Technological Superiority Doesn't Matter in War

[SlowThinker]

Originally posted by Grim Legacy As for cheating on combat in Civ2: on Deity, combat odds were definitely stacked against you. Not that that helped the 'AI' much.

Originally posted by GP
I'm not sure of that. Sounds more like an urban legend (with a hint of whine). Have you proved it with tests? See this definitive thread on combat. Nothing is mentioned about deity level bonus to AI. And these guys have done lots of combat research and are pretty darn sophisticated.

FYI: I posted there to get some direct answer regarding your allegation.

The judge is coming...

On Civ2 deity there is no combat advantage for the AI (except barbs).

2 years of jail for Grim Legacy.

[Velociryx]

I'd also like to say that I have rarely had any difficulties with winning battles and keeping captured cities from reverting back.

I believe this is because I never underestimate my enemy.

Even if I've got tanks, and he's guarding the city with a spearman, here's generally how my attack plays out:

1) Cutting off reinforcements via the best defensive units in the game heading out to sever communications with the besieged city (delete roads to prevent reinforcement and occupy high ground around the city) In the late game, this can be accomplished with bombers long before the troops arrive.

2) Artillery to soften up the defenders (again, bombing runs in modern times)

3) Lead the attack with my best elite unit (to take out the best defender, always presented first). My little guys with less experience can take up the rest and gain experience and HP from it.

A properly executed attack will leave the opponent unable to respond and you'll not see the results you're talking about.

That you are, would suggest to me that you are not taking full advantage of your technological advantage, and you do so at your own peril.

-=Vel=-

[davwhitt]

I think we're beating a dead horse here. Originally the "other side" was stating there was nothing wrong with a knight or longbowman or spearman often defeating a cavalry, rifleman, or tank. After further debate they stated that we were just expecting too much realism - a view that implies our first position - that knights should not be able to defeat tanks - was realistic (and their own view, by default, was not). One person actually implied since the rest of the game wasn't 100% accurate why bother making the combat system accurate. So what if a bronze-age unit can defeat a Sherman tank, what do you think this is, a simulation...oh wait it is a simulation...but simulations aren't meant to simulate reality...oh wait they are...well the rest of the game is flawed so what do you expect from the combat system!?!

[WhiteElephants]

Hunh? Wha? Oh...

[Monoriu]

"Also, does anyone have any ideas on what other paths I could use to capture the city? Combat and trying to buy the city haven't worked."



k. Here is how.

Assuming you are playing in the industrial age, here is the minumum requirement for taking a city:

12 infantry
15 artillery
2-3 cavalry

Step 1
Position 2 infantry and 15 artillery within 2 tiles of the city, preferably on good defensive terrain.

Step 2
Advance 10 infantry and cavalry units as a single stack toward enemy city. The stack should sit on a tile next to the intended target on good defensive terrain, and make 200% sure that no river runs between the tile and the city.

Step 3
Bombard city with artillery until population is below 6. Nobody attacks before that.

Step 4
You must do this within a single turn, otherwise the enemy will heal: Bombard the city again, this time your aim is to reduce the health of the defenders as much as possible. Then attack the city with your stack of units next to it. This is very important: 4 of your infantry should NOT attack.

Step 5
After capturing/razing the city, advance 2 of your unused infantry into the city to protect your new city/protect the unit that first advanced into the city as a result of winning against the last defending unit.

Step 6
Fortify another 2 of the unused infantry to protect the wounded units of your army that first attacked the city.


Move on to the next city and repeat......I usually use 30 artillery pieces to bombard it in one turn, or 20 artillery to bombard for 2 turns. I also bring a lot more than 12 infantry. I play on the Monarth level now.

[F18fett]

They never did actually make their own gunpowder, but they sure were using lots of rifles and other begged, borrowed and stolen modern equipment to fight us.

I'm not sure or not if their neighbors had gunpowder, but they sure as heck got none from me.

As to the point of research....as you climb the tech tree, your units not only get more deadly, but more versatile. Witness the transformation of horseman to knight to cavalry (extra movement in the case of the latter, ZOC in the case of the former)....those advances *alone* are worth the effort to research for.

If my units are getting more deadly, why are they losing to medieval level units?

Also keep in mind that if you plan your battles correctly, that longbowman *won't* win via attacking your rifleman (posted earlier in this thread) because you will out manuver him with better, faster units (cavalry) and attack him and his 1 defense first.

