What's missing in the combat realism debate

[Shiva]

Originally posted by Badtz Maru

Take the privateers as another example. They are significantly weaker than any of their contemporary naval units, which fits in with history - there was no way a fleet of privateers could stand up to an attack by the fleets of a major nation at the time. What they could do, and what they were paid to do, was to disrupt the shipping of opposing powers without having to move the fleets from the Old World and declare an open war. There were many luxury items and vital resources that were being shipped back to Europe from the Carribean colonies and stopping that flow was able to weaken the sponsors of said colonies, cutting into their profits and making luxury items like spices and tobacco more expensive and therefore less available to the masses. How is this modeled in the game? Take your privateers and blockade the opponent's cities that are only connected to the rest of their empire via their harbors.

Well the privateer is useless because Firaxis didnt put shipping into the game. If we had to transport resources in ships then they would be very usefull. As it stands now .....

[Badtz Maru]

Originally posted by Shiva


Well the privateer is useless because Firaxis didnt put shipping into the game. If we had to transport resources in ships then they would be very usefull. As it stands now .....

Shipping IS in the game - resources and luxuries are automatically transported between cities with harbors. If you blockade the harbor, it's the same as cutting the enemies roads - but the difference with privateers is that you can park within the enemies borders without getting the 'Leave or we declare war' message.

It's useful under the right situations, i.e. when a civilization is dependent on resources that come from a city that is only connected to his empire via it's harbor. It may not come up in every game, but it can be useful - I was in a game where my sole source of rubber was on an island. If my opponent had blockaded that harbor with privateers I would have been forced to divert resources to break the blockade or else be unable to build infantry on the mainland.

[Shiva]

Originally posted by Badtz Maru


Shipping IS in the game - resources and luxuries are automatically transported between cities with harbors. If you blockade the harbor, it's the same as cutting the enemies roads - but the difference with privateers is that you can park within the enemies borders without getting the 'Leave or we declare war' message.

Abstract shipping is in the game yes. By all rights privateers should be abstracted also since you cannot use the ship for what it would have been used for, attacking enemy shipping. In real life for the most part they avoided any real armed force and did not blockade ports. They are in truth, useless for the most part since you cannot attack commerce shipping.

[n.c.]

(Not enough time to respond to everyone.)

Badtz Maru- Good points. But why does it have to be an abstraction? Hvae the spearman morph into Villagers with Pitchforks or somthing.

[D4everman]

No child, just some years in the infantry and working close with armor.

Hey, Shiva, still in the Infantry? Signal here! Screw that sleeping in the woods crap...oops I forgot. I'm signal. Whenever YOU guys go to the field we gotta go the field! And you guys go a lot! (no matter...I'm a recruiter-in-training now)

I've never seen any wierd combat results with tanks, but I wouldn't expect to win every single battle with them either. I think its possible for a bunch of spear wielding men to destroy a tank, but it would be rare. Besides if tanks were invincible they wouldn't be much fun would they?

[Robert]

I agree with n.c. on this.
if you're advanced, you couldn't have ancient units anymore.
Forced upgrade or forced disband.

n.c. be honest to us, you still play civ3, don't you ?

[Ozymandous]

If you're advanced you upgrade your units when you can afford to.

Depending on how tight you're running your finances this might take awhile. Besides, many society's have old "showy" units that don't do much but parade around that are composed of real soldiers. I am sure that is push came to sove they'd fight with the best they had even if it was old equipment used mainly for show.

[SuiteSisterMary]

Note exactly what I'm saying when you give examples attempting to disprove this statement: that which did not happen, did not happen. Tough position to counter.

Yawn.

Rommel the Desert Fox taking his German Panzers against African Spearmen in World War 2. Polish horsemen (calvary with spears) against tanks. The list goes on. Hell, America transitioned from Industrial to Modern in three years, and finished modern in the next twenty-five or so.

During the Sengoku Jidai, in 1600s Japan, your typical Japanese army group consisted of poor bastards with spears, Samurai, mounted archers, and towards the end, musketmen. That's two or three Civ3 ages worth of units right there.

[WarKing]

Personally, I love the balance and forced strategy dynamics of war. It seems more real than in Civ 2, much more real. In Civ 2, all I ever needed were a few nights to conquer a civ, and later I would build armor, but I never needed the numbers I need now. Heck, I've almost gotten to the point of giving up on the idea of quickly overtaking civs.

The corruption isn't worth the trouble and if I'm not gaining needed resources or strategic terrain, then the battle's not worth all the reciprical effects imposed in the new war model.

Admittedly, I haven't gotten a game into the modern or even the industrialized era yet. I'm an experimental perfectionist, so I'm still working on my ancient and middle ages strategies.

That said, I love having to really commit vast resources to take on another power.

What's really scary is when you inadvertently start a world war that runs away from you! Whoah watch the pulse jump!!!

