ASK The CIV TEAM 8/22/01! - Page 2

The_Aussie_Lurker · August 22, 2001, 21:22

Even if the units do fight together, I still feel that 3 units is too few. A more reasonable upper limit is 8 (9 with Pentagon!). Of course this should only be achievable if you are at war or mobilised for war. Militaristic societies should have a limit of 5 units (6 with Pentagon) when at peace. Non-militaristic units should be limited to 4 units/army (5 with pentagon) when at peace!
Note, that this limit should only count for direct-attack units, not bomardment units, which would probably soften up the target from a distance and would probably never engage a unit directly (From all I've heard, this is how bombardment units will work).
I also feel that armies with larger numbers of ranged units (bowmen, riflemen etc) than their opponent should get a bonus to attack strength based on how many extra ranged units they possess!

As for limits on # of armies/Civ, I only think this should apply during peace-time. Militaristic societies should be able to have 1 army/2 cities and, during war, all bets should be off (i.e. number of armies should be limited only by number of appropriate leaders and maintainence costs!).

Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker.

August 22, 2001, 22:35

Uh, am I missing something? Exactly what good are armies if they are just like transports that hold units but have no attack value or do not add to the value of member units? Sounds lame to me - another perfectly good CTP concept ruined by Firaxis

Wittlich · August 22, 2001, 22:45

Quote:

Originally posted by Mister Pleasant
Uh, am I missing something? Exactly what good are armies if they are just like transports that hold units but have no attack value or do not add to the value of member units? Sounds lame to me - another perfectly good CTP concept ruined by Firaxis

MP, IMHO, I believe the armies WILL have an increased attack/defend value. The LEADER however will not have an actual attack/defend value. The Leader will be treated like a transport which holds the force together.

introvert · August 23, 2001, 00:32

The way I understand it is that units in an army will share hit points during combat. So when an army attacks the best attack unit will attack until the whole armies hit points are used up, and when defending the best defencive unit will defend until the whole armies hit points run out.
Stacking units and adding their attack and defence bonuses seems silly, because then an army of spearmen will be able to defeat a single armor unit, and you cannot convince me that that is reasonable.
If I'm right then bulding armor units will actually be worth while. Amor in CivII was good, but it's attack and defence did not compare to artillery and mech inf, so I know I rarely built them. But it had more hit points than either of those units. As you would want armies to have as many hit points as possible, you would want to stack a good attack or defence unit with as much armor as possible. And an armored army will actually be able to punch through a strong defencive position and drive deep into the enemies rear. Rather than having armor after armor get wasted by one or two mech inf's.
Of course the combat system has apparently be significantly altered, so using CivII comparisons may be badly flawed, but I think I get my impression across here.

And presumibly armies will move at the rate of the slowest unit in it...

Phutnote · August 23, 2001, 00:42

Whoa. I'm confused about armies a bit. They pool their hit points as in the first attacks, but stops before it is destroyed, and then the next attacks, but stops before it is destroyed, and lets the third attack instead.

In other words they attack in sequence?

Or do they attack as one group with a big glob of hit points? Do units in cities share hit points when they defend, or do they defend one by one? Attack values have been shifted alot. I wonder what tweaks hit points have had, and if firepower even exists anymore.

Sounds like some significant changes to the system. Tantalizing new tidbits of info.

1 army per 4 cities . . . hmm. In the modern age on a large map a big empire might have what, 20 or so cities? That'd be 5 armies. Sounds like a decent number.

I guess there'll be an impetus to found an extra 4 cities if you really need an extra army . . . but all those pop point losses from the big manufacturing cities to do it would hamper the war effort as well . . .

I think civ III warfare is shaping up to be rather interesting.

Phutnote

Colwyn · August 23, 2001, 02:08

"Once an army is built, you can load THREE units onto the army, and those units will pool their hit points during an attack"

Each unit has an attack, defence and hitpoint ratting amungst others.

