Is Combat Screwed up?

[N. Machiavelli]

Originally posted by Ghengis Brom


What game are you playing?

Civ2 evidently.

[yin26]

Moraelin: Ever played the Operational Art of War series? Supply routes, etc., are all in there ... along with morale and so forth.

[Jurassic Joe]

I still say the combat system is not screwed up. So you lose a couple of battles to inferior units. Oh well! Have you lost a war because of it? I haven't.

If you continue to look at it as spearmen vs tanks, then you will continue to have problems. In the modern world today, can you name a country that fields spearmen in its army? The tribes in the amazon basin and the aboriginees are not countries, they are goody huts and encampments. I think every nation in the world is at least armed with firearms and some sort of armored vehicle. There are also over 300 nations in the world. In civ3 there are only 16 civs that just represent the biggest ones. Just because they didn't pay to upgrade their units doesn't mean that they are still equipped with axes and bows. They represent untrained units armed with low grade weapons of the era like Mausers and molotov cocktails or something.

Don't have a cow man, have fun. This is not a war game. If you want to play a wargame then go and get the close combat series or buy Avalon Hills Squad Leader (the board game). Those are war games.

[Moraelin]

Yin26: Nope, never played those. Sounds like I've been missing something good.

Jurassic Joe: As was said before, those countries did upgrade their units or created new ones. Basically, if they have AK-47's, then they are Infantry, not Spearmen. (And some of them even have AK-74's. And most of them have various models of RPK squad LMG's too. That's very modern as Infantry goes.) If they have bolt action rifles, then they are Riflemen. (But I don't think any countries still have those.) And they did pay to upgrade their troops, either by importing Soviet weapons, or even by licensing the Soviet designs and building several factories of their own. For a small and nearly bankrupt country, I believe that does count as paying for an upgrade all right. Poorly trained, yes, but we already have "conscript" for that. Spearmen, no.

Basically what I'm saying is: since the game DOES offer the choice to upgrade your spearmen to Riflemen or Infantry, which is what those poor countries have, there's really no reason to assume that the Spearmen hordes kept by the AI are anything else but guys with spears.

Chronus: In all fairness, I'll have to somewhat aggree with you, too. While I _am_ disappointed with the frequency of weird results between different tech eras, wth, it does look like some people expect 100% guaranteed results. And that just does not happen in real war.

[Antonin]

[Plumbean]

Second front.Western Front,Clash of Steel are all older cool wargames

[Blaupanzer]

The units are 1-1-1, 2-1-1, 1-3-1, 3-2-1, 6-3-3, up to 12-18-2, amd 24-16-3 or whatever. Don't get so hung up on the titles. The wide disparity between British infantry and tribesmen in the veldt is not what this game is trying to portray. As someone noted, that's what the villages represent. Major powers will arm even their most rudimentary units with weapons which, while obsolescent, will do some damage to the enemy. That's what those "older" units represent. I agree that the ability to still build swordsmen and longbowmen in modern times is an oversight of the unit progress tree. I do not agree that combat is outlandish or "broken." Have fun, don't get quite so serious. Poorly armed troops do win tactical confrontations. Such outcomes seldom affect the course of wars.

[Lord of the Isles]

Originally posted by Moraelin

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.

Too right. I mean, I spend over 50% of my time in Age of Empires moving units around and no one pretends *that* is a wargame, do they? It's a game about moving things around.

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.

Agree totally. All we ask for is some realism so that warriors never defeat tanks. Code Warrior and others can only rant on about the units just being abstractions and how Firaxis made certain decisions about the combat system to make the game play better. As if we care about game play! And what's all that stuff about "abstractions"? That's a real warrior on my screen, isn't it?

Moraelin's last point is the clincher, though I admit he had to distort Code Monkey's argument out of all recognition to make it. There's no excuse for not making the combat system more realistic, not game play, not anything. Why do I have just 3 units in an army??!!! Real armies have tens of thousands of units in them, if not more. Tedious to implement you say? But that's realistic. Do you think generals just click on a couple of buttons to send their units into battle? Of course not, so the next patch had better include radios, uniforms, a full headquarters staff and so on.

