Fire power is not what we need, we need modern units to have more hit points

[Ozymandous]

Re: Re: Re: On Tactics and stuff

Originally posted by n.c.
BTW, Pizarro and his ~400 men beat armies with tens of thousands because they had steel and were on horses. Don't believe it? Read Guns, Germs and Steel by Diamond.

That is fine, what is not okay is why this is true and how it gets implemented.

-"shouldn't you be playing on a higher difficulty level?"
Not necessarily, as he may have encountered a seriously backward civ.

He also won because at first at least, the natives didn't fight back, they thought he was some holy diety.

Want to bet how successful Pizarro would have been if:

1) The natives had massed and counter-attacked his invading army as soon as they knew he would have landed.
2) If the natives had been immune to the diseases he, and all foreigners, had brought to the new world.

Heh, I highly doubt that even with guns and at the time "modern" equipment he would have survuved the initial assualt to throw him off the beach. Even modern units like tanks and infantry need bullets and gasoline to make them so efficient at fighting. Take the bullets from a modern infantry man and the gas from a tank and you end up with what?? People running around using sticks, rocks,clubs and anything else they can find to fight with..

[zapperio]

Originally posted by Akka le Vil

I hear constantly the anti-FP side talk about "game balance", "having to produce one high-end unit and steamroll an entire civilization is not fun" and the like. But it seems not disturb you that for the same amount of production, warriors do roughly the same job than tanks and infantery. Do you see the "balance" only when it fits you ?

You would be correct if CIV3 was a combat simulation. It is not. Combat is a component of Civ3, and though it is an important one it is not the deciding one, at least not anymore. I've had a full game without so much as a skirmish (not kidding). Does that mean I didn't play the game the way it was meant to be played? Considering the number of victory conditions, i don't think so.

If technology gave you nothing but better combat units you would be right again but better technology means you are able to build an machine that will allow you to have large civilization with huge profits which can crank out 300 tanks in ten turns if necessary while the backward civ will be lucky to get 300 warriors in 100 turns. Advantage through technology? What game are you playing?!?


Zap

[Monoriu]

Originally posted by Akka le Vil


Monoriu, you would gain a LOT in credibility if you were able to actually READ a post before starting to counter it. As I'm generous today, I'll spare you the huge work of reading a post in it's integrality and then repost the parts you obviously skipped :
"Now, go for more practical examples that will make more sense in the game : tank vs fortified warrior, and warrior vs fortified infantery."
"1) Warrior vs fortified infantery."
"2) Tank vs fortified warrior in a town"
"1 tank + 1 infantery, used in appropriate ways (ie : tank attack, infantery defend) are killed by 30 warriors."

*irony on*
Not too hard to read ? See ? HOW WONDERFULL ! A tank is actually used for ATTACK in my example ! And the infantery to DEFEND ! Truly incredible.
*irony off*



1) 1 infantery + 1 tank need 2 gold AND ressources AND technology climbing. Consider all the money you have put in research, city improvements for this research, times and money used to gain access to these ressources, and I'm not really sure that you will really be able to say that they only require "2 golds".

2 and 3) Yes, the tank has an advantage over the warrior. Wow. After 5800 years of technological improvement, I am really surprising about it. No joke, really.

5) It's an advantage only for a human. For the AI and for the simple "balance" stuff about fight, it's nothing.


It's incredible though that you did not say anything about the fact that building only warriors, you can have the same fighting capacity than someone building only tanks and infantery. I mean, be serious, do you really understand what this imply ? Its imply that the research means NOTHING and that the same work you can do with high-end units can be equally done with stone age ones.
I hear constantly the anti-FP side talk about "game balance", "having to produce one high-end unit and steamroll an entire civilization is not fun" and the like. But it seems not disturb you that for the same amount of production, warriors do roughly the same job than tanks and infantery. Do you see the "balance" only when it fits you ?

Here what's I will say : the technological advance give NOT ENOUGH advantage over ancient units.
I CAN edit my game and change unit statistics, but it's not the point. I can edit the pollution and corruption too, and ultimately I can practically rebuild all the game (thanks to the rules editor BTW, it's probably the best one I've see so far). But I have to say that in default game, the advanced units are not powerful enough.
I understand that it's needed to let a little margin for backward civ about the fight, and I agree that Civ2 was too mechanical about the victory of improved units. But COME ON, stop the delirium, I'm talking about units that are THREE AGES APART ! I agree to give units ONE age apart chances in fight, but any civ that is still in ancient era when another is in modern one should be CRUSHED WITHOUT ANY CHANCE. If a player/AI fùcked its research so bad that he's/it's since at the spearmen level when another is building aircraft, then he/it SHOULD die.

