Pillaging too easy

[The Rusty Gamer]

One of the things that annoyed me is how any old unit can come along and in one move pillage a tile improvement that's taken several turns to complete. I suppose this is more noticeable in SMAC and CTP2 than Civ2 but nevertheless the principle still applies. Tell me how one scrawny little soldier with a sword and an attack of 1 mess up a road or an irrigation unit just like that. Pillaging should take a number of turns, that number being based on how powerful that unit is. And it gives us a chance to send some units out to stop it. Yes, I know we should have units standing there to defend important squares, but if you don't build a fortress there, depending on your government type, the plebs can get unhappy. So tell me, why we're at it, how sending units to defend important improvements can make citizens unhappy! Dumb, dumb, dumb.

[Maxxes]

Pillaging an improvement should be easier than building it. And that unit is not 'one scrawny little soldier' it represents an army.

[Pedrun]

I completely disagree with you. I even prefer that pillage gives some money. This way the combats become more common and you'll need to protect then. Pillage become a trick to call others to fight. A maneuver to make strategies work.

[Cyclotron]

Pillaging, as described in the Civ2 maunual, is representative of troops trampling crops, caving in mines, and pulling up roads. I don't see any proof, relism or otherwise, that it is too easy to do this.

Pillaging is not a time consuming science. When you pillage, you are trying to inflict damage on the move, carving a wide swath of destruction through enemy territory. Setting fires and trampling fields is something any army can do. After all, Sherman's March was still a march. He didn't carefully dissassemble the towns, he just plowed on through!

This makes sense for gameplay, too. Pillaging is meant to be a viable alternative for a prolongued campaign. You can run in, tear up some stuff, and get out before enemy forces can react. It makes war more costly, and the last thing we should do is make war easier! Pillaging is a good and useable tactic, and a fairly good balance to war. Why have it any other way? If you want to keep those pesky enemy units out of your wheatfields, you better start building some defense!

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- Cyclotron7, "The Rajah of Resources"

[Cyclotron]

And with that post, a crowned Prince am I!

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- Cyclotron7, "The Rajah of Resources"

[ajbera]

Congratulations, Cyc.

[Dan Magaha FIRAXIS]

quote: Originally posted by cyclotron7 on 05-12-2001 10:46 PM Pillaging, as described in the Civ2 maunual, is representative of troops trampling crops, caving in mines, and pulling up roads. I don't see any proof, relism or otherwise, that it is too easy to do this. Pillaging is not a time consuming science. When you pillage, you are trying to inflict damage on the move, carving a wide swath of destruction through enemy territory. Setting fires and trampling fields is something any army can do. After all, Sherman's March was still a march. He didn't carefully dissassemble the towns, he just plowed on through! This makes sense for gameplay, too. Pillaging is meant to be a viable alternative for a prolongued campaign. You can run in, tear up some stuff, and get out before enemy forces can react. It makes war more costly, and the last thing we should do is make war easier! Pillaging is a good and useable tactic, and a fairly good balance to war. Why have it any other way? If you want to keep those pesky enemy units out of your wheatfields, you better start building some defense!

Someone once said that it is always easier to destroy than to create. I find myself making frequent use of pillaging when playing Civ III because it allows me to slowly strangle my opponent's cities without attempting risky frontal assaults. I know that the group of high-defense units they've got garrisoned in their cities will probably waste my attacking units, so I run around outside the city destroying their ability to feed their people, forcing them to either "punt or grunt".

The obvious downside to all of this is that when I eventually "liberate" the enemy city, I usually inherit little more than a pile of smoking rubble. It's a trade-off; do you want to risk losing a bunch of valuable military units to capture a big and well-developed city, or do you follow the "scorched earth" policy and spend a lot of money rebuilding later? It all depends.

Dan
Firaxis Games, Inc.

