Please Fix The Combat

[Torment]

This has to be the worst combat system i have ever seen

I know some people say it works fine for them and everything, but i'm on my fourth game now and everytime i go to war it seems lke technology doesn't matter. The one damn english spearman took out 4 swordman 3 musketman and 2 knights in one turn. The worst part is that the last 3 attacks he was down to one red bar. Another case in point, the fleet i used to get my troops there, 2 galleons, a frigate and 2 caravels. ALL SUNK by the brave little english galley who didn't even take a scratch.

this seems to be a MAJOR problem and hopefully you'll fix this.

now i have to go deal with an elite english spearman

[The Unknown]

It's just bad luck..

[Setsuna]

Bad luck is being the only person to ever lose a Tank to a Musketman.

In this case it's just another day of Civ III. Where archers have magic powers (To shoot down cruise missles) and Spearman can draw on their inner ki to defeat Modern Armor.

Geez, didn't you read the manual?

[hexagonian]

Does the door swing both ways...?

A question...

Has anyone noticed in their combats with the AI that they have been able to win battles against supposedly superior forces?

[shammy]

not just bad luck, its a rule

i just lost eight modern tanks to cossacks, knights and ancient units like hoplites, spearmen etc. i lost three of them while they were attacking me, and i lost 5 more when i attacked them.

i lost battleship to iron clads, galleons and submarines to caravels

and of course.. i lost multiple mechanized infantry when taking a city with musketmen in it

this is my third game now and so far there have been over one hundred occasions on the combat system that have caused my blood to boil.. this is just like having civ1 combat system

this is extremely frustrating, if i have supreme tech on the battlefield,. why cant i be supreme..

[dr. blackclove]

Yeah, there are some oddities. I am playing at chieftan level and losing tanks and mech inf to spearmen and knights pretty regularly. I am definitely having CTP flashbacks.

In a way it makes some sense, because usually I'm losing them while garrisoning enormous cities with a couple of tanks... I guess you could assume that by modern times some of those "ancients" are really people with firearms mixed in with the less advanced stuff, guerillas, huge masses of peasants, etc. At least thats how I try to justify it to myself when my tanks are killed by spear chuckers.

Overall though it's pretty irritating.

[Zizka]

I feel your pain. Nothing like having 3 Elite Legions lose to a warrior. Look caesar and his crack troops just got routed by asterix!!

:P

Z

[FrantzX]

Am I the only who hasn't seen this? I just finished killing the English and Indians. I was in the modern age and they were both in Industrial. With a force of 25 armor, 12 bombers and battleships, I lost 2 armor and a battleship in capturing 20 20 cities. The defenders were mostly riflemen and infantry. I have found that using artilery makes conquest SO much easier.

[Jason Beaudoin]

Maybe we should tweek the combat numbers a little with the editor?

[hexagonian]

The sad thing is that this will probably not be patched in by Firaxis, as this will mean a complete overhaul of the combat system. Say what you will about the combat system of CTP1, but at least Activision reworked it to give balanced results in CTP2. And to think that Firaxis regressed on this issue...as soon as they said that they were removing FP, the warning light went off in my head, because this was exactly what Activision did in CTP1. I thought that the HP system would take care of this, but it appears that elite status is extemely powerful, almost to the point of unbalancing.

Guess it is up to the fans to rework the system - oh wait, the editor is a piece of crap!!!

I'm still a fence sitter on this game - and the more I read about these combat results, the less enthused I am about civ3.

My question still stands though - Is a player managing to get these skewed combat results in his favor from time to time - i.e. being able to kill 2 AI galleons, a frigate and a caravel with a galley? (and were you attacking the galley, or did it attack you, because that will make a difference, based on the numbers?)

Though in looking at the charts, frigates and galleons are not that powerful in relation to galleys... Still, a ship with an attack/defend of 1 should not be able to take out 4 ships with stronger numbers - and this is seeming to be more the norm rather thaan an occasional occurance.

[Yog-Sothoth]

Originally posted by hexagonian
My question still stands though - Is a player managing to get these skewed combat results in his favor from time to time - i.e. being able to kill 2 AI galleons, a frigate and a caravel with a galley?

Nope, never happened to me at least. Seems like the AI has been given some sort of advantage in combat.

[zapperio]

The combat is fair.

