Casualties of War

[Patroklos]

Hey everyone,

Bieng a history major, I had an idea in class. I was studying WWI and all the statistics associated with it and began to wonder what they would be for my Civ wars.

I don't know about any of you , but I would like to see a casualty list after I declare peace with a particular Civ, maybe including the units lost by both sides during that particular conflict. Not only that, but I think a shield loss comparison would be interesting, where the total shield cost for all the units of both sides are compared (this means that if I am fighting a Tech backwards Civ with cheap units then a better comparison can be made). This would let you see who won economically in a sense.

Why stop there, why not give each unit a number equivalent to the soldiers that would be contained therein (maybe a spearmen unit represents a thousand soldiers, a tank two thousand, a fighter three hundred), so that you can see an abstact number for soldiers lost. A civilian casualty stat would also be useful, counting the population lost to bombing, artillery, and city conquest (of course this would have to be modified for tha ages, a pop point in a medieval city would be 10,000 casualties, while in the modern age would be 1,000,000 maybe). I think that would be fun. I also think that when two civs declare peace it should be sent to all the players.

What do you think?

[Muddi]

I think that sounds pretty cool. Maybe you would need a separate program that runs along side civ to keep track. wish i could program ...

[vmxa1]

They had a list of lost units in civ2, but I think it was a running list, I forget.

[Demerzel]

in civ2 they did indeed have a running list of units killed & lost by the civs.

having stats of how many civilians I killed off in a war sounds just a bit macabre for my tastes. a list comparison of military casualties for each side I guess would be useful for the player and maybe for the AI too if it could use the information intelligently...

[The Pioneer]

I loved that list on Civ 2. I used to look into it all the time. Although it served no practical purpose it was fun to check it out.

So long...

[SanPellegrino]

IMHO casualty stats are a very good idea, because the terms of peace with the AI are dependant of your kill ratio. (the more units you kill (and cities you conquer) the more money and tech you can get from peace).

Well, and another point: I just loved it in civ2 to see my 20 lost MAs vs. 600 spearmen and musketeers

[Muddi]

oh yaeh you wipe out a civilization then see the stat on all the units you slaughtered.

I can imagine your little civs learning these things at uni history classes...

[Adm.Naismith]

Originally posted by SanPellegrino
IMHO casualty stats are a very good idea, because the terms of peace with the AI are dependant of your kill ratio. (the more units you kill (and cities you conquer) the more money and tech you can get from peace).

We asked for similar statistics during long years of Civ III brainstorming. Probably Firaxis just chose to cut some numbers to save computing resources.

Just a bit of searching in Apolyton archives, will let you find many interesting suggestion that you can consider worth to read, IMHO.

[werdhertz]

I, also, would like to see this. maybe in the 2nd expansion pack..We can hope..

[miccofl]

If the game could create and save a text file at the end of every turn - call it "turnsummaryyear.txt" that could be called up with a button or hotkey, it would be a welcome addition, although on huge maps with the resulting epic battle sequences, the calculation and compilation of the file would most likely cause quite a wait between turns.

[Cidifer]

Here's something that I've always thought though, when a veteren unit of let's say Infentry (which we'll say has 1,000 units to make it simple) goes into battle and loses 2 health bonuses I don't think of that as all 1,000 people being hurt I think of it as half of them being killed, which means if you wanted actual # of people casualties maybe you could count those as casualties too.
Now there are 2 ways to of upgraded units (elite for this example) you can think of it as them getting an extra 250, or how I think of it, that they have gained experiance and now in battle they tend to lose fewer people at a time, for example instead of 250 people per hit point it's now only 200.

Anyway just letting people know, it's fun to pretend like maybe we'll get it in someday.

[Patroklos]

The counting civilian casualty idea wasn't some twisted idea of me liking the idea of slaughtering the inocent, but rather a way fro me to compare my civ wars to real life equivalents.

[aahz_capone]

I think this is a great idea. I looked at the military casuality list in civ2 all the time as well, just to see which civ is better at war and such. If it could split that list into sections (The first Sino-Russo war, the Franco-Persian war, the second Sino-Russo war, etc) that would rock!

Showing civilian casualties (from bombing, art, nukes etc) would be mucho mucho cool. Then you could see which civ is the most ruthless.

[Demerzel]

if an infantry unis is supposed to represent an infantry division then it comprises ~12,000 men. so using the above system & say it lost "2 health points", that would be 6,000 men cut down in their prime in 2secs of game time. youch. that would be 3,000 men dying per second. not sometime to revel in surely?

"ooh looks boys, according to the stats I got a new high of 34,500 men killed per game minute. I rule!"

sheesh.

however at least this is dealing with soldiers who know what they are letting themselves in for. what worries me is the people who want to know how many civilians they kill as if that makes you a better gamer...

the game is supposed to be fun but surely it is fun in the abstract nature of your command? considering just how much your abhorrent or benevolent rule affects the "common" person could be quite suprising indeed.

to really express this simply, if I attacked a size 20 city then that might be 2 or 3 million citizens. After a considerable bombardment and subsequent capture that city might drop to size 6, which say is ~500k people ( it might be less I forgot exactly). this would mean I've either killed/wounded/or made refugee at least 1.5 to 2.5 million people...

in a hard fought modern war I might expect to do this between 5-10 times to take what I desire, leading to anywhere between a low estimate of 7.5 million to a high of 25 million casualties/refugees.

exactly where is the fun in knowing you've murdered X number of civilians come from? mass genocide isn't fun it's something to fight against. I seriously wonder about certain peeps, me I try to keep the horrific as abstract from the gameplay as possible.

sorry to be a downer on this thread but I'm prepared to accept people wanting a military "who's the best general" stats idea but "who's the best mass murderering genocidal lunatic" stats idea is abhorrent to me.

[Cidifer]

IT'S A GAME!
Also if I'm playing multiplayer (and to a lesser extrent SP) and I find that one player has kills about a million civilians per war then I'd know he likely uses the tactic of bombarding the cities of his enemies or razing them afterward, this information would surely prove useful in planning my defense, don't you agree?

Also are you forgetting the game world doesn't take place in seconds? each turn is many years long, sometimes hundreds of years at a time so it wouldn't be like killing 3,000 people a second.
Also I think that the infentry representing a division that's a little big, I mean think of how many inf\rifleman you have at once. I like to think of them more as companies or some other smaller group.