Please Fix The Combat

[Ozymandous]

Originally posted by Pembleton


Uh oh, this is getting way off topic but we *are* going to run out of oil in about 30 years or less. And we *will* come up with alternative energy sources.

We can do it now. We have the GNP that would allow us to invest in this research and do it within 5-10 years. But not as long as Bush and his buddies get their money from oil. They'll wait the 20-30 years to profit from this before they start investing more money in alternative energy sources.

To get even more off topic (initially)...

Bush and buddies? You mean the same folks who also helped elect Clinton? Before you shoot off at the mouth why don't you take those blinders off and realize that the goal of modern business is to make money, and there are a lot of people besides those who deal in oil who understand that.

How about land deals/scandals? Clinton seemed to cherish those and Gore seemed to love mining for minerals since he had a mine on his family owned land, polluted the local area quite nicely, or so I heard.

STFU about politics, especially one-sided views that utterly fail to see how ALL business people try to make money, period.

Quit slinging mud.

Now then, back on topic. The AI get's NO bonus. Why do I say this? Because I have had a small "army" of Mounted Warriors wipe out whole groups of musketmen, spearmen and even riflemen that were defending enemy cities.

All of these defensive units seemed to be fortified and the cities either had walls or were large enough to provide bonuses, yet 6-10 MW, attack strength 3 wiped out at least half that number of defenders when statistically they should have all lost.

I have seem some battles go for and against me but those are the odd's, or rather the number generator rolling the battles, sometimes you win some sometimes you lose some.

Oh, and for those who haven't bought the game and are sitting here talking out of their ass bad-mouthing the game, why don't you stop? You're only making yourself appear incredibly stupid to those who actually play the game because your "comments" aren't relative to how the game is.

A little strategy and more importantly, TACTICS, will take you far in this game, which is a *very* welcome sign.

[Kalstone]

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?

Once, I had 1 regular warrior hold off an attack from 3 horseman in one turn. He was on the defensive fortified in a size 8 city. I have had similar, though not as dramatic, results when I have been on the defensive in other situations. I think the problem is that either the defensive bonuses are higher than we think or that people aren't taking them sufficiently into account. The reason the combat seems biased could be that humans are on the offensive much more than the AI is.

[Setsuna]

Well, once I did have a semi-unfair victory (Right after an unfair defeat.) After attacking a Spearman with a Knight (And losing completely) I attacked with an Archer. Total victory for the Archer. This was against a fortified defender in a city, mind you.

Though I haven't seen the really wacky results yet (Once I made it to Tanks in my first game, it was basically over) I have seen a couple of close calls. My 15 hit point Cavalry Army was chopped down to half of it's hit points by a mere Swordsman. This was while attacking on open terrain. My, that Swordsman looked positively supernatural the way he stood there getting shot repeatedly.
I also nearly lost a Transport (Armed with machine guns) to a Galley (Armed with little arrows.) Again, I can only assume they were not arrows, but instead Magic Missles. After all, a modern transport could have defeated a normal ancient Galley just by running through it, much less needing to actually use its onboard weaponry.

Shortly after my one and only late game war started I soon had Bombers in mass abundance, which meant just about every city I attacked had 1-3 defenders with one hit point. I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest it wouldn't have been so easy without the bombers.

[Pembleton]

Originally posted by Ozymandous

Bush and buddies? You mean the same folks who also helped elect Clinton? Before you shoot off at the mouth why don't you take those blinders off and realize that the goal of modern business is to make money, and there are a lot of people besides those who deal in oil who understand that.

How about land deals/scandals? Clinton seemed to cherish those and Gore seemed to love mining for minerals since he had a mine on his family owned land, polluted the local area quite nicely, or so I heard.

STFU about politics, especially one-sided views that utterly fail to see how ALL business people try to make money, period.

Quit slinging mud.

I have to leave soon, so I didn't read what you wrote carefully, but I just wanted to say that I'm neither Republican nor Democrat and I was just waiting for someone to pounce on the party issue. Both parties are guilty, and I am well aware of it. But Bush is our President *right now*. Just because I attack Bush and Republicans doesn't mean I'm a Democrat.

STFU about assuming that you're either/or.

