Is Combat Screwed up?

[Thrawn05]

I voted NO, because I feel that combat is not THAT bad, it could be tweaked some more (say, making the odds of a weaker unit destroying a stronger one somthing like 1/25 or 1/50), because I like the idea of a historical battle where the underdog won, particuraly when I'm the underdog .

[Jaybe]

Originally posted by Plumbean
I love the game but I think combat stats are off.I had a warrior not a veteran beat 10 barbarians and become an elite.I served in the USMC and even they wont attack a army on a assult with out 3 to 1 odds

The reason you beat the Barbarians so easily is that (unless you were playing Diety level or had changed them) you had a 200 to 400% advantage over them!!

Go into the Editor, Difficulty Levels and change the Attack Bonus Against Barbarians to 0% in the Difficulty Levels you are playing -- I did.

[EPIC]

Can I play too?

OK, how 'bout this: A civilization that hangs on to its elite force of warriors and spearmen must have a good reason to do so. Those mutha's have had a long time to become the best damn axe throwers on the planet. I mean, who needs gunpowder weapons when you can wing spear at 90mph and knock turret-heads off tanks in one mighty toss of the bolo!

Yeah, there are fantasy games that have more tangible and explainable combat systems (well, of course your dragon destroys my pillar of fire?) and tech should always make a clear and unmitigating difference in combat.

I think this was done so that mediocre players could stand a better chance of coming up from a long flood of desperate or silly playing. This does not excuse anything, I am myself a mediocre and inexperienced player and I would like to be dealt a swift and unquestionable defeat if I have missed something important. The only way I'll really learn the game is to be punished into submission, forcing me to start afresh with a new strategy. Besides, I hate it when my assured defeats just drag on forever like a badly crippled steed -- just take this lame horse out and shoot it for pity's sake!

[Moraelin]

Originally posted by Jaybe
The reason you beat the Barbarians so easily is that (unless you were playing Diety level or had changed them) you had a 200 to 400% advantage over them!!

Actually, with the unmodded Civ 3, the advantage over barbarians can go up to +800% if he's playing on Chieftain. Yep, those barbarians can hit up to 9 times weaker against the players' Warriors, and very weakly against the AI's Warriors too. Basically, yep, unless you're playing on Deity, the Barbarians are just something you train your units to elite on, as well as a source of money.

[Akka]

Originally posted by Code Monkey
Try taking your own advice. C&C is not a wargame either any more than Civ3. Both are nothing more, and nothing less, than _strategy_ games which use a combat model for that strategy gaming.

Perhaps that C&C is not a TRADITIONNAL wargame like Battle Isle, but give me a break : this game was ONLY about war. Fighting, killing, producing units to fight and kill, and killing ennemy before he could produce unit to fight and kill yours.

[Moraelin]

Actually, I'd guess "Battle Isle" wouldn't be a war game by his standards, either. Heck, neither would "Steel Panthers".

Frankly, I can't think of ANY game which meets most of those criteria. Supply routes and interdiction of those supply routes? Seriously. I can't think of a single game which implements that. Morale modifiers from having the retreat route cut off? What game implemented that, ever? The only one that I can think of that came even close (but not too close) was "Steel Panthers", but even there it would only happen if a unit was actually encircled. (As in: you had at least 3 units around it, so no matter which way it could try to retreat, it would still end up adjacent to one of your units.) It also happened only when it actually tried to retreat, not in advance.

Either way, what I've been trying to say is: I don't care if it's a proper "war game" by some arbitrary definition. If I spend over 50% of a game in War, it's a game about War, and it darn better have War well modelled. As long as no matter what I do, and how much I'd rather concentrate on culture instead, the AI WILL attack and force me into war after war after war... yep, it IS a game about war. (By the same token, if I fly a plane in a game, I'll expect it to have a good flight model, instead of a bunch of fans going "But it's not a REAL Flight Sim." Who cares? If flying wasn't important enough to warrant a proper flight model, then it darn better give me the choice not to fly at all. Likewise, if I drive a car in a game, it darn better have a palatable driving model, not just a bunch of guys claiming it should be excused because it's not a REAL Racing Game. If racing isn't an important part of that game, then why do I have to drive in the first place?)

From what I can see, Code Monkey's arguments revolve against an idea of his that can be summed up as: "if it's not a 100% perfect simulation, then it darn better be a total screw up instead." If you have ONE unrealistic thing, like immortal leaders, then you're automatically excused (or rather: expected) to have as many other wildly inaccurate things as you can possibly squeeze in a single game. The more stuff you just pull out of your rear, the merrier. If you don't have a 100% perfect combat model, down to the exact ammo type and the grade of the gunpowder in it, then it's actually better to make a total screw up of combat. And so on.

[Code Monkey]

Originally posted by Moraelin
Actually, I'd guess "Battle Isle" wouldn't be a war game by his standards, either. Heck, neither would "Steel Panthers".

Give me a break. Steel Panthers = wargame, Battle Isle = TBS. These aren't my classifications, they've been around a lot longer than I've been gaming.

Why don't you head over to some of the wargaming forums or ngs on the webs, I'm sure they'd love to have you tell them that a game is a wargame if it's about war.

You do nothing but obstinately refuse to consider that game can have a well thought out combat system even if you don't personally don't like it's abstractions. A wargame must have abstractions that accurately model reality and history, a strat game is under no such restriction and I'm glad this board has an ignore feature.

[Moraelin]

Originally posted by Code Monkey
Give me a break. Steel Panthers = wargame, Battle Isle = TBS. These aren't my classifications, they've been around a lot longer than I've been gaming.

