So what was wrong with 'Firepower' again??

[Talenn]

I've been reading various forums and post and seeing the major griping about the massive battle 'upsets' in Civ3. Most of them mirror my own experiences in the game and some border on the completely absurd.

Civ2 introduced the concept of 'firepower' as a way of flattening out the luck curve and making it so vastly more modern troops dont lose to ancient adversaries. It seemed to work just fine IMO. Sure, there were occasional strange results, but overall, combat units performed as could be reasonably expected.

Now in Civ3, we are back to the Civ1-style utterly random combat results...Tanks losing to Napoleonic Era infantry, ACW Era Cav losing to Ancient Greek Era Spearmen etc etc. Its not only silly, but extremely frustrating. This is evident from the number of complaints regarding the combat 'model' in Civ3.

So, my original question stands: What was wrong with the concept of 'Firepower' from Civ2? Why was it removed? I hardly think that it was because it was 'too complicated'. The combat results are entirely 'black box'....the end user has to do nothing so what could be difficult about it?

About the only thing I can think of is a bastardized sense of 'game balance'. In Civ2, once a Civ got Gunpowder it was basically a license to overrun anyone who didnt have it. And the same went for more modern troops. Maybe they wanted to flatten out the troop's power so that older (obsolete) troops could still hold off technologically superior opponents. If that was the goal, then they have more than succeeded. But it makes for a bad gameplay experience IMO. People should be able to rely on certain results and not have to always be hounded by BS luck. Civ3 has reintroduced large quantities of utter luck into the game in terms of combat and resource placement.

IMO, I'd like to see BOTH types of luck have some sort of mitigation in a patch. The combat really needs some attention to make if 'feel' more correct. The resource placement should not be so absolutely critical IMO. Sure, reward the folks that have it, but make the units/improvements available to the 'have nots' even if at FAR greater costs/upkeeps. I can think of plenty of 'work arounds' that dont call for major reworkings of the design system so I'm sure the folks at Firaxis can too. The trick is convincing them that something should be done.

Would anyone else like to see these types of things addressed? If so, continue to post those thoughts cause they cant fix it if they dont know (or think) its broken.

[Altuar]

I agree to your points.

And I would like to clarify one: you mention that in civ II getting modern units meant overrunning everyone - but the AI seems quite capable of staying in the same technological ballpark as my own - two games in Monarch so far, and in both, even when I was the tech. leader, the worst the other civs was to defend against my modern armor with infantry, which, when fortified in cities is adequate defense - it cannot hold, but slows the attacker sufficently so that the defender is not completely overrun. At least without significant cost to the attacker.

Other civs of course had mech. inf. at this time. Less said about those tenacious defenders, the better. You need a significant power to overcome them, with cruise missiles, artillery and air support. It seems there is as much care taken in unit design as folks at Blizzard do in their RTS games. Balanced and full of (near-)historical flavour.

So the combat system, in this sense, is close to perfect.

SO: If the firepower system is re-introduced, the riflemen, say with, say, 2.5 firepower would still be adequate defense against with modern armor with 3 firepower. (There is only a slight technological difference between the two after all. Imagine the big picture where spearmen would get 1 firepower) Since the AI is pretty capable of tech research, firepower would not mean Civ II style walkovers while more or less creating a predictable combat system.

[TechWins]

I completely agree with everything you have to say.

A better system for combat fighting would be this (a lot like Civ3): a regular unit receives ten combat points, a veteran unit receives twenty combat points, and an elite unit receives thirty combat points. [Hit points will still be the same (i.e. regular unit gets 3 hit points).] Firepower points will be awarded by the unit's capability (i.e. warrior 1, knight 2, muskeeter 3, marine 4, armor 5, modern armor 6) with the points rangning from 1 to 6. The odds ratio would be just like the knight 4 to 6 thing except that the fraction would be put into a decimal and then multiplied by 1,000 (i.e. 4 to 6 would equal 666.6 points). Bonuses come from defensive positions etc... Luck is a number ranging from .5 to 3 ranging in intervals of .5 (i.e. .5, 1, 1.5, 2, 2.5, 3). The equation for each so called 'round of battle' (read manual for further info) would be something like this - (Firepower) [Combat Points + Odds + Bonus] * Luck. That put into words would be - combat points plus odds plus bonus then multiplied by firepower and next that multiplied by luck. Firepower will help stop the "armor losing to a spearmen"thing. Combat points will acount for an experienced unit. Odds will be what the realistic odds are. Bonus is what type of extra advantage the unit should get. Luck is just the plain old luck that unit has in that particular round. The unit with the higher point total wins that round and then the next round starts [the only difference between the next round would be random luck].

