Near Infinite Movement Point Model (for all modern units)

[Gammaray fan]

Essentially, the argument is between tactical warfare and strategic warfare. With the Civ2 system of MPs, emphasis is placed on HOW you get to places - this makes it difficult for the AI to handle war.
Infinite movement would essentially make the game a strategic game - (see how war is handled in Imperialism) where the emphasis is on HOW MANY units you have in KEY LOCATIONS (such as cities and choke points). The move from units to armies significantly shifts the balance to STRATEGIC war, and the near infinite movement system merely gets rid of the need to waste time MOVING which the AI can't handle anyway, and concentrate on STRATEGIC WAR.

[Dienstag]

Good discussion.

I thought I'd mention that the board game World in Flames has a system in which planes have a movement rating, and can fly missions up to that number of hexes away. Some planes have the "extended range" characteristc, which means you can choose to double the plane's movement rating and halve its attack rating, on any particular combat mission. Also, instead of flying a combat mission, you can rebase the plane, moving it up to twice its movement rating (or 4 times MP if plane has "exteded range") in one turn, just so that it's somewhere more convenient for next turn.
I think this is a reasonably good examble of realistic but playable airplane movement. Downside is that you'd have to decide if each plane is attacking or rebasing all the time.

[Dienstag]

Concerning the main idea of this thread: I would be overjoyed if there was a way to have balanced movement that was realistic timewise. As has been pointed out, ships planes and land units can do a lot in one year.

1.) As is:
Unit movement neither balanced or literally agrees with game turn. We've all played this and it's still fun but could be way better.

2.) Movement balanced / not literal interpretation of game time:
Planes and ships move much faster than land units, but it still takes anything many many turns to go around the world. Better than #1, but not entirely satisfying.

3.a.)Movement balanced / literal interpretation of game time (shorter turns):
Each turn is a month or two, and all units move like they realistically would in this time. Game becomes more tactical, also much longer. I like this option, but understand why many would not.

3.b.)Movement balanced / literal interpretation of game time (longer turns):
Each turn is a number of years, and all units move like they realistically would in this time. Best model for this is probably polymth's Near Infinite Movement Point Model, with small changes as necessary. Strategic, if a little abstract, but definitely a big improvement over #1 and #2.

Comments?

[Harlan]

I always thought movement was a bit weak in Civ2. In a perfect world, here's how I'd do it (I'm just kind of making this up as I go along, never really thought about this before, so bear with me).

Roads would have their regular bonus, and railroads would be triple that or so. Each unit would have its "normal" movement amount, much like the Civ2 numbers. To move this amount is already figured in the yearly upkeep cost of the unit. Here's where things get different: any unit can move more (not infinitely, but a lot more - lets say triple your normal range), but to do so is costly.

How is it costly? You use up special resources, depending on the unit. Ancient land units would chiefly burn through food and money. More modern units would burn through coal, oil, and the like, as well as money.

Thus, to keep costs, it makes sense to move things slowly. But if "it absolutely positively has to be there overnight", you pay to make it happen. For instance, you need to bring up some far away units for an attack on a town, or rush defenders to a town being threatened. One would have to use this sparingly, cos if you did it all the time, you'd run out of resources. Fast units would still have their fast advantage, cos they could move more without incurring that extra cost, and if they did incur the extra cost, they could go farther at their max than slow units at their max.

Planes and ships would operate slightly differently. Planes could only attack once per turn, and would always end their turns in a city or airbase(but other planes would have intercept abilities a la CTP, so you could have dogfights and so forth). If their range was 20 a turn, they could never go farther than that in one jump, so ten away from an airbase is as far as they could get. However, they could go that distance of twenty between airbases and/or cities you control as much as they like during a turn with only a small resource cost.

Most ships would operate similarly. They could only attack once a turn, and until nuclear ships, they'd need to stop at naval bases and/or cities periodically to keep going. Wooden ships that didn't stop reguarly at naval bases would run a chance of dying, esp. the ones that weren't adept at open ocean travel. Nuclear and other modern ships could in theory circle the whole world in one turn, but the cost would be quite high, so normally they'd stay at cruising speed.

In this way, tiny island bases like Singapore, Hong Kong, Gibraltar, Malta, Panama, Diego Garcia, Okinawa, and so forth become as important as they are in the real world for both air and naval bases. You would also be able to pass through allied bases - a big reason to have allies.

