ancient era warfare: non-existent?

[Barshy]

I don't know if I'm in the minority, but in Civ2 I almost NEVER went to war in the Ancient Era, b/c I would speed through the tech tree so quickly that it wasn't worth all the effort.

Yet, I hated this b/c I wanted to have an in-depth Ancient Era warfare model that would encourage players to use Ancient units. I also liked it b/c it is more fun for me to use little archers to take over a city vs. a bunch of tanks (maybe b/c of the challenge).

I was then encouraged to see civ3 devote half or more of its UUs on ancient units, believing that this would mean a much more indepth ancient era experience.

All of this was shattered when I read one recent review about the ancient era in civ3 playing much like civ2. It was doubly confirmed when reading Jeff Morris's own "overall strategy" guide that seems to ignore the ancient era warfare component completely.

Again, maybe I'm in the minority. My hope now is that I am, so that I can see that maybe i'm missing something here.

[Sava]

One problem with ancient era warfare is the simplicity. For 4 thousand years, guys attacked each other with the same weapons over and over. The ancient era was a roullette of changing political control over regions. More modern warfare in the last 500 years has seen a variety of complex strategies come and go. For gameplay sake, I believe Civ has sped up the ancient era because people don't want to play Legion Vs Phalanx for 200 some odd turns. I think the next step in the evolution of civ-style games is the incorporation of war doctrine into a seperate section of a tech-like tree. In civ games, battle is very simplistic. Unit A vs Unit B... Unit A wins... There is no use of battle strategy. There might be a use of a broad strategy like "land here, take over 'Boston' produce musketeers, take over 'New York'. But there isn't strategy involved in the actual battles. Players just point and click, or use the number pad to move its unit into a space occupied by another unit and then a battle ensues. The games are absent of troop formations. In such a style of gameplay, a long period of time must be condensed to get rid of the monotony of Legion vs Phalanx, etc.

[Steve Clark]

Barshy: May I suggest Kull's Seeds of Greatness scenario? There you have more ancient civs, units, turns and events than you can shake a stick at.

Besides, I've won several games with Vet Knights (I consider them an ancient unit because Chivalry is a very early tech). I prefer to fight with non-modern units because they're easier to manage in a game, so I do everything possible to build the best military units early and often.

[Earthling7]

Sorry to disapoint, but I feel the same. I never bother to fight until I have bombers, howitsers and paratroopers. Guess I prefer the Powell dochrine.

I just feel that once you've built a unit in ancient times, it's obsolete.

[Dida]

Originally posted by Earthling7
Sorry to disapoint, but I feel the same. I never bother to fight until I have bombers, howitsers and paratroopers. Guess I prefer the Powell dochrine.

I just feel that once you've built a unit in ancient times, it's obsolete.

true true. I never fight untill I'm forced to it in ancient era.

[Rakki]

i think the problem is that in the era we can't afford to fight... i'd rather build a fortress and keep the egyptians off my back while i send my settlers to build cities elsewhere.... production is much more critical in the ancient era.... and you end up having to piss around with poorly sited AI cities even if you do decide to attack.

in the ancient era a lot of people (relative to the overall population ?) can be called up to fight,... but as you head towards the modern era, then the military units actually become smaller yet more powerful.

in Civ1/2 however it's actually the reverse.... you can actually afford to have a larger standing military as you reach modern era !

[Jason Beaudoin]

I can tell you that if there is ever a civlization that is next to my captal in the early part of the game, I would much rather deal with them right away in an aggressive ancient-era military campaign rather than having them act as a thorn in my side for the entire game.

Although I generally don't act as a war monger, you wouldn't know that of me in the ancient era.

...but, if I'm far away from civs early on, I'm as sweet as pie!

[Taylost]

I suppose if you really wanted a game that concentrated on the Roman and Pre-Roman era, you could play on a smallish world and use the editor to slow down research. This would push for a bloodlust win using early units. Of course, it could also mean a really looooooong game.

[FrostyBoy]

The problem is that our goal is to reach the end, and many of us feel that the end is at the end of the tech tree.

If Firaxis were smart, they would have balanced the era's correctly, so that you get an equal amount of time in each era.

I think they've tried to do this by making sure you have to discover almost everything before you can move on to the next era.

However, I feel that isn't going to work well unless property and resource is important, because if those two things are important, and other civ's have what you need in order to progress, then you have got to go to war with them, and war can slow the game down a lot.

[Deathray]

Originally posted by Rakki
i think the problem is that in the era we can't afford to fight... i'd rather build a fortress and keep the egyptians off my back while i send my settlers to build cities elsewhere.... production is much more critical in the ancient era.... and you end up having to piss around with poorly sited AI cities even if you do decide to attack.

in the ancient era a lot of people (relative to the overall population ?) can be called up to fight,... but as you head towards the modern era, then the military units actually become smaller yet more powerful.

in Civ1/2 however it's actually the reverse.... you can actually afford to have a larger standing military as you reach modern era !

WWI. Were any wars fought in ancient times with quite that many troops? I somehow doubt it.

[Ray K]

I feel the same way. The Ancient era can be a very fun time, militarily, but the techs rush past it too quickly to make it worthwhile.

What I did in Civ2 & CTP is slow down the era by adding more turns. I had to also cut down the tech advancement to compensate.

Finally, to cut down on the amount of expansion, I put as many Civs as I could on the smallest map so that you would be forced to encounter them earlier. You do not realize how paranoid you get when you've already encountered another civ's military unit before you've established your second city!

The reason I do not like a big map is that it's too easy to build up a lead on the AI because they do not expand as aggressively.

[Lonestar]

WWI. Were any wars fought in ancient times with quite that many troops? I somehow doubt it.

Not in ancient times, but near the early Middle Ages. Attila The Hun's campaign was extremely bloody, even by our standards. The Battle of the Catalunuian Fields had some 150,000 dead.

Ghenghis Khan killed over 8 million. Good haul.

The death toll of the 30 year war in Germany was in the millions.

Same with The Napoleonic Wars (but it was stretched out with long gaps between battles)

The first "Modern" war was the American Civil war, More Americans died at Gettysburg than during the entirety of the Vietnam war. After Grant became Commander-In-Chief (and Sherman took over the Western Theater) The war more closely resembled a modern war. Grant's VA campaign was a long grinding war, which eventually turned into trench warfare before he achieved a breakthrough in 1865.

[Jason Beaudoin]

I appears to me, based on the screenshots I've seen, that the AI has no problem with expansion. I think those civilizations that are expansionist will have the AI geared for that.

[Inverse Icarus]

i am a war monger, and personally i think that wars with archers/legions/catapults are some of the more strategic wars of the game.

and i think that riflemen and cannons make up a large portion of my military for quite a while.

[Ray K]

I would simply like to play the game in all 4 eras. To me, it seems silly to have Ancient units if they are never used.

It would be cool to play on a huge map with 32+ civs, and have time in the Ancient era to explore your local region and spar with the 3-4 civs surrounding you. As your empire grows and you progress through the ages, you come into contact with more civs -- the survivors of their own Ancient era on the other side of the world.