According to Soren, the AI does not receive any combat bonuses on any level. This has been my experience also, in 4 games on regent, that your forces do very badly if they are by themselves in enemy territory AND the AI forces are crappy by themselves in your territory. If however, you use tactics and group defenders with attackers and mix elites into the bunch, then that group will by more effective and a lot tougher, even in enemy territory.

Just like real life! fancy that.

Zap

[Grumbold]

Re: Please Fix The Combat

Originally posted by Torment
The one damn english spearman took out 4 swordman 3 musketman and 2 knights in one turn. The worst part is that the last 3 attacks he was down to one red bar. Another case in point, the fleet i used to get my troops there, 2 galleons, a frigate and 2 caravels. ALL SUNK by the brave little english galley who didn't even take a scratch.

Since units can only attack once per turn I have to doubt your observations. Second you also have to bear in mind that Elite uits stand a much better chance than Regulars or Conscripts. Those HP really count even if your attack or defence stats are weaker. Third, adding up all the defensive bonuses can really get to high numbers if they are in forts or cities. The solution is to bomb the enemy down to 1 hp before even thinking of making a ground assault.

They made a design decision not to allow modern units to be invulnerable because of the resource system. If you as the player had no Oil access, would you want the game to be completely unwinnable? I thought not.

[Leonidas]

After playing 70+ hours on Regent level on many different types of maps, I have experienced skewed combat results on many occasions. Not once, in all these games did I see the AI affected in this way.

Example: An army of 15 attack strength (three elite swordsmen) was utterly destroyed by a pikeman (4.5 defense strength - he was on a hill). The sad part was, that pikeman was still in the green!

A veteran Ironclad destroyed by a Galleon.

I could go on.

It seems that whenever the AI is faced with a need to hold a position; or if you momentarily have an edge, it suddenly develops "Superhuman" abilities.

It is very obvious that the combat system has not been playtested as it should - any surprise since the game was rushed?

The combat between units in Civ 3 plays more like battles in Command and Conquer games or in Sudden Strike, then in a strategy game that spans human history. . .

The combat system as it now stands is a big step backward - and this from a company that has a history of designing this type of game. . .

[Barnacle Bill]

Re: Re: Please Fix The Combat

Originally posted by Grumbold



They made a design decision not to allow modern units to be invulnerable because of the resource system. If you as the player had no Oil access, would you want the game to be completely unwinnable? I thought not.

This was, IMO, a bad decision. A better choice would have been to give the player an unpleasant but usable work-around for lacking a strategic resource, like making units that require it cost 3 times as much if you don't have it or something. In real life, if you have a shortage of oil there are work-arounds - no major power in a war that I ever heard of had absolutely none. For example, in WWII the Germans made synthetic petroleum from coal, and I read that in WWI German colonial forces in Africa cooked up some sort of usable motor fuel from plant sources (ethanol?). The US developed synthetic rubber in WWII. In WWI the Germans made a class of coal-burning battleships because they had an oil shortage. In WWII the Germans also had a late-war jet fighter design that was created especially to not use strategic metals (HE162, if I recall correctly). All those alternatives are more expensive, but possible, and easily abstracted to higher unit costs if you don't have the good stuff

However, in real life guys with spears don't beat tanks - ever, and guys with muzzleloading muskets don't either. Keep in mind that on the scale of Civ3 a ground unit is not one person/vehicle, it is more like a division. If Napoleon's Grand Army with which he invaded Russia, over 400,000 men as I recall (let's call it 40 musketman units) attacked a German Panzer division, what do you think would happen? The British lost 100,000 men on the first day of the Somme offensive charging German machineguns, and they had modern rifles & artillery support while the Germans had no tech advantage. Now imagine that instead of Napoleon's army it is the Persian army with which Xerxes invaded Greece going up against that Panzer division?

IMO, there should be three combat "periods": ancient/medieval (i.e. pre-gunpowder), early gunpowder, and modern. Every unit would be assigned to one of these periods. All the sailing ships (everything after galleys), ironclads, cavalry, cannon, musketmen/musketeers and riflemen would be in period "early gunpowder". Everything earlier would be in "ancient/medieval", everything later would be in "modern". Ancient/medieval units would be able to fight with Early Gunpowder units, handicapped only by their relative attack/defense factors. Same for Early Gunpowder units vs Modern ones. Ancient/Medieval units should just die without causing any damage if attacking or defending against modern units, though. If a player gets himself into that sort of predicament, he aught to lose