The game would have a smart move function, where you could click on any part of the map and the unit would find not only the fastest, but the cheapest way to get there. So lets say you want to send a (coal powered) Dreadnaught from Britain to Australia. You click on Australia, and its line of travel would be shown on the map, and any extra cost you'd incur to move that far would be shown too. If you're willing to pay that, you click again, and watch the ship whiz from island to island, port to port, getting to Australia in a few seconds. Ditto with aircraft, except they would stop at a few airports along the way instead of a larger number of naval bases. Of course the journey would stop if the ship or plane came within range of an enemy intercepting unit.

I don't think this is very complicated, and it would greatly improve the game. Normally, especially in peacetime, things would go their normal pace. But wars would tend to go much faster, and overly prolonged wars could really bankrupt you. No more nonstop state of war with an enemy for centuries on end. You could also try to send off Columbus type expeditions (if you had the technology for it), but it would be very costly- recall how Columbus spent years begging various monarchs to fund his scheme. If you're really rich, you could go on an Alexander or Hitler styled fast war. Note that Hitler literally ran out of oil and was increasingly unable to move weapons around, a huge reason he lost. These strategic resources used in running your military would become phenomenally important to have in big amounts. Typically, you'd have a small mobile army that you'd devote a portion of your economy to keeping runing, cos it would cost too much to quickly move a large one around. So this style of movement would naturally prevent IUS (infinite unit sleaze). Also, during peacetime you would be able to stockpile up more movement ability, so things would tend to fall into patterns of long periods of peace followed by short bursts of warfare.

Unfortunately, this is all pipedreaming, cos the one drawback to all of this is the AI would have to be very smart to be able to play this way. It would have to know to secure colonies and bases allowing it to get around easily, it would have to know when to go into "overdrive" movement mode, when to launch voyages of discovery, and so forth. These would be very hard things to get it to do well, I imagine. But one can dream, right?

[Grumbold]

quote: Originally posted by cyclotron7 on 05-14-2001 05:58 PM Very true. All those realists should realize that turns are merely something to measure tech progress against, and should not be taken literally. Do you really want a game that lasts 144000 turns?

Not quite. The same desire to feel good about your achievements, be it discovering democracy before 100AD, spaceships by 1800AD or building a wonder of the world before it was done historically applies to military achievements too. Alexander conquered the mediterranean with infantry marching on poor roads in 20 years. The Nazi's invented, built and conquered most of Eurpoe with panzers in 4 years before being pushed back and defeated by allies whose tech and troops were only built in response to the declaration of war. That makes it a little depressing to realise you can barely produce a handful of panzers yourself and conquer a few cities before the technology is out of date, let alone outstrip historical achievements. A minor brush war in ancient times can sometimes take an unbelievable 2000 years or more to conclude. I don't think juggling movement points can solve this (without having several turns per year.) Instead you would need to rework the system completely toward strategic movement of armies.

[JellyBean]

Why should movement on railroads be based on the movement of the unit? A train doesn't go any faster when it's carrying a tank than when it's carrying infantry. If railroads are going to allow only finite movement, then it makes more sense for them to take 1/10th of the unit's maximum movement per square rather than 1/5th of a single movement point.

For example, a tank with movement of 3 could move 3 squares on a railroad at a cost of (3/10)*3 = 0.9 movement points, and then be able to move two more squares of grassland or plains. An infantry unit could move a full 10 squares along a railroad in one turn.

[joseph1944]

I believe they should use the following movement rate. Foot Soldier, one tile p/turn. On a road 3 tiles p/turn. On a railroad 9 tiles p/turn.
Soldier on Horseback, 2-tile p/turn without road. With roads 4 tiles p/turn. On a Railroad no more than 9 tiles p/turn.
Tanks, how about 3 tiles on dirt, 6 on a road, 9 tiles on a railroad.
Railroads should be a constant, no matter what. Maybe in the modern age a railroad can go 12 tiles with a city improvement or new tech. discovery.
Ships should be able to go one tile faster than a horse or why even build a ship, unless you need it to go to another Continent.
So early ships 3 to 4 tiles and as we build newer ships one or two tiles faster with each new class of Ship.
Airplane between 1914 and 1939, 9 tiles. From 1940 to 1950, go 11 tiles, 1951 to 1960, 12 tiles, 1961 to present 14 tiles. Of course if you add air-to-air or ship-to-ship refueling the ship or plane could be extended twice the distance.
Meg. Rails, I will go along with “Roman” on this one, it is future tech. to be sure. I know that Europe is now running a Meg. Rails system to see how it will work. Who knows how long before the world will be using Meg. Rails.


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[Harlan]

Jellybean,
Your idea about railroads is great. Of course, it doesn't make a difference what kind of unit is carried by railroad- they all get there at the same time! Firaxis, please notice this!