COMBAT (ver 1.2) hosted by CyberShy

[Flavor Dave]

Theben--well, it's a turn based game. In that context, I would still argue it's realistic.

[redleg]

Hey!

Im back from Officer Canidate Course. What a tough course! It's like Army Basic Training on super steroids. Thank god Im national gaurd and only go for two 2 week periods and weekends! Anyway I'm arround again and will need a day or so (probably the 28th of June - after I rest) to digest all the posts, and then I will get going again. Thank you cybershy for keeping it going!

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Redleg

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

[ember]

Stacking
Limit size to 4 units that can enter combat at a time (any more and they wouldn't all be able to squeuze into the battle field.)
Unlimited units can sit on a tile, but only 4 can be used at a time.

Only the units engaged in the battle can be destroyed.

The 4 units would allow (for ortimum use) 1 infantry, 1 calvary type, and 1 ranged type. The 4th can be any, depending on the situation.



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

[ember]

A combat Idea. (modified from Theben's)
Have units rated on (land / sea / air / ranged / defense mod.) combat. Ranged combat is used while in a stack or bombarding against units of the same domain (land vs land, sea vs sea) otherwise the unit uses the appropriat value (these are always considered ranged) Units attacking other domains always bombard, with a chance that neither unit will be destroyed.

In real combat defense and offense are very similiar ( terrain bonuses will still give and advantage to some defenders, so will fortifiying)

The defense mod is a % decrease in combat ability because of an enemy force having the initiative. Infantry would ahve a low Mod, ranged units would have a higher mod.

A phalanx might be 2 land 0 everything else,
artillery 2 land 6 sea 4 air 10 ranged.
an artillery that is attacked without some other defenders available would use it's land rating, witch is very low.

Ancient units cannot use ranged attacks agains more modern units.

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

[Theben]

ember,
I like those ideas. I have a similar one for unit stacking, it's terrain based. You could have up to 9 units in a combat stack on grasslands, plains, down to mountains having a max of 2 in a stack. No limit on # of units in square, just in combat. There should also be technological limits based on command & control, which would cause a penalty if exceeded.

For your combat idea:
Why use ranged combat while in a stack? Is this something from CtP(haven't played)? Which units would used ranged combat & which regular? For bombarding against other domains the likelihood of 1 side killing the other should be small in all cases. There is a problem. Some attacks should almost never kill it's target (air/sea vs. land) while others should have a significant effect (air vs. sea; think Battle of Midway. Fleet not destroyed but carriers lost). One solution: Allow certain "special options" to be disabled when the unit is severely hurt, in the above case, the unit's ability to "carry air" would be lost.

Defense mod: Would it replace the % bonus given to units in certain terrain, or be in addition? Attacker initiative is definitely important to include (especially with my idea. Thanks!).

Ancient vs. more modern: What would older units attack/defend with? Their regular STR? How about using range grades, with a bonus to each RG the attacker/defender has? FE, arrows, muskets, [catapults], rifles, [cannons], machine guns, [artillery], heavy guns(tanks), missiles?

[Jakester]

I think that leaders should have a larger part in civ3. For instance u should be able to hire potential generals for your STACKED armies or possibly advisors for military, science, trade, foreign and attitude who could all give you their different ideas for problems of state instead of the same one that were in civ 2 if u played the game enough. ministers can also be hired if u want. Defense minister could tell you his opinion on how u are militarily and possibly battle strategies. Here are my ideas for generals and their characteristics.

Poise- will he or she give up on his troops when things dont look good or will he never give up.

Tactics- how he or she positions their troops on battlefield and how he sends them into battle.

speech- can he or she inspire their troops to great deeds which could affect morale maybe more.

loyalty- will he or she be ever loyal to u even in the bad times of your nation or when offered gold from your enemies.

These are just some basic ideas so more ideas are more than welcome. U could measure these by very bad, bad, average, good. very good. If u like my ideas on leaders or have opinons on governors possibly check out some more on the radical ideas 2.0 . Thanks

<font size=1 color=444444>[This message has been edited by Jakester (edited June 28, 1999).]</font>

I think this thread is getting too big to be followed. Perhaps it should be broken down into different threads like:

Global rules of combat

Combat Techs

Then have period threads, looking special rules etc. A rough split could be:

Ancient combat (everything up to Roman Legion)

medieval combat (chivalry etc.)

Renaisance combat (Da Vinci period, English Civil War etc. early canon, musket and pike)

early modern combat (Napoleonic onwards)

modern combat (WWI onwards)

future combat (2050 onwards)

<font size=1 color=444444>[This message has been edited by Alexander's Horse (edited June 28, 1999).]</font>

<font size=1 color=444444>[This message has been edited by Alexander's Horse (edited June 28, 1999).]</font>

[Ekmek]

I'm all for leader units mainly since conventional wisdom holds it as a decisive factor in warfare (esp. Clausewitz). I like the rating ideas too, besides that you can have improvements and wonders that add to those abilities so you can train leaders (not to be partial but I'd like to see a West Point city improvement). There is a lot of discussion on leaders in the UNITS thread too.

