Are your units getting blasted?

[Morganstern]

For all you guys complaining about tanks getting beat by medieval units, c'mon, didn't you see Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade? Our hero on horseback attacks an armored tank full of Germans, with other units on a nearby mobile carrier, and wins hands down, no losses. With that precedent, I just don't see what the big deal is!

[Spamius_one]

ROFL, an army of Archeologists - now that's something I would love to see in the game

When I started this thread, I wanted to know if there were others who noticed the same oddities that I did, cuz I thought I might have a faulty version of the game and wanted to know for sure. Now I know that I don't. Cavalry getting killed by warriors, galleons blasting battleships out of the water? This is the third edition of the game!! When Civ2 came out, some of us (like now) ranted about how terrible the combat system was, and of course there were fools who contested that. I'm sure Firaxis will try to fix the problem in the patch, or some guru group of players will come along with their own mod-pack. But yes, even with the odd battle results, the game is still damn enjoyable. I just can't believe that some housebound freaks took the suggestion of combat imbalances as an insult to their own personal worship of Sid Meier and were offended. And you few know who you are, with statements like "oh this is the way it's meant to be," "it's perfect, you newbies just don't know how to play." "Sid Meier is God, and if God meant for the combat to be queer as hell, then that's how it should be!" I've played Civ2 on deity level and kicked ass, and I'm sure hundreds of others that read this post and noticed the same imbalances have done some diety kicking as well. So SoulAssasin and you other clowns who think it's perfectly logical that an archer takes out a tank, or a wooden galley blasts a battleship, or who were in tears because I suggested that maybe Sid and the boys at Firaxis had sold out to popular gaming - why don't you get educated and quit watching reruns of Rambo 3 and reading TeenBeat in the basement of your parents' house. Get a job, find a girlfriend, try out for a hockey team, or do something that might give you some sort of perspective into the real world, and quit occupying thread space with your stupid posts.

[michaelmagnus]

Mujahaddin beating Russians or Cong beating Americans is not the same as spearmen beating tanks. The Afghanis and Vietnamese had modern weapons - guns at a minimum - and in Civ, spearmen have SPEARS. I don't care if they're in a fort on a mountain, they are going to get shot, or they are going to retreat if faced by tanks and APCs. By all means, allow a bowman to beat a musketman in the woods, and have a modern guerrila unit that is cheap, has a movement of three or four (to strike and retreat), ignores terrain movement restrictions, and is able to defeat a modern line unit in rough terrain. But please, no swordsmen beating armor in the open or in fixed positions.

Bastogne and Thermopolye - yes. Defenders with roughly equal technology have often done amazing things against attack even when greatly outnumbered. Even a rare Khartoum or Isandlwana is realistic. But day in and day out, a technologically inferior force should lose, damnit.

I think perhaps the greater flaw in Civ combat is the way war revolves around cities throughout time. In certain periods of history cities were made into fortresses and had to be subdued one at a time. But in those periods when the offence had the advantage, the battle was fought in the field and the cities just FELL. Napoleon conducted a few seiges - his wars were won by beating the opposing army and then the country sued for peace and offered up land, for one example. Hell, the Germans marched into Paris without firing a shot after bagging the field army - try to get that in any Civ game.

And a seige should be a seige. Units in a cut off city shouldn't regain full strength every turn, I don't care if they have a barracks. They should get WEAKER. That's the point of a seige. Defenders run out of food and ammo.

Before you guys jump on me, I've been a loyal Civvver from the start. And it's good that in Civ III a stack doesn't get wiped out anymore, and that you have armies (even if it's too hard to get them - jeez, every state in history has formed an army right out of the gate). But this could have been a lot better. Hopefully if we present good, workable feedback, the developers or the tinkerers will make worthwhile changes.

[Larz Smith]

Originally posted by morb
the only thing most of the posts on combat expose, is how utterly inconsistant and often dumbfounding the combat experience is. I think Firaxis are idiots for basicly going back to the Civ1 combat system. This is terrible in the extreme. And no, I don't buy the argument "oh, but this prevents more advanced civs from crushing the lesser ones." WTF shouldn't this happen? What's the point of even having more advanced units?