But the cavalry was on defensive duty. I can't think of how a cavalry inside a town, armed with weapons with a better range than longbows, managed to die.

As to the rifleman/knight thing...I dunno....perhaps he caught the rifleman company napping a la Washington vs. the Hessians on Christmas Day in the Revolutionary war?

Once again, you should know if those sort of things happen. Mind you, my men weren't mercenaries forced into the war, they were fighting to preserve their homeland. Also, they were in a size 12 town. I suppose no one would notice the approaching knights?

Monoriu:

All that for one city? The city only had one spearman! There is no need for a force of that magnitude. Besides, my income would go into the negatives if I built an army that big.

[Monoriu]

"Monoriu:

All that for one city? The city only had one spearman! There is no need for a force of that magnitude. Besides, my income would go into the negatives if I built an army that big."


This army is designed to attack a city with 3-4 infantry/riflemen and maybe 2-3 cavalry/ancient units. This is typically what I face in my games. If you are sure that your opponents only have 1 spearmen (which I doubt) of course you don't need that much, but overkill never hurts.

No, not for 1 city, but for all the cities in the world. Trust me, build that army, and it can roll over any city in the world if you replace its losses. You can conquer a city with that every few turns.

Not sure about you but I have 10k gold and a 200+ income per turn, that's a communism government and I have 300+ units. I play on the Monarch level.

[F18fett]

This army is designed to attack a city with 3-4 infantry/riflemen and maybe 2-3 cavalry/ancient units. This is typically what I face in my games. If you are sure that your opponents only have 1 spearmen (which I doubt) of course you don't need that much, but overkill never hurts.

I've been attacking the city from a saved game, it only has one spearman.

Not sure about you but I have 10k gold and a 200+ income per turn, that's a communism government and I have 300+ units. I play on the Monarch level.

I only have +40-50 as a Republic. I spent some of it on science though as well as paying for all the units. I usually switch governments before trying to capture the city but by the time I get the option to choose a new government, some sort of combat imbalance has already shown up and ruined the game.

[mharmless]

Nukes would kill any unit. The end.

A knight cant kill a tank. The end.

A musketman cant kill a tank. The end.

You serriously overestimate the power of nukes and tanks. Somehow you have this romantic notion that they are invunerable and all powerfull.

Thermal radiation is the big killer from a nuke. The blast is immense, true. But unlike blast damage, the thermal radiation pretty much ignores objects in the way and it has a much longer reach. You can draw a neat little circle arround the point of detonation, and expect that all corpses found on that line will have nearly the same degree of burns.

A 1 megaton yeild will cause 3rd degree burns or worse to anybody inside a 12 km radius of the detonation point. For 20 megatons, you are looking at a 39 km radius for this serrious damage. Given a world 256 squares across, and that the earth has a circumference of 40,000 km at the equator, then your nuke is destroying life in less than one QUARTER of one square on the map.

Seems highly probable to have survivors to me. Doesn't it look that way to you?


Next up, tanks. The M1A1 Abrams is probably a good choice for modern armor equivlence. It has a .50 caliber heavy machine gun with one thousand rouds, its primary weapon for use against infantry or light vehicles. This weapon is mounted in a turret on the top of the vehicle, and it must be manned. The soldier useing the turret is an exposed target. The tank crews four people, and it -requires- two seperate soldiers to both move the tank and fire the howitzer. The howitzer has fourty rounds, and is largely ineffective against soft targets. The engine exhaust and intake are mounted high on the Abrams, to give it the ability to cross up water up to six feet deep.

I don't know how many tanks make up a modern armor unit. I don't know how many nobles are needed to form a knight unit. I don't know how many peasants it takes to form a musketmen unit. What I do know is that some body has to stick his head out of that Abrams to counter infantry, and that sombody can lose said head just as easily as any other man.

Call it improbable, but don't call it imposible. The end.

[Monoriu]

Fett, I am just trying to help. My numbers may not suit your situation but the spirit still stands. Bottom line is, build enough units (3-4 isn't enough for anything), plan the attack, bombard and weaken the enemy before you attack, use the units according to their roles (infantry type units for defence, cav type units for hit and run, artillery type for bombardment), exercise caution, protect your weak units, use the terrain to your advantage and don't fight against it, and you'll have no trouble fighting anyone with the same tech level as yours.

[calefein]

Originally posted by Venger


Having under standard circumstances a longbow unit defeat a rifle unit is a mistake.