I think the magic word here is :

"the units will pool their hit points during an attack" ie there is no mention of pooling attack or defence strength's only hitpoints so as it means I don't think a 1/6 and a 2/4 unit army would become 3/10.

If not I am wondering how units within an army would die if attacked, as individuals or as a group ie 3/10 all die.

If this would occur(attack and defence poolling) a fortifyied army on a mountain etc would be near impossible to kill ie could get a very high defensive value. Artillery bombardment(2 space range) though perhaps over time cause enough damage to make it move off or even die. Which is also very realistic too.

Dan certainly knows how to realease just enough imformation to get the forums going and our minds a calculating, well done until I go mad.

Adm.Naismith · August 23, 2001, 05:22

Funny, my browser show no sign of a link to last AskTheCivTeam on official CivIII site, while I can read it via Apolyton.

Is it mine proxy/cache problem? Do you regularly see the new link on the official site or reached it by e-mail list announce?

Back to the stack:

Quote:

Even if the units do fight together, I still feel that 3 units is too few. A more reasonable upper limit is 8 (9 with Pentagon!). Of course this should only be achievable if you are at war or mobilised for war. Militaristic societies should have a limit of 5 units (6 with Pentagon) when at peace. Non-militaristic units should be limited to 4 units/army (5 with pentagon) when at peace!

As for limits on # of armies/Civ, I only think this should apply during peace-time. Militaristic societies should be able to have 1 army/2 cities and, during war, all bets should be off (i.e. number of armies should be limited only by number of appropriate leaders and maintainence costs!).

Sorry Aussie_Lurker, but how can you support these tuning? They seems more a matter of game balancing, and one difficult to do without actually playing the (beta or demo of) game.

The difference you proposed between militaristic civ and not, seems too much an advantage on the side of warmonger, and before you askthis can be guessed before of a played game because it's only a comparison between "quantities" of the same object.

The limit related to number of cities is obviusly a game design trick, so can been liked or not. It doesn't seem unfair, because in the past armies weren't very numerous, and that matches with the limited number of cities you are likely to have at the early part of game.

Sure, Roman Empire have quite enough Legions, and they can be translated on a great number of armies... hmmm

Kenobi · August 23, 2001, 06:18

Quote:

Originally posted by MarkG
as dan posted just now, leaders are like "transports" with attack/defence values

as many armies as you can(1/4 cities)

that is a good question, especially for the movement part

Some more questions:

- Can great leaders stack ships? Bring on Horatio!
- In combat, does an entire stack get annihilated in the event of defeat, or can you retreat at some point to conserve your forces?
- Can a great leader stack more than 3/4 units if he's in a city?
- For that matter, if you have a stack in a city and non-attached units, how does combat play out?

On the subject of maximum number of stacks, I agree with their plan (i.e. one stock for every four cities). Too many potential stacks and you run the risk of hordes of low value units running rampant and defeating their betters.

korn469 · August 23, 2001, 06:39

Quote:

To answer your first question, in Civ III we introduced the concept of an army. To build an army, you need either a great leader or the Military Academy (Small Wonder). Great leaders can appear when an elite unit wins combat. Once an army is built, you can load three units onto the army, and those units will pool their hit points during an attack. If you build the Pentagon (Small Wonder) you can load an additional unit into an army.

It is also important to note that you can only have one army per four cities, and militaristic civs have a greater chance of producing great leaders.

Elite units are not the same as civ-specific units. Elite units refers to units that have been promoted to elite status (regular->veteran->elite) by winning battles.

Yes, IIRC they are like transports that can carry units, but have no inherent attack or defense.

Ok from the site and Dan's follow up, this gives me a question...
Does the Elite unit turn into a great leader, or if an elite unit wins combat does a great leader unit appear on the map along side the elite unit?

