COMBAT (ver 1.1) hosted by Redleg

[redleg]

Summary for Combat as of 11JUN99

Use some combat modifiers, such as morale and giving special abilities to certin units (giving a besieged city the pleauge by launching dead beasts into the city walls). -Pythagoras / NotLikeTea

Use an optional battle plan phase where you choose formations and order of battle, then watch the fight. - Flavor Dave / Ove

Give the ability to destroy buildings and infrastructre to the land and air forces, rather than only being able to destroy units.

Automate the siege process. Perhaps cause unhappiness in the victim city per unit involved in the siege. (controversy on the unhappiness factor)

Give the ability to destroy a city completely, rather than captureing it. This would cause refugees and/or slaves.

Automate the manouvere of military forces though "stacks" (CTPesqe) or armies (collections of units, like a stack, but representing a hard number of men and equipment rather than abstract "units") - Eggman


Use more levels of difference between units. Such as 1st Generation Armor, 2nd Generation Armor, etc... - Chowlett


Do not have units absolutely fight to the death, but rather give the attacker a chance to withdraw by moving combat in stages or phases or turns.

Increase the probability of "bombardment" attacks hitting thier intended target (a unit, building, or infrasructure) as the technology increases. - Ember

Spies are too powerfull, tone them down. - Eggman (others)



This is only a summary and very distilled collection of your ideas. If I left out an important part of an idea, or have misinterperted your idea - let me know. I will be on military training for 2 weeks and hope to see the great ideas still rolling when I get back!




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Redleg

Small minds talk about people, Average minds talk about events, Great minds talk about ideas.

[Mo]

I think that democracy shouldn't get a huge unhappiness penalty for units within its own territory.

[Jimmy]

I'd like to see the concept of military readiness levels, Defcon 5 (peacetime)to Defcon 1 (full war readiness). At the maximum levels, the units would fight at the maximum strength but there would be a greater economic and industrial support costs. At the lowest levels, it would be the reverse: little economic and industrial support but the units would not fight at their maximum strength while they still at the low readiness level. Additionally, democracies could get a public opinion boost for low military readiness in times of peace.
I like this idea because I think it could add to the atmosphere of the game especially when you reach the nuclear age. You could have true "Cuba missile crisis" type situations. Think about if your military advisor pops up and says " Our enemies the Zulus have moved troops near our borders. I recommend we go to Defcon 2." You would get the choices: "I concur, order our forces to Defcon 2" or "No, remain at Defcon 3."

[Diodorus Sicilus]

A few comments RE seiges and seiging.
To reflect the fact that a "beseiging" army is deployed completely differently from a field or marching army, Lay Seige should be a Special Order for a unit or group of units. Move them next to a city, toggle the command, and a ring appears around the city. the ring could start as a faint pink and become a stronger and stronger red as the seige '"tightens". The effect would be to cut off the city from the outside, lower morale inside, and steadily raise the chance of someone inside betraying the city: Aeneas Tacitus the ancient Greek military writer devoted most of his book into ways to sneak into a city, usually with help from a traitor inside. That, BTW, is the "excuse" for a Spy or Diplomat being able to 'buy' a city - paying off the folks to revolt, betray, or the leaders to sell them out.
The size of the army required to beseige a city should be related to the size of the city. As I understand it, the actual cities in the game occupy only part of the city hex/tile, and so the numerical size would be a good indicator of how big an area the beseigers have to cover.
Seiges were expensive. An army that sat in one place for any length of time before this century lost a lot of men to disease, in addition to the losses due to guys on top of the wall throwing heavy things down on them. There should be an Attrition Factor every turn of the seige, both for the city and the army. If the city has no Warehouses (Granaries?), then the attrition inside will be a Lot worse than for the army, BUT armies that sat in place were very hard to supply before railroads. I keep making that point in a lot of these threads but it's really applicable here, because a seige was the worst possible supply situation: the army can't forage very far because it's sitting around the city, and all the concentration of food distribution for the area is inside the city where they can't get at it!
Unless the city formally "surrenders on terms" (which should be a Special City Order), that is, if it is finally attacked and stormed or bought out (which means you got troops inside suddenly) there should be a very high probability that the troops get out of hand and sack the whole place. In an assault that takes a walled city after a seige this chance is practically 100% - certainly no lower than 90%. Any time a city makes an army sit outside taking casualties for a while, there's a chance the troops will take it out on the city when they get the chance. A sack results in a large part of the city infrastructure going up in smoke and loss of population, and most of the cash from the place going directly to the troops, and not to the treasury.
This, by the way, is also where most of the ancient world slaves came from: troops sold their captives to dealers who followed the army - dealers did not go out catching folks on their own.
There are a lot of Advances that could relate to Seiges. The Assyrians invented seige engines long before the catapult, which would give an army an advantage both in storming the city and in blocking it up faster. After gunpowder the city walls became much more elaborate earthworks and covered wider areas, so the effective size of the beseiging army should go up BUT the development of Vauban's "Parallels" method of seige makes the fall of the city almost a mathematical certainty.
Engineers of some kind are a requirement for seiges, but they could be grouped with catapults and seige machines into a sort of Seige Train unit - very, very slow, but adds some kind of Anti Wall factor to the army, and speeds up the entire blockade process.

[Jimmy]

Dioderus: I like the siege idea a a lot.

[Captain Action]

*grabs a can labled worms and a can opener*

I for once would like to see morale done differently. Human beings are usually interested in staying alive not dieing in armed conflicts. Perhaps this morale system should be looked at...