[Velociryx]

Wow...lots to respond to here.

While I find myself agreeing with the spirit of n.c.'s post, I must say that the entire Civ series *by design* is one giant abstraction. Otherwise, how could you reasonably expect to plot the course of 6000 years of human history. Unless the game were played out on a 1 day = 1 day basis, you can't without using abstractions, and if you make it 1 day = 1 day, I'd LOVE to meet the first person to actually finish a game!

And what is abstraction, in game terms? Abstraction is the simplification of real world concepts in such a way that the game can move forward, and in the entire civ series, the game DOES move forward by leaps and bounds! On the opener, each time you press that space bar, you essentially kill an entire generation of your citizens, advancing 50 years with the touch of button!

So let’s start with the early game. Standard staring city, two food, one shield. Takes 10 turns to grow from size one to two. Wha….? It takes 500 years for a small hamlet to double in it’s size?! THAT’s not realism! Nope…but it’s a game abstraction to help the game move forward.

Takes five turns to “train” a cave warrior. :: double take:: But wait a minute?! That’s 250 years!? People don’t even live that long now! Surely they didn’t live that long in 4000BC. By the time you trained him, his great, great grandchildren would probably be dead! And, when this VERY old Cave Warrior is finally trained, move him one tile and now he’s 300 years old and if he wasn’t dead before, he surely is now!

But…you say…the unit does not really represent “one guy” or even one group of guys! That’s just a symbol of a military unit for the civ in general….and as one soldier dies, he is, of course, replaced by another. Now, one could argue that we should get some graphic depiction of this….perhaps each “generation” of Cave Warrior could have a slightly different uniform, or the style of clothing could change a bit….don’t know. It’d be kinna nice, but it’s not required for me to accept that the same guy I train in 3800BC is NOT the same guy I have walking around in 1700AD.

But, back to the discussion about realism….and for the sake of realism, should we not have a little skull and crossbones over each unit where people have died and been replaced, and a little report screen showing the number of dead veterans and new recruits? Also, for the sake of realism, when members of your “Elite Cave Squad” die from old age, and are replaced by new recruits, should the morale not drop?

But it doesn’t stop there. Even in the modern age, we get all sorts of bizarre stuff that flies in the face of realism. Destroyers that take 20-odd years to circumnavigate the globe. Bombers that can do so instantly (by relocating them to a new base). If you’ve recently conquered an island and haven’t got workers to build rails yet, it takes your infantry 2-3 YEARS to get from one side of said island to the other. None of this is realistic….pure abstraction, and we accept it as such and move on.

So….let’s take a look at the real world, and begin with the assumption that ancient units and modern ones cannot exist at the same time.

The British Army, when colonizing Africa and India, encountered primitive, savage tribes armed with bows and spears vs. the British cannon and rifle. IMO, that is an example of the very thing we’re talking about.

And, to their credit, those primitive, savage tribes dealt a blow or two DESPITE their technological inferiority before being conquered. (In game terms...the bowman beat the rifleman!)

Same thing was true of the Americas.

Something else happened too….the natives might have started off using bows, but when men with rifles showed up, the natives learned very quickly how useful they were, and began acquiring them by whatever means they could.

Did they suddenly learn to invent gunpowder and make rifles for themselves?

Of course not.

But the “proprietary technology of Europe” DID, in fact, manage to get into the hands of the natives. Suddenly, their spearmen had guns! Now…maybe they were older guns, and it’s VERY reasonable to expect that said natives didn’t know how to use the new weapons as effectively as trained British regulars, but they HAD them, at least in limited quantity. (Of course, they prolly also had their speak with them too, because it was so familiar).

So…just as I do not need a change in the graphic depiction of my Cave Warrior Squad losing its older members and picking up fresh new recruits (representing the march of generations, and its corresponding hit to morale), I also don’t need a change in graphic to accept that the primitive spear unit I made back in 1600BC MIGHT have acquired some better (if still dated) weapons over the course of say….the last two thousand years. Would a change in graphic be nice? Sure, but it's eye candy, IMO. Not required for me to make the leap of faith.

Having said all that, I have to say that I totally agree with the part of forcing upgrades as a solution to this “problem.” Imperialism II did that…and if you didn’t have the money to upgrade, poof….you lost the units. End of story. I don’t see this issue as being a problem…it’s easy enough to accept that it’s just another abstraction, but apparently, it’s a HUGE problem for some, and because of that, I’d have no problem supporting a mandatory upgrade or something. That’s cool. Seems like an AWFUL lot of energy is being devoted to this one gripe, but…::shrug:: that’s just me.

-=Vel=-

[Barnacle Bill]

At the apparent scale of Civ3, it is not "a tank", its "an armored division", i.e. a large formation with 10-15 thousand guys built around several hundred tanks but including supporting infantry & artillery, plus wads of guys in non-combat support roles. A couple of neighborhood duds might very well take out "a tank" under the right circumstances, but 15,000 neighbor dudes will never take out an armored division.