[The Rusty Gamer]

Don't you think though, that perhaps some units should be more adept at pillaging than others, the more ancient units should perhaps take at least 2 turns? And at the other end, maybe the more modern units might "overkill", when pillaging a tile they cause pollution or destroy the land?
As regards to my second complaint, I take at that in Civ 3 any units within the culture borders won't cause unhappiness, that is, won't be seen to being away from home?

[This message has been edited by Russell (edited May 13, 2001).]

[Theben]

quote: Originally posted by Dan Magaha FIRAXIS on 05-13-2001 12:00 AMSomeone once said that it is always easier to destroy than to create. I find myself making frequent use of pillaging when playing Civ III because it allows me to slowly strangle my opponent's cities without attempting risky frontal assaults.

Out of curiousity, did you guys include a "sieging" option when attacking strongholds?

[Admiral PJ]

Hey a Christchurch man, nice city :>
A lot more could be ton with the pillaging rules.. maybe taking a whole movement turn to complete, though I find its pretty hard to pillage without being attacked by a fast moving unit anyhow.
You could have Millitary engineers or just the normal ones able to pillage quicker.. It takes serious amounts of explosives to destroy a large river bridge quickly - at least placed in exactly the right spots, otherwise you have to dissasemble it screw by screw.

I like SMACS system where you could bombard with artillery to destroy terrain improvements.. if you can do this with bombers it would be nice as well.
Always go a step forward (better than SMAC) not a step back(the old Civ 2).

Admiral Pete
Head of 3d God game Mantra by VIRE tech.

and a third New Zealander

[Grumbold]

Pillaging farm improvements should be easy. Pillaging a road should be next to impossible without demolition tools. I would suggest only river crossings should be able to be destroyed before the invention of gunpowder. Its hard to completely destroy a mine too although you can do significant damage to the processing equipment. Perhaps some thought should be given to making any improvement a little cheaper/faster to put back in a tile where it has existed before.

[Pedrun]

quote: Originally posted by Admiral PJ on 05-13-2001 04:16 PM You could have Millitary engineers or just the normal ones able to pillage quicker.. It takes serious amounts of explosives to destroy a large river bridge quickly - at least placed in exactly the right spots, otherwise you have to dissasemble it screw by screw.

Define quickly: a year is the smallest turn size even few people could destoy a large bridge in this time. think what a whole army (in civ2 10,000 people) can do.

[Cyclotron]

quote: Originally posted by Grumbold on 05-13-2001 04:40 PM Pillaging farm improvements should be easy. Pillaging a road should be next to impossible without demolition tools. I would suggest only river crossings should be able to be destroyed before the invention of gunpowder. Its hard to completely destroy a mine too although you can do significant damage to the processing equipment. Perhaps some thought should be given to making any improvement a little cheaper/faster to put back in a tile where it has existed before.

Grumbold, are you suggesting that while the Romans could make roads long before gunpowder, it was physically impossible for them to pry the back up??? All you'se gotta do is pry up/overturn cobblestones, or simply fell trees and collapse dirt onto the road, effectively blocking it until it can be repaired.

Which brings up an idea... wouldn't it be cool if tile improvements could be just damaged, not completely destroyed? If you pillaged a tile once the improvements would become damged, and would not yield anyhting or be useable again until they were repaired (worker function, half the cost of rebuilding). Of course, pillaging a damaged tile would utterly destroy the improvements. I like it... probably won't be implemented, but just getting the idea out there!

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- Cyclotron7, "The Rajah of Resources"

[bj]

quote: Tell me how one scrawny little soldier with a sword and an attack of 1 mess up a road or an irrigation unit just like that.

Its not one guy just coz the icon shows one guy. Do you really think that armies, say in ctp2, are made up of 12 men? No. Each icon represents a group of units, like a squadron of fighters, or a regiment of troops.

Anyway, pillaging is and should be easy. I think its right as it is. Destroying crops/buildings is as easy as starting a fire, units like tanks can crumble roads....Heck railroads can be completely taken out by setting of one charge on a rail. Irrigation gone as easy as crumbling a canal or cutting a pipeline...

