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There shouldn't be just a small chance for a spear chucker to knock out a tank, there should be NO chance. Why not give them a chance to knock out F15s, that would be balancing.
The tokens in the game don't just represent one spearman or one tank, those are armies. So there is no consideration of odd hiccup that would affect the interaction of just two individuals.
I will take a Sherman Tank vs Napoleon's whole Waterloo army any day. Even when it has shot all its ammo, it just runs around the field turning infantry squares into axel grease.
Now, take that same Sherman and match it against an M1 Abrams. There is zero chance the Sherman can hurt the M1, except possibly at point blank range up the ass. But thats not the kind of thing you count on in a mass battle.
Try those same Napoleonic troops agains one guy with an M16 on open terrain. How much of that unit do you think will survive to get within range to shoot their muskets?
There is an exception to this, and that is unsupported armor in a city. In that situation even a boy scout troop has a chance.
My objection is a basic one, doing something wrong (ignoring reality, ie lying) to achieve an end (game 'balance') is bad practice. Why give someone a chance they don't deserve? And its not necessary, civilizations and nations survive in the real world without 'balancing'.
Set the AI right and don't let IT cheat so much then you don't have the problem of trying to compete with run away AI tech advances. Then you can play with a rational strategy.
This is a strategic not a tactical game, so there are other factors more important than the fact that you have superior weapons that hold back aggressive expansion. It adds more value to the game experience if brains are used for balancing rather than lies.
Make the units rational, and let the chips lay where they fall.
etc:
The nuclear sub is severly under rated in the game, it should be a real menece and be able to attack with a chance of not being detected who did it. There should be a hidded or stealth flag for units that allows an attack of hidden origin. This could apply to land special forces units or terror units.
Tanks are faster than horses.
Monitor class boats sink in open seas.
Give the Pirate ship to the Barbarians. Every age should have a type of Barbarian typical to that age.
A special unit for each age for each culture could be interesting.
Artillary, bombs, rockets torpedos icebergs and exocets sink ships very well. I mean really, there's no place to go but down. There is no way a viking galley can find, let alone sink a 688 class sub, most Japanese fishing trawlers will agree.
Modern infanty can evade artillary fire very well, but older square formed units can not. There should be a flag for units that indicates how suseptable to artilary and what kind.
Why not adapt (and improve) the CTP type combat resolution.
The tokens in the game don't just represent one spearman or one tank, those are armies. So there is no consideration of odd hiccup that would affect the interaction of just two individuals.
I will take a Sherman Tank vs Napoleon's whole Waterloo army any day. Even when it has shot all its ammo, it just runs around the field turning infantry squares into axel grease.
Now, take that same Sherman and match it against an M1 Abrams. There is zero chance the Sherman can hurt the M1, except possibly at point blank range up the ass. But thats not the kind of thing you count on in a mass battle.
Try those same Napoleonic troops agains one guy with an M16 on open terrain. How much of that unit do you think will survive to get within range to shoot their muskets?
There is an exception to this, and that is unsupported armor in a city. In that situation even a boy scout troop has a chance.
My objection is a basic one, doing something wrong (ignoring reality, ie lying) to achieve an end (game 'balance') is bad practice. Why give someone a chance they don't deserve? And its not necessary, civilizations and nations survive in the real world without 'balancing'.
Set the AI right and don't let IT cheat so much then you don't have the problem of trying to compete with run away AI tech advances. Then you can play with a rational strategy.
This is a strategic not a tactical game, so there are other factors more important than the fact that you have superior weapons that hold back aggressive expansion. It adds more value to the game experience if brains are used for balancing rather than lies.
Make the units rational, and let the chips lay where they fall.
etc:
The nuclear sub is severly under rated in the game, it should be a real menece and be able to attack with a chance of not being detected who did it. There should be a hidded or stealth flag for units that allows an attack of hidden origin. This could apply to land special forces units or terror units.
Tanks are faster than horses.
Monitor class boats sink in open seas.
Give the Pirate ship to the Barbarians. Every age should have a type of Barbarian typical to that age.
A special unit for each age for each culture could be interesting.
Artillary, bombs, rockets torpedos icebergs and exocets sink ships very well. I mean really, there's no place to go but down. There is no way a viking galley can find, let alone sink a 688 class sub, most Japanese fishing trawlers will agree.
Modern infanty can evade artillary fire very well, but older square formed units can not. There should be a flag for units that indicates how suseptable to artilary and what kind.
Why not adapt (and improve) the CTP type combat resolution.
True
True, and false. Entire armies can fall to the same "hiccups" that happen to individual soldiers.
You bet on the tank, I bet on the Napoleonic army, I win, you owe me money. A 24-pound bronze cannon would not make a hole in a Sherman, or blow it up, but it could knock off a track. A 188-pound field mortar would leave a big hole. Napoleon used both of those weapons.
Match one M4 Sherman against one M1 Abrams, not a fair fight. However, the Sherman might be crewed by Rommel, Patton, Montgomery and Guderian, and the Abrams might be crewed by my five year old nephew. Fair fight? Training could even out the differences. In WW2, German Panther, Tiger and King Tiger tanks were the best on the Western Front. But by the end of the war, they were losing more men then the Allies, all because of training.
One guy with an M-16 against 200,000 men with muskets, cannon, mortars, and cavalry. The M-16 gunner could take down 30, tops, before reloading, if he never missed. In that time, the 200,000 troops charging him would have bayonetted him, and moved on. 200,000 guys with M-16s, though, would be different. Tactics and training, in addition to numbers will often make more of a difference then you expect.
Unsupported armor in a city stands roughly the same chance as unsupported armor in the countryside, which in turn stands roughly the same chance as a snowball on a hot day in hell. I'm exaggerating, but unsupported armor anywhere is generally fuqued, and chances are, has crappy leaders.
Skipping a few....
Skipping a few more...
Tanks were not always faster then horses. In WW1, the Mark 1, the first production tank ever, had a top speed of about 10 miles per hour. If you drove it this fast for long, the engines would burn out rather quickly. The German A7V was even slower, with a top speed of about 5 miles per hour. I can walk faster then this, let alone ride a horse (if I knew how to ride a horse). WW2 tanks could be clocked at about 30 miles per hour, with some extremes. The Sherman, at almost 45, and the JS-3 (Joseph Stalin) at about 20. Modern tanks are different. They can indeed go faster then horses, as an M1 Abrams can go more then 60mph with the engine governor removed.
"Monitor class boats." First of all, they do not always sink in open water. They have poor handling characteristics, but they do not arbitrairily sink. Second, the image in the game represents (to me) all of the "iron-clad" warships built between 1855 and 1910, when France ceased production on the last of her Ironclads.
The barbarians have the Privateer, thats very much like a pirate ship, it even has the skull and crossbones.
True.
True. Bombarding, at least from the air, should sink ships. Artillery, a little different, but stil possible. Subs shouls be invisible to anything older then a destroyer, and hard to find for those that come after it (except destroyer, AEGIS, and possibly aircraft), and if anything finds a sub, only ships newer then ironclads should be able to fight one. Iron shot from bronze cannon would not do anything under water, it would require explosive shells to deal with subs.
I think this exists... Doesn't the defense attribute relate to a unit's vulnerability to bombarding?
This has been a long post. I am tired. I apologize for tearing your post apart, but I liked and hated almost all of it, so I had to respond.
Steele
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