Here is what I propose : veteran, elite and conscript statut should change the A/D values (I think it makes more sense anyway). And then, Ancient unit should have 2 HP, Middle-age units should have 3 HP, Industrial 4 HP and modern 5 HP.

I wasn't very clear in my last post, for that I apologize. I did read through your entire post before responding, and this is the part of your original post that I was refering to when I made the "specialization comment":


"So, basically, the infantery is, in fighting value, 9 times better than a warrior (average between 7 and 11). Some can argue that infantery is made to defend, not attack. It's true, but this is about strategy, not about what technology gives you. Remember, it's a FIGHTING unit, not unit like carrier, transport or aircraft that has special ability. So I'll stick with this 1 infantery = 9 warriors for now. "

I just wanted to point out that if you are going to use the att. value for tank and def. value for inf, its better to be consistent in your whole analysis.


Another thing that you did not include in your analysis, is the time it takes to build units.

Let's say, a typical industrial age city. It takes 3 turns (somtimes 2) to build an infantry, and the same goes for the tank. Ok, 6 turns to build the 2 units. How many turns does it take to build 30 warriors? 30 turns. In the same period of time, I can make 5 inf. and 5 tanks.

edited to change an important word

[eRAZOR]

Originally posted by Venger


We don't want them all powerful, and quantity has a quality all it's own. Look at the musketeer versus 2 legions example - in Civ2, the musketeer always won the first battle, but lost half it's hit points, and was 75% likely to be killed by the 2nd legions counter attack. Even without a counter attack, the musketeer was only 50/50. I think you may be forgetting the damage aspect when thinking of this debate. When a modern unit wins, it suffers damage, and that damage means that it WILL die if it continues combat, either attacking or defending.



First, they should be chewed up, second, yes the quantity matters! Every old unit you add has 10 hit points to burn. Again, look at the example.



?????

Venger

Buddy. Argueing with these zealots is a waste of time. I went through the exact same bull**** with several other games only to realize that theres a good amount of people that accept every broken piece of crap (in this case the dumbed down combat system to appeal the mainstream audience and newbies).

Let the flames coming - I don't give a damn

[zapperio]

Originally posted by eRAZOR
I don't give a damn

Neither do I

Zap

[Grumbold]

The only meaningful way of analysing effectiveness has to take into account the production rates of cities, as Monoriu points out. A city that would take 30 turns to produce a tank might be statistically better off churning out 15 warriors instead, assuming you ignored the cost of keeping those warriors hanging around - but that cash could be used to upgrade them anyway.

In practical terms, when a civ discovers infantry (please not infantEry) it normally has cities capable of building them in 2-3 turns. It is normally intending them to be used defensively too, so the defence factor of 10 is more likely to be 15+ when combat modifiers are accounted for, resulting in a much higher success rate defending against the hypothetical warrior wave attack. Its ability to survive and rise to veteran and elite is an additional advantage that low cost high expendability units are unlikely to achieve, even giving the possibility of a leader.

I have sworn repeatedly at the computer over the last week as my best laid plans have been blunted by a series of unlucky combat results. There is no doubt it can be infuriating in individual outcomes but over the course of a full campaign, knocking out 4 civs almost single handedly, the loss of 8 tanks seems pretty small beer. If the modern units were given any greater advantages there would simply be no point in playing on should you fall behind on the tech race or not have the cash to upgrade your troops when you discover a new one.

When you advance to a new age you get better abilities to bombard the defenders down to 1hp before charging. That is the advantage you have to press to the maximum and the reason why frontal assaults have to be risky if you don't use them.

[Fidel]

Originally posted by Grumbold
I have sworn repeatedly at the computer over the last week as my best laid plans have been blunted by a series of unlucky combat results. There is no doubt it can be infuriating in individual outcomes but over the course of a full campaign, knocking out 4 civs almost single handedly, the loss of 8 tanks seems pretty small beer. If the modern units were given any greater advantages there would simply be no point in playing on should you fall behind on the tech race or not have the cash to upgrade your troops when you discover a new one.

spot on
i had some really infuriating results (i attack immortal with 3 swordsmen and they all die while the bastard is elite now, standing unfortified in some nice grassland) but overall combat is VERY fair and your well prepared attack has a reasonable chance of success. what some are arguing here is an civ2-like avalanche of tanks that sweeps other civs away.
combat is fine as is now.

grumbold, did you finally get the game? how do you like it?