Morale should govern when a unit "breaks" in combat. The game cheaks morale when a unit is at a certain percentage of damage. If the unit doesn't break then when the unit takes more damage the unit makes additional morale cheaks unit either the unit is healed above it's "damage limit" or it breaks. A broken unit either retreats or surrenders if there is no neighbooring squares that it can flee into. Broken units stay broken until they at maxiumn health.

The highest morale rate is fanatical. At this level the unit will NEVER break. Only certain goverenments and tech can produce this morale. Elites break at 90% of damage, veterans at 50%, and raw recruits at 10%.

[Jimmy]

Wouldn't it be the other way around: elite troops break at 10% not 90%, raw recruits break at 90% ?

[Eggman]

If I remember correctly, I believe that air units in Civ2 received bonuses for terrain, fortresses and city walls. This may make sense for helicopters that generally stay close to the ground but I cannot come up with a plausible explanation for airplanes that are thousands of feet above the ground. Some units just shouldn't be able to avail themselves of certain defensive modifiers.

[Picker]

Officers are a must. Good tactics can defeat brute force(tech being similar, of course). So add an officers corps with various strategy ratings. You could even put in famous generals from around the world, to be hired and used by the civs(ie. napoleon, genghis khan, zhuge liang, william wallace, you get the picture).

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The Notorious P.I.K.
"Read my clit, not gonna do it."

[Picker]

Going along with that idea, you could have rebellions in your cities or rebellions by your officers, and if they succeed they start a new civ.

[Flavor Dave]

spies are too powerful, in large part b/c they are too weak. By that I mean, counterespionage is too weak. The 1st thing that the folks at Firaxis should try is to increase the percentage that counterespionage works.

Also, (I think I also said this under units thread) cities should be more expensive, but units cheaper.

Last, I'd like to see the overall happiness of a city affect the price. From what I've read of MP, bribing is too powerful. But what if you could put luxury at 10%, and get a light blueface and no reds, making the city more expensive.

We all know cities in revolt cost half as much. I'd rather see a sliding scale.

[ember]

What if in stead of having sieging units placed around a city, you move them on to the same square the city occupies and set them to siege.

For each city there is a certain cumulative combat rating required to siege it depending on size and defenders. Less than that can be used, it is a blockade.

If the exact siege amount is used to food accumulates, and no units may be deployed / produced to the city. Repairs still can be conducted. If less is used it reduces the food accumulation and production proportianal to the fraction used. If more than this amount is used, there is a net food loss, depending on how much more than the required number (no food at all is 2 - 3 times the minimum siege combat rating)

Certain units, like catapults, artillery, etc count as double the combat rating.

Units with bombard can still bombard the city, but bambard units in the city can hit back. Either side can disside to launch a direct offensive. Small blockades will only be effective agains a city with no offensive units inside.

When all stored food runs out, population loss occurs. There is also a % chance per turn that a besieged city surreders.

Bombards on a city do collateral hits to other units / structures / population than the target.

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"Any technology, sufficiently advanced,
is indistinguishable from magic"
-Arthur C. Clark

[NotLikeTea]

Rebeling officers (or millatary units in general) is an intersting idea. A drafted army would be less willing to commit atrocities than one comprised of more patriotic gun folks.

Millitary Coup d'Etat, anyone?

[Alexander's Horse]

Probably covered elsewhere but who has time to read all the threads....

When a city is surrounded (via zones of control) it should not be able to draw sustenance from the surrounding countryside. In other words, all it should have is what is in the food box. Once that's gone the city should surrender. Historically, I can't think of any examples of cities actually completely starving to death whilst besieged. No food, no water usually means no more fighting or th defenders having to try and fight to break the siege.

If implemented I see three effects:

. A more dynamic game

. Emphasis on fighting in the countryside rather than around cities because once a city is besieged it will usually be all over red rover (though there will still be time for sieges whilst the food box drains down).
. Forces you or your opponents to fight to save cities rather than sitting passively behind city walls.

Current city defences are far too strong and unrealistic. Ports would need to blockaded by sea as well as besieged by land.

[Ove]

In order for all the neat things we are discussing here to be even remotely realistic in the game, the timescale for combat (and unit movement) has to change.

How about having military sub-phases in each turn. Variable number depending on how long a main turn is and maybe on the command structure and technological capabilities of each civilization.

That way we can have sieges and great wars in less span than (for instance) 20 years.

I do not mean that the military phases will be active all the time (although there will probably be a war going on somewhere in the world).
OK, let me flesh this out with an example:
(current turn advancement is 5 years)
MAIN PHASE: Diplomacy, production, research
optional military phase 1: Calls up 5 armies from reserve status, deploys them in strategic mode (unable to use this phase).
omp 2: Sends 8 armies over the border to attack a neighbouring country, 3 of these armies besiege 3 cities and the other 5 screens those from attack. Combat resolution.
omp 3: Enemy reacts, you both move armies and fight.
omp 4: (wishing to save money/manpower/resources) you order victorious besieging armies to fortify in the cities, and the other armies to stay in place. However the enemy continues to attack you.

New turn:
MAIN PHASE: diplomacy/production/research
omp 1: redeployment of 2 armies to reinforce the combat front. Enemy attacking.
omp 2: No combat or deployment from any side.
military phase ends.

New turn:
MAIN PHASE: diplomacy/production/research, peaceagreement
omp 1: withdrawal and demobilising of 4 armies. no further military activity.

Next turn:
MAIN PHASE: ...
no military activity

Next next turn: ...
and so on.

<font size=1 color=444444>[This message has been edited by Ove (edited June 15, 1999).]</font>

<font size=1 color=444444>[This message has been edited by Ove (edited June 15, 1999).]</font>