this combat system has to **GO**

[vondrack]

Originally posted by Blue Moose
Well, it's sort of annoying how no one has paid any attention to my suggestion on fixing the tech issue. I gave the example that a civilization with computers should find it basically impossible to keep other civilizations from knowing electronics. It seems to me that any advanced civilization is not going to be able to keep it's older technology a secret, such technology is simply too integral to society and knowledge of it would be far too common. Hence you could easily make a system where it became trivial to research such techs, and it would be hard or impossible to be more than an age behind anyone else...and more likely about half an age. You'd need a better combat system to back this up though (IMO).

Blue Moose, I should have addressed this, sorry for that... I am afraid it solves virtually nothing (besides, it is already implemented - first, by lowering costs of the tech research once it is known to other civs, second by trading techs). In 90+% of cases, the reason for having tanks facing spearmen is not that the spearman civ would not know techs for better defenders (just check the trade screen - they usually know techs allowing them to build infantry, since it is - due to the extensive tech trading - very rare that a civ gets way behind tech-wise). The reason is that the spearman did not get upgraded. Your idea of tech knowledge "spread" would do absolutely nothing to change that. You would still have woefully outdated units running around...

Humans upgrade as much as they can. That's why there are always complaints of AI spearmen beating human tanks only. I know of nobody trying the opposite regularly (and you need a lot of tries to get that one lucky shot). Humans simply upgrade everything they can, AIs do not (even though it has been greatly improved since the initial release!).

[vondrack]

Originally posted by WarpStorm
This could be done now by someone with the needed animation skills (Firaxis, if you are reading this thread, I'm talking about you). The file structure supports a different animation for each unit in each era. It's be cool if the spearmen grabbed a shoulder mounted anti-tank missile in the modern defense animations. That's tell you that these "spearmen" are living in Modern Times.

This would probably be a bit complicated and not fully implementable... there is no "general age", every civ is in its own age. Thus, you would still have outdated units facing more advanced ones, since different civs would be in different ages. The definition of the age would have to change to allow for using the current age-dependent unit "skins"... Like that the age changes (for EVERYBODY!) at the very moment the first civ enters it...

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by Blue Moose Are you purposefully being obtuse?

No. As I stated before, I am not against refinements in the combat system, but it is after all a strategy game (both words are important). Strategy means that the local events are beyond control of the planner. Game means that, well, it's a game, a diversion.

Citing a fictionalized account of history doesn't help your case, not that even one or two accounts would show that it is more than a very, very rare event.

Henry V is not fictional, nor was Ben Franklin's story, nor was Hanssen's betrayal.

So that's over 200 years of history with no military betrayals, and America has been in many wars.

Betrayal, friendly fire, incompetence, bad decisions, poor morale, weather, local terrain, typhoons, and so on. Many factors, not just betrayal, affect tactical combat. America is just one nation and 200 years is a short period of time in the Annals of Civilization.

The game might be fun to play and all, but the combat system is simply unrealistic in the extreme. Vivid and wild imagination are required to delude oneself into thinking otherwise (or some of that combined with sheer ignorance).

Only imagination is required. Fun is the point, I believe.

My intention is to only point out this lack of realism, and to provide some ideas as to how you might design a better system, I don't intend to imply *you* can't have fun playing the game.

There are a thousand ways the game can be improved. However, the original thread did start as an admitted gripe.

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by vondrack

but I distinctly recall many games (in fact, I guess lots of my games fall into this category) that had one or two AI civs grow to heavenly heights (in terms of the histograph performance) and than simply crumble to dust without my direct involvement. Which in turn means that there were other AI civs (not only me) that fell - in a certain moment - behind another one, but managed to get back on the train.

Yes the AI can get behind other AI's and get back into it, they can not fall many techs behind a good human player and get back into the game. That is what I was talking about. Anyway your .02 is as germain as anyone elses. In fact, I do not recall them doing it at emp/deity even verses the AI. I have seen it, I just do not recall the level of that game.

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by Zachriel
Betrayal, friendly fire, incompetence, bad decisions, poor morale, weather, local terrain, typhoons, and so on. Many factors, not just betrayal, affect tactical combat.

Forgot normal wear-and-tear when it comes to tanks and planes. Some tanks will just never make it home, they've been expended, used for parts, abandoned, etc. Some planes will just fall out of the sky. What percentage of the U.S. B1b bomber force was lost in Afghanistan?