From what Jeff Briggs said before, that the most powerful fights first and then when it is damaged it steps down and the new most powerful units fights then, taken along with "those units will pool their hitpoints" means that lets say you have the egyptian war chariots attacking a greek hoplite

here is how i theorize that combat would work, all three chariots are undamged but one is veteran, the veteran chariot would attack first, the first turn it scores a hit, the second turn the hoplite scores a hit, but a damaged vetern war chariot is still stronger odds wise than an undamaged normal war chariot so the vetern attacks again scoring another hit, then another hit, then the badly damaged hoplite hits it, so now the undamaged normal war chariots have better odds than the damaged veteran war chariot so one of them attack, it is damaged, the next round the other undamaged normal war chariot attacks and it kills the hoplite...that is the most likely way that combat will work

what that means is that a three unit army will still have the same attack/defense values since they attack one at a time, but it will now have three times the hit points...the big change here is that before in civ2 when units attacked one at a time you might lose two units and the third unit would win taking a little damage...now most like all three units will survive but all will take a roughly equal amount of damage, this will let more units have a chance of becoming veteran and elite and of spawning more great leaders...also armies means that low defense units have a better chance of surviving a counterattack

korn469 · August 23, 2001, 06:58

Kenobi

Quote:

- Can great leaders stack ships? Bring on Horatio!
- In combat, does an entire stack get annihilated in the event of defeat, or can you retreat at some point to conserve your forces?
- Can a great leader stack more than 3/4 units if he's in a city?
- For that matter, if you have a stack in a city and non-attached units, how does combat play out?

unknow if a great leader can form a fleet, or if you could stack aircraft either

i have heard that retreat is in the game, and your forces can retreat as long as you have more mobility than the units attacking you, except there is an all out attack command where your units fight to the death

i would say that a stack counting as one unit would be limited to 3/4 nomatter if it is in a city or not, however you should be able to put multiple armies on the same square

as for the combat if you have a stack and non attached units in the stack...the strongest unit would defend, so if you have three horsemen stacked in an army in a square and a musketman then the musketman would defend, but if you had three knights in an army then a chariot in the same square the knights would defend

this brings up another question though...you have two equally strong armies of three legions each and one unattached horseman, the square gets attacked by an army of knights and the knights win...are both armies and the horseman destroyed like in civ2? or is it the collateral damage system in SMAC or is it something else?

OneFootInTheGrave · August 23, 2001, 07:16

At least for now, until we play the game, the CTP unit stacking seems much better.

Their system gives you more tactical options and decisions to make.

In here the only advanatage over the Civ II seems the better survival odds for an army, as korn pointed out, which is good but not near the CTP system.

In CTP series the army benefited defensivly and attacking wise, you had ranged units, normal ones and flanked ones, so it really mattered how are you going to organise the army to get the most out of it, and i feel it added greatly to the gameplay. You had a battle screen to, which added to the war feeling even more. Wars were not easier to win since you could defend quite well in stacks too. Moving units accross the map was easier, and spying becomes a 'must' part of the game.

Well Civ III system seems to be a step down, but well we cannot have improvements in every aspect I guess.

And on the Pentagon wonder. Doesnt it unbalance the game in the favour of warmongers?
If you can have a stack of 4 units and the enemy can only have 3. That is a 33% advantage in hit points

I guess that you could build two such armies with some support and overrun the enemy easily. if you could have more units in a stack that difference would not be so great.

But what i feel is missing is
1. no ranged units or flanking ability
2. no battle screen
3. small number of units in a stack seems to take a bit of the gameplay out.

All in all, this seems that could have been done better.

korn469 · August 23, 2001, 07:45

OneFootInTheGrave

i think that the strategic implications of armies in civ3 is not fully know yet, so even if they work exactly as i theorize there could still be a great number of strategies arise from the use of armies

also i think that one advantage of the civ3 army system over the CtP2 system is that the civ system is simpler and faster...so i don't really think it is a step down...more like a tradeoff than an actual downgrade

MarkG · August 23, 2001, 08:03

Quote:

Originally posted by korn469
also i think that one advantage of the civ3 army system over the CtP2 system is that the civ system is simpler and faster...

perhaps the ctp2 system was more complex, but it wasnt difficult for the player. the novice player only needed to know that if he grouped his units they would fight better. the hardcore had tactical control over his armies

anyway, we need more details. perhaps Dan could put together a small tutorial like the one for resources and colonies!