Here's what I've been struggling with for the past 3 hours. I've been trying to take out the last English city with my Russian troops. At first I thought I'd have a fairly quick victory considering I had 13 units advancing on their lowly city with only 3 defenders and 2 bowmen. So what happens? I march on toward the city, position my units around the city, put 2 musketeers to protect my 3 catapults and rush with 5 knights while positioning the 3 bowmen in with the catapults. ALL 5 KNIGHTS are beaten to within inches of death and make their escape while their 3 pikemen which started out as regulars are down 2 bars and 3 bars of yellow, making 2 of them veteran and one elite! Fine I think, I'll swoop in with an all out assult from the catapults and rachers next turn. Next turn, ALL their units heal. Before that happens though, their 2 bowmen, take out my musketeers which were keenly positioned in the hills to receive a nice defencive bonus. Of course the bowmen both retreat back to the city because they did not destroy all of the units in the catapult square, which means they will be good as new the next turn, woohoo! I spare my knights and let them heal up this turn, or they would surely be dead. Next turn, I fire the catapults... ALL miss the mark, wonderful. I hit them with the 3 bowmen, which all get slaghtered like pigs on a bucher's table. So now I've lost my task force and forfit my dignity. To add insult to injury, they captrue my catapults the next turn and haul them in to inflict even more damage to my reinforcements which arrive by this time. Another asorted army (not civ3 army) of 7 units ready to do business. My original task for them was to secure the area and make sure all english units were taken down after the city was captured (like a settler or some BS like that). Now they find themselves the main course.

This would have never happend in Civ2 or SMAC. Since the units in Civ3 don't employ "power" stats, they can sit there and take punishment all day long without taking penalties from "power drain" or in civ-like terms, haste penalties. This is a major flaw.

All is lost my fellow civvers who are in the same camp, because if you read the chat transcript, you find out that Firaxis has no intention of revamping the combat system. "its a feature" they say. Thanks. I really wish I could stick a pikeman's spear up the ass of all responsible for this blunder, using this same "feature.

oy vey.

Your problem is youre not using your army effectively. Bomb the **** out of em, or throw rocks at em with catapults, before attacking...and since you know they have pikemen in there attack with archer first...weaken them as much as possible before making your final finishing swoop....I dont think Ive ever taken a city, by warfare, that was much bigger than a 5 or 6 in size because its been so devastated by my bombardment....and when I finally attack none of their units are full strength.

That reasoning in Magnus' post is exactly what I'm talking about. I can understand guys with bolt action rifles and bottles of flaming gasoline on rooftops or on skis holding off veteran machine gunners and tanks entering their city. (Suomussalmi in 1939-40 saw the Finns lose 25,000 men to Russia's 1-million). The Finns did not have spears! I think it's cool if a few units of elite riflemen hold off repeated attacks by tanks or infantrymen in the game (like the old "rugged defense" in Panzer General). THAT is reasonable, and when you prematurely attack a city, is to be expected.

2000 Israelis held off an entire Roman army for years with roughly equivalent weaponry (bronze vs iron is much more equivalent than a 120mm cannon vs bronze). The Jews were in the most defensible spot on Earth (if you haven't been to Masada, you would be in awe if you looked up at this mountain fortress), and were religious fanatics fighting to the death. If the Romans would have had mortars, rockets, and semi-automatic rifles, the battle probably wouldn't have gone on for that long!

When the Spaniards rolled up into Mexico, they dessimated the whole country. There were only a few hundred of them on horseback armed with ancient pre-flintlock muskets, and yet they killed thousands of the toughest warriors in history, who were armed with (guess what) swords. You had a small European kingdom trash one of the baddest civilizations this side of the Atlantic - that's technology in action. No stone-age tribe has ever beaten an industrial empire. Ever. Not Shaka, not the Samurai, no one.

When Napolean showed up in Egypt, he had a small force of diseased infantrymen with cannons (FRENCH cannons). They survived an all-out charge by 15,000 Mamelukes (who were again, religious fanatics on THEIR turf, whose predecessors had beaten Kahn's army) and the French took the whole country in days.

The hitpoint system is ridiculous. I understand that's how the mechanics of the game work. But the point is, that's how it worked in Civ2! And, the consensus from Firaxis was that it would not happen in Civ3. How many posts and updates in the past year have we read attesting that the combat would be so good that it would leave people weak in the knees? But, it's exactly the same. A hitpoint for a spearman should not equal a hitpoint for a rifleman, and so forth. Technology is everything. Ask the Iraqis. And, that was only a difference of 20 years of technology.

Now, I don't think the game should be AS realistic as life, because plain and simple, as soon as you rolled into your obsolete neighbors' turf, his game would be over. And, that's no fun. But, this is ridiculous. There is NO way that this combat system can be rationalized. I don't care how much someone loves Sid. When I strategically surround a city and siege it, it's defenders should not be rejuvenated every turn. How can they be, they're cut off! And my armies, which are connected by roads to my cities with resources and supposedly supplied (cuz as you nay-sayers insist, the combat in the game is realistic), are getting weaker? What gives? If the cut-off guys are getting reinforcements, why am I not getting them when I'm the one controlling the roads!! Even the Byzantines with their 20-foot thick walls died when they were surrounded and cut off. My God, I'm wearing out my minor in Military Science tonight. For a guy who did Antietam and Gettysburg, Sid really dropped the ball here. If Firaxis wants to redeem themselves, the combat has to be reworked in a patch.