[Grumbold]

Originally posted by LaRusso
grumbold, did you finally get the game? how do you like it?

Yup. I'll bump my 'thoughts' thread and expand on it some more. 4 pages of spam *cough* serious discussion seems to have obscured it

[rid102]

Let's say, a typical industrial age city. It takes 3 turns (somtimes 2) to build an infantry, and the same goes for the tank. Ok, 6 turns to build the 2 units. How many turns does it take to build 30 warriors? 30 turns. In the same period of time, I can make 5 inf. and 5 tanks.

Firstly, the relative costs of units are already factored in. E.g. why does it cost 10 shields to build Warriors yet 80 (or whatever) to build Infantry when both are essentially a body of men? Because the shield costs are relatively balanced, that's why. Trying to argue that the Infantry get more training etc. is nonsense as (e.g.) Hoplites and Legions were also just as well trained and drilled as modern units. The cost of a unit is not (or rather, should not be) based solely on its tactical value, but on both its value and relative cost w.r.t the era it appears in. In your example:

Tank (A16 D8 Cost 100) = 0.16A per resource, 0.08D per resource

Warrior (A1 D1 Cost 10) = 0.1A per resource, 0.1D per resource

Hence, Warriors are actually more effective per resource cost then Tanks in defense. At least on paper. And Tanks are only 1.6 times more effective in attack relative to their cost. Resource costs are balanced.

And this isn't even taken into consideration the cost in breaching the scientific gap between these two units, which is tremendous.

Secondly, for better or for worse, everything (including units over and above your free allocation) now runs off gold (rather than sheild) support. This means that the faster you can create units, the faster you also create a burden on your economy to support those units. This means that the "bang-for-buck" (i.e. effectiveness per gold) of a Tank is a lot higher than a Warrior, i.e. technology is really just making more advanced units more cost effective (economic) and but not really very much more tactically effective.

Thirdly, there is very limited obsolesence amoungst units. This causes a "stretch" in resource efficiency and cost effectiveness of units (see above example). Whereas in Civ2 you could normally at most have units from two "ages" (e.g. ancient and renaissance) now you can have units spread across several eras (e.g. Battleships fighting alongside Longbowmen, as in the game I played yesterday).

Overall the issue is not one of "Warriors are better than Tanks" or whatever, but the fact that relatively, more modern units simply do not provide sufficient tactical prowess verses their cost.

[rid102]

A city that would take 30 turns to produce a tank might be statistically better off churning out 15 warriors instead, assuming you ignored the cost of keeping those warriors hanging around - but that cash could be used to upgrade them anyway.

One factor which seems to have been neglected is the fact that units can only attack once per turn (AFAIK). This makes a "rushing" strategy like this viable.

Say you have a city producing 10 shields/turn. You can build 1 Tank in 10 turns or 10 Warriors, one per turn.

In the case where the Warriors attack the Tank, you have (potentially) 10 attacks/turn. Even though the chance of the Warrior winning is only 1/8, the number of attacks should outweight that and the Warriors stand a decent chance of beating the Tank in a turn or two (by sheer weight of numbers).

If the Tank attacks the Warriors then it needs 10 turns to clear them all (or at best 5 turns if you allow 1 attack per movement point).

This can't be right, is it?

[Grumbold]

Lets ignore a modern armor because that does get more attacks. Why shouldn't it be right? A unit can only be capturing/killing one thing at a time, and the enemy aren't all going to stand shoulder to shoulder to be gunned down en masse. A "horde" attack that sweeps past the defence to pillage the countryside beyond or capture workers is perfectly good strategy, and one the AI likes to use. The key at all times is to be asking yourself if you have 1. numerically enough defenders and 2. strong enough defenders. If you have one tank defending your border, you are going to get hurt unless it is stationed on a 1 tile wide land bridge. It is also why a technologically inferior enemy will get belligerent and demanding if it has a bigger army than you even if it only has horsemen against your mech inf. Every game you have to strike the right balance. That's one of the reasons its called a strategy game

[rid102]

Lets ignore a modern armor because that does get more attacks. Why shouldn't it be right?

