What's missing in the combat realism debate

[n.c.]

Ever see the Saturday Night Live sketches of the big fat Chicago guys? They sit around and discuss things like whether or not Mike Ditka could beat up Geoge Washington.

Imagine it was not a sketch, but instead you were observing such a discussion in a bar. The participants were actively engaged, all totally serious. The sentences were not conditional- they really were making a comparison. What would you think? A) Mike for sure. B) Geoge all the way. C) How preposterous- Washington has been dead for ~200 years!

In observing debates over the realism of frigates sinking carriers and spearmen killing modern tanks, I feel like the guy in our hypothetical bar: who cares what would happen, the event itself is impossible!

In other words, it's not just that the result of ancient beating modern is unrealistic, the two types never existed simultaneously. Note exactly what I'm saying when you give examples attempting to disprove this statement: that which did not happen, did not happen. Tough position to counter.

The observant among you will note that this is not a Civ III issue, but dates to II and I (which should mollify the less virulent anti-"whiners"). Also, the solutions are easy- either make the unit disappear over time, change its name, icon & characteristics, or both. (I know it's possible to upgrade, but in reality doing so is not an option; you either upgrade or retire the unit.)

Closely related to this is the notion of technology flow: civs will eventually absorb the technologies of those around them. Perhaps a discussion for another thread.

Anyway, its late and I'm turning in. See you this weekend.

[Capt Dizle]

That was an intelligent post! Are you sure you are from North Carolina?

[IamJordan1]

well spearmen killing tanks i wouldnt believe, but anykind of armed infantry can take out a tank easily. even a a couple of neighborhood dudes can take out a tank. consider a tanks cannon is so slow to twist around, and inaccurate at close range, a couple of neighborhood thugs armed with hand guns can run around, while the cannon is turning side to side. then thugs get close enough to the tank and open up the hatch, drops a grenade, or just plain sprays all his bullets in the hatch. boom bye bye tank. what i liek to note in civ 3 is that

technological superiority is an advantage
but numbers matter more! numbers always matter more in real life. ok i am done with my *****ing, my tanks just got creamed with a couple of musketmen and archers. next time i will bring 2x that many tanks.

[Bubba_B]

Put a bullet in this one......

The combat system, whether you are against it, for it, or indiffrent is the combat system in Civ III

It frustrated me at first too, but I developed other stratagies (used editor too) and moved on.

Oh well thats my two cents.

[Venger]

Originally posted by IamJordan1
well spearmen killing tanks i wouldnt believe, but anykind of armed infantry can take out a tank easily. even a a couple of neighborhood dudes can take out a tank. consider a tanks cannon is so slow to twist around, and inaccurate at close range, a couple of neighborhood thugs armed with hand guns can run around, while the cannon is turning side to side. then thugs get close enough to the tank and open up the hatch, drops a grenade, or just plain sprays all his bullets in the hatch. boom bye bye tank.

Apparently you didn't notice ma deuce hanging on the tank turret, a .50 caliber can of whoopass which can reach out an touch someone a mile away. Every tank made has anti-infantry weaponry, in fact most WW2 era tanks had 2 if not 3 machine guns of the .30 cal to .50 cal variety.

I tell you what. You and some of your neighborhood buds go attack a tank and tell us how it went. Wait - just tell us when you are leaving, you won't be back...

what i liek to note in civ 3 is that
technological superiority is an advantage
but numbers matter more! numbers always matter more in real life.

Actually, numbers DON'T matter in Civ, because every combat action is one unit versus one unit. CTP had stacked combat which made numbers truly matter.

ok i am done with my *****ing, my tanks just got creamed with a couple of musketmen and archers. next time i will bring 2x that many tanks.

I hope that part about the archers is a joke.

Venger

[Shiva]

Originally posted by Venger


Apparently you didn't notice ma deuce hanging on the tank turret, a .50 caliber can of whoopass which can reach out an touch someone a mile away. Every tank made has anti-infantry weaponry, in fact most WW2 era tanks had 2 if not 3 machine guns of the .30 cal to .50 cal variety.

I tell you what. You and some of your neighborhood buds go attack a tank and tell us how it went. Wait - just tell us when you are leaving, you won't be back...