I also agree that when you pillage you get some reward, like a little bit of money. Ransacking the land and houses etc of a nations territory, enemies can take money, gold, art and any other thing thats there and it'd be worth something.

[bj]

I like that idea cyclo, pillaging only damages a tile. In this case Id say that If you were to try and build the same type of improvement overtop of it, it would take less time/resources. Good fix without overcomplicating the issue.

If you wanted you could also make pillaged improvements disappear if they are not 'repaired' in a certain amount of turns, just to represent it is in a run down state. Possible but not essential

[S. Kroeze]

It seems to me some people here have a most distorted image of the technical possibilities of pre-industrial societies. Here is a quotation about road building, communication and travel in 18th-century Europe(!). Though some progress had been made, distance was still a restrictive factor to the exercise of power.

'Communications were a serious problem, whether in terms of the movement of people or of goods, of transport with speed or in bulk. Poor communications magnified the effects of distance and imposed high costs on economic exchanges. Road transport was particularly bad across most of Europe. Without metalled roads or mechanised transport, land communications were generally slow. The quality of roads reflected the local terrain, in particular drainage and soil type, and the ability and determination of governments and local communities to keep the roads in good repair. The resistance of the road surface to bad weather or heavy use was limited. The rainy summer of 1708 made the Russian and Lithuanian roads very soft, hindering Swedish military moves. The need for constant repair was expensive in terms of money, manpower and government effort, and it is easy to appreciate why road construction or improvement might be seen as a poor investment. The most important Russian road, that between St Petersburg and Moscow, was laid out by Peter I in the first two decades of the century. The roadbed consisted of tree trunks, with piles driven into the marshes and low-lying soft spots. Covered with a layer of gravel, sand or dirt, such a roadbed was supposed to provide a firm and relative smooth surface, but the rotting of the wooden base, erosion of the surface and gradual subsidence of long stretches into the soft, marshy soil, kept it in a permanent state of disrepair. Important Russian secondary roads lacked any roadbed and were simply a cleared expanse on which construction and cultivation were forbidden. The absence of any standardisation helped to ensure great variety in European roads. In the kingdom of Naples land communications were so bad that it was easier to ship olive oil than take it across the country by cart. In contrast the roads in the Austrian Netherlands were both relatively good and well maintained. In France the transportation networks were substantially denser and more interconnected north of a line stretching from Geneva to St Malo than south of it. There was no integrated French national framework. Poor roads led to long and unpredictable journeys that strained individuals, damaged goods and tied up scarce capital in goods in transit. The bad Portuguese roads ensured that the 350 km journey between Lisbon and Oporto took about a week. The newly crowned Adolphus Frederick of Sweden when touring his territories was forced in 1752 to abandon his plan to return from Finland along the shore of the Gulf of Bothnia, because of the difficulty of crossing the rivers, the bad state of the roads and the impossibility of finding sufficient horses.

Some road improvements were made. A powerful incentive was governmental, with the need to move instructions, officials, armies and monarchs more swiftly. The improvements made on the St Petersburg-Moscow road between the death of Peter I (1725) and the 1760s, including the construction of bridges, reduced the journey time over its 825 km from five weeks to two. It is clear that economic motives also lay behind much road improvement, particularly when, as in northern Italy, different states would gain from any shift in trade routes. In 1748 over 500 labourers were employed in building a new road from Bologna to Florence which it was hoped would improve trade between Lombardy and Tuscany. Six years later the Austrian government were worried about the effects on their possession of Milan of Genoese plans to build a major road from their port of Sestri to Parma. By the end of the century there were signs of improvements in areas such as Spain, France (particularly Languedoc) and Savoy. The École des Ponts et Chaussées established in Paris in 1747 was partly responsible for the development of French bridge-building in the second half of the century. However, in general road transportation was still bad. Main roads were often still primitive, that between Verviers and Aachen in 1785 being still in part 'a narrow sandy lane'. There were major gaps, such as between Provence and Genoa, that prevent any depiction of an integrated system. The enormous effort that was required for those that were built, for example the mountain road over the Col de Tende between Nice and Turin taking 17 years to build, helps to explain the relative absence of significant change. In Britain the government played a far smaller role. A sizeable network of 'turnpikes' was created, radiating from London by 1750 and from the major provincial centres by about 1770. The main impetus for this came from trade and the desire of local merchants and manufacturers for growth.