[Rakki]

they should force the combat system back to Civ 2....

and instead of the stupid army feature, use the Master of Magic army feature. now THAT was a combat system i liked.

[Barchan]

Conquesticus said:

"Now, I don't think the game should be AS realistic as life, because plain and simple, as soon as you rolled into your obsolete neighbors' turf, his game would be over. And, that's no fun."

And he's right. But perhaps that's just how the game *should* be. As it is now, while there's certainly good reason to upgrade your old units, there's no dire imperative to do so. Hell, if pikemen defend well enough against cavalry, why upgrade to riflemen? Better to spend the money on rush-building universities and the like. Or just use the gold to subsidize additional modern units, *and*still keep the old buggers around as well.

I think, as I said before, advanced units should on average eliminate obsolete units without significant damage. Tanks v. pikemen should result in *maybe* a health bar loss to the tank. Very rarely, maybe two. Once in a great while, perhaps even three. But no more than that. Elite units just shouldn't be eliminated attacking a unit of a previous age. The same should apply on defense; entrenched riflemen in modern fortifications should not be eliminated by swordsmen.

Now, while taking a health bar or two may be an overly optimistic assessment of the pikemen's performance, a) there's always a chance in combat for a unit's strength to be reduced (Airborne units frequently experience 10% casualties just jumping in), and b) there'd be no fun (or skill) in regular "InstaDeath" combat, where all obsolete units become like artillery and bow before your might.

I haven't seen a game yet (I play on regent) where I've been able to field tanks and the AI is still in the dark ages. Although this happened a lot in CIV and CIVII, with the new tech tree and greater emphasis on AI tech trading, most other countries always seems competitive technologically. Yet, my tanks still see (and lose to) plenty of spearmen and swordsmen, and my battleships see (and get shelled by) friggin' frigates and ironclads. Why? Because the cheap AI won't pay to upgrade the units, that's why!

And why should it? Unless there's a greater penalty than simply not having the highest available number, why pay the cost to upgrade a unit?

Now I prefer to have the latest technology at my disposal for war, so I have to pay good coin to upgrade my riflemen to infantry or my knights to cavalry. This puts me at a disadvantage, since the AI will have a lot more free gold to spend on other things (including rush-building more, and frequently modern, combat units). So not only am I poorer, but I tend to get outnumbered as well. And, since it seems obsolete pikemen count for determining "military might" I get treated like s**t during all my diplomatic negotiations. When war finally comes, I shatter the AI's few decent units and then slowly blunt my forces grinding against wave after wave of obsolete units. I win eventually, but it takes way longer and costs much more than it should given the technological superiority of my army in the field.

If having advanced units actually meant something more than a marginally bigger number (I mean, please, an M1A1 Abrams tank is a *hell* of a lot more than 33% more effective on attack than the old German Panzer!) perhaps the AI would focus a bit more on quality rather than quantity. If it did, and therefore spent money on upgrading units, the AI might not start running away in the tech/gold arena in the middle game.

Although, if the AI wants to let its obsolete units "wheeze around" (as the manual puts it), fine. But it should have to pay for that decision in blood as its ancient spearmen get swept easily (not automatically, mind you, but easily) aside by more modernly equipped combatants.

[thanakar]

Originally posted by SoulAssassin Once this is done, the computer only has about 2-3 defensive units in each city, and since you took out their resources, they can't build more modern units. It doesn't even matter what era you are in, although, I haven't even been to the modern era yet because I kill the comps too fast. Focus on one city at a time. And don't attack until you have 4-5 mobile units in attack position per city per turn. Don't be scared of fortifying outside the city. If they attack you, their unit moves out of the city and into the open, then they only have 1 unit in the city. Even on deity, the comp won't attack using garrisoned forces.

Soul - I have done this..position a task force (a group of 5 veteran horseman) just outside the city getting ready to attack it only problem with this is that while during the computers turn he had moved he rushed in with some REGULAR horseman and wiped out my fortified horseman since they SUCK defensively. You speak a great game but you dont' take into account how the computer cheats using the fog of war to hide its units. The computer always knows where your units are even when not visible to it.