Venger

I always love people who think that tanks are an end all, be all weapon system. Hate to break it to you Venger but in the right set of circumstances a few men can easily dispatch a tank. There are reasons tanks dont go into cities and need infantry support in most terrain.

As for IamJordan1's "open up the hatch, drops a grenade, or just plain sprays all his bullets in the hatch", it might look nice in the movies but those hatches in real life lock from the inside He is right about getting so close to a tank where it cant use its weapons against you, be it too slow or unable to depress to target.

[Venger]

Originally posted by Shiva



I always love people who think that tanks are an end all, be all weapon system. Hate to break it to you Venger but in the right set of circumstances a few men can easily dispatch a tank.

Watch the Dirty Dozen one too many times? The "right circumstances" you mention are an unsupported buttoned tank attacked by what, three guys with a panzerfaust? Or do they have phasers? Or an antimatter bomb? What are the right circumstances? I can take out an F15 with a bag of marbles if I can somehow get it into the intake, so does that make the plane vulnerable to me in the right circumstances?

There are reasons tanks dont go into cities and need infantry support in most terrain.

I don't cut my steak with a chainsaw either. But then again I make the pretense it's the right tool for it. Who mentioned sending tanks into no mans land without infantry support? The brain trust who thinks and his homeys from the hood can dispatch a tank because "the turret goes so slow" got the information he clearly lacks, that the tank has massive anti-infantry weaponry, and while the main gun does fire HE rounds the "slow turret" isn't used for point defense. The .30 cal in the tank body and the .50 on the parapet will lay it down when this dip$hit takes his homemade grenade and tries to run a circle around the tank...

Note to tank assaulter - try plopping a grenade in it while it's driving at 25 miles an hour...

right about getting so close to a tank where it cant use its weapons against you, be it too slow or unable to depress to target.

Ugh... dude, the gunner isn't spinning the main gun to take out three spares and a grenade, the whole tank rotates to bring the point defense machine guns to spray .30 cal in a 360 degree arc. Infantry is effective against tanks only when concealed from fire during the tanks approach and when they can attack in number with effective weaponry. Note - this does indeed happen. But not with three high schoolers and a homemade Molotov...

Venger

[Sniffer]

In the open field when the other side does not have artillery or air support, tanks Are the end all be all. Fifty tanks under such conditions would be able to commit atrocities that would sicken the stomachs of any general. You would run out of ammo before the enemies could do anything right. Spearmen, archers, knight, civil war cavalry, and the few guys from the hood could group together all still lose against tanks without AT weaponry. Tanks are destroyed with mines, high explosive rockets (hopefully a lot more than one), and good luck. Even a direct hit from a rocket doesn't give you a 100% chance for a kill.

Of course, we are talking about modern American and western European battle tanks. I wish that technology would minitaurize as it did in Master of Orion 2. Early tanks should smoothly progress into more powerful tanks a certain number of turns after you have them, and the process should continue from there. To say that there have only been 2 ages of planes and tanks is a folly.

Anyway, it is late and I am babbling. Tanks should never lose to anything short of infantry in Civ 3. Period. How many Zulu spearmen would it take to even drive back a tank division?

[Badtz Maru]

People seem to forget the scale of the game when it comes to units, which leads to misunderstandings about game balance. A tank unit does not represent a single tank, it represents hundreds of tanks, as well as support vehicles of various kinds. Likewise, a frigate does not represent a single frigate, but probably a fleet of frigates, as well as smaller vessels, the fighting men on board the ships, etc. Yes, a single guy can't take on a tank. Ten guys probably couldn't take a tank, but if a hundred rushed one from various directions, you can bet some would get close enough to do some serious damage without being mowed down by the machine guns. They would also be able to attack the supply trucks that brought along the fuel and ammunition that the tanks brought along, and incapacitating those who supply and maintain the tanks effectively eliminates the tanks when you look at the game on the scale that it is intended to cover.