[Code Monkey]

Let's attack this from a different angle, forgetting for a moment what would really happen when warrior meets tank and just how much of wargame Civ3 is or isn't.

Instead, let's put a different way, given all of the underlying game mechanics, is combat screwed up? Phrased that way, the answer is not only a clear 'no', it's actually imbalanced towards modern units.

A warrior, the most basic unit, has 1/1/1 for its stats and costs 10 shields.

Archers, spearmen, and chariots cost 20 shields and have 2X attack, defense, or movement respectively - a doubling in cost just to double one of the stats.

The swordsman has 3X the attack and 2X the defense of the warrior for 3X the cost, an ancient times bargain.

Horsemen, pikemen, longbowmen, and knights hold to a formula of 10 shields per additional stat point beyond the warrior's.

The musket man only improves on the warrior by 4 points (+1a, +3d) but costs 50 additional shields.

Then things start getting lopsided in favor of modern units:
Riflemen have (+3a, +5d) but only cost 70 shields more.
Cavalry have (+5a, +2d, +2m), 9 additional stat points, and only cost 70 shields more
Infantry get 14 additional stat points but only cost 80 shields more.
A tank gets a whopping 23 additional stat points but only costs 90 shields more.
Mech Infantry get 29 additional stat points for only 100 additional shields.
Lastly, modern armour gets 40 additional stat points for only 110 additional shields.

So, although in Civ3 world it's conceivable that a tank might go down to a cavalry attack, you're also only talking about units with only a 20% cost differential. In the real world, I'll bet plenty of meglomaniacs would love to be able to field a WW2 era tank for only a pittance more than a man on a horse with a carbine. Put another way, in the course of the game, units only increase in costs 12X but increase in firepower 24X and maintenance never changes.

If you want to declare that Civ3 results are unrealistic compared to what they're meant to represent, by all means do so. But, please, don't go calling it all screwed up unless you are also prepared to accept a number of changes to the underlying system including vastly increased unit costs and upkeep. If you want to see things such that tanks would almost never lose to cavalry then a tank should cost, at a minimum, twice what the unit it's 99% outclassing costs.

The whole of the combat system was designed and balanced for the abstracted system that they use - if you want real world results then everything has to be retooled.

[Jaybe]

Gotta love all these people who are really into the details! If you look just at the details then you can argue anything you want, because there are real life examples of anything happening!

It's those aggravating incidents (and overcoming them) in the game which makes the game so rich and fulfilling!

JB

[TrainWreck20]

I have got to conclude from all the debate that Civ III must be a great game to convince so many people that it is a warrior winning a battle against an armor unit, instead of a 1-1-1 defeating a 16-8-2 (or whatever the armor is rated). You would think that most people claiming to want a war game would pay more careful attention to the stats instead of the icons.......

[Bad Ax]

Originally posted by Lord of the Isles

Agree totally. All we ask for is some realism so that warriors never defeat tanks. Code Warrior and others can only rant on about the units just being abstractions and how Firaxis made certain decisions about the combat system to make the game play better. As if we care about game play! And what's all that stuff about "abstractions"? That's a real warrior on my screen, isn't it?

How, exactly, has gameplay been improved by this system? I mean, the manual claims that firepower, HP differential, etc. have been removed from the game, no longer needed because "combat has been improved." Improved how? By returning it to the good old fashioned CivI system? The gameplay is only "better" for you under the present system if you've gotten screwed by the poor strategic resource implementation.

As for abstractions -- I'm fine with abstraction, as long as it's internally consistent. If Firaxis wanted to program the game so that there was only one kind of unit for each tactical zone (land, sea, air) that was supposed to represent the most modern strengths in each particular era, then fine. If, however, this unit gets replaced, so that we have a warrior unit armed with an axe and a rifleman unit armed with a gun, then I expect that the abstractions should at least maintain consistency with the implied advance.

The units certainly are abstractions. After all, we don't designate Riflemen to be specifically armed with Martini-Henry's or Enfields. Nor do we designate whether our warriors are armed with stone axes or obsidian-lined clubs. Nonetheless, the fact remains that the Warrior is an abstraction of a very primitive army, and the Rifleman is an abstraction of a reasonably modern army. As such, the abstraction system should remain reasonably consistent. Warriors defeating Cavalry should happen less than one in a hundred times.