Venger

Can we for a moment consider what would happen if your solution to the "problem" was
implemented and firepower was brought back from the dead. This would place a point
where a tech advance would put you vastly superior to everyone else.
This would be more realistic, but would it make for a more fun game? I think not. Players
would scramble up the tech tree to get to gunpowder, and afterwards they could slack of
tech wise because of the significant bonus of their new troops over their counterparts.
If the AI got gunpowder before you, you would try to get it at all costs knowing that your
troops had little chance of holding up. You would throw as much money as needed to
either bribe or steal it out of them. I hope I’m not wasting my breath here and you can at
least see where I'm coming from. This will put a huge hot spot, hump or what every you
want to call it right in the middle of the tech tree. Game strategy will be more based on
getting or not getting gunpowder than military tactics, and will ultimately decide many
more games than it does now. Should a knight be able to kill a cavalry unit just because
he was defending? Well yes because otherwise you would have trampled the AI because
of gunpowder, the game's combat system is designed to reward players for using units the
way the designers intended. The knight is an offensive unit, so is the cavalry, it's more
advanced but the cavalry was defending, you are penalized for using an offensive unit to
defend a city, and for only using one (two etc.). The bonus for superior tech in this game
is a bonus it's significant, but not so great as to lessen everything else.

Ok Flame away

[TCO]

All of you guys whining about losing battles, realize how rarely it occurs. Read the Probability and Combat thread.

[TCO]

Originally posted by Kc7mxo

1) I understood the combat engine. I understood its numbers, so when a defense 4 riflemen, fortifed, behind city walls, hurt my tank, i knew that it was because that riflemen had a defense of 10 instead. (Walls are 200% right? or was it 100?)

2) In civ 2 while it was possible for primitive units to damage modern units, but because of the firepower and hitpoint system, the damage was rarely fatal.

Kc7,

Actually you don't even understand the Civ2 combat system well. You need to go to the Civ2 strat section and read the Info:Combat thread so you know what city walls do. ALSO FP is IRRELEVANT to the tank vs piekman argument. THEY BOTH HAVE A FP OF 1.

[TCO]

Originally posted by davwhitt
I think we're beating a dead horse here. Originally the "other side" was stating there was nothing wrong with a knight or longbowman or spearman often defeating a cavalry, rifleman, or tank. After further debate they stated that we were just expecting too much realism - a view that implies our first position - that knights should not be able to defeat tanks - was realistic (and their own view, by default, was not). One person actually implied since the rest of the game wasn't 100% accurate why bother making the combat system accurate. So what if a bronze-age unit can defeat a Sherman tank, what do you think this is, a simulation...oh wait it is a simulation...but simulations aren't meant to simulate reality...oh wait they are...well the rest of the game is flawed so what do you expect from the combat system!?!

Ummm...ever heard of fun? playbalance? The system has to work as a whole. You can sit and dream about a perfect AI...but we have what we have. Changing the combat rules to allow players to do tank rushes would be a drag...for most people who like a challenge with some strategy.

[Setsuna]

Originally posted by Monoriu
Fett, I am just trying to help. My numbers may not suit your situation but the spirit still stands. Bottom line is, build enough units (3-4 isn't enough for anything), plan the attack, bombard and weaken the enemy before you attack, use the units according to their roles (infantry type units for defence, cav type units for hit and run, artillery type for bombardment), exercise caution, protect your weak units, use the terrain to your advantage and don't fight against it, and you'll have no trouble fighting anyone with the same tech level as yours.

This solution sounds more the end game of a Real-Time Strategy game.

Build a bunch of units and throw them at the computer until it dies. Rinse and repeat. Hey, isn't that taboo among this crowd?

If your strategy is to bombard cities until every defending unit is drooling teeth, a tech advantage would be moot. You could capture such cities with inferior equipment as long as the defenders only had one hit point (Under the current system.) No wonder you haven't been having any problems.

Shouldn't I be able to sweep in against a weak foe and capture the city relatively intact, and save the artillery for cities belonging to my equals and superiors? Why do I need to go all out against such a primitive force? What if that big force is needed elsewhere, but at the same time I need to quickly and easily impress some extra cities into my fold, or deal with a intellectual midget of a civ on my other flank? I guess I'm screwed since the only way to win is throw 100 units at the computer until it dies.

And the "tactics" you mentioned are basically common sense when playing the game. Given considerations, not intricate planning's.


On a somewhat unrelated note, it irks me that Knights take precedence over Pikeman for defense in a stack. Even against a mounted opponent. Grr..