I also agree that a spearman in modern times is not the same thing as a spearman in ancient times. A spearman is a large group of men on foot who cost about the same to train and equip as a large group of trained spearmen did in ancient times. The government could not afford to provide every man with a weapon, it would be a 'bring your own gun' militia with very limited support, that was capable of being mustered quickly by any large city. For those of you who saw it, think about the movie 'Enemy at the Gates'. The German soldiers were the equivalent of infantry in Civ3 - a well-equipped early 20th century fighting force, complete with support vehicles like APCs, jeeps, and possibly a few tanks. The Russian soldiers were significantly less equipped - every other man was given a rifle and a few rounds, with the other man given the standing order to follow a guy with the gun and pick it up if he gets killed. They had significantly less combat experience and therefore less discipline, and were clearly inferior in combat efficiency than the Germans, but the Russians were able to produce them with a lot less resources than German was using to create and supply it's armies. There is no 'Poorly Supplied Infantry' unit in Civ3, so you would have to think of the Russian soldiers defending the city as an inferior unit that were all the Russians were able to produce in time in that city, equivelant to Riflemen or perhaps even Musketmen.

Take the privateers as another example. They are significantly weaker than any of their contemporary naval units, which fits in with history - there was no way a fleet of privateers could stand up to an attack by the fleets of a major nation at the time. What they could do, and what they were paid to do, was to disrupt the shipping of opposing powers without having to move the fleets from the Old World and declare an open war. There were many luxury items and vital resources that were being shipped back to Europe from the Carribean colonies and stopping that flow was able to weaken the sponsors of said colonies, cutting into their profits and making luxury items like spices and tobacco more expensive and therefore less available to the masses. How is this modeled in the game? Take your privateers and blockade the opponent's cities that are only connected to the rest of their empire via their harbors. You can also use them to attack some of the smaller military forces in that region (which would be represented in-game by more outdate naval units). Why do they cost so much when they aren't the equivalent of a fleet? Well, part of it IS balance (if they were too cheap you would constantly be having to fight pirates around every one of your ports), and part of it can be explained by the fact that when a nation's navy captured enemy ships, those ships and all their cargo belonged to the nation that took them. Privateers only had to pay a relatively small percentage of their take to the nation that was sponsoring them.

Just remember that the game HAS to be abstract, a game that tried to realistically portray combat and trade on the scale of this game would be several orders of magnitude more complicated, harder to play, require a much more advanced AI to be challenging (possibly more advanced than is currently possible with home computers), and probably take 8 hours to play a turn.

What matters is how things play out in the long run, if large-scale strategies used by real-life civilizations (as opposed to tactics) reproduce realistic-seeming results. It seems to be doing a pretty good job to me.

[Venger]

Originally posted by Sniffer
Of course, we are talking about modern American and western European battle tanks. I wish that technology would minitaurize as it did in Master of Orion 2. Early tanks should smoothly progress into more powerful tanks a certain number of turns after you have them, and the process should continue from there. To say that there have only been 2 ages of planes and tanks is a folly.

In Civ2 I modified the tank unit to be a hair weaker (10/5 with three HP down to 8/5) and created a Main Battle Tank unit that required Advanced Metallurgy and was rated (10/6 with three HP and two FP). This allowed you to have different levels of tanks over time. It worked great...

Venger

[Bubba_B]

*BANG* *BANG*

D*** combat thread wont die!!!



Oh well.......

Have fun guys

[Venger]

Originally posted by Bubba_B
*BANG* *BANG*

D*** combat thread wont die!!!



Oh well.......

Have fun guys

Civ2 patches modified some combat values.

Why not assume this at the minimum is going to be possible in the Civ3 patch? Making changes to the hit point system should take just very few changes and yet make a world of difference to the game.

Venger

[Bubba_B]

Why not assume this at the minimum is going to be possible in the Civ3 patch? Making changes to the hit point system should take just very few changes and yet make a world of difference to the game.

Venger

Well maybe so, but if Fraxis hasn't got the idea by now they never will. I guess what is funny about these kind of threads is the "What if" senarios being bantered about. I think Fraxis would pay more attetion to a thread thats sticks more to the point of actuall game play changes that need to be made.

I think the rants just confuse things.

Just a thought

P.S. Just having fun too

And I like the funny faces

[Shiva]

Originally posted by Venger


Watch the Dirty Dozen one too many times?

No child, just some years in the infantry and working close with armor.

As I said the "right circumstances" so please dont try and distract the point with silly statements about phasers and such.

