HP/FP solution is simple.

[The Rook]

The people who are looking to have FP implimented in the game all seem to have the same complaint. They don't like the idea of a pikeman winning to a tank. The people who are opposed to FP all say the samething. They say combat is an abstraction. I see and agree with both sides. I came up with what I think is a good solution, and posted it in the other thread, but I think it deserves repeating.

Firaxis shoulkd impliment Militia. Militia should come out around the same time as Infantry does. What is a militia? Look at Afghanistan, the Muja Hadeem (SP?) is a good example of what a militia is. No modern country has pikemen guarding it's cities. If they can afford a real army, then they get one. If not, then they arm the citizens with whatever weapons they can get.

In Civ3, all foot units that do not have a better equivelent to upgrade to, should upgrade to militia. Pikemen, Swordsmen, Legionairy etc should upgrade to militia. The graphic could be a raggedy looking individual with a rifle. In addition this should be an AI priority to upgrade, so by the time tanks roll out the door, the last of the spearmen have been upgraded.

Now, a tank losing to a spearmen is hard to chew on, but losing to a militia is not that hard to swallow.

[GodSpawn]

Of course, militia have a habit of changing sides very easily...

But a good and interesting idea nonetheless.

[ThaddeusAlexander]

I like your idea, but I want to add a thought.

Pikemen can beat tanks. They can. I mean, if you take a few tanks and put them at one side of an open field, and you align pikemen in typical battle formation on the other, of COURSE the pikemen will lose ... BUT! do you not think that as weapons of war change, so do tactics? Pikeman can ambush tanks - jump them, use weapons to pry inside them and by sheer number power overwhelm the crew ... once you get on top of a tank , there isn't much it can do.

Although they lost in the long run, cavalry against tanks in WWI were effective because with speed they could get close to the tanks fast and use whatever means possible to 'crack the egg' (in a matter or speaking) and take them over.

In fact, this method is very effective if you think about it. Suddenly, you won't have to annihilate/destroy a tank in order to beat it, just the crew. So technically, you don't destroy the unit, just the crew, and would thus have perfectly intact tanks at your disposal. Bonus !! Of course, the odds of this happening are low, as are the odds of a pikeman beating a tank in Civ3 (of course, if you play on diety or something rediculous, it will happen more often with the combat % adjust associated, but if you play regent where everything is even steven, this rarely happens).

So this is what I propose - if a pikeman (or anything primitive) can beat a tank, then it is automatically upgraged to a tank! It just takes it over !!!

Any takers ? I personally think its a great idea

Good gaming everyone!
Cheers!
~Alex

[Kc7mxo]

First of all, pikemen don't ambush ANYONE. the 18 foot pike is kind of a give away.


and secondly i don't care baout the pikemen that beat tanks. cause they don't. what they do is cause damage to the tank.

in civ 2 if your tank lost to a phalank in a single round of combat, he lost only a TINY sliver. so it wasn't a big deal.

in this game, it only takes at most five lost rounds to lose a unit. which makes advanced units just as fragile as primitive units, and will allow your units to esentialy be bitten to death by ducks.

[Phalanx2000]

Hey, a gaggle of ewoks beat out the blaster-packin Stormtroops along with their full-on armored chicken-walkers so anything's possible, right??!

[Wrong_shui]

Look, its a well known fact that pikeman had anti-tank pikes, failling them they used fusion torpedoes.

[Lord Chambers]

An Age of Empires-esque battle system

We all (hopefully) realize that in Civ 3 the stats of units battling have less bearing probability of winning or losing than in Civ 2, becuase Civ2 units had ten times more hit points, and thus many more rounds of battle. More rounds of battle increase the accuracy of a battle outcome. Like if you flip a coin ten times, you could get ten heads in a row. It becomes MUCH more unlikely to have the same outcome if you flip it a hundred times. Since in Civ 3 you are only "flipping the coin" 3, 4, or 5 times (determined by HP), you have pikemen beating tanks much more often.

One thing they were origanally planning to implement in Civ 2 was a battle system where you actually control troops on the field, in the battle. You wouln't just send you unit into another unit's square, you would send your archers to the top of a hill and send the cavalry charging down into the valley to meet the enemy swordsmen. It would have been great. You would actually be in control of battles. No longer would you piss your pants when the elite musket man dies without scoring a hit on the attacking horsemen, leaving your regular spearmen to be shreded. You would have an influence on that battle. Sure, there still might be amazing routes when the enemy totally suprises you with a jungle ambush, but in the case of the musketman, at least you wouldn't be so imcompetent not to hit the horsemen for a point or two of army damage.

Basically, I think a lot of these fuxed battles could have been avioded with an Age of Empires type battle system. You would be able to inflect some intellegence into the battles, and prevent those pikemen from surrounding a tank and cracking it with spears. It's not like I think this kind of change could be implemented, but I really hope they release Civ 4 with very advanced features like this. I'm dissapointed that they wanted to make Civ 3 so accessable to newbie's, as opposed to creating a very advanced version of Civ 2 for us veterns.

Also, at first I scoffed at the idea of a primitive unit winning a battle against a tank and becoming one itself, but I suppose if there were no explosives involved in combat, (meaning any unit below musket men), the tanks would be intact and I guess you could use them. Of course, you should have to pay an upgrade fee, to teach your stone age warriors how to read German and calculate trajectories

[ElitePersian]

Yeah, i was hoping civ 3 would have implemented the aoe style combat. Or anyone here played this really old game North & South? It had a simple combat model with different units, and you controlled them, it was nothing too fancy, but if civ had this combat style, it would be so much better of a game. Im really hoping that in the near future, an expansion pack will be available which will incorporate this into the game. I know it's far-fetched, but if we actually start a thread about this, and get a LOTTA responses, Firaxis might consider it for an expansion pack.

[Akka]

Re: HP/FP solution is simple.

Originally posted by The Rook
The people who are looking to have FP implimented in the game all seem to have the same complaint. They don't like the idea of a pikeman winning to a tank.

I personnally want FP/MP not only to allow a tank to crush a pikeman, I want (and a significant part of the pro-FP/MP too) them to improve the modding possibilites. Just give us back the FP/MP and well I'll work myself on my Civ to make the units like I want them to. And NO I can't have the same results with only A/D. No.

[ThaddeusAlexander]

Originally posted by Kc7mxo
First of all, pikemen don't ambush ANYONE. the 18 foot pike is kind of a give away.

Like i said, i would think they would modify their pikes in order to better suit the modern combat situation ... i think its easy to assume that much.

~Alex