As to coexistence of units from different periods, we ALMOST had that in history. Aside from a few obscure visits by small groups, the New World was totally isolated from the Old until the 1500's. Europe at that time was at the "musketmen-galleons" level in Civ3 terms. The best the New World had to offer was at the "Neolithic pre-Dynastic Egypt" level, i.e. Warriors and not even Galleys yet in Civ3 terms. Now, Cortez only had a few hundred guys (and wads of local allies) but the tech advantage was significant and made a big impact (one of the reasons he had wads of local allies). A Spanish Tercio was a 16th Century state-of-the-art combined arms formation of about 3000 guys. They coexisted in time with the Aztec Jaguar Knights, the Spanish just never sent one to America (why bother, when they could conquer the whole continent with much less but they needed every Tercio they could get in the chronic wars of Europe). What do you think would happen, though, a Tercio vs 3000 Jaguar knights?

OK, suppose a different rate of development between the OLd & New worlds? What if the Aztecs had reach the level of classical Greece. Triremes vs Galleons for control of the Caribbean. The result is obvious - except under very special conditions (like ambushing the galleons anchored at night), you get triremes blown out of the water before getting close enough to cause any damage.

In the Civ games, there is no "technological diffusion". To improve the model, you would need to give bonus tech points to civs that are behind any other civ with which they are in contact. However, lack of that feature doesn't make it OK if Henry V's army of longbowmen takes out a WWII Panzer Division. That's two wrongs, which never makes a right. Even with that feature, if the old & new worlds don't find each other until very later in the game, big differences in tech would be perfectly realistic. Ever read Harry Turtledove's "World War" series? Aliens with military tech about current with today invade the earth in 1942, but are surprised because they expected to find us at the tech level we had when they previously peeked in about 1200 AD.

[Velociryx]

Excellent post Barnacle Bill!

I do, however, disagree with your last paragraph, but I think that speaks more to how we approach gaming.

In a post on another thread, I made the comment that gamers could essentially be categorized in two broad groups: Scientific and Romantic.

The scientific gamers are the ones we've been hearing from. They want the realism of Panzer General with none of the hassels, and they want it on top of the existing Civ3 4x system. Anything less than that, and they won't be 100% satisfied, and that's cool. I used to be that sort of gamer myself. For them, the math is everything....the numbers behind the scenes. What they are and why they are what they are.

At the other end of the spectrum are the romantic-oriented gamers. The guys who LOVE underdog fights. Whose favorite stories are about little guys beating impossible odds, and our own world history is full of such stories.

Custer's Last Stand, where ill-trained, ill-armed indians took on a much better equipped American Military unit.

The Zulu defeating a British Regiment using spears vs. rifles.

Thermopalye. A stoic collection of Spartans standing defiantly against HORDES of enemies of Greece and winning. (Okay....so maybe winning isn't the best term...but succeeding in their mission nonetheless!)

Scotland's Highlanders (a ragged, peasant army if ever there was one) defying British Knights and Longbow and WINNING!!!!! NONE of this should or would be possible under the purely scientific/mathematic approach, and IMO, it would be a loss to the game, because THESE are the stories we remember.

Nobody would remember if the Highlanders had been mechanically crushed by the British Army, or if Custer had decimated the indians. Nobody would care.

It's BECAUSE they were the underdogs and won anyway that makes it noteworthy....that makes it...well, worth reading history....

Take that away from the game, and you lose all the romance of the "what-ifs" and it becomes a mechanical grind....again, just my opinion on the matter.

-=Vel=-

[zapperio]

[SIZE=1]

In the Civ games, there is no "technological diffusion". To improve the model, you would need to give bonus tech points to civs that are behind any other civ with which they are in contact. However, lack of that feature doesn't make it OK if Henry V's army of longbowmen takes out a WWII Panzer Division. That's two wrongs, which never makes a right

It is a design desision. Simple as that. In the context of the game, as a *game*, the point is moot.

gamadictG> Soren, I don't know if this has been addressed before, but do you think low-tech units have too
good of a chance to defeat higher-tech units...??
Soren_Johnson_Firaxis> gamad...: concerning the loss of firepower. Firepower added needless complexity to the
game. For example, there is no significant difference between a unit with an offence of 10 and a firepower
of 2 and a unit with an offense of 20 and firepower of 1... however
Soren_Johnson_Firaxis> having said that, the later age units in Civ3 ARE less powerful than they are in Civ2.
This was a design decision based on the resource system . We didn't want the game to be totally hopeless if
you were unable to build the newest type of unit because you don't have resource X.

[emphasis is mine]

Zap

[zapperio]

Speaking as a romantic of course...

Zap

[Velociryx]

Rock on, Zap!

-=Vel=-