Killing a tank isnt as hard as laymen like to think. You talked about the m2hb on the tank as if its some magic ward against infantry up to a mile away which it isnt. Might be nice in the desert but in most places people can easily find cover from it and once your close enough its useless which is the point. The same goes for the main gun and any hull gun. At least thats the way its worked on the tanks i've been around.

Originally posted by Venger
Who mentioned sending tanks into no mans land without infantry support?

No one, doesnt make the fact that a few people could kill said tank any less valid does it? I guess that would be one of those "right cirumstances" and you wouldnt need a a phaser

Originally posted by Venger
The brain trust who thinks and his homeys from the hood can dispatch a tank because "the turret goes so slow" got the information he clearly lacks, that the tank has massive anti-infantry weaponry, and while the main gun does fire HE rounds the "slow turret" isn't used for point defense. The .30 cal in the tank body and the .50 on the parapet will lay it down when this dip$hit takes his homemade grenade and tries to run a circle around the tank...

No ,your the one lacking the facts. If your cant bring those a-p weapons to bear then your not going to kill anyone, no matter how many ar mounted on a vehicle or how far they can reach. Also heres a little fact for you. A few years back someone took an M-60 for a little joyride (most people have seen the video of what happened). The driver was killed by a police officer putting his pistol in a vision slot and firing. The rounds bouncing around inside killed the man so I would guess that a guy with a pistol can kill off a tank.

Originally posted by Venger
Note to tank assaulter - try plopping a grenade in it while it's driving at 25 miles an hour...

Who mentioned a tank driving around at 25 miles an hour?

Originally posted by Venger
Ugh... dude, the gunner isn't spinning the main gun to take out three spares and a grenade, the whole tank rotates to bring the point defense machine guns to spray .30 cal in a 360 degree arc.

Ugh, no. No tank driver worth his salt is going to spin around in circles playing tag with people outside their tank. Another little fact is the turret can turn far far faster than you can spin the tank around if your dumb enough to try and out pivot a moving man. Also your hull mounted gun has the same type ofproblems with limited arc and depression as the turret weapons. Useless at close range.

Originally posted by Venger
But not with three high schoolers and a homemade Molotov...

Tell it to the russian tankers killed by teenagers armed with molotovs in Finland or the Germans tankers who got the same in Russia by "high schoolers". I bet if you look around you'll see a lot of this over the past 60 or so years in many many different places.

As I said the tank is far from the end all be all you make it out to be and its mg's are far from the magic charms against people on foot you wish them to be.

[Felch]

There is no 'Poorly Supplied Infantry' unit in Civ3

After Nationalism you can draft infantry in your cities. Only conscripts, so this is similar to the Enemy at the Gates scenario.

In terms of modern weapons never being used against primitive weapons . . . haven't any of you heard of the Age of Imperialism? Do you think Europe was able to carve up Africa like a cake without comparatively advanced weapons? In almost every engagement Europeans easily dominated their African opponents. Islandhwana and Khartoum were exceptions, but in both cases European firepower and technology eventually gained the upper hand.

[Shiva]

Originally posted by Badtz Maru

Take the privateers as another example. They are significantly weaker than any of their contemporary naval units, which fits in with history - there was no way a fleet of privateers could stand up to an attack by the fleets of a major nation at the time. What they could do, and what they were paid to do, was to disrupt the shipping of opposing powers without having to move the fleets from the Old World and declare an open war. There were many luxury items and vital resources that were being shipped back to Europe from the Carribean colonies and stopping that flow was able to weaken the sponsors of said colonies, cutting into their profits and making luxury items like spices and tobacco more expensive and therefore less available to the masses. How is this modeled in the game? Take your privateers and blockade the opponent's cities that are only connected to the rest of their empire via their harbors.

Well the privateer is useless because Firaxis didnt put shipping into the game. If we had to transport resources in ships then they would be very usefull. As it stands now .....

[Badtz Maru]

Originally posted by Shiva


Well the privateer is useless because Firaxis didnt put shipping into the game. If we had to transport resources in ships then they would be very usefull. As it stands now .....

Shipping IS in the game - resources and luxuries are automatically transported between cities with harbors. If you blockade the harbor, it's the same as cutting the enemies roads - but the difference with privateers is that you can park within the enemies borders without getting the 'Leave or we declare war' message.