[thanakar]

Originally posted by yavoon
hehe u save reload newbies crack me up, obviously firaxis has put some kind of protection against save/reload for new battle results. which I think is really nice.

unfortunately I doubt its foolproof. either way, the pure amusement of you running around like ur head is chopped off because you can't seem to save/reload every lost battle nemore is rather hilarious.

yavoon, i've yet to see you do anything but bash posters with legitimate concerns about a game they shelled out 50 bucks for. Why don't you get off your high ****ing horse and quit.

[yavoon]

quit? wut? giving my opinion? there has to be some counter to the flood of newbies who think this is a simulation and not a strategy game.

I'm only bashed cuz their incessantly stupid opinions are w/o merit, so thats their recourse, bash me.

[michaelmagnus]

Ultimately everyone makes their own choice about the tradeoffs between things they like versus what they don't like about games The final two questions one asks themselves are "did I enjoy the experience?" and its corollary "will I buy another game of similar type or from the same develpers?" There's no right or wrong answer; everyone makes that value judgement.

I've been playing wargames since I was 9 years old in 1972. As soon as I got into the hobby I discovered the Playability versus Realism debate. Much blood was spilled between roving gangs of Avalon Hill and SPI players. So the arguments here are nothing new to me, or to many of you, I'd imagine. I'd just suggest one keep it in perspective.

From the very start, in Civ I, it annoyed me that Legions could defeat Armor. The first time it happened, I'm sure I *****ed and moaned to beat the band. But the game was so interesting, and new, and unique and just Fan-F'ing-Tastic that I put that aside. I derived far more pleasure from the experience than I did annoyance.

Civ II comes out and, again it is a great experience. A quantum leap over the first, and I have played it to death. Those damn Legions are still beating my Armor, but I rationalize it away - (it's not a legion, it's a low-quality modern infantry unit) - because the game as a whole is so great.

Civ III is now out. I like the culture concept, the national borders, the armies, the fact that stacks of units don't die after a loss. But I think I've rationalized away that indestructable Legion for the last time. I'm sorry, but my expectations have been raised. I enjoy and want to continue to enjoy the genre, but I'm not so in awe of the concept anymore that I can meekly accept a feature of the combat system that to me is just so out of whack and could be so easily addressed. I am much less enthused at this point than I was with the previous incarnations. It's not that I'm right and anyone else is wrong - that's just my cost/benefit calculation of the experience.

I'm still playing my first few games and I will continue to explore the game. Obviously I hope changes are made, by the developers or by tinkerers, along lines that I like. If not, so be it. I'm not crying - Civ has given me such pleasure over the last 10 years that I'll deal with it. (Though I'll happily dissect and criticize it in a forum such as this, which I am under the impression is made up of like-minded history and game afficianados who know how to passionately but civilly conduct an intellectual discourse.) But I have not fallen in love with this version as I did the former two right off the bat. It is this customer's general position that if there is a Civilization IV, and I hear that Legions are still beating Armor in THAT game, then that's it for me. I still have my beloved CIV II CD and I can just go back to that. If that means anything to the company that hopes to sell it to me (for what will probably be $100 by then), great. If not, OK; we part as friends and I keep my dough.

[michaelmagnus]

Since we are rightfully citing Indiana as a source of reference, I would draw the assembly's attention to a pertinent scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark -

When Professor Jones is confronted by the Elite native Swordsman, he utilizes his knowledge of Gunpowder and efficiently SHOOTS HIM DEAD, suffering no loss of hit points.

[zapperio]

Originally posted by michaelmagnus

Civ III is now out. I like the culture concept, the national borders, the armies, the fact that stacks of units don't die after a loss. But I think I've rationalized away that indestructable Legion for the last time. I'm sorry, but my expectations have been raised. I enjoy and want to continue to enjoy the genre, but I'm not so in awe of the concept anymore that I can meekly accept a feature of the combat system that to me is just so out of whack and could be so easily addressed. I am much less enthused at this point than I was with the previous incarnations. It's not that I'm right and anyone else is wrong - that's just my cost/benefit calculation of the experience.

There is a perfectly reasonable explanation for the combat system given by Soren (AI wiz Firaxis) as it supports an excellent new strategic resource system:

gamadictG> Soren, I don't know if this has been addressed before, but do you think low-tech units have too
good of a chance to defeat higher-tech units...??
Soren_Johnson_Firaxis> gamad...: concerning the loss of firepower. Firepower added needless complexity to the
game. For example, there is no significant difference between a unit with an offence of 10 and a firepower
of 2 and a unit with an offense of 20 and firepower of 1... however
Soren_Johnson_Firaxis> having said that, the later age units in Civ3 ARE less powerful than they are in Civ2.
This was a design decision based on the resource system. We didn't want the game to be totally hopeless if
you were unable to build the newest type of unit because you don't have resource X

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