Broken indeed - but not beyond repair

[Venger]

Originally posted by WhiteElephants


I fail to see your point. I could say the same thing that infections and disease killed more than artillery and bombing.

Alas we cannot build a disease unit. However, you continue to assert that bombardment by sea, land, or air, does not destroy enemy targets. When in fact it does. What it cannot do is occupy land.

That's a simple FACT. Yet this fails to answer why you think artillery and bombing are capable of destroying entire units.

Because they DO. Arclite missions wiped out entire NVA units. Naval units are obscenely vulnerable to aircraft. There are accounts of Allied artillery creating ghost zones. IT IS NOT UNREASAONBLE.[/quote]

I need not point any further than the current war in Afghanistan to make my point.

Huh? We are running maybe 100 sorties a day with little in theatre ordinance. What's going on in Afghanistan is light but targeted bombing. Look at a full force campaign, i.e. Iraq, where allied air and MLRS rendered resistance in places non-existant.

Granted it kills people, but that's not what we're arguing about. What we're arguing about is whether or not it's capable of destroying units that are represented in Civ, which I assume are near Corp size. Now I'll grant you that they can inflict vast amounts of damage, but you surely aren't going to march your artillery into the Stalingrad are you?

In Civ2 neither air nor naval units could occupy. And seeing as you think units in Civ are Corps size (not likely), any unit will consist of more than just artillery.

Of course not, you need ground troops to go in and clean up the mess.

There can be nothing left to clean.

I don't have the game, but, again, I'll meet you half way and agree that maybe artillery needs to be stronger, but I'm not going to as far as to say that it should wipe out entire units either.

In Civ2, 4 artillery can take a city with 3 defenders. In Civ3, artillery can at best knock down the defenders one point, which they will heal during the AI turn. In other words, they do NOTHING. They are broken.

Air power can render entire armored formations combat ineffective. Hence, destroyed. Artillery can render infantry combay ineffective, hence destroyed. Air power can outright sink ships. This is not represented in the Civ3 combat system worth a damn.

Considering that people survived Hiroshima I don't think its a strech of the imagination to believe there would also be survivors of an artillery strike no matter what the size large.

Hiroshima wasn't a capable combat center after the bombing - so no, it didn't survive as a combat effective city.

Besides the gameplay repercussion of artillery deystroying units are exactly what you want to aviod that was in Civ2. I would think you'd be somewhat happy.

Artillery and bombardment units are for the most part useless in Civ3. And that sucks. In fact, Civ2 spies are more powerful in damaging units than Civ3 units are. And that's a joke.

Venger

[CyberGnu]

Dexter, the combat system is definetly broken. The problem is that any unit can defeat any other unit. There are three problems with this:

1) It is not consistent with a game called 'civilization'. You and me both know what happen to the Polish cavalry when they charged the german tanks...

2) It makes the game 'uncontrollable'. What I mean is that you don't have a reasonable expectation as to what is going to happen. If my knight attacks a spearman in the open, he might get killed. If he attacks a fortified infantry on a mountain, he might win. And I guess I'll get someone screaming at me that this is a feature, not a bug... War is chancy etc etc. Well, I agree that there shouldn't be completely linear. Once in a blue moon a tank might fail to kill a spearman. But not to the point when I avoid putting my tanks in the open because I'm afraid of the enemiy knights... Civ 2 handled this aspect pretty well, I think. If a tank suprised your rifleman in the open, you knew he was toast. Once a game or so, however, he would survive with one hp left... and you would look at the screen and breathe a sigh of relief Here you never feel the relief.... More an irritation when he dies.

3) It makes defense damn near impossible. In one of my games on deity level barbarians spawned horsemen faster than I could build hoplites. I had a wall around my town, a fortified hoplite (defense three) and yet it only took five horsemen (attack 3) to kill the hoplite... Which was spawned every five turns or so. It took me ten turns to build a hoplite. You do the math. This is especially annoying in the ancient age with the roving knights... The computer sends in a single knight and attacks your town (which since there is no ZOC you can't really actively defend anymore). If he fails, he'll retreat with one hp. But there is about a 50/50 chance he'll succeed... I don't think this is right. I should not loose a city because of a crap-shoot attack like that... At least not half the time.


Seriously, what was wrong with the combat system in civ 2? Keep the artillery the way it is for landunit, I quite like how it works in the modern age. Let bombardment kill sea units, so modern naval warfare acquires some semblence of sanity. And of course, keep the 'one unit killed doesn't kill the entire stack'. Or better yet, copy CTP's stack system.