It's useful under the right situations, i.e. when a civilization is dependent on resources that come from a city that is only connected to his empire via it's harbor. It may not come up in every game, but it can be useful - I was in a game where my sole source of rubber was on an island. If my opponent had blockaded that harbor with privateers I would have been forced to divert resources to break the blockade or else be unable to build infantry on the mainland.

[Shiva]

Originally posted by Badtz Maru


Shipping IS in the game - resources and luxuries are automatically transported between cities with harbors. If you blockade the harbor, it's the same as cutting the enemies roads - but the difference with privateers is that you can park within the enemies borders without getting the 'Leave or we declare war' message.

Abstract shipping is in the game yes. By all rights privateers should be abstracted also since you cannot use the ship for what it would have been used for, attacking enemy shipping. In real life for the most part they avoided any real armed force and did not blockade ports. They are in truth, useless for the most part since you cannot attack commerce shipping.

[n.c.]

(Not enough time to respond to everyone.)

Badtz Maru- Good points. But why does it have to be an abstraction? Hvae the spearman morph into Villagers with Pitchforks or somthing.

[D4everman]

No child, just some years in the infantry and working close with armor.

Hey, Shiva, still in the Infantry? Signal here! Screw that sleeping in the woods crap...oops I forgot. I'm signal. Whenever YOU guys go to the field we gotta go the field! And you guys go a lot! (no matter...I'm a recruiter-in-training now)

I've never seen any wierd combat results with tanks, but I wouldn't expect to win every single battle with them either. I think its possible for a bunch of spear wielding men to destroy a tank, but it would be rare. Besides if tanks were invincible they wouldn't be much fun would they?

[Robert Plomp]

I agree with n.c. on this.
if you're advanced, you couldn't have ancient units anymore.
Forced upgrade or forced disband.

n.c. be honest to us, you still play civ3, don't you ?

[Ozymandous]

If you're advanced you upgrade your units when you can afford to.

Depending on how tight you're running your finances this might take awhile. Besides, many society's have old "showy" units that don't do much but parade around that are composed of real soldiers. I am sure that is push came to sove they'd fight with the best they had even if it was old equipment used mainly for show.

[SuiteSisterMary]

Note exactly what I'm saying when you give examples attempting to disprove this statement: that which did not happen, did not happen. Tough position to counter.

Yawn.

Rommel the Desert Fox taking his German Panzers against African Spearmen in World War 2. Polish horsemen (calvary with spears) against tanks. The list goes on. Hell, America transitioned from Industrial to Modern in three years, and finished modern in the next twenty-five or so.

During the Sengoku Jidai, in 1600s Japan, your typical Japanese army group consisted of poor bastards with spears, Samurai, mounted archers, and towards the end, musketmen. That's two or three Civ3 ages worth of units right there.

[WarKing]

Personally, I love the balance and forced strategy dynamics of war. It seems more real than in Civ 2, much more real. In Civ 2, all I ever needed were a few nights to conquer a civ, and later I would build armor, but I never needed the numbers I need now. Heck, I've almost gotten to the point of giving up on the idea of quickly overtaking civs.

The corruption isn't worth the trouble and if I'm not gaining needed resources or strategic terrain, then the battle's not worth all the reciprical effects imposed in the new war model.

Admittedly, I haven't gotten a game into the modern or even the industrialized era yet. I'm an experimental perfectionist, so I'm still working on my ancient and middle ages strategies.

That said, I love having to really commit vast resources to take on another power.

What's really scary is when you inadvertently start a world war that runs away from you! Whoah watch the pulse jump!!!

[Velociryx]

Wow...lots to respond to here.

While I find myself agreeing with the spirit of n.c.'s post, I must say that the entire Civ series *by design* is one giant abstraction. Otherwise, how could you reasonably expect to plot the course of 6000 years of human history. Unless the game were played out on a 1 day = 1 day basis, you can't without using abstractions, and if you make it 1 day = 1 day, I'd LOVE to meet the first person to actually finish a game!

And what is abstraction, in game terms? Abstraction is the simplification of real world concepts in such a way that the game can move forward, and in the entire civ series, the game DOES move forward by leaps and bounds! On the opener, each time you press that space bar, you essentially kill an entire generation of your citizens, advancing 50 years with the touch of button!