[Jaybe]

Originally posted by Zachriel
... What percentage of the U.S. B1b bomber force was lost in Afghanistan?

Well Zach, how many B1's WERE there supporting the Afghan affair??

(One was lost on the way back to Diego Garcia due to mechanical failure)

[Nubclear]

Alright vod, I'll conceed to you that you are correct. It was bad tactics, and I'm bickering about graphics and math but......It is my right to bicker about such things! All I can really say in reply to your post is that....for me, it just wasn't fun. It was incredibly irritating, frustrating, and just didn't hit the spot for me (Whether for logical reasons or not) and...it may be justified, but I really care less about its justification. I'm looking for the fun....and in Civ3, I can't find it anymore.

So.....whatever rocks your boat. I happen to disagree with you that Civ3 is fun, but I suppose thats just my opinion

[vondrack]

Originally posted by Tassadar5000
Alright vod, I'll conceed to you that you are correct. It was bad tactics, and I'm bickering about graphics and math but......It is my right to bicker about such things! All I can really say in reply to your post is that....for me, it just wasn't fun. It was incredibly irritating, frustrating, and just didn't hit the spot for me (Whether for logical reasons or not) and...it may be justified, but I really care less about its justification. I'm looking for the fun....and in Civ3, I can't find it anymore.

So.....whatever rocks your boat. I happen to disagree with you that Civ3 is fun, but I suppose thats just my opinion

Tass, feel free to bicker as much as you like!

I guess how you feel about Civ3 is exactly how I felt about SMAC... Others kept telling me it was one hell of a game, but I just did not have fun with it... perhaps the graphics and those strange unit/tech names... yeah, that must have been it... the graphics and strange names, definitely.

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by Jaybe

Well Zach, how many B1's WERE there supporting the Afghan affair??

You would ask! Frankly, I'm not sure. The U.S. has about 90 B1b Bombers (soon to be only 60). From what I can gather from the Air Force website, 40-50 planes were deployed in Operation Enduring Freedom. That would be a loss rate of about 2%.

http://www.b1b.wpafb.af.mil/

[Gen.Dragolen]

Tassadar5000,

I have been bedevilled by lousy combat results so many times I don't even get upset by it anymore. It's merely another factor to work in when I estimate the forces I will need to win a series of battles.

Having been a soldier in my youth, you get the concept of "plan for the worst case and then for success" hammered into your skull. A sargeant's instructional lessons tend to stick when they force you do drill over and over and over... especially when you haven't slept for 3 days. Combat in Civ 3 has about as much relation to reality as the comabt in Risk.

There are some strategic and tactical ideals that do still hold true, but when people are involved in real life situations, **** happens. The only tool for a programmer to use to approximate it is a psuedo random number generator. It is possible in real life for a rag tag bunch of highly motivated civilians to tie a professional military unit in knots. Just think of the resistance if someone decided to park an armoured division in your neighbourhood and all you could come up with were spears and rocks. You're not going to kill a tanker while he's inside his tank, but when he gets out to resupply, or to have created tank traps and ambushes, even in open ground, the only protection a tank has from some determined soldiers with molotov cocktails is to move. This is where the combined arms concepts come in: you need infantry inbetween your tanks to keep enemy infantry from getting too close.

Part of the problem was the way the combat system in Civ 3 was labelled. Change the words "hit point" to morale and it suddenly becomes a lot more palettable. And a little more realistic. Napoleon succeded more often than not in the face of numerically superior opponent because he understood how important was the fighting spirit of his men:

"An army's effectiveness depends on its size, training, experience and morale, and morale is worth more than all the other factors combined."

The only thing I would change in the combat system is what it takes to form an army. You should be able to build generals even in ancient times, and they should be able to make a 3 unit army (no blitz attacks), since that was the whole point to having leaders. Units that succeed as elites in that army should be able to great a GL, since this is where they were usually forged.

To balance things out, there should also be a chance to generate a GL from building improvements and trading with other Civs. This could represent people like the Buddha, Aristotle, Jesus of Nazareth, Mohammed, Leonardo Da Vinci, Ghandi and others who made their presence felt without being a soldier.