The difficulties and cost of road transport helped to ensure that much was moved by sea or river. A Tuscan government inquiry in 1766 found that it cost as much to move goods overland from Pescia to Altopascio as on the water route from Altopascio to Livorno, which was six times as far. Water was particularly favourable for the movement of heavy or bulky goods, such as building stone from Savoy to Lyons. In 1703 the Swedes used the Vistula to move their heavy baggage and artillery in Poland. But the river system was not always helpful: many rivers were not navigable and transport was often only easy downstream. Furthermore, rivers did not always supply necessary links. This was clear in the case of St Petersburg, separated by the nearby continental divide from the Volga and Dnieper river systems that provided much of the rest of western Russia with a good network of trade routes.

There was little improvement in the condition of European marine transport during the century. It still remained heavily dependent on the weather, as Charles XII of Sweden discovered when a storm disrupted the movement of troops from Sweden to her Baltic provinces in October 1700. The seasonal variation of insurance rates reflected the vulnerability of wind-powered wooden ships, which had not yet reached their mid-nineteenth-century levels of design efficiency. Sea travel was very slow compared sith what it was to become in the following century. However, it was the cheapest method for the movement of goods and the sea brought together regions, such as south-western Scotland and eastern Ireland, or north-western Spain and western France, whose road links to their own hinterlands were poor.'
(source: J.Black:'Eighteenth Century Europe 1700-1789',1990)

So it is rather surprising that without constant repairing your roads, mines and irrigation works, public works in CIV are blessed with some 'divine' imperishability. One of the main causes of the decline of the Sumerian civilization was salination of their irrigated fields.
Until the Mongol conquests the Middle East and Persia were always the 'heartland of cities'. Actually the region has even today not yet truly recovered from the Mongol pillaging in the later Middle Ages! After the Thirty Years War(1618-1648), the recovery of Germany lasted about a century and until the nineteenth century it remained a economic and cultural backwater. And what about the South after the American Civil War...?

[Adm.Naismith]

I agree with most of post here:

a) pillaging isn't too difficult, but it should take some time. I don't care of a turn reproduced as a whole year or more, I mean in gameplay effect a turn is the smallest slice of time, and sometimes it's not long enough.
If it's not unbalancing, I suggest to make pillaging costs 1MP: it's fair with artillery bombarding (as in SMAC) spending its movement point; it make more effective pillagin by horseman or fast units in general (think about hordes of Mongols), because they can spend 1MP reaching the tile, then the second MP pillaging. Next turn they can try to flee away from your vengeance

b) pillaging can give you some immediate return, but not so many (you aren't pillaging a main town, just terrain enhancement and basic villages/structures). I suggest you represent this by removing support cost from that pillaging unit that same turn or the next (chose the best for gameplay and/or development).

I mean, a unit costing your supporting cities a "coin and shield" will cost nothing the turn it pillage a square (it use money, food and resources razed from that square). If that unit is already supported for free... they keep the gold for personal premium, sorry

This is interesting IMO, because represent a way to survive for a unit below the ideal "supply line": again, it somewhat reproduce nomadic tribes of warriors, barbarians and collateral damage usually inflicted by passage of troops on enemy territory.

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Admiral Naismith AKA mcostant

[Grumbold]

Kroeze makes my point for me, in a roundabout way. Until metalled roads become the norm, there is almost nothing you can do to a road to make it less efficient than it already is. Dropping a few trees across it is insignificant in terms of armies moving large distances. The armies are usually far too concerned with using the roads for their own movement and supplies. The Roman roads in Britain survived almost completely intact until they were resurfaced as metalled roads despite centuries of warfare. If it was viable and strategically beneficial to dig them up during a war I am sure someone down the centuries would have done so.