Grim Legacy · August 23, 2001, 08:22

I'm pleased to see that the army stack is limited in several ways, most notably by it's size and by the number of supporting cities. I was afraid of having to deal with endless piles of units before.
This way, the army is an interesting and valuable asset, not just some of your units heaped together to roll over a few enemy cities.

MarkG · August 23, 2001, 08:32

Quote:

Originally posted by Grim Legacy
I was afraid of having to deal with endless piles of units before

yeah, now you'll just have to deal with endless units

OneFootInTheGrave · August 23, 2001, 08:59

I played CTP I/ II, and found the army system really satisfying.
At first i thought that Civ III will have a very similar system with the advantage of great leaders (which is a way forward).

But it seems now that Civ III army siystem will be totally simplified. Ok we have to wait and see, but this was my first impression after reading Q & A on civ3.com

CTP system was easy for novices too. Everyone would know that putting more units in the stack means a better fighting chance. But balancing the stack well, was a challenge for more experienced players. So simplicity should not be the issue, perhaps firaxis was aftaid that they would not be able to teach AI to use big stacks properly, with more abilities, and combinations to chose from?

Grumbold · August 23, 2001, 09:51

Lots of info still missing about how these armies work but I have to say that the CtP system still seems better and more true to life. I don't understand why anyone thinks it complicated considering the Civ games include many other concepts that are much harder to enumerate.

If all the armies combine is hitpoints then it makes sense to have best attack unit / best defensive unit / who cares as long as it has huge hp (x2 for pentagon). Nothing mentioned about combined arms benefits.

The pentagon allows bigger armies? Really? I must ask the Russians how they have managed to keep their larger version hidden from satellite observation since WWII. I would have expected it to have improved technical capability or morale, not maximum size.

Fiera · August 23, 2001, 09:55

You can only produce great leaders during your olden Age, or you can only get elite units during your Golden Age?

jglidewell · August 23, 2001, 10:11

So now will you send out your single Strong unit seeking out settlers and workers, just to get from regular to veteran to elite, and your goal of Great Leader.

I massacred 15 settlers and now they call me a Great Leader
or was that Hitler.

Wittlich · August 23, 2001, 10:13

We are all familiar with how a unit will become a "veteran" unit after a certain amount of combat. The new addition is the "elite" unit. Getting an Elite unit occurs after a Veteran unit wins a certain amount of combat. This Elite unit is what is needed to lead an army.

So to answer your question Fiera - IMO, No, you can get an elite unit when ever a veteran unit wins a certain combat(s). This has no tie to your Golden Age.

Grumbold · August 23, 2001, 10:20

It does sound like a recipe for unnecessary combat though. It reminds me a little of games of Risk where you would agree with a partner to exchange ownership of a territory and leave it garrisoned with one soldier just to get your bonus card for having fought. I can see barbarian villages surrounded by a single Civ left alive to provide combat training for their new regiments.

If an elite unit spawns a leader and does not disappear in the process, then can one elite unit be used to repeatedly spawn new leaders? Can an army consisting of green units get their troops promoted to veteran and elite, and can those elite units then spawn more leaders while already in an army (Even Julius Caesar fought as a junior commander before rising to prominence)? All of these things will dictate the optimum strategies for "farming" leaders.

Steve Clark · August 23, 2001, 10:56

Grumbold: That would likely be the strategy if war was the objective. In war-based scenarios, I don't think there would be anything wrong with that. I am equally interested in how the other modes of winning (or more specifically, the cultural/diplomatic/conquer objectives of custom scenarios) would play out strategically.

Adm.Naismith · August 23, 2001, 11:12

Edited: forget this post of mine, Dan followed with a post that prove wrong any of mine guess

Quote:

Originally posted by Grumbold
I can see barbarian villages surrounded by a single Civ left alive to provide combat training for their new regiments.