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by Ozymandous
Oh, and for those who haven't bought the game and are sitting here talking out of their ass bad-mouthing the game, why don't you stop? You're only making yourself appear incredibly stupid to those who actually play the game because your "comments" aren't relative to how the game is.

Sorry, but my comments/questions are meant to get to what is actually hapening in the combat model. If I am going to fork over $50 for a game, and I hear that there are some goofy results happening - and that is what is being reported by the initial poster in this thread (and other players), who are also playing the game, then I have every right to try to get some clarification on that issue.

And as I stated before, this is the EXACT same model that was used in CTP1, where these same things were happening, so they are relative to the situation.

[Nikomed]

Originally posted by Stuie


This has been my experience as well. If you prepare for combat and then execute your attacks properly and with forethought, you will not experience the problems people are complaining about.

Seems like a lot of people are ignoring any sort of tactical thinking (attacking with musketmen??? Why? They are a defensive unit.... same goes for mech infantry....) and just throwing units hap-hazzardly at the enemy. You deserve to lose if that's what you're doing. The combat system rewards planning and use of combined arms. If punishes blind assualts.

Well lets see...Is THIS the blind assault?

Objective - to kill 1 German Regular Spearmen fortified within the city.

Tools to achieve the goal:3 Archers(2 of which are Veterans) 3 Catapults and 3 Hoplites(2 of which are Elite and one Veteran).All of them are positioned on the same tile.

And what do you think the Grand Result was?

Of course ALL dead except that DAMNED spearmen.I lost ALL of my assault team and STILL had to deal with him...the only difference was that now he was Elite...too baaaad.

[Steve Clark]

Originally posted by Stuie


This has been my experience as well. If you prepare for combat and then execute your attacks properly and with forethought, you will not experience the problems people are complaining about.

Seems like a lot of people are ignoring any sort of tactical thinking (attacking with musketmen??? Why? They are a defensive unit.... same goes for mech infantry....) and just throwing units hap-hazzardly at the enemy. You deserve to lose if that's what you're doing. The combat system rewards planning and use of combined arms. If punishes blind assualts.

As I frequently do, I agree with Stuie. As a veteran deity warmonger in Civ2 and grogard wargamer, you have to know what and how to use your units effectively to ensure a more winning results. Combined arms, flanking attacks, ambushes, speed, defensive offense tactics and the ability to recognize the strengths and weakness of each unit (esp. in their movements) are the key to success. That does not mean that you win every battle and every war (or that it will be predictable in each and every situation). If that was the case, then it wouldn't be worth replaying. AoE this is not, thankfully.

[Setsuna]

Though I do believe combat needs fixing, that still wouldn't help much in your case.

The catapults do miss rather often against cities, that's true. I'm not sure if that needs addressing.
The Archers have an attack of 2, whereas the fortified defender gets various bonuses, which means they are still at a disadvantage.
The major problem here is the Hoplites. They are a defensive unit, not offensive. They defend at 3, but attack at only 1. See the problem?

[Jerk]

Well lets see...Is THIS the blind assault?

Objective - to kill 1 German Regular Spearmen fortified within the city.

Tools to achieve the goal:3 Archers(2 of which are Veterans) 3 Catapults and 3 Hoplites(2 of which are Elite and one Veteran).All of them are positioned on the same tile.

And what do you think the Grand Result was?

Of course ALL dead except that DAMNED spearmen.I lost ALL of my assault team and STILL had to deal with him...the only difference was that now he was Elite...too baaaad.

I don't understand how that happened. You cannot attack with Catapults, you can only bombard as they are considered an artillery unit. I assume you bombarded, then attacked, then on the following turn you lost your catapults to another enemy unit. Your assult team was by no means technologically elite compared to the Germans. Doing a quick look in the back tables of my Civ3 manual reveals that a Hoplite is very much a defensive unit. It has an attack value of a meager ONE. Archers only have an attack value of TWO. Now take into account the spearmen's defense rating of TWO, factor in terrain defensive, city improvement (did it have a city wall?) and fortification bonuses I would say that the results you experienced were completely reasonable. I would also say that using hoplite's to attack IS DEFINATELY a BLIND ASSAULT. You should have bombarded with your catapults, then assaulted with your archers. If that fails then WHY attack with even worse units like hoplites? You should have fortified your hoplites for that turn and retreated to save your catapults. You must keep in mind that you don't just lose your artillery units, you lose them to the enemy. Giving your opponent free units is a bad way to fight a war.

