COMBAT (ver 1.1) hosted by Redleg

[Eggman]

BTW, if the city declares its independence, it should love you.

[Pathless1]

Civ3 simply must have the stack-combat featured in CTP. If it does not, I simply won't buy the game (as I didn't buy SMAC). The old method of resolving attacks one unit vs. one unit is outmoded, grossly unrealistic, and a fine example has been made in CTP of how to handle combat instead. You hear that Firaxis? Stack combat, man!

[don Don]

Another seige problem: if I occupy at least alternating tiles around the city square proper, how do goods get from the outlying squares into the city? They're cut off by enemy units. In MOO if there are unopposed enemy ships in the system food, production, and science outputs are cut in half (representing interdiction by various means). Not only should unhappy faces appear, but food, shields, and especially trade from "interdicted" tiles (in enemy ZOC) should be diminished.

[Eggman]

Just as an addition to the siege concept, for sieging to be a viable and useful (and fun) part of the game, it has to be easier than surrounding a city with 8+ units. Surrounding the city would put those units in positions to get themselves killed easily and would require too many resources for an action that could easily backfire (that city could hold out for a long time).

I like the idea that an enemy unit in the city radius causes unhappiness to the city. This could produce similar effects to those that I was describing since unhappy citizens will require entertainers that were formerly working the land or doing other valuable labor. The loss of production, food and whatnot becomes obvious.

Furthermore, I think that if you put 3 units in one square, it should cause 3 unhappiness. (or something similar). Grouping your units together should provide a better defense (assuming they get rid of the silly kill one unit and the 25 unit stack dies with it thing), makes sieging easier and is fairly historically accurate (the army camps in one place and patrols the surrounding area to keep people out/in). Plus, if you have real gall, build a fort on that square and make the enemy's life real miserable.

Of course, I am open to any set of "siege" rules as long as it makes it a viable combat option. There are a lot of ways that it can be handled. For example, instead of causing unhappiness, the unit blocks the use of all the squares in its ZOC. One well placed unit can render 6 squares useless. If those are used squares, it could be devastating. Of course, if those square are worthless swamp, the city would be generally unaffected.

There could also be a minimum number of units that would be needed for a siege. It could be a fixed (3 units min) or relative (at least half the number of defenders) amount. If you have 1 "siege" unit and the enemy has 5 defenders, a siege shouldn't work. Sure, I can disrupt that one square, but the most damage I could pull off is a disruption of trade and production, not a full-blown crisis. Most likely, my "siege" unit would be playing hide and seek (like a guerrilla or a pirate), attacking targets of opportunity while evading patrols sent to hunt me down. To truly siege a city, it needs to be cut off, which requires a force of some significant size that requires a direct confrontation to get rid of it.

Perhaps sieges could require at least one "siege" weapon. Like a catapult, or a cannon or artillery. Or perhaps siege weapons could reduce the number of units needed to pull off a siege.

You can have a specific number of requirements that need to be met for the siege to start. If you meet requirements A, B and C, the city takes a 50% penalty in everything.

BTW, ships should be allowed to help "siege." They would "blockade" water squares.

However, the important key element is that the city must be forced to eventually surrender if the siege is not lifted. Otherwise, sieging is just organized vandalism, which while hurting the enemy, is not much of an ego boost. Having a city go into riots and grovel at your feet for mercy is a lot more fun than just making their life miserable.

If ethnicity is implemented (WHICH IT SHOULD!), sieges should be considered an event that hurts the relationship between two ethnic groups. Starving people out does not make friends.

Thank you for listening to my rant. Have a nice day.

[Eggman]

Just as an aside to the capture the city concept, there should be an option (as suggested by many people) to raze the city to the ground. Of course, this would be more acceptable in the ancient age (nature of war) than in the modern one (big time atrocity). Razing the city would produce some refugee units. And if slavery is implemented (which it probably should, even if the concept is inherently revolting), there should be an option to enslave and/or kill the entire population of that razed city too. Rome as well as many other civilizations did this often.

[Flavor Dave]

Buying cities shouldn't be eliminated, but it should be alot more expensive. This would have the benefit of reining in the too-powerful spy, and the too-powerful (late in the game, anyway) fundamentalism.

Also, the number of units in a city should affect the price. Now, it's to easy to "allow" the AI to take a small city, move in half its army, and buy it. At the same time, bribing units should be alot easier.

"Furthermore, I think that if you put 3 units in one square, it should cause 3 unhappiness."

Disagree. This would make siege too powerful. Think about it--you build a fortress on a hill two squares away, and continue feeding units in. What if you have 10 units in one fortress? Should that really make 10 redfaces?

Also, overlapping squares shouldn't count for this. A unit in my city radius and an AIs shouldn't cause unhappiness in either.

<font size=1 color=444444>[This message has been edited by Flavor Dave (edited June 10, 1999).]</font>

[Ove]

Hi there!