Example 1 -

A regular knight is attacking an elite spearmen so a knight has a 4 to 6 advantage. The spearmen is standing on a mountain, this is the only bonus for either unit, so it would have a bonus of 100. A knight has a firepower of 2 and the spearmen has a firepower of 1. On the first round of attacking the knight has a luck of 1 and the spearmen has a luck of 1.5. The equation for the knight would be (2) [10 + 666.6 + 0] * 1, which would equal 1353.2. The equation for the spearmen would be (1) [30 + 333.3 + 100] * 1.5, which would equal 694.95. This means the knight wins round 1 of the battle.

Example 2 -

Swordsmen - attacking spearmen, 3 to 5 advantage, 1 FP, regular unit, no bonus, luck of 1
Spearmen - defending against swordsmen, 2 to 5 advantage, 1 FP, veteran unit, standing mountain, luck of 1.5

Swordsmen - (1)[10 + 600 + 0] *1 = 610
Spearmen - (1)[20 + 400 + 100] * 1.5 = 780

Example 3 -

Swordsmen - attacking warrior, 3 to 4 advantage, 1 FP, veteran unit, no bonus, luck of 1
Warrior - defending against swordsmen, 1 to 4 advantage, 1 FP, regular unit, in a city that is on plains and has city walls, luck of 1

Swordsmen - (1)[20 + 750 + 0] * 1 = 770
Warrior - (1)[10 + 250 + 60] * 1 = 320

For now that is all I will do, but I believe if you do more you'll see that this would be a very effective winner calculation system in all situations.

[n.c.]

Removing firepwer was dumb. Even worse is making hitpoints increase w/morale as opposed to technology.

Of course, the fundamental problem is that Panzer vs. Phalanx battles are even possible.

[Leonid]

Firepower mad it way too easy to roll over the competition since you were already ahead in the tech game always, it just made it that much easier even on diety. The devs stated this was a problem to be addressed.

The developers wanted to make it more challanging. So if a phalanx is a tuff nut for my tank to crack, thats good. More of a challange, in civ 2 it was boring for me on diety when ya just rolled over everyone with your tanks and planes *yawn*

I like the corruption, scarce resources, tough trading, and competitivness of ancient units. Makes the game more challanging. Even have to consider giving away free techs to rival civs just for the chance of them trading a scarce resource to you, for instance in my current game I need coal for railroads..IM gonna have to give china like 4 advances just so he can see he has coal to trade me thus keeping him in the tech ballgame. That's the beauty of it.

If I easily ran over them every time like in civ 2 mop up operations I would stop playing..why i dont play smac or civ2 anymore way to easy even on highest diff setting. A real bore.

[Altuar]

Leonid, I could make civ 3 real challenging by making the computer ask me a question every turn "which number do I have in mind" and if I answered wrongly it would destroy a city of mine. But that wouldn't make too much sense, would it? Now, in the same line of reasoning, having modern armor beat by cavalary do tend to tick some people off. Me, for example. Yawn.

[n.c.]

Originally posted by Leonid
If I easily ran over them every time like in civ 2 mop up operations I would stop playing

There are 2 options for having ancient units be more competitive:
1) Change unit characteristics in the rules.txt file (which is no longer possible unless you play a scenario, thanks Firaxis).
2) Alter gameplay in a preposterously unrealistic manner.

I'm so happy that the designers chose #2

[n.c.]

Taken from another thread:

Originally posted by Dire Wolf
* The same stupid "knight-beats-tank" battle results occur. I've seen very silly battles so far. I've had a Knight beat my Mechanized Infantry, a Frigate/Galleon beat my Destroyer, a Spearman beat a Musketeer, and a Galleon beat a Submarine. There are other incidents like the ones listed above and they have occurred enough to be more than just "freak" luck.

[Talenn]

Altuar:

LOL! Yep, good point there. If all someone wants is a challenge, there are plenty of ways to handicap yourself...

All:

I agree that lack of 'firepower' makes the game more 'challenging' (anything that throws in large amounts of BS luck is going to do that to a human player...), but IMO, there are better ways to handle it. Combat is a centerpiece to the game. Having combat mechanics that are that far off base detracts from the whole gameplay experience IMO. And the farther up the techtree you go (and thus, the more time you've invested in the game), the worst the combat mechanics seem.

At any rate, I'd be in favor of any patch changes that mitigate the extreme luck and silly results that the current combat system promotes.

Thanx for the responses.