It has been my experience so far that the combat system is not bad at all. I have lost battles that I should have won but I have also successfully defended battles that I should have lost. I think the key is a good balance of attack, artillery, and defensive units. If my attack fails I don't rush in my defenders to die and leave my artillery open for capture. I cut my losses by retreating or by fortifying my defensive units, bombard every turn, and wait for reinforcements to come in and assult.

As for the strategic resource issues I agree that you should be able to build the units anyway at a significantly increased cost. I have been fortunate in my games so far and had decent access to the resources I need but I hated seeing Calvary in my city build lists. I hate having to scroll to all the good stuff. At the very least crappy older tech units should be put at the bottom of the list. I would also prefer it if my city govenors would listen to what I say. I was all the way through the tech tree and despite me telling all my city govenors to NOT build naval units they would still try to build Privateers. I also built new cities and after building a granary and a wall they decided to build weath when I was very much in the positive as far as income per turn and had a very large cash reserve.

[Leonidas]

quote:

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!



I think you're misinterpreting some of the numbers here. Your army had 15 hit points, but an attack factor of only 3. Each member of the army attacks alone until out of hit points. So an attack of 3 vs. defense of 4.5 could conceivably result in a complete loss three times in a row, destroying your army.


skink:

The forum was so busy I didn't have time to post everything I wanted to say, so let me explain the situation a bit better here:

1) There were two regular enemy Pikemen on a hill, guarding an iron resource. I initially attacked them with a single veteran swordman and he won aginst one of the pikemen, although he went into the red. No problem.

2) I then figured - hey - my army of three elite swordsmen should have no problem against that remaining pikeman. So that army attacked and was wiped out, not even making a dent in that pikeman's hit points. The AI wanted that iron resource and nothing was going to move it. I have seen this sort of thing happen frequently. You can almost tell when the AI's units will be unbeatable.

3) While I can appreciate randomness, luck, etc in a battle or a game, one of the purposes in using one of these very rare leaders is to form an army and take out those tough defenses (I believe I saw it written down somewhere). If it can't do that - then what's the point in forming an army and losing all those elite units? The leaders are far better used to speed-build Wonders - this boosts Culture, which in turn can capture enemy cities. . . But how realistic is that?

4) If combined arms wins games - then the pikeman (which was historically used against charging cavalry), should do poorly against close combat units like the swordman. Nope - doesn't apply. There goes realism. . .

5) A Galleon should stand no chance against an Ironclad. Maybe I read too much history - but historically, the Merrimac (Confederacy Ironclad) and the Monitor (Union Ironclad) were practically indestructable from a wooden warship's cannonballs. I realize this is a game - but a little nod to historical reality would be nice. I could envision maybe three Man-of-Wars attacking an Ironclad and winning - but a Galleon (it didn't lose a single hit point)?

6) The whole purpose of having firepower in Civ 2 was to eliminate this problem. Otherwise - a hit point for a tank is the same as a hit point for a pikeman - which makes no sense.

7) Like I said - I realize this is a game - but it's not like Civ3 was created in a vacuum - there were two games before it as well as the HUGE input from the Civ community. The moment I heard that firepower had been taken out of the game - I knew there were going to be problems.

8) If this was done to prevent people from supposedly feeling the effects of falling behind in the tech race - it was the wrong way to go about it. The strategic resource system should have been balanced better, plus implement the idea of synthetic materials or small Wonders to allow the purchase of better equipment (albeit that equipment would be more expensive) would have helped to re-dress a lot of these issues.

9) But once again this points to what can happen when a game does not have a wide and open beta test - things do not work as they should, or certain ideas should not have been implemented. It didn't take much game playing for me to see some of the unbalanced elements in Civ3 come to the surface.

10) This game could be so much more than what it is. It's a real diamond in the rough - sure hope it can be polished up to shine like it should.

11) In many games of Civ3, it does feel like I am playing Command and Conquer or AoE. There are a lot of people who probably enjoy playing these kind of games; I understand a lot of people enjoy playing "Sudden Strike" - but all resemblance to realism in that "wargame" is purely coincidental.