That is why I suggested the possibility of allowing them to be pillaged but esily replaceable - the game could apply all the negative effects of having the roadways "cut" but they would be relatively simple to put back into use once the enemies are driven off. In the modern era the military may mine the roads but they only demolish key choke points like bridges. Even then enough supports remain that combat engineers can usually get a temporary surface in place very swiftly.

[Adm.Naismith]

quote: Originally posted by S. Kroeze on 05-14-2001 05:01 AM It seems to me some people here have a most distorted image of the technical possibilities of pre-industrial societies. Here is a quotation about road building, communication and travel in 18th-century Europe(!). Though some progress had been made, distance was still a restrictive factor to the exercise of power. So it is rather surprising that without constant repairing your roads, mines and irrigation works, public works in CIV are blessed with some 'divine' imperishability. One of the main causes of the decline of the Sumerian civilization was salination of their irrigated fields. Until the Mongol conquests the Middle East and Persia were always the 'heartland of cities'. Actually the region has even today not yet truly recovered from the Mongol pillaging in the later Middle Ages! After the Thirty Years War(1618-1648), the recovery of Germany lasted about a century and until the nineteenth century it remained a economic and cultural backwater. And what about the South after the American Civil War...?

S.Kroeze is back! Hi!

Sorry, I kept my previus post in edit so far I miss yours.
Sure you have a point (but you seem to forget all Roman empire work on roads, most of them survived till today and still used somewhat in Italy and part of Europe).
Rivers where so relevant it's a pity Civ can't reproduce them at the proper scale. Sea transport where the same, and IMHO it's strange to have to build a caravan in Civ II, then embark it on a ship to reach another port: heck, transport ships did the job pretty well by themselves!
Ports where the keys of the transport system, not a caravan/truck I can embark/disembark anywhere on a coast!

Maintenance cost of roads is historically correct and interesting, but may be too much to handle for Civ III: how do you suggest to account it? (You mentioned Public Works). Civ/SMAC already has inefficiency in trade, if I rememer correctly: that can include road maintenanc, to some extent.

If another solution is needed, I can suggest a list of road path, named City to city and City to Colony, as expensive as long they are. Cost must be payed by national treasure, not by every city.

Dead end road an internal minor road (e.g. from a city to a fort) are support free, for sake of simplicity and low micromgmt.

Another way to compute costs could be to simply sum number of tiles crossed by road inside borders, then multiply it by number of coins/squares and round the result. I know new rules limits border to developed cities, hence reduce costs for not developed/new ones. I'm not sure, but it could be a right rule for not killing early Civ development.

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Admiral Naismith AKA mcostant

[JamesJKirk]

Would it be a good idea for in the modern era to have battles taken place on land tiles destroy the tile, as has been much the case in the real world?

[SerapisIV]

Which tile gets destroyed? The tile on which the loser is on, or the tile of the defender, on which the battle takes place?

[Cyclotron]

quote: That is why I suggested the possibility of allowing them to be pillaged but esily replaceable - the game could apply all the negative effects of having the roadways "cut" but they would be relatively simple to put back into use once the enemies are driven off. In the modern era the military may mine the roads but they only demolish key choke points like bridges. Even then enough supports remain that combat engineers can usually get a temporary surface in place very swiftly.

That sounds like my "damaged tile" idea!

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"Third option, third option!"
Let's have civ bonuses that YOU control!

[Grumbold]

I think I sneaked you by two posts with the "easier to put back" reference unless you mentioned this in another thread. Byt hey, if they implement it I'm not going to insist on the credit

The only think I don't like about your damaged tile post is the idea that you can then pillage a pillaged square and totally destroy the roads. I don't know of any historical example of a time when an army completely obliterated any large sections of road. You either occupy the ground and inhibit movement or you don't.