And Vondrack, there were some really useful features in SMAC that I wish had made it into Civ3. The diplomacy model was light years ahead of anything else I've seen before and since. And I have played them all from Civ and CTP to Civ3 and SMAC. However, the sci-fi genre may not be to your taste. And there is nothing wrong with that. I've come across a lot if games that just didn't to it for me either.

Anyway, some of our issues will be put to rest in PTW, and a whole host more will rise to take their place. In the mean time, just remember to use at least 5:1 strength to ensure victory (and yes I have lost 4 veteran cavalry to a fortified spearman, with only the 5th one killing the little bugger, and the cavalry had only 1 hp left too...)


D.

[tinyp3nis]

I tried to read all but uhhuh..
Nobody said this yet? Maybe it has been said since this has been discussed like ...zillion times? Well I'll say it then:

The main problem is that the random number generated for each turn has more influence over things than attack and defence. Means almost any unit can kill any unit. This random number also ruins everything else in a turn that has a roll

Why didn't anyone tell this to the starter of the thread? Instead this once again got completely out of hand

[Zachriel]

Feelings

Originally posted by tinyp3nis
The main problem is that the random number generated for each turn has more influence over things than attack and defence.

When I see a stack of enemy Cavalry approaching my city defended with Spearmen, I start to worry. If I can upgrade them to Infantry, I feel safe again. To me, at least, the combat values of my units matter greatly.

[tinyp3nis]

Re: Feelings

Originally posted by Zachriel


When I see a stack of enemy Cavalry approaching my city defended with Spearmen, I start to worry. If I can upgrade them to Infantry, I feel safe again. To me, at least, the combat values of my units matter greatly.

Too bad Firaxis didn't think they should matter _greatly_.

[Blue Moose]

Well here's an idea...

Double the number of units, more or less, fill in some historical gaps with unit types, make attack power increase a bit more smooth.

Make the tech proliferation for a society's common knowledge techs (electronics if they have computers is the example of such things) much, much more powerful than the current system. Perhaps even have it almost like the great library, where 'older' techs are given for free to more primitive cultures. The ideal here should be that it is almost impossible for a society to get more than 1 age behind, and with some decent research going on, you can stay .5 or so (perhaps). Of course, there would still be advantages for maintaining the lead (wonder access first, military unit access first).

Incorporate some simple supply line system (with a improved trade system showing the trade lines). Cutting supply lines would decrease the effectiveness of troops after a short time. This could be done so it is easy and intuitive. I believe the trade system in CTP used something like this...it would also allow the pirating of trade routes and the like.

With the increased number of units, make it much, much easier to upgrade them. Barracks are not required, only access to the supply system. The cost should be fairly inexpensive, though perhaps the current pricing system would suffice. In any case, upgrading should be easier, considering the length of terms and the like. This would make it so you are far less likely to encounter more primitive units.

Revamped combat system, focusing on unit counters, the RPS system I have aboved described, and a grouping of units into armies that attack together. Balanced armies of various unit types would hence be encouraged.

I think this system would be more realistic and more fun, since combat would have a lot more depth. True, as many have said, combat is not the entire game, but it is an important part. Better combat systems would improve the game. I also think there are other areas that could be improved, but this thread is about combat so I have stuck to that.

As for concerns about how the game is unrealistic in many areas. This is true. But some of those are essential to the premise of the game. It is about you ruling your civilization in your version of the "ideal" way, which is essentially unrealistic. That doesn't require the combat system to be unrealistic though, the main lack of realism is that your civilization has one leader with vision throughout its entire lifetime. A big difference, but there is no reason why other factors can't be more realistic. There's no reason why more realism in the combat system can't add to the fun. Civilization-like games are based on history, and that adds in a certain expectation of some realism.

Anyhow, I think perhaps the most glaring error (the more I think about it), is combat between units of the same type. Each side should have about an equal chance of winning such an encounter on open plains with no fortification (perhaps assume that the attacker was attacking from a plains too, so it wasn't hiding). I don't think anyone has addressed this issue I've brought up...but I'll double-check.

[Blue Moose]

Originally posted by Zachriel


Forgot normal wear-and-tear when it comes to tanks and planes. Some tanks will just never make it home, they've been expended, used for parts, abandoned, etc. Some planes will just fall out of the sky. What percentage of the U.S. B1b bomber force was lost in Afghanistan?

That's handled by the maintainance system.