So let’s start with the early game. Standard staring city, two food, one shield. Takes 10 turns to grow from size one to two. Wha….? It takes 500 years for a small hamlet to double in it’s size?! THAT’s not realism! Nope…but it’s a game abstraction to help the game move forward.

Takes five turns to “train” a cave warrior. :: double take:: But wait a minute?! That’s 250 years!? People don’t even live that long now! Surely they didn’t live that long in 4000BC. By the time you trained him, his great, great grandchildren would probably be dead! And, when this VERY old Cave Warrior is finally trained, move him one tile and now he’s 300 years old and if he wasn’t dead before, he surely is now!

But…you say…the unit does not really represent “one guy” or even one group of guys! That’s just a symbol of a military unit for the civ in general….and as one soldier dies, he is, of course, replaced by another. Now, one could argue that we should get some graphic depiction of this….perhaps each “generation” of Cave Warrior could have a slightly different uniform, or the style of clothing could change a bit….don’t know. It’d be kinna nice, but it’s not required for me to accept that the same guy I train in 3800BC is NOT the same guy I have walking around in 1700AD.

But, back to the discussion about realism….and for the sake of realism, should we not have a little skull and crossbones over each unit where people have died and been replaced, and a little report screen showing the number of dead veterans and new recruits? Also, for the sake of realism, when members of your “Elite Cave Squad” die from old age, and are replaced by new recruits, should the morale not drop?

But it doesn’t stop there. Even in the modern age, we get all sorts of bizarre stuff that flies in the face of realism. Destroyers that take 20-odd years to circumnavigate the globe. Bombers that can do so instantly (by relocating them to a new base). If you’ve recently conquered an island and haven’t got workers to build rails yet, it takes your infantry 2-3 YEARS to get from one side of said island to the other. None of this is realistic….pure abstraction, and we accept it as such and move on.

So….let’s take a look at the real world, and begin with the assumption that ancient units and modern ones cannot exist at the same time.

The British Army, when colonizing Africa and India, encountered primitive, savage tribes armed with bows and spears vs. the British cannon and rifle. IMO, that is an example of the very thing we’re talking about.

And, to their credit, those primitive, savage tribes dealt a blow or two DESPITE their technological inferiority before being conquered. (In game terms...the bowman beat the rifleman!)

Same thing was true of the Americas.

Something else happened too….the natives might have started off using bows, but when men with rifles showed up, the natives learned very quickly how useful they were, and began acquiring them by whatever means they could.

Did they suddenly learn to invent gunpowder and make rifles for themselves?

Of course not.

But the “proprietary technology of Europe” DID, in fact, manage to get into the hands of the natives. Suddenly, their spearmen had guns! Now…maybe they were older guns, and it’s VERY reasonable to expect that said natives didn’t know how to use the new weapons as effectively as trained British regulars, but they HAD them, at least in limited quantity. (Of course, they prolly also had their speak with them too, because it was so familiar).

So…just as I do not need a change in the graphic depiction of my Cave Warrior Squad losing its older members and picking up fresh new recruits (representing the march of generations, and its corresponding hit to morale), I also don’t need a change in graphic to accept that the primitive spear unit I made back in 1600BC MIGHT have acquired some better (if still dated) weapons over the course of say….the last two thousand years. Would a change in graphic be nice? Sure, but it's eye candy, IMO. Not required for me to make the leap of faith.

Having said all that, I have to say that I totally agree with the part of forcing upgrades as a solution to this “problem.” Imperialism II did that…and if you didn’t have the money to upgrade, poof….you lost the units. End of story. I don’t see this issue as being a problem…it’s easy enough to accept that it’s just another abstraction, but apparently, it’s a HUGE problem for some, and because of that, I’d have no problem supporting a mandatory upgrade or something. That’s cool. Seems like an AWFUL lot of energy is being devoted to this one gripe, but…::shrug:: that’s just me.

-=Vel=-

[Barnacle Bill]

At the apparent scale of Civ3, it is not "a tank", its "an armored division", i.e. a large formation with 10-15 thousand guys built around several hundred tanks but including supporting infantry & artillery, plus wads of guys in non-combat support roles. A couple of neighborhood duds might very well take out "a tank" under the right circumstances, but 15,000 neighbor dudes will never take out an armored division.

