this combat system has to **GO**

[tinyp3nis]

If you are losing more, you are doing something seriously wrong. Veteran Tank v. Veteran Spearman fortified in a city has a 97.3% chance of victory -- and the losers will probably still retreat to recover their lost hitpoints and their pride. And this assumes you don't know how to use Bombers. With a little bombardment to protect your embarrassed and cowardly Tanks, Veteran Tanks v. Damaged (1hp) Spearman fortified in the rubble of a former city wins 99.96% of the time.

How much more certainty in a combat zone do you want? What more of your soldiers can you rightly expect? This is war!

Have you ever played civ 2 or AC?

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by tinyp3nis
Have you ever played civ 2 or AC?

Yes, and both are great games in their own ways. Civ2 in particular shows how a great game can still have peculiarities in the combat system without ruining the overall game (Howitzers Rule!). And I still miss my Corporate Raiders from CTPII for peacetime attacks, but oh well.



By the way, I'm all for imagining better combat systems, and all for improvements in the game. Bring it on! (I just don't think the combat system is broke in its current form, as in "this combat system has to **GO**.")

[tinyp3nis]

Just wanted to point out that civ2 and ac had the tank problem solved. Tanks would eventually lose to spearmen (or phalanx or something) but never(?) the first time. I know, I know "use the editor" to increase hp, then its civ2 almost. But I dun wanna. And now I'm chieftain on poly and my life is fulfilled!

[vmxa1]

Civ2 combat makes civ3 look very good indeed. One unit kills a whole stack in one fight, if it beats the top one and hence a single unit in a city with walls can defeat a pile of attackers. Well at least the fighting did not take as long. But you could sit back and relax in civ2 if you saw 6 waeker units heading for your city with one good defender. If that was Civ3, you would have to at least sweat some.

[tinyp3nis]

Originally posted by vmxa1
Civ2 combat makes civ3 look very good indeed. One unit kills a whole stack in one fight, if it beats the top one and hence a single unit in a city with walls can defeat a pile of attackers. Well at least the fighting did not take as long. But you could sit back and relax in civ2 if you saw 6 waeker units heading for your city with one good defender. If that was Civ3, you would have to at least sweat some.

Also note that city walls had +200% defence bonus on civ2.

[Blue Moose]

Originally posted by vondrack
There was a good discussion about the RR problem some time ago. The reason for not allowing to change the zero-cost RR movement is it's hardcoded. And the reason for hardcoding it is that it tremendously speeds up the game pathfinding algorithms. I do understand this reason just as much as I dislike what the zero-cost RR movement does to the gameplay in the later stages of the game... Seriously, making the RR movement non-zero is a change just as serious as what we are discussing regarding the combat model. Perhaps a different game...

I meant to say that the developers said infinite railroad movement was a staple of the Civlization games in general...hence implying that all future civilization games will have this. So that makes it possible they won't decide to change any apparent 'staples' in future games (unless they realize this is stupid and change their mind or they get new developers). I think they mentioned a few other things as staples that they had put in civ3 just for that reason.

[Blue Moose]

Originally posted by Zachriel


Just to make sure my point wasn't misunderstood, the tank units are abstractions. In the Industrial Age, a stack of tanks usually consists of several dozen such abstract units. Fighting against a stack of Spearmen, you might lose a couple of percent of your units to represent this attrition. This is as expected.

If you are losing more, you are doing something seriously wrong. Veteran Tank v. Veteran Spearman fortified in a city has a 97.3% chance of victory -- and the losers will probably still retreat to recover their lost hitpoints and their pride. And this assumes you don't know how to use Bombers. With a little bombardment to protect your embarrassed and cowardly Tanks, Veteran Tanks v. Damaged (1hp) Spearman fortified in the rubble of a former city wins 99.96% of the time.

How much more certainty in a combat zone do you want? What more of your soldiers can you rightly expect? This is war!

I just think that's off by a factor of 100 or even 1000 (at the very, very least a factor of 10).

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by Blue Moose
I just think that's off by a factor of 100 or even 1000 (at the very, very least a factor of 10).

Sometimes I wonder if we are playing the same game. In the Industrial Age, with all the lead flying and bombs dropping, there is rarely room for a spear much less a Spearman.



Cleopatra, Queen of Thebes

http://www.zachriel.com/gotm9/ad1800-Conspiracy.htm

[Ethelred]

Originally posted by Blue Moose


I just think that's off by a factor of 100 or even 1000 (at the very, very least a factor of 10).

Its not off at all. Not by ten, not by anything, That was for a spearman down to one hit from bombardment. Just what do you think is the odds of a spearman in a city killing a tank? I have seen it happen exactly once since the game came out in my games.

[Theseus]

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3combatcalc.html

[vmxa1]

I saw it a couple of times before any patches, but not since. I still see a galley sink DD/BB if I get lazy. really since 129f it has not been too outrageous.

[aaglo]

Strange occurences for me:

- Zulu swordsman destroyed my modern armour (which was damaged to 1 hitpoint).
- Greek Fregate took 3/4 hitpoints from my battleship, when I attacked the Fregate.
- Elite Zulu Impi (while defending a city) took 5 or 6 hitpoints from my army of 3 tanks.

The combat system has it's unique surprises, but sometimes they can be fun to play with...

[Sir Og]

Originally posted by cyclotron7
1) Civ2 option: All units are exponentially better than their less advanced counterparts. While "realistic," Anybody with a tech lead can wipe anybody else off the map with essentially no challenge. Result: Very, very easy game and wimpy AI.

2) Civ3 option: All units are arithmatically better than their less advanced counterparts. While "unrealistic," all players have a chance, strategy must actually be utilized instead of raw tech advantage, and the gameplay is vastly improved.

Firaxis chose option 2. So would I.

Civ2 was an easy game not because of the bad combat system. The combat system was realistic and worked well. The only thing Firaxis had to do was to add armies (like in CTP) and work on the solutions for making the game harder to win like adding increasing unit support, making it harder to keep conquered cities etc. Instead Firaxis added a feature that did not work well (resources) and decided to balance it by making the combat system worse.

[Tiberius]

Originally posted by Sir Og
Instead Firaxis added a feature that did not work well (resources) and decided to balance it by making the combat system worse.

What's your problem with the resource system? It is one of the best addition to the Civ series.

[WarpStorm]

I'll have to agree with Tiberius on this one. Resources are my favorite addition to Civ. The give a reason and justification for the wars to happen.