In that same UNITS thread there is a lot of talk about Command and Control (C2) I've added my thoughts on it, but if the argument gains momentum here I'll throw them into this thread too.

As something to combat though I know that for a strategy game Civ2 kind of ignores the various types of strategy considered the basic in military thought (atleast American).
Civ2 doesn't represent strategies of attrition, annihilation, or exhaustion to well. Not that I have really formulated any strong ideas on this but the fact that Civ basically becomes a fight for the cities (and the computer will overstack in cities instead of commiting strong forces to the field, not a good representation of Alexanders battles like Arbela) Conquest of cities doesn't really represent war in history. Granted cities and capitals have been the centers of gravity in many conflicts but in some capturing key terrain and resources or destroying an army in battle meant more to victory than taking a city. This maybe a factor of diplomacy. Maybe the way the AI's sue for peace (and the possible reparations with it) should be upgraded and used in conjuction with the outcomes of battles.

[ember]

Theban, I was thinking about it. Forget about the defense modifier. All attacking units have a 25% bonus for haing the initiative. Defenses are stronger with this model, so halve terrain bonuses.
The idea behind it is that if two armoured divisions are fighting, one side doesn't just take shells until the attacker runs out of ammo, then go and kill them, they have lots of localised attackes ad defenses. THe side that launches the battle has the initive, giving them some advantage.

Range would depend on the era of the unit.
More modern units could use their regular rating as a ranged attack against older units.
If a ranged unit fights a non-ranged unit (after age adjustments have been acounted for) the ranged unit gets several free shots at the other (archers might only get a couple at a phalanx, but a an armor unit will often kill it before it gets in range)
For stacked combat.
I chose 4 units in a fight to represent how many units can be engaged at a time and be able to support each other. More than one of these events can occure in a square each turn, but they are somewhat independant from each other.

Units start at a range that is farther than the longest range available.
Each round they can move MP steps closer to the other side.
If a unit can hit the enemy they will not advance.
If the enemy is being hit, and none of your units are, all units remain in position until this changes.
Units below a certain threashold strength will attempt to retreat ( if they move beyond max enemy range, they have retreated)
Range in steps (oviously needs to be play balaced)
1 ancient normal
2 renaisance normal
3 ancient ranged
4
5 early modern normal
6 renaisance ranged
7
8 late modern nomral
9 early modern ranged
10
11 late modern ranged
12
13
14 over tile edge bombard

When units engage they split their attacks between all units within their range (more injured units, less kills if fighting a large stack)

I feel that repairs should cost modey/resources, so injured units still has an economic impact.

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

[Agent 000]

Problem with giving "free hits" to units because of range is displayed in Warlords 3, in which some units have a "range" advantage. Although Warlords 3 is a fantasy strategy game, this flaw in your thinking is clearly displayed here.

In Warlords, there is a unit named "Elven Archers", which recieves 4 free shots at any oncoming enemy before engaging them in combat. Usually, the archers can kill the first attacker outright, no matter what it is. If you wanted ranged units to get strike bonuses, you'd also need to factor in things like attack direction, terrain of combat (after all, bowmen in a dense forest would have a terrible time trying to shoot down a bunch of charging swordsmen), surprise, cover (easy enough to hide from arrows and firearms behind brush or a small trees), as well as ammunition (to give ranged units a disadvantage to counter their advantages), and specific unit modifiers such as the amount of armor on the target (Sorry, just no way an arrow is gonna be able to destroy a galleon, armed or unarmed!). The way I see it, ranged units should have a stack advantage, more of them being able to participate in a single combat than hand-to-hand units (As I suggested before, 2 or so melee units and 3 or so ranged units, which emphasizes combined arms). This would make it much more simple. I do think that there should be "beyond tile bombardment". That way, catapults and other such siege weapons have a point. That's my two cents.

[ember]

The inability of a unit to hit a ship/plae would be given by it having a sea/air combat rating of 0.

Free shots are somewhat limited. If the archer gets 4 free shots, that could be 4 damage out of 10, not enough to kill a unit. 2 shots is more likely, if they are undefended.



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

[Miner]

I have just posted this in the general Civ3 forum, but I want Firaxis to see this:
This is an idea I had a long time ago to increase the realism of combat in Civ2 and since it is similar to Thebens posting I thought I would share it: (this is a large posting and I do apologise, it is also my first)

Comabt would incorporate 2 extra features, Domain & Range

Domain already exists in the units stats, either 0,1 or 2 for sea, air or land.

This is used in combat to determine which units can attack or defend against other units. Units can only attack in their specified domain unless indicated otherwise as a special ability flag.
This is probably best explained by example:

Phalanx can't attack battleships, nor can they defend against battleship attacks. (the former is already true in Civ2).
This is because the battleship has the ability to attack units in the ground domain but phalanxes cannot attack/defend against a unit that is not in the ground domain.

Musketeers cannot attack stealth bombers, nor can they defend against
stelath bombers. Same reasoning as the phalanx above.

Extra-Domain attacks should be treated as artillery bombardments (as in SMAC), where if the attacker does not win then no damage is done to it, just no dmage is done to the defender. Turns of comabat to be endured by the defender would be FP *10 (of attacker).