Well there are two cases:

1 - Units are "same era" units, in which case I agree with you. They should have equal attacks.

2 - Units are not "same era" units (e.g. Tanks vs Warriors) in which case if you have a very string economy, it makes more sense to produce Warriors simply because it will take the enemy so many turns to wade through them all. This effect is espectially crippling for Sea units (e.g. Destroyer/Battleship) which can only bombard Land units once per turn and very ineffectively at that. Surrounding all your coastal squares with Warriors is an effective (if not particularly cheap) tactic which makes you pretty near invunerable to Sea-based invasion, for literally the smallest resource and science outlay possible. The only viable tactic is to use several Marines to establish a beachead. Which is fine if you have Amphibious Warfare, but if you haven't...

The key at all times is to be asking yourself if you have 1. numerically enough defenders and 2. strong enough defenders.

Well, I consider units to not be individual entities but rather playing peices. So, in this case a "Tank" is actually a Tank Division and "Warriors" are actually a band of a few thousand tribesmen.

So, to answer points 1 and 2. I do think that an armoured division should be able to hold off tens of thousands of primitively armed tribesmen (machine guns, run them over, rout them etc.). I take it, you think that the Tank is too weak in this case?

If you have one tank defending your border, you are going to get hurt unless it is stationed on a 1 tile wide land bridge.

I'm not really considering the strategic point of whether or not I'm defending my border or whatever. I'm talking about the tactical ramifications of a Tank engaged with 10 units of Warriors.

Every game you have to strike the right balance.

I agree. I just don't see why tactics and stratagies which have worked for me in the past with Civ1/Civ2 or have worked historically cease to be valid in Civ3.

[Monoriu]

Originally posted by rid102


One factor which seems to have been neglected is the fact that units can only attack once per turn (AFAIK). This makes a "rushing" strategy like this viable.

Say you have a city producing 10 shields/turn. You can build 1 Tank in 10 turns or 10 Warriors, one per turn.

In the case where the Warriors attack the Tank, you have (potentially) 10 attacks/turn. Even though the chance of the Warrior winning is only 1/8, the number of attacks should outweight that and the Warriors stand a decent chance of beating the Tank in a turn or two (by sheer weight of numbers).

If the Tank attacks the Warriors then it needs 10 turns to clear them all (or at best 5 turns if you allow 1 attack per movement point).

This can't be right, is it?

You are correct, it can't be right, here's why:

By the time you get tanks, most of your cities can turn out a tank in 2 or 3 turns. Do you want 5 tanks or do you want 15 warriors?

Thus, the real relative cost of a tank to a warrior is 3:1, on average. And a tank surely fights more than 3 times better than a warrior.

The shield cost of a unit is irrelevant to me. What's relevant, is how many tanks I can get within a given time frame.

[zapperio]

poignant point from last week's TIME:

"Sunday, Nov. 11, 2001
In the dead of night, horses poured from the hills. They came charging down from the craggy ridges in groups of 10, their riders dressed in flowing shalwar kameez and armed with AK-47s and grenade launchers. In the Kishindi Valley below, 35 miles south of the prized northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, the few Taliban tanks in the area not destroyed by American bombs took aim at the Northern Alliance cavalry galloping toward them. But the 600 horsemen had been ordered to charge directly into the line of fire. "If you ride fast enough, you can get to them," an Alliance spokesman later explained. "You ride straight at them. The tank will only have time to get off one or two rounds before you get there." The rebels were told to leap on top of the tanks, pull the Taliban gunners out through the open hatches and kill them. The first land battle in the century's first war began with a showdown from a distant age: fearless men on horseback against modern artillery. America's money was on the ponies. "

Zap

[zapperio]

Originally posted by Monoriu




You are correct, it can't be right, here's why:

By the time you get tanks, most of your cities can turn out a tank in 2 or 3 turns. Do you want 5 tanks or do you want 15 warriors?

Thus, the real relative cost of a tank to a warrior is 3:1, on average. And a tank surely fights more than 3 times better than a warrior.

The shield cost of a unit is irrelevant to me. What's relevant, is how many tanks I can get within a given time frame.

And with airports and rail you can stack them high in no time.

Zap