces to drain the local resources, but I also think my civ should bear a support cost.

[Gen.Dragolen]

Where's the Paymaster ?!?

Theseus,

Hooya !

Thanks for the suggested title. I'll see what i can find of his books.

And yes, I quite agree: your civ should pay the wages, but the enemy should be feeding them when they are on their soil. Not being able to pay a field unit has led to mutinies in the past...

As for the part about the shipping that brought the English army across the channel, don't forget that they would have put most of the horses in specialized boats and the men in other boats. I love horses, but would not want to sleep on a ship for a couple of weeks with them. But again, the scale of the units is getting in our way. Ships in that era could probably handle maybe 50 horses and 4-500 men a ship.

If one unit of infantry is made from one population point, then one caravel "unit" would be a sizable fleet. I seem to remember something about the Battle of Lepanto where the Ottoman's went toe to toe with the Venetians and allies, and there were maybe 5000 ships between the two. My sense of this game scale would have had one Venetian galley and caravel vs. two Ottaman galleys. Not exactly an impressive display of power...

Since they no longer assign population to the city size (just another relative abstraction) it's hard to guage what scale on which they are basing the units. If we use the Civ 2 scale where 1 pop = 10,000 persons, that would make WW II on the Eastern front correspond with about 3-4 million Germans vs Russians 5-6 million or about 300 infantry/panzer units vs.500 infantry/tank units. So we will have to play as we can: I'll see your 2 Infantry and raise you 3 tanks and an Arty...

I think the relatively abstract units leads to more flexibility in playing, but it oversimplifies things too much. It takes out some of the complex and subtle skills in running a campaign in favour of a body count.

Again. thanks for the suggested reading, Theseus.