Anyone other than me hate Civ3 combat?

[Tiberius]

Originally posted by MrBaggins
It just occurs to me that the worker system has an unavoidable downside: micromanagement.

You can't say that you don't micromanage your PW; maybe not investing the same energy in it; but then, some of us like to micromanage things (and we love the option to automate when micromanaging becomes tedious). Micromanagement is not the biggest evil in a civ game.

You don't have to micromanage your cities, if you don't want to; enable the governors and there you go: less micromanagement. Yet most of us micromanage our cities, sometimes even in the modern era, because there are things we like to micromanage (like combat, right?, but also cities, and some of us workers)

Finally, I don't find PW any more fun than workers, and fun is the primary reason I play civ.

[CybellesReverie]

Easy solution: play Kohan. Problem solved.

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
Can you place tile improvements in enemy territory with PW? Because you can make it with workers, and it makes perfect sense to build a one-turn fort for an invasion stack with workers shipped with the units.

I just couldn't resist to check in on this issue...
Yes you can - use a settler to build a temporary city within enemy territory, drop a fort and disband that city the same turn. You retain your settler to move on to other tiles - and the beauty of it is that you can simulate your beloved worker system.

Both combat systems have their plues and minuses.

The civ3 model is more simplistic (since having no limit on the number of units on a tile makes it easier for the AI to mount large-scale invasions). Couple this with infinite RR movement and a weakened ZOC rule, and military tactics in the Industrial Age and beyond are no more than a matter of maintaining one or several huge stacks within your borders that can react on the fly to any threat. There is little thought involved because troop positioning is a non-factor - all you need to do is pump out units - take cities - and beeline reinforcements into conquered cities on you newly captured rail system - that is if you even decide to bother to keep the city.

My main gripe is that civ3 bogs down in tedium at that point - and the tedium is the main reason why I do not care for the game.

There isn't an efficient way to move these forces to multiple fronts. You have the ability to group/move like units, but it is a major chore to subdivide those stacks. And yes, a player could just keep his forces subdivided, but this doesn't reduce the tedium by much.

And the battles are tedious when you have to resolve 50-60 combats a turn in simplistic one-on-one mini-battles.

CTP2 has a more streamlined approach, but not without its flaws. The AI has several problems to overcome - it needs to create a good balance of ranged/frontline/flankers in an army while it also has a limit of the number of units. It does a pretty good job of it, but it can screw up too (but what game is perfect all the time???). And the pathing can sometimes create movement logjams - although it does not cripple the AI, or freeze the game, it seems it could be better.

I'm not going to get into a huge debate concerning the tank-vs-spearman issue. Suffice to say that it occurs with much greater frequency in civ3 - deny it as much as you want as an urban legend, but there are enough reports to give it some validity. Again, the argument for this was to add a more random combat factor into the game.

Personally, its not a big issue for me in civ3 - I can live with it. I do feel that the programmers at CTP2 were smart enough to do away with this issue that was also a major problem in CTP1.

I do have other issues which I will not touch here, but the tedium (civ3 workers, as well as civ3 combat) is the backbreaker... (and despite my criticism, there is a lot to like about civ3 - it does do some things well.) But given the choice between the two, I would rather play (Modded) CTP2.

Actually I'd make this suggestion - play EU2! Neither civ3 or CTP2 is in it's league.

[vmxa1]

Eu2 is it not an RTS? If it is then CivIII or CTP2 are not even it its genre.

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by vmxa1
Eu2 is it not an RTS? If it is then CivIII or CTP2 are not even it its genre.

It's an RTS that feels more like a TBS game than a RTS.

...and its still superior, in terms of gameplay depth