Hitpoints/Firepower?

[Marquis de Sodaq]

Ahem...

If you have any questions about how combat in CivII works, see my Combat thread in the Strategy forum. SlowThinker provided the link above, here it is again:

Info: Combat (GL)

Literally everything you are debating has been answered in this thread. Read up, you are even likely to learn something you don't know! The formula can be confusing, but I try to clarify it in the discussion that follows. I hope you find it helpful.

In sum, as ST stated earlier, an increase in attack or defense strength is better than greater hp, which is in turn better than greater fp. The latter two differ only slightly. Higher numbers (total for both units) reduces the likelihood of surprizes, too.

Kolpo, thanks for the tests. I'll (eventually) include them as a reference in the combat thread.

[Grim Legacy]

Originally posted by n.c.
The HP/FP system is the minimum acceptable.

There is a better way to ensure that phalanxes don't beat tanks: design the game so that ancient units cannot exist beyond a certain point. For example, once a civ has gunpowder it gets 10 turns to upgrade to musketeers or the older unit disappears.

But why would a game want to use historical reality and the best ideas from SMAC when you can have random-@ssed archers fighting paratroopers?

Even with your proposition it can still happen that a Civ is very backwards and does not have modern era units or tech when your armors hit their shores. And that is a good thing & one of the joys of Civ.

Some 'leakage' from contact with advanced civs would be nice though. Instead of easy exchanging and stealing of techs, the lower developed Civ should only be able to obtain second-class units, as they have not fully mastered the concepts initially.

[Edward]

HP are in, as they should be, but FP?

cyclotron7
I must point out that in my opinion, it was the lack of hp and fp in CTP that destroyed the game and ruined its combat system. C'mon, guys! You can almost always determine who is going to win any battle with just attack and defense. Add up the terrain bonuses, the fortification bonuses, the veteran bonuses, compare the two numbers and you might as well just throw in the towel already if your number is lower. That's the way without hp/fp.

With these values, however, we can put more strategy and suspense/excitement into Civ3. A unit with a low attack but a high firepower doesn't hit an enemy very often, but when it does, it hits hard. Think bombers, early submarines, V-2 rockets, etc.
A tank has good armor (defense) but if a shell or bomb pierces it's armor shell, many vital systems and crewmen could be destroyed, thus taking out the tank.

Are you saying that firepower (FP) is good because it makes the combat system mysterious and arbitrarily difficult to understand or that it's good because it makes the combat system full of crazy flukes?

I'm with Tventano in that FP adds unneeded complexity. Complexity is only good if it adds to gameplay. Yes, FP does affect combat and does so in a different way than increased attack values but does this distinction add to gameplay?

A modern unit having dramatically higher attack and defense combined with hitpoints should eliminate the phalanx beats tank issue. (And, as barefootbadass alludes to, if a smoking 1-hitpoint tank coasts into a mass of pikemen, maybe they can pry that sucker open.) Crazy high-HP low-attack units are better represented outside the standard combat system (spy sabotage, naval/artillery bombardment, ...). The only thing you lose in removing FP is the choice between (A) a unit that kills a phalanx one in four times and (B) a second unit that rarely beats a phalanx, but always gets rid of a quarter of its hitpoints. I guess you'd want unit A if it's acting alone and unit B if you want a dependable big force. However, despite the fact that Civ2 had FP, I NEVER made a decision between two units of this sort. Can anyone here think of two such units and an actual situation where they made a strategic choice between them? Can anyone think of a real situation where they said "Hey, screw attack value. This calls for a high FP unit."? Does FP add anything to the strategy or fun of the game?

I personally think that FP was a kludge that could have been avoided with exponentially increasing attack/defense factors combined with hitpoints. Maybe you could add a "modern unit vs. ancient unit" bonus (like the Civ2 pikemen vs. mounted bonus). FP's removal would result in an easier to understand game and would eliminate over half of the long threads regarding how Civ combat works.

[SlowThinker]

Originally posted by Edward
Yes, FP does affect combat and does so in a different way than increased attack values but does this distinction add to gameplay?

If you double FP and halve HP of the unit simultaneously then the unit's strenght will be unchanged, but battles will be shorter and so results will be less predictable.
In other words, the FP has only one effect: it indirectly allows to adjust the fortuity of battles.

It would be a good solution to replace the FP-constant by a constant that would control the predictability of strenth of the unit in the combat directly.
A very inpredictable unit may be interesting in the gameplay.