[Cyanide]

Once again, I find I must agree with the overall sentiment of the original posting. After the first game, I never produced another artillery unit - why bother? Now, I agree that a single artillery shouldn't destroy another unit (duh), but 3 or 4 should. Just on a resource commitment alone, that seems fair (it took the time and resources for me to build 4 units to kill just one). Keeping a city, on the other hand, doesn't seem so great. I'm not talking about realism here - why must realism enter into every Civ war debate? To me, there are many more things than just unrealistic combat to complain about in all Civ games. I'm talking about game balance. And on the subject of broken combat in general, I'd have to agree again (God - it seems like all I do is agree with the CivIII bashers). I can't tell ya how tired I am of seeing pikemen hold off my armor rush...

[Zylka]

The problem with civ2s system of hitpoints and firepower is that it makes too much sense = difficult to understand = too intimidating for the mass moron norm consumer.

[Altuar]

Originally posted by Zylka
The problem with civ2s system of hitpoints and firepower is that it makes too much sense = difficult to understand = too intimidating for the mass moron norm consumer.

But the same is true for the "solution;" the only thing different is that spearmen defeating tanks dont make sense for both the average consumer and stat-maximizing power player.

Beside that, firepower system in Civ II hid behind images. An average player, not wishing to look at stats and whats meant by them could figure out that a tank is more powerful than cavalary.

[wervdon]

You know all these people saying bombardment/bombing can't kill units in real life, your right. Thing is neither can ground troops vs ground troops. There are always survivors in any battle, and I doubt there's been too many cases in history where _every_ man in a army gets destroyed in combat (some escape, defect, desert, etc). The important thing is the army gets broken and is no longer effective. If your going to take this logical argument for air bombardment or canon bombardment to the extreme then at least finish it up and say no unit should ever be killed because its impossible to kill "all" of them. Course, that'd make for a fairly boring game.

Course I dont want them to totally change bombardment anyways, I just want the option for lethality to it in the editor so people can set their rules to suit themselves

[Sikander]

Again an argument has arisen which fails to point out the real problem. In this case the real problem is again a strategic game trying to simulate tactical features on a strategic scale. Rather than either:

1) Using army sized units that represent combined arms forces and letting these units act on the strategic map.

or

2) Allowing players to build their own combined arms armies made of of components which then fight a tactical battle on a larger scale (ie smaller area) map.

Civ 3 instead retains the design flaw of Civ 1 and 2 by making the strategic map do double duty as a tactical map. This makes old fantasy games like Master of Magic and Sword of Aragon much more realistic and enjoyable in this aspect. Both of these games allowed you to build armies, and then fight tactical battles with these armies on a map which represented one square on the strategic map. The result was a satisfying strategic game that gave you a lot of flavor of the tactical combat without losing too much focus and becoming a completely tactical game.

I do give Civ 3 some points for trying to improve the game, they eliminated zones of control to some extent (no more phalanxes built in a 10,000 population city keeping a panzer corps from moving through thousands of square miles of territory for instance). They included the army unit, which allows grouping of units together, though from my experience these units are too rare to be truly useful, much less the paradigm shift I think is necessary.

Let's face the facts. A game on the scale of Civilization should not have artillery units at all. They should be small components of armies. Their range (with the possible exception of modern missle units) should not allow them to even fire out of their own square, and their numbers would be miniscule. The real failure is the concept of transplanting tactical combat on to a strategic map at a strategic time scale. This was a failure of Civ 1, and is merely a sad legacy that has plagued the entire Civ series with the exception of Master of Magic. (I never played CTP, so perhaps there is another exception).

As for the argument whether long range firepower can achieve decisive strategic results by itself (ie without ground units), my opinion is that this is still not possible where there is any cover and concealment available to the targeted units. Thus in the desert, or at sea you may well be able to annihilate an enemy force, you will be a good deal less likely to do so where the enemy is using cover and concealment, and even less likely to do so where a lack of friendly ground forces allows the enemy to disperse as well. A quick look at the bombing of Serbia, where a miniscule casualty rate was suffered by Serb forces should tell the story.

A decent analogy would be American Football, where a team could limit itself entirely to a passing game. It might win against a really weak opponent, but that opponent would certainly be able to take countermeasure like pulling it's linebackers out and replacing them with more defensive backs, and sending it's linemen on a balls to the walls pass rush on the opposing quarterback. By mixing the threats of pass and rush you can make both phases of your game work better. By limiting yourself to one set of options the opposite is true.

Thus the threat of a ground attack forces the enemy to concentrate his forces, which makes them more vulnerable to bombardment. The fact of a ground attack makes the enemy more vulnerable again by forcing him to move, which means he has to leave his protective bunkers and become a good deal more visible to boot. The Arclite strikes in Vietnam, while very effective, never destroyed units of the scale that I assume exist in Civ (Divisions in the modern era), nor did they do so outside of the context of friendly ground units operating in the same or adjacent squares (in Civ parlence). I do think that they in fact knock a number of hit points off those divisions however.

