Ranged Combat

[hHydro]

Improve the AI? Brilliant idea Diablo!! Why didn't they think of that before? Just give it the best AI that the world has ever seen! Should only add a week or so to the production schedule, right?

The reality is, Diablo, that good AI is probably the toughest part of this game to program, and every time they impliment a new feature like artillery or pollution or slavery, they have to find a way to make the computer use it.

Firaxis did okay with artillery in SMAC, but I found the artillery seldom fired on towns. More often it just took out terrain enhancements. Could have been intended, but I know that if I had a choice to either program artillery how to pick off easy (defenseless) farm improvements vs. teaching them how to manouever into place in order to accurately provide support for a separate attacking ground army, I'd definately have them pick off terrain enhancements. "If terrain enhancement location = enemy territory then action = destroy". There. Done.

[Diablo, Bro. of Mephisto]

Yes, your right that the AI problem is the hardest to combat, but, if take a Poll, and look at what everyones top ten changes are, Ill bet you that 90% of everyone will have AI in there top-10.

[lord of the mark]

doesnt this illustrate the difficulty of using a single engine for such a wide range of scenarios?

IIRC, The Operational Art of War, designed for scenario building , has hexes which are considered to range from about 10 miles to about 50 miles.

Here we have people using a game where, at one extreme, you play the entire world on a small map, and a tile is well over 100 miles, to people making Normandy scenarios where the entire map is well under 100 miles across.

With all due respect to the Civ scenario designers, this wasnt designed as a war game like TOAW or Combat MIssion. Its designed to look at the development of civilizations (thus the name) over historical epochs. Its great how creative people are doing WW2 scenarios, but you can hardly fault the game for not being designed to make your lives easier.

OTOH ranged attack for certain 20th century weapons might make sense - what was the range for Big Bertha, 1918 German siege artillery? Also WW2 era Battleship guns, long range sub torpedos, etc?

[Deity Dude]

I think ranged conflict is a great idea. I'm not sure about the 1/3 tile range because tiles are full units.

PS Diablo you have some great ideas, and some lousy ones, but there is no reason to have an "attitude" when you post them. I've seen this time and time again on your threads. You seem to have to insult other people, natioalities or posters in order to get your point across, and its really not necessary. I think that everyone here is using their heads - their head just might not come up with same conclusion as yours.

[orange]

I agree with Deity. You seem to have this attitude that you are right and everyone who doesn't agree is wrong. Saying stuff like that will give people a lousy impression of you

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[hHydro]

Just remember that this game is an abstraction. Ranged units (a la SMAC) are a fine idea, but I don't think they should be able to shoot more than 2 squares.

All we need is an abstraction to show that the artillery is able to attack from range, and that only highly mobile units can hope to counter attack next turn. We do not need to start measuring ranges of weapons throughout the ages and modelling them.

Lord of the Mark is right about one thing though... This is CIVILIZATION, not Sid Meier's Ancient art of War. I WANT battle to be an abstraction so I can focus on all aspects of Civ-building.. not just war.
[This message has been edited by hHydro (edited December 21, 2000).]

[Grumbold]

This is why the combat screen for stacked combat will be an important part of what makes or breaks Civ3. The AI on the game map only needs to know what are sensible stacks to make and ideally how to move them around in support of each other.

The battle AI can then take over and concentrate purely on achieving the best combat result on the tactical map, perhaps with parameters to give it major goals - like don't lose more than 50% or only use long range bombardment.

You can only keep the two mostly separate if unit ranges are not normally a factor on the main game map. As soon as it becomes more advantageous to have an attack stack with an artillery stack behind it (and a fighter stack nearby for air support etc) then the human players will always find a way to outwit the AI and lure it to destruction.

Keep it fairly simple, though, and games like the Panzer General series show that losing a bit of realism can result in a fast flowing battle where the AI is capable of defending extremely well and knows how to attack without leaving itself wide open too.

[lord of the mark]

glad we finally agree on something, hydro