As to coexistence of units from different periods, we ALMOST had that in history. Aside from a few obscure visits by small groups, the New World was totally isolated from the Old until the 1500's. Europe at that time was at the "musketmen-galleons" level in Civ3 terms. The best the New World had to offer was at the "Neolithic pre-Dynastic Egypt" level, i.e. Warriors and not even Galleys yet in Civ3 terms. Now, Cortez only had a few hundred guys (and wads of local allies) but the tech advantage was significant and made a big impact (one of the reasons he had wads of local allies). A Spanish Tercio was a 16th Century state-of-the-art combined arms formation of about 3000 guys. They coexisted in time with the Aztec Jaguar Knights, the Spanish just never sent one to America (why bother, when they could conquer the whole continent with much less but they needed every Tercio they could get in the chronic wars of Europe). What do you think would happen, though, a Tercio vs 3000 Jaguar knights?

OK, suppose a different rate of development between the OLd & New worlds? What if the Aztecs had reach the level of classical Greece. Triremes vs Galleons for control of the Caribbean. The result is obvious - except under very special conditions (like ambushing the galleons anchored at night), you get triremes blown out of the water before getting close enough to cause any damage.

In the Civ games, there is no "technological diffusion". To improve the model, you would need to give bonus tech points to civs that are behind any other civ with which they are in contact. However, lack of that feature doesn't make it OK if Henry V's army of longbowmen takes out a WWII Panzer Division. That's two wrongs, which never makes a right. Even with that feature, if the old & new worlds don't find each other until very later in the game, big differences in tech would be perfectly realistic. Ever read Harry Turtledove's "World War" series? Aliens with military tech about current with today invade the earth in 1942, but are surprised because they expected to find us at the tech level we had when they previously peeked in about 1200 AD.

[Velociryx]

Excellent post Barnacle Bill!

I do, however, disagree with your last paragraph, but I think that speaks more to how we approach gaming.

In a post on another thread, I made the comment that gamers could essentially be categorized in two broad groups: Scientific and Romantic.

The scientific gamers are the ones we've been hearing from. They want the realism of Panzer General with none of the hassels, and they want it on top of the existing Civ3 4x system. Anything less than that, and they won't be 100% satisfied, and that's cool. I used to be that sort of gamer myself. For them, the math is everything....the numbers behind the scenes. What they are and why they are what they are.

At the other end of the spectrum are the romantic-oriented gamers. The guys who LOVE underdog fights. Whose favorite stories are about little guys beating impossible odds, and our own world history is full of such stories.

Custer's Last Stand, where ill-trained, ill-armed indians took on a much better equipped American Military unit.

The Zulu defeating a British Regiment using spears vs. rifles.

Thermopalye. A stoic collection of Spartans standing defiantly against HORDES of enemies of Greece and winning. (Okay....so maybe winning isn't the best term...but succeeding in their mission nonetheless!)

Scotland's Highlanders (a ragged, peasant army if ever there was one) defying British Knights and Longbow and WINNING!!!!! NONE of this should or would be possible under the purely scientific/mathematic approach, and IMO, it would be a loss to the game, because THESE are the stories we remember.

Nobody would remember if the Highlanders had been mechanically crushed by the British Army, or if Custer had decimated the indians. Nobody would care.

It's BECAUSE they were the underdogs and won anyway that makes it noteworthy....that makes it...well, worth reading history....

Take that away from the game, and you lose all the romance of the "what-ifs" and it becomes a mechanical grind....again, just my opinion on the matter.

-=Vel=-

[zapperio]

[SIZE=1]

In the Civ games, there is no "technological diffusion". To improve the model, you would need to give bonus tech points to civs that are behind any other civ with which they are in contact. However, lack of that feature doesn't make it OK if Henry V's army of longbowmen takes out a WWII Panzer Division. That's two wrongs, which never makes a right

It is a design desision. Simple as that. In the context of the game, as a *game*, the point is moot.

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.

[emphasis is mine]

Zap

[zapperio]

Speaking as a romantic of course...

Zap

[Velociryx]

Rock on, Zap!

-=Vel=-