[Tani]

Soren said in the interview it is all in the eye of the beholder

artistically, no contest, it can be as remote from reality as it can be and still be called completed. for realism, it's just broken relative to civ2, because it actually get less real. and yes, more challenging, but you haven't try the setting that let ai starts at future tech 1 while you start with none. i said it already, but i will say it again, good games are challenging, but it doesn't make any challenge a good game.

well, it is not worthless, but i expected a lot (ok, may be too much for current technology, who knows) since it has been such a long while from civ2. i can accept the defense on the defects only if this is pseudo civilization, not civilization.

[Venger]

Originally posted by Sikander
I do give Civ 3 some points for trying to improve the game, they eliminated zones of control to some extent (no more phalanxes built in a 10,000 population city keeping a panzer corps from moving through thousands of square miles of territory for instance).

This hurts the game by making defense nearly impossible. ZOC not only includes covering the concept of a fighting radius for a group, but also the limitations presented by a grid map. ZOC should be back, although ZOC should expire if the unit is more than one age apart. Hence, your pikemen cannot stop a tank unit, but a musketeer can.

The solution, of course, is to deal with the musketeer...

They included the army unit, which allows grouping of units together, though from my experience these units are too rare to be truly useful, much less the paradigm shift I think is necessary.

I'm actually racking these great leaders up (I think at least 5 in my current game, as the (what else?) Romans), and I've determined -

Armies suck. (Sounds like a great title to a new thread...)

I can advance faster and do more with three legionarys than with a three legionary army. Send my army against a city, sure, I may kill a unit, the AI will rush build another. After two of these, my army has to withdraw to heal or risk losing the great leader to the broken combat system.

A real army should pool hit points AND give a +1 attack bonus for each unit in the army. This would more accurately portray the effects of a combined force army. Fighting three people at once is loads harder than three people one at a time...which is what the Army pretty much does.

Rush building, on the other hand, rocks like a motherflanker... had I realized this earlier on, my game (still on my first game, it's a LONG one) might be over with all the wonders I could have rush built...

As for the argument whether long range firepower can achieve decisive strategic results by itself (ie without ground units), my opinion is that this is still not possible where there is any cover and concealment available to the targeted units.

This in and of itself is considered in the game (or should be), units in cover are less apt to be damaged by a bombing run. However:

Let's assume an enemy unit is fortified in a forest hex. If I send three bombers (which is conceptually equivalent to a year long campaign by 3 bomber wings), and bombard with three artillery, I should likely knock out the unit. And why shouldnt I? I cannot think of a single unit that could withstand a yearlong Arclite and constant artillery , times three - they may not be all destroyed but they'd be hors de combat...

Thus in the desert, or at sea you may well be able to annihilate an enemy force, you will be a good deal less likely to do so where the enemy is using cover and concealment, and even less likely to do so where a lack of friendly ground forces allows the enemy to disperse as well. A quick look at the bombing of Serbia, where a miniscule casualty rate was suffered by Serb forces should tell the story.

Again, this is built in to the defensive bonus - it takes more to destroy an in-mountain unit that on plains.

The Arclite strikes in Vietnam, while very effective, never destroyed units of the scale that I assume exist in Civ (Divisions in the modern era), nor did they do so outside of the context of friendly ground units operating in the same or adjacent squares (in Civ parlence).

A bomber unit should be considered an Arclite mission. Now mind you, in Civ3, this will only damage a unit, not kill it. Which I don't disagree with. But the THIRD arclite hit in a row ought to finish him off.

Also, I'd have preferred a 50/50/25 for bombardment - 50% off first strike, 50% off second strike, 50% of third strike - with a 25% minimum on a hit. Thus, three strikes and youre out. Of course, not all would be successful - likely a fortified unit may require six strikes...of course, with the 5 hit point rule (!?!?!), that's not doable...

BTW, what was so wrong with the SMAC general rules for combat? They evolved from Civ2 and while they had some problems were vastly superior to the 3/4/5 hitpoint elite/veteran/regular Civ3 deal...

Venger

[Wrong_shui]

My first post so be gentle.

Id be happy that you couldnt kill units with bombardment as long as it had a chance at damaging all units on that tile, as they're all round the area makes sense they'd all get hit.

I think this bombarding thing has made cruise missiles useless, theres just no need for them.

[squid]

Though collateral damage would be a very good feature, I see no problem with civ2's combat system. The only real bug is in handling the planes. and that's going to get fixed. I really do like the game, and for all the Firaxians out there: I think everyone was expecting walking on water in civ2 ... don't be so worried about all of these whiners.

[Tani]

Originally posted by squid

I think everyone was expecting walking on water in civ2 ... don't be so worried about all of these whiners.

to the contrary, i believe people don't want anything magical, or miraculous. rather, more realism than civ2, not less. but i am starting to feel that may be civ was always intended to be in the fantasy genre.