Why don't you head over to some of the wargaming forums or ngs on the webs, I'm sure they'd love to have you tell them that a game is a wargame if it's about war.

Umm... Let's read the last sentence again. "A game is a wargame if it's about war." Fair enough. That's what I've been thinking all along.

Then let's get to the previous paragraph, because the two don't add up now. So Battle Isle wasn't about war, or what? I don't remember even being possible to do anything else but fight. (Not to mention that you're probably the first one to say that Steel Panthers isn't a turn based strategy, too.) Let's go a few messages back. Command and Conquer wasn't about war? Could have fooled me, with all the fighting going on in there.

What about Panzer General, then? Where does that one fit?

It looks to me like you're just taking some classifications as far more clear cut than they really are. A game can be a war game AND a TBS at the same time. (E.g., Steel Panthers, Battle Isle or Panzer General.) In fact, TBS is in the end just a sub-category of the war games family. RTS is another sub-category of war games.

[Moraelin]

Actually, I think it's finally starting to dawn upon me what do you mean. I think that what you call a "wargame" is actually a TACTICS level game.

Is that what you're trying to say? That there are different abstractions at Tactics and Strategy levels?

If that's the case, THAT I can aggree with. At tactics level you get to keep track of each individual tank and squad (or sometimes even individual soldier), while at strategy level you can't possibly keep track of them all. When 1 unit = 1 division, there just isn't the CPU power nowadays to accurately simulate a full battle with tens of thousands of soldiers, keeping track of each one of them, and still give you the result back in half a second.

So, yes, at Strategy level you don't get to actually keep track of what ammo type each tank used, and exactly what model of rifle had each squad. No doubt. Obviously.

That said, I do think that simplified as it may be, even at Strategy level, the model should still produce more or less the expected results. Let's say I attack one unit of B-17's with one unit of BF-109's, in Panzer General. Even though yes, the game doesn't accurately simulate each airplane, I do expect that the results would be believable given the historically documented results of such encounters. If I attack a 37mm Soviet AT regiment with a regiment of PzKpfw-IVc's, I do expect that the results are (most of the time) similar to what happened in real history in such encounters.

Simplified is OK at strategy levels. BUT that doesn't mean it's also OK to be wildly inaccurate, and have situations where awfully unbelievable results happen 9 times out of 10.

[Venger]

Originally posted by Moraelin
Frankly, I can't think of ANY game which meets most of those criteria. Supply routes and interdiction of those supply routes? Seriously. I can't think of a single game which implements that.

Civ3 does, sort of, in an obtuse way. Units cannot heal in enemy territory - this is a fair if rough approximation of loss of supply.

Venger

[Akka]

Originally posted by Code Monkey


Give me a break. Steel Panthers = wargame, Battle Isle = TBS.

LOL


Do I need to add more ? Battle Isle NOT a wargame ???



Guess you just shot yourself in the foot.
I feel sorry for ya

[barefootbadass]

Originally posted by Bad Ax


The failure to implement proper obsolesence, just like the failure to establish strong temporal differentials, is the result of the resources system. Since resources are too rare for any one game to ensure that every player will have the oil to build tanks, or the rubber to build infantry, units must not go obsolete (so people will have *something* to build)

Nothing wrong with the resources, as long as all ancient units you have the resources to build disappear when something better shows up. But if you only have the resources to build swordsmen, pikes, and knights, then what is wrong with being able to?

The fact that units like warrior/swordsmen don't disappear no matter what resources you have is a problem that occured because Infogreed rushed this game. This is a problem, the combat system is not.

Given the resource system(which is IMHO a wonderful thing) it is important that there be some remote chance(yes it IS remote, and normally requires vast numbers) that older units can prevail against newer ones, but requires the one with the better units to suck and try to use their pre-conceived strategies based on the supposition that their units should be invincible. All those people have arguments that are DEEPLY flawed(actually they aren't really even arguments, its just screaming 'it don't work like I think it should!'), especially since you can edit the game to stack the odds even more firmly against ancient units if you aren't happy as it is. The game has a set of rules for combat that both you and every ai have to play by, that is the same(at least now that air superiority is fixed), so the game is perfectly fair in combat.

[C Chulainn]

Originally posted by Code Monkey


The game claims:


It doesn't say "recreate" history, it says "rewrite" and "reinvent" and the game certainly lets you do that.

All well and good, but your version actually entails reinventing the laws of physics. There is no chance that a bunch of cavemen with flint spears could overrrun infantry positions defended by troops equipped with assault rifles, grenade launchers and support machine guns - even if the enemy runs out of bullets before they run out of men, they're still outclassed by steel helmets, body armour and fixed bayonets...

[Chronus]

I was pleasantly surprised to see the number of "no"s. With all the complaints posted on the board about combat results, I was beginning to think that I was the only who rarely got these freaky results. Then again, I should count my blessings.

Spare me the storyline and rationalizations. The whole point is that seriously superior units should not lose to seriously inferior ones - ever!

I object to the use of your word "ever". This is unrealistic and unhistorical. I'm sure you've already read all the posts about the fluke battles and such so I won't repeat it. Freaky things do happen in real life. If your objection is the frequency of these things happening . . . then fine. But to say "ever" is unrealistic.

I don't want to hear about tornados, muddy fields, or stealthy attacks in the night. Save that for fanfic writing!

Funny, I don't just read about these things happening in fanfic writing. I read them in HISTORY books as well.

[Ghengis Brom]

Originally posted by Code Monkey


Units always get better through the ages and a higher attack versus a lower defense usually wins.

What game are you playing?