The Battlemap

[Kumiorava]

quote: Originally posted by MarkG on 01-03-2001 05:00 PM well, 95% of the time the way the units are placed are the best...

"Best" is a very relative thing. Maby you would like to try something innovative sometime, something the AI or a human opponen in MP would not be prepared for.

quote: again, the strategy is your choice of units to participate in the battle

Exactly. Even if we see the units bash it away, the battleview has no effect on the outcome of the fight. The winner will be determined by the a/d/hp/fp stats associated with the units on either side, and to an extent by a random number generator. In other words, the battleview is nothing but eyecandy. If you get bored with it and turn the feature of, you will loose nothing. In fact, you'll use less time per turn when you don't have the battleview enabled, and time is often of essence when playing MP.

quote: and the drop in the power is according to the unit that caused the damage

Quite. You would also see this if you do the battle just on the map, IIRC.

quote: i think the issue is that you're just watching instead of seeing...

There isn't much to be seen in the CTP battleview. You can learn just as much about the battle by looking at the units before the fight. That is, if you understand how the battle system works...

[MarkG]

quote: Originally posted by Kumiorava on 01-04-2001 12:02 AM There isn't much to be seen in the CTP battleview. You can learn just as much about the battle by looking at the units before the fight. That is, if you understand how the battle system works...

guess what? the battle system is hardly explained in the manual. if it werent for the battle screen you would most probably have no clue

[Kumiorava]

quote: Originally posted by MarkG on 01-04-2001 02:23 AM guess what? the battle system is hardly explained in the manual. if it werent for the battle screen you would most probably have no clue

I only glanced through the manual anyway. It's so pathetic even by appearance that it just didn't seem worth it. And I haven't kept the battleview enabled when I play since the first couple of games. One just has to learn the battle system through experience or through other sources.

[Mihai]

A turn-based battlefield with a tile/hex grind like in Heroes of Might and Magic would provide the control that we need. And of course the retreat option.
A real time battle isn't a good idea.
And about CTP - if you have 8 units and the enemy only 2 or 4 you cannot encircle them.

[Matthew Hayden]

I think that perhaps a large battlefield 48-high
48-wide would be a decent size to work with. The attackers would enter the battle field the same way as they attacked the defenders in the main view.
The defenders would be placed in the middle, and both sides would take it in turns to move and shoot.

UNITS CANNOT STACK!!

[Matthew Hayden]

Please! No retreat option!

Just walk off the edge of the battlemap.

[Matthew Hayden]

By the phrase units cannot stack, I meant in the battle view only.

Any ideas on my idea anyone?

[Ralf]

Heres an similar idea i had about a month ago. The link/title is maybe somewhat misleading, and the idea was modified/simplified after a couple of posts.

RISK-II style combat - simultaneus, still not realtime
[This message has been edited by Ralf (edited January 06, 2001).]

[Sir Shiva]

I think the retreat is a very good idea.

But I feel that you should be able to control which unit on which to concentrate your attacks. Suppose the enemy brings in an army with 11 leviathans and one nanite disassembler guy. You should be able to try and kill the nanite guy as quickly as possible...

[Grumbold]

The big plus that CtP1/2 introduced was army stacks and rudimentary combined arms tactics with short range attackers protecting the rear rank artillery pieces. It has lots of effects, but generally improves on civ:

- No more stacks eliminated when the top unit dies

- You get to see the composition of a defending force even if you lose the battle.

- The battle displays are pretty quick. Each unit dies about as fast as in Civ 2, but each one has to be killed individually

- The AI is not brilliant and sometimes the placements can be a little absurd

- A 20th C rifleman/machinegunner is classified as short range which is absurd when confronted by pikemen guarding long-range archers or musketeers

- You are not able to influence your troops or fire upon the long-range enemy until the short range stuff is wiped out. This can be infuriating when a city assault (by land) allows two artillery pieces to be protected by a screen of transport ships!

I do hope that Civ3 takes this further, and allows a simple but effective battle system where the players can influence the outcome. Something like Imperialism II/HoMM3. Naturally this should be toggled to quick display/AI fights both sides for MP gaming unless all sides agree otherwise. I see this as essential if Civ3 is going to allow army stacks and combined arms tactics rather than just 1 piece v 1 piece combat.

One big advantage of having army battles and using a separate screen is in the AI. The main game AI need only know how to create useful army stacks and place them reasonably sensibly. The battle AI can then be built separately to use the individual pieces most effectively in combat. It also helps get around the ranged bombardment problem by allowing ranged battle within a square rather than having pieces fire unfeasibly long distances on the main map (thats what 1 shot rocket/missiles are for).
[This message has been edited by Grumbold (edited January 10, 2001).]

[Adm.Naismith]

I would prefer not to "drill" to a battle map to make tactical orders: too much micromgmt IMHO.

I enjoyed wargames that briefly pop-up a smal window to show me a short animated battle (just eye-candy, I agree, not interactive) where you can see the involved unit "expanded" to single component (i.e. a 14/20 hit points tank unit will be showed on battle map as 14 proper tanks) that become destroyed as enemy hit you (same for enemy, of course), till one win and the battle is resolved.

To avoid too much interrupt, this show must be automatically limited to relevant battles (e.g. when the opposing forces are of similar power, or you are about to crush the last defender of a city or fortification: there is no fun to see lot of "musketeer massacred by elite marines" scene).

Pressing "esc" you should always be able to skip the scene.

Of course, when two stack are fighting, you can see a proper coordinated battle (who cares of showed formation, we are playing a Civilization level game, not a Squad level one! ), for short time, i.e. not longer than around 10 seconds.

Of course this will look better if the game is played in Simultaneous turns, because you can see the whole battle "clip" one after another, more like watching a war movie (while the main map on background will move to center on fighting position).

Battle replay can be implemented, too.

I know computer resources will be used for "not interactive" reason, but I feel that for a better "game immersion" it will be worth the hassle. I enjoyed it a lot on Battle Isle 2 and 3, only skipping when they where boring.

Just a last detail: in BI2 & 3 the battle scene where simple but rendered on-the-fly, showing appropriate surrounding (e.g. road or mountains) according to main map landscape, the camera moved and zoomed in and out to add deepth, explosions and debris where quite good for that old state of the graphics. Nothing where more thrilling to see your and enemy tanks firing and exploding until the winner won the battle!

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Admiral Naismith AKA mcostant

[- Groucho -]

I can live without a battlemap. I find the military micromanagement aggravating enough without having to worry about tactical issues in a skirmish. Just let me know who wins.

As for the stuff about having to peer at battlemaps to figure out how units work ...

All that means is the game is lacking a decent manual. I think most of us want nothing hidden from us in terms of game mechanics. All the rules should be well documented.

[Grumbold]

If combat is stack v stack rather than unit v unit then you need *something* to show what forces were involved, which ones were damaged/destroyed and why. I could live without it being interactive if I had any confidence that the automatic resolution was making sensible choices, particularly about when to retreat. Interactive combat is needed in CtP2 because sometimes the AI is spectacularly bad. 95% of the time hitting 'autoresolve' and getting a 10 second clip is perfectly good enough, I agree. The BI2/3 video was excellent at that, but was only unit v unit. Not sure it could do the same thing for stack v stack without turning into a short war movie