This sort of works out -- in the open field a Warrior has a 1.3% chance of defeating a regular Cavalry while taking *no* damage. However, in the open field an elite Warrior has a 25% chance of taking defeating regular Cavalry overall! You can jabber that units are an abstraction all day long, but the question remains what they're abstracting from. If a Warrior is just abstracting from a guy who likes to fight with whatever he can get his hands on, well this result might be fine. That's what you want me to buy. But the technology and obsolesence scheme in-game suggests that this *isn't* the case, that the Warrior instead abstracts a primitive soldier using nonmetal weapons.

In sum, just because the combat system is an abstraction doesn't excuse all its sins. The units abstract particular *kinds* of armies, and as such combat results should generally match the results when those *kinds* of armies met. And while there are some striking (but mostly grossly misinterpreted) instances where primitive armies defeated organized contemporary ones, these are exceedingly rare. The combat system should reflect this.

It doesn't.

Therefore, it's screwed up.

[Geez]

I have my issues with the combat system, but as far as all this hubbubb about "obsolete" units....

What happens when or if your civ loses access to iron, rubber, oil, and saltpeter? (or a combination thereof) Tell me what units you will build if ever confronted with that scenario? I know, it's a long shot, but then there are many successful longshots in the game (sigh). I think that makes it obvious why they didn't make longbowmen or spearmen obsolete. It simply prevents what would be a quite fatal flaw in the game.

Tell me, if any country on earth lost access to oil or gunpowder, would they still defend themselves any way they could? You bet they would - spears and all! Not just roll over because they couldn't build tanks like everyone else.

Hey, I may be starting to see the light here!

[Akka]

Originally posted by Geez
I have my issues with the combat system, but as far as all this hubbubb about "obsolete" units....

What happens when or if your civ loses access to iron, rubber, oil, and saltpeter? (or a combination thereof) Tell me what units you will build if ever confronted with that scenario?

Riflemen.
There should have at least one unit each age that doesn't require any ressource. The excuse about ressources is a poor excuse to justify the oversimplification of the combat system, that made no sense and had not a single advantage.

I know, it's a long shot, but then there are many successful longshots in the game (sigh). I think that makes it obvious why they didn't make longbowmen or spearmen obsolete. It simply prevents what would be a quite fatal flaw in the game.

Tell me, if any country on earth lost access to oil or gunpowder, would they still defend themselves any way they could? You bet they would - spears and all! Not just roll over because they couldn't build tanks like everyone else.

It's about impossible to lose access to gunpowder. It's impossible to lose access to iron. Such ressources just existe ANYWHERE in the world. Not a single country have ZERO access to salpeter and iron. And there is too much underway to get ressources that you're lacking to say that there is a COMPLETE IMPOSSIBILITY to get them.
But just for the sake of it, let's consider that the nation is so completely unable to get any ressource that it can't build anything but spears.

Well then, NO it won't build spears and fight. It will surrender.

[Geez]

It's about impossible to lose access to gunpowder. It's impossible to lose access to iron. Such ressources just existe ANYWHERE in the world. Not a single country have ZERO access to salpeter and iron. And there is too much underway to get ressources that you're lacking to say that there is a COMPLETE IMPOSSIBILITY to get them.

Hmmm....I know of a few nations that wouldn't have guns were it not for them being smuggled into the country, donated by foreign militaries, etc. and also have little to no iron manufacturing in place. Were it not for trade, there are PLENTY of countries on Earth that would not have these things like....uhhh Afghanistan or uhhhh......the bulk of sub-Saharan Africa. Get it together, boy! Show me a fine iron product from India. Show me a good Tanzanian rifle. Duh. Riflemen are not found ubiquitously around the world. There are civilizations that still fight without guns. You just obviously have never heard of them. You're probably better off in your world....

Well then, NO it won't build spears and fight. It will surrender.

I hope for your country's sake that you never enroll in the military. Did the Aztecs, Mayans, and Incans give up when the Spanish came to the Americas? No, they were decimated by gunpowder weapons and disease, but they didn't fall on the ground with their legs in the air. They fought. You need to do some more reading before trying to defend your reveries....

Some people pi$$ me off.