[Sava]

I don't see how you could pillage a dirt road or path, but during the Civil War, General Sherman destroyed Southern rail lines by heating them and them bending them into circles. In WWII, Allied Thunderbolts armed with 6 Browning .50 caliber machine guns disrupted Nazi rail lines in air raids.

Just look at it logically, people. Can you burn a farm? Yes! Can you destroy a dirt road? I don't see how, but you can occupy it and disrupt trade. Can you destroy rail? Yes! Can you destroy a mine? Yes! During long sieges in the Middle Ages, armies pillaged farms, starving the people held up in castles.

I'd like to see pillaging, but keep it realistic. Roads should be immune to pillaging. Later in the game, you should be able to destroy bridges using explosives and by bombing raids.

[JMarks]

quote: Originally posted by SoulAssassin on 05-14-2001 03:35 PM I don't see how you could pillage a dirt road or path, but during the Civil War, General Sherman destroyed Southern rail lines by heating them and them bending them into circles. In WWII, Allied Thunderbolts armed with 6 Browning .50 caliber machine guns disrupted Nazi rail lines in air raids. Just look at it logically, people. Can you burn a farm? Yes! Can you destroy a dirt road? I don't see how, but you can occupy it and disrupt trade. Can you destroy rail? Yes! Can you destroy a mine? Yes! During long sieges in the Middle Ages, armies pillaged farms, starving the people held up in castles. I'd like to see pillaging, but keep it realistic. Roads should be immune to pillaging. Later in the game, you should be able to destroy bridges using explosives and by bombing raids.

It seems like there should be levels of roads based on what I've heard. Especially concerning the varying qualities of roads. Can a dirt path be destroyed? No, but a Roman road can, a modern road can. Large streaches don't have to be pulled out, just take out one tile. Hey, if you want to spend years doing so, take out the whole thing, but who'd want to do that?

[Theben]

A dirt path can have obstacles placed on it and be plowed up, as well as be mined.

[Cyclotron]

quote: Originally posted by Grumbold on 05-14-2001 03:23 PM I think I sneaked you by two posts with the "easier to put back" reference unless you mentioned this in another thread. Byt hey, if they implement it I'm not going to insist on the credit

Yeah, I think I'm basically just voicing your opinion... I think I said something about it before, but I haven't really been preaching it. You can have the copyright if they make one...

quote: The only think I don't like about your damaged tile post is the idea that you can then pillage a pillaged square and totally destroy the roads. I don't know of any historical example of a time when an army completely obliterated any large sections of road. You either occupy the ground and inhibit movement or you don't.

This is true, but you have to be able to destroy roads. It just isn't sound gameplay to build roads that last forever. For ease of use, I think it has to be this way.

In addition, tying my (our!) idea into the idea of getting money or support for pillaging, damaged tiles would not yeild anything if destroyed. Obviously, only pillaging intact improvements gives you anything.

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"Third option, third option!"
Let's have civ bonuses that YOU control!

[Mo]

Roads can easily be pillaged by laying some trees down, putting a bolder in its path. However I think that when a "friendly" unit moves onto the tile it should automatically repair it. So all the pillaging does is prevent it from functioning as a road until a friendly unit moves onto it and restores it. I would justify this by saying that in normal movement you have to move obstacles out of your way, so it shouldn't be a problem to remove a few blockages on a road.

[Guildenstern]

quote: Originally posted by Grumbold on 05-14-2001 06:26 AM In the modern era the military may mine the roads but they only demolish key choke points like bridges. Even then enough supports remain that combat engineers can usually get a temporary surface in place very swiftly.

I think that that is a good point. It should be an action for the engineer unit. Mines are also a good idea. They could destroy trade routes (trucks blow up) and sea lanes (ships get sunk). You could even incorperate a "mine free zone" treaty!

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"We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another." -Jonathan Swift