Phew, that was a bit long and I hope everyone followed that. now for the second bit:

Range.

Every unit also has a range, defined as an integer from 1 up to about 5 or something. Maybe no upper limit would be best.

Range affects combat where the domains of the attacking and defending units are the same (ie archers vs knights or trireme vs ironclad).

The unit with the greater range gets that many turns of combat where the other unit cannot defend (treated as an artillery duel, as above).
This is also probably best explained by example:

An archer (range 2, because of the arrows) vs knights (range 1, because they only have swords) - doesn't matter who is attacking/defending.
The archers get 10 turns (calculated as difference in range *10) of combat where the knights cannot defend, treated as an artillery duel so if the archers lose they do not take damage.

After these turns, the knights are considered to be in close enough proximity to attack the archers and therefore do damage and combat is resolved as normal.

This should finally bring an end to the stupid situation where a bunch of blokes armed with spears can damage a battleship 10kms away and cavalry charges against machine guns/tanks turns into the mass suicide
it would be. This biases success in combat toward advanced units even more than the introduction of HP & FP did for Civ.

[Knight_Errant]

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Varying sizes of stacks. If there were supply rules, they would go a long way towards making large stacks effectively impossible for most of the game: simply not possible to supply htem unless they stay on the coast where ships can haul in bulk food. The other possibility is to reflect in the Tech Tree the organizational advances that led to Mass Armies of the Napoleonic era and afterwards:
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I suggested a supply rule that was an extension of the border system. Units within a countries border would be supplied in the way they are supplied now. No change.

Units that are outside the border lose points like a Civ 2 chopper.

Units within an allied border are supplied as if they were within their own border.

Using this system, no one has to be standing near a beach. No one has to move around any special supply units and so forth. I find many people see "Supply Rule" and start screaming "Too complicated".

[Victor Galis]

A sea to ground assault should be treated the same way it is in SMAC (its an artillery bomberdment with the ships batteries against a ground target.) This way Phalanxes will not defeat battleships.

[ember]

As I mentioned elsewhere, i think making you lose HP just for being in enemy territory is to severe, making invasions undoable, instead I think you should not be able to repair.

Units should ahve a combat rating agains each domain to reflect the different techniques needed to fight them.
(Modern infantry are good at ground combat, but weak at air combat and bad at antiship combat) Land/air/sea/ranged-land(range) values: 8/3/0/5(5) as an example.

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

[redleg]

Upcoming -

This weekend I will summarize the thread and post it NLT Mon Jul 5. Please look my summary over and critique it so I can make changes and turn it in NLT the end of the week.

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Redleg

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

[Theben]

RE: range,

Range should reflect the domain the unit operates in-land units have land range, sea units sea range, etc.

Differences in range are subtracted from each other. The remainder is the # of "free hits" the higher range unit may inflict on the lower. 'Free-hit'= The 'attacker' attempts to hit the 'defender'. If successful the defender takes the attacker's firepower in damage. Faster units subtract/add one range for each movement point difference between the two sides, depending on terrain.

I'm changing my LASS(land/air/sea/space) to LASOR (land/air/sea/orbital/range) so I can keep silly acronyms.

ember,
Some units should still have STR in a domain even if they cannot attack into that domain. A "special option" (which would increase the cost depending on the domain STR only) could enable the unit to attack into that domain. Some units would be able to attack into other domains naturally (air units).

[ember]

How can they have strength in a domain if they cannot engage in combat?
Do you mean something like cannons have to wait for the ships to attack to come in range within their square?
I guess you could just have an 'engage domain' set of flags.

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

[Theben]

"Do you mean something like cannons have to wait for the ships to attack to come in range within their square?"
Exactly that. The combat is determined by the ships, since they move, but the cannon can engage once the ships move close enough to attack.

"I guess you could just have an 'engage domain' set of flags."
Or a "special option" a la SMAC, but the same idea.

[Depp]

I have though about leaders...

Why not have headquarters instead, that contribute to each and every units fighting capabillity in a certain radio? Like in the WW2 boardgames... That would make more sense than leaders really. The HQ coudl give a +25% attack and defence bonus or movement bonus (at least one).

Leaders could still be used, like there is a 1% chance every turn that a unique (very good) leader emerges, and he stays like 20-40 years /whatever that means in turns for the moment. He will double the effectivness of the HQ or grant other benefits.

Maybe one should limit the amount of leaders a civ could gain in a game to like 10 in total, so you don´t have to find that much names and stuff

What do you all say?

[Jon Miller]

This is a real short idea really and forgive me if someone has already mentioned it but in order to make warfare not just be about troops vrs cities how about an enemy troop making every surrounding square in his zoc unusable unless a freindly unit was in it, this would make keeping enemy units out of your land very important


Jon Miller

[Flavor Dave]

Jon--there's been some discussion that sieges need to be more potent, and your idea would add to that. IMO, it would add too much. How about, if you have a unit adjacent to a city, the tiles on the side away from the city are unusable. This should also apply to sea tiles.

[Theben]

I'll back Flav Dave on this one. I'd also include that other cities can send support if they can trace supply to the city, over land, via sea, or thru the air (limited).