Suggestion for a concept to reduce the micromanagement:

The ability to group units into larger entities and formation editor to place the subunits of an army in desired positions:

Example:

xxx = Militia, XXX = Legionnares, ooo = Light archers, !!! = Light Cavalry
                                                                     Front
                                                                      Rear
Marching                               Formation #1
                                  Default                               Attack
    !!!
    !!!                                                       !!!           XXX           !!!  
    !!!                                                           !!! XXX   XXX !!!
   xxx             !!!   !!!  XXX  !!!   !!!          xxx                       xxx
   xxx            xxx XXX xxx XXX xxx                      xxx
  XXX                 ooo ooo ooo                    ooo ooo ooo
  XXX
  XXX                                                                Defence
  ooo                                                                      xxx
  ooo                                                !!! !!! XXX XXX XXX !!! !!!
  ooo                                                      xxx  ooo ooo ooo  xxx
   xxx
    !!!

With the ability to save and load formations (several pre-included with the game, for those who don't want to edit their armies).

Thus, you could combine frex. four units into one army, combine that army with two others and include some more light units as screening forces and so on.

Combine this with some buttons to highlight obsolete units or other useful stuff. Reducing micxromanagement (in moving many units at the same time) as well giving more options to customise your armies.

<font size=1 color=444444>[This message has been edited by Ove (edited June 10, 1999).]</font>

<font size=1 color=444444>[This message has been edited by Ove (edited June 10, 1999).]</font>

<font size=1 color=444444>[This message has been edited by Ove (edited June 10, 1999).]</font>

[Ove]

Aaargh, this stupid mailerwindow strips blank spaces.

My example formations got trashed. Apologies.

[NotLikeTea]

I think there's a code to apply monospaced unformatted text with this site... it may work.

[Ove]

Short explanation of what the garbled "graphics" was supposed to be.

Marching formation: Basically just a line of troops with a userdefined order of the component units. Designed for maximum speed (every unit gets to walk along a road for instance, instead of just traveling parallell to it). Being ambushed in this formation is not good.

Default position: Starting position on a battlefield.

Attack position: Describes the desired position of the units in an advance forward.

Defence position: Ditto for the defending position.

If the battle is played out in a combat window, each unit starts in its designated position and then moves into its attack or defence position depending on what strategic role the whole grouping plays.

In ancient times (slow messengers), the player shouldn't be able to influence the formation once a battle has begun, unless the king is present in the army.


<font size=1 color=444444>[This message has been edited by Ove (edited June 10, 1999).]</font>

[Ove]

NotLikeTea; Do you know where I can learn these codes? Thank you.

[Ove]

Never mind                                                
                   I
                     found
                           it !  [img]http://apolyton.net/forums/smile.gif[/img]

[Flavor Dave]

The rule that democracies can't be bribed is PURELY for game balance. Unless other elements of the game are changed, this MUST stay.

Some of my most fun games are when I try to win with only X cities. The best I've done so far is 5. But if two spies had a good chance of taking out 20% of my empire...that would be rough. This rule balances fundy-expansionism and demo-perfectionism.

Also, one way to conquer is the city-by-city. You set up a fortress outside the enemy, but still within 3 of your city. Take the city. If your new acquisition could be bribed, you'd never fight in democracy, even with this straight ahead approach.

[Eggman]

Flavor Dave, I can see your point. I am open to any set of sieging rules that make sense and are balanced (I gave a bunch of possibilities above). But a size 10 army blocking off access to a city in a fort should be a pretty powerful thing.

The overlapping city radius wouldn't be a problem as a siege is an act of war so a civ can't siege without being at war anyway. With borders, the whole issue becomes moot.

As for spies, I still think that buying revolts is too easy (and unrealistic) even with higher prices. The revolt should not be a sure thing (the revolt may work, it may be crushed). Even if the revolt works, there should be no guarantee that you get to annex the city if the inhabitants don't particularly like you and thus declare independence. And some cities just shouldn't revolt. If the citizens are all happy, why would they revolt? Only cities that have some level of unhappiness or have an ethnic background similar or friendly to your own should be willing to revolt at all. If Communism really worked, there would be little unrest...

And democracies should be able to be subverted. It shouldn't be particularly easy, but ethnic revolts or simply unhappy citizens under an ineffective democratic government revolts are not unheard of.

[Flavor Dave]

I've thought about it, and I'm taking a harder line on why the number of redfaces in a sieged city should equal the number of squares occupied, and NOT the number of armies.

1. Game balance. All you'd have to do when fighting a democracy is put 5 units into a fortress, and the city goes into revolt, or has to take so many squares out of production that the city will very soon starve.

2. Realism. Think about how big of an area is represented by a city radius on a medium map. The folks in the immediate neighborhood of the siege are probably unhappy, but folks 500 miles away don't care much.