Somenone (Dan Mahaga?) already mentioned that fight with barbarians doesn't count for elite status > leader conversion. No cheat available here

Quote:

If an elite unit spawns a leader and does not disappear in the process, then can one elite unit be used to repeatedly spawn new leaders?

Watching E3 movie (the first, amatorial take, IIRC) I'm almost sure to have got a glance of an (elite) unit winning and trasforming itself into a Leader/General.

If that's true, surely it seems a bit silly from a realistic Point of view, but probably is needed to balance things: if you rush for many leaders, you end without valuable, strong troops to command!

SonofDogbreath · August 23, 2001, 11:12

I'm curious about the effect losing cities will have. If I have 4 cities and my army is elsewhere on the map, could an enemy take over one of my cities (conquest or spy) and thus eliminate my army? I figure you would keep the units but lose the leader. This would still suck since the leader was an elite unit.

Might be worth having an extra city as a buffer in this case....

Dan Magaha FIRAXIS · August 23, 2001, 11:39

Quote:

Originally posted by jglidewell
So now will you send out your single Strong unit seeking out settlers and workers, just to get from regular to veteran to elite, and your goal of Great Leader.

I massacred 15 settlers and now they call me a Great Leader
or was that Hitler.

I'm not positive on this, but I'm pretty sure that "battlefield promotions" take into account the opponent you've defeated. That is to say, I doubt you'd make elite just by picking off settlers and workers, and I assume this would be true for the appearance of great leaders as well.

Dan

Dan Magaha FIRAXIS · August 23, 2001, 11:43

Quote:

Originally posted by Adm.Naismith

Somenone (Dan Mahaga?) already mentioned that fight with barbarians doesn't count for elite status > leader conversion. No cheat available here

I'm not sure whether defeating barbarians can spawn great leaders, but you can attain elite status if a veteran unit defeats barbarians (I've seen this happen when a horde of barbarians attack a single unit and the unit defeats them all)

Quote:

Watching E3 movie (the first, amatorial take, IIRC) I'm almost sure to have got a glance of an (elite) unit winning and trasforming itself into a Leader/General.

If that's true, surely it seems a bit silly from a realistic Point of view, but probably is needed to balance things: if you rush for many leaders, you end without valuable, strong troops to command!

I don't *think* leaders replace any of your units, I believe they appear as a completely seperate unit...

Dan

KrazyHorse · August 23, 2001, 11:47

Ah...

This clears up a bit of confusion for me. I thought (from the tone of some passages) that elite=great leader

jglidewell · August 23, 2001, 11:49

Quote:

Originally posted by Dan Magaha FIRAXIS

I'm not positive on this, but I'm pretty sure that "battlefield promotions" take into account the opponent you've defeated. That is to say, I doubt you'd make elite just by picking off settlers and workers, and I assume this would be true for the appearance of great leaders as well.

Dan

Me too, I hope it isn't just a 'unit destroyed'(which includes every one) count.

sekong · August 23, 2001, 12:06

How many Great Leaders can each civ have?

In civfanatics forum, somebody raised a interesting question:
if you have Military Academy, and already have number of armies up to the limit based on your city number, say, 3 armies when you have 12 cities.
Now when you get a new leader, he don't have any army to form(because of per 4 city limit). Or there can be a new army formed by him, or he can't be spawned at all, when your army reached the limit?.. It almost caused mental probelms....

Quote:

Originally posted by Dan Magaha FIRAXIS

I'm not sure whether defeating barbarians can spawn great leaders, but you can attain elite status if a veteran unit defeats barbarians (I've seen this happen when a horde of barbarians attack a single unit and the unit defeats them all)

I don't *think* leaders replace any of your units, I believe they appear as a completely seperate unit...

Dan

KrazyHorse · August 23, 2001, 12:09

I've seen it stated as (pre-Nationalism):

Number of stacks possible = Number of cities/4 + Number of Great Leaders. THis was official, IIRC, and not just speculation.