Likewise with Civ3, the very idea that a pikeman can take out a tank, or that an Ironclad can sink a battleship is laughable. Some have tried to compare the pikeman in these instances to the Mujahadeen or the warriors in Ethiopia. They don't compare - the Mujahadeen and Ethiopians all had rifles. The Mujahadeen also have machineguns, mortars and bazookas. They are poor - yes - but they still hav very real modern weapons. I wonder how they would have done against the Soviets armed only with pikes?

[CyberGnu]

I think I have the record for loopsided results... I had my army of three modern armor units being killed by a defending IMPI!
Even accounting for the defensive bonus and the city size (8), he couldn't have had a defensive value higher than 3...

Naturally, the next armor unit I sent against the town killed the impi without even a scratch...

Which just reaffirms what I've thought all along... Armies are thoroughly, utterly, unarguably useless. Sorens answer to my question on why you ever would use them was 'because they are an unbeatable unit'. This is obviously not the case...

Although, I have a nagging suspicion that this is a coding problem instead of a logic problem. It seems to me that armies have a tendency to either kill the opponent without getting a scratch, or be horribly decimated. Anyone else seen this?

[Saber_Cherry]

9) But once again this points to what can happen when a game does not have a wide and open beta test - things do not work as they should, or certain ideas should not have been implemented. It didn't take much game playing for me to see some of the unbalanced elements in Civ3 come to the surface.

10) This game could be so much more than what it is. It's a real diamond in the rough - sure hope it can be polished up to shine like it should.

I completely agree with all of your points, but I think these two best sum up my feelings. I certainly hope MOO3 has a public beta; still, even without it, Quicksilver is EXTREMELY responsive to fans. They have an OFFICIAL forum, and practically every worthwhile thread is responded to by at least one employee or moderator. They are even letting fans participate in a (fairly unimportant but very fun) part of the game, the "Event System", by submitting their own events. So I almost have complete confidence there that preordering won't burn me like it did with Civ3, despite the fact that MOO2 was only so-so.

[yavoon]

I know its been sed, but sometimes the obvious and true is hidden under mere ladnslide of ignorance.

not letting technological advantages mean instant and complete obliteration is GOOD for gameplay. FEAR NOT statistically more advance armies will still win in the long run. though now the playing field technology wise is leveled a lil. this also helps in respect to strategic resources, if u dont have access to them, u aren't neccessarily rolled instantly. I'm really sorry all of u chieftan players rolling swordsmen over w/ tanks can't see that

but thats just life I spose.

[Venger]

Originally posted by Setsuna
Well, once I did have a semi-unfair victory (Right after an unfair defeat.) After attacking a Spearman with a Knight (And losing completely) I attacked with an Archer. Total victory for the Archer. This was against a fortified defender in a city, mind you.

Been there. Had an ARMY attack and lose, only to send a single unit in later and skunk the defender. Frankly, the concept of the army is nice but malfunctioned. One can take a city easier with 3 legionarys than with an army of three legionarys.

Venger

[Venger]

Originally posted by CyberGnu
I think I have the record for loopsided results... I had my army of three modern armor units being killed by a defending IMPI!
Even accounting for the defensive bonus and the city size (8), he couldn't have had a defensive value higher than 3...

Naturally, the next armor unit I sent against the town killed the impi without even a scratch...

Feel your pain brother...

Which just reaffirms what I've thought all along... Armies are thoroughly, utterly, unarguably useless. Sorens answer to my question on why you ever would use them was 'because they are an unbeatable unit'. This is obviously not the case...

Armies are horribly done. You should not only get shared hit points, but an attack bonus of +1 for each unit. Face it, fighting three guys at once is a $hitload harder than fighting three guys one at a time.

Although, I have a nagging suspicion that this is a coding problem instead of a logic problem. It seems to me that armies have a tendency to either kill the opponent without getting a scratch, or be horribly decimated. Anyone else seen this?

Yep. Armies not only seem to lose WAY more than they should, they actually slow an offensive. I'll get further and faster with 3 legionarys than with a 3 legionary army. I can take a city out in one turn with 3 legionarys, instead of up to 4 or 5 turns as the AI rush builds units as I simply attrit one as he builds it.

Plus, I've not seen a unit within an army become elite...

Broken...

Venger