Rant Rant Rant AI builds crazy numbers of units Rant Rant....

Anyway, besides the normal issues, I'm getting very annoyed with how hard it is to tell how many units are in a stack. After 10 or so the list goes offscrean so its anyones guess what you're actually up against. If they are in a city where you have EP sure you can investigate, but that doesent usually happen. When a Stack of Death is coming for me I would very much like to know if its 40 or 140 units, and even more like to know what they are so I know how many units to designate to countering them.
Is there a key I'm missing?

Civ doesent seem to be good at handling large number of units, there are plenty of grouping keys ect to help out, but in general Civ puts more effort into the building game than the military game. Then because of the way the game goes the military is more important for winning hard levels than the building in some ways. I hope Civ V has a whole new combat model, perhaps something that is more tactics oriented than % chance oriented.

Really though, people have complained about random events skewing the gameplay of something that is a very tactical very not random game, but right from the get go it has a crucialy important battle mechanic based almost wholly on luck...

Does anyone have an idea for bringing back the no random battles feture from Civ II? That would at least be some improvement.

When the screen is too small for all the units to appear, they are marked by numbers. Something like:
Cavalry
Cavalry
Cavalry
Cavalry
Cavalry
Infantry
Infantry
Infantry
Infantry
Infantry
Infantry
Infantry
Infantry
Infantry
Infantry
Infantry
Infantry
Infantry
Artillery
Artillery
Artillery
Artillery (4), Machine guns (5), Marine (2)

Written like this, this stack contains 5 cav, 13 infantry, 7 artillery, 5 MG and 2 marines.

Thats helpfull, many thanks. It still means you have to count the rest, but at least there is a way to tell.

I still say its kind of skewed when a game like Mario relies wholly on skill and a game like Civ has a huge section designated to luck.

A hard limit of one military unit per empire population would make some sence, as it sits the soldiers just appear out of nowhere so there isnt any real (1G at worst) penalty for building sickening armies. In reality soldeirs dont come from nowhere and armies are not cheap to maintain.

I would like to use the python code mod (someone already did it, many thanks) to make a hard limit of 1 unit per tile (3 in a city just so you dont have to get anger just to build units) so that you really have a frontline and have to orginize your defence and invasion. It wouldnt be perfect but it would be beter. You would expect most your frontliners to die, and any unit you wanted to level would have to be put in a safer wave. Mounted units would tend to level more because they could hit and pull out, esp in you're own territory. And there really would be a battle line to push foreward and back as new waves are used and new units struggle to find the best defence or aggressive positions.

But I doubt its worth the effort till I get more MP people, I have a nasty feeling the AI would just stick 3 units in each city and stop building.

one thing that do bothers me about stacks, especialy my own...is that if you have over 60+ units in same square the unit icons keep piling up all way upscreen. Its irritating, specialy if you play with battle zoom on.

http://www.fileden.com/files/2007/9/23/1454304/blah.gif

There been times that gets past half screen blocking a lot of my view.... (>_>)

I agree entirely Lunatic. That is something that bugs me too, esp when you can hardly click a tile to the south for unit icons. I maintain the game was not really desinged for military like this, but becaue of how the game works you and the AI must have it.
Good settings by the way, though I'm not much of a marathoner and would probably go Epic prince or monarch.

If you play on higher graphic settings the unit icons are a bit smaller and have much longer rows so they don't stack as high. Example: a 60 unit stack would only be 2 rows high on my screen(1280x1024).

Widescreen FTW

Lunaticslave: wow. I never have stacks that big. I guess I've usually attacked way before I get stacks that big :)

I still say its kind of skewed when a game like Mario relies wholly on skill and a game like Civ has a huge section designated to luck.Uh, Mario is an ARCADE game! And if you don't want any luck, don't count on ever seeing a computer game with a world system much more complicate that chess (64 board locations, 32 pieces, precise scoring algorith, limited move choices)

Then maybe real life is skewed. For example in the American Revolution Washington & all his generals on American side attribute it to Divine intervention (luck) that the overnight/morning of their evacuation from Long Island in July 1776, a very unusual weather combination of 1) heavy fog and 2) atypical favorable winds that kept the british from sailing their warships up the channel, was the only thing that preserved the rebel army (and therefor the hopes of the revolution).

now I guess you can say that is meteorology and not luck, but unless you want to program in a weather model into civ & wait 2 hours for each battle to run :) we are stuck with luck.

Hey Hey, before random events where introduced the only active random factors in civ where the map layouts and the battles. Random maps are Random maps, and you can get around those by simply writing a map to play on.
Real Time Strategy games have for quite a long time not had random damadge numbers and have been reasonably successfull at complex tactical battles (albeit they tend to be very rock paper scissors). Even games like Fire Emblem that have random factors can have much more tactical depth than civ offers.

The Civ battle mechanic, while it has improved drastically each and every civ game, is still not a particularily good one. It lends itself to the Stack of Doom phenomnina that has been widely complained about long before I ever posted here. Its not just untactical, its un fun for a lot of players to sit and created these stacks and to face them being throwen at them by the AI. Ive seen plenty of calls for more feild combat ect.
You're right to say that there is an element of chance in any given battle, and that that can have a very large effect, but there is a lot of room for more orginization and strategy then what we now have as well.
I dont think I'm out of line saying that less random is beter though, its the direction the Civ programmers have been taking since Civ I. We all have heard too many time about a Civ I spearman killing a stack of tanks. II reduced that with an increased number of Seed calles per battle, III Filled out Exp levels a lot, and IV has become much more tolerable for chance as their algorthim gives <0.01% in a tank VS warrior situations.
Civ I wasnt built to focus on tactics, so a random system was tossed in, but as it progreeses its going to a much less random system with more strategy in combat as well as in Civ building, and I hope they continue to make it less random as the serise progresses. The Randomess is becasue of how the serise is developed, not because Civ is too complex for a non or very limited random battle system.

I agree with Tlalynet, the combat system as it stands is unappealling, which is why I almost never even try to win by domination. The keys to victory are: start early, keep at high tech, build seige, destroy. Frankly it's not even hard, if you avoid biting off more than you can chew and keep your backside protected.

Though frankly, if it's trying to simulate real life it's not going to be like an RTS, in real life the most important factors are economics and productive capacity, not really tactics. So really Civ should attempt less 1v1 fighting and permit stack combat. You'd still have stacks of doom, I suppose, but it would go much quicker and the game would hopefully not completely revolve around collateral damage like it does now.

I agree with Tlalynet, the combat system as it stands is unappealling, which is why I almost never even try to win by domination. The keys to victory are: start early, keep at high tech, build seige, destroy. Frankly it's not even hard, if you avoid biting off more than you can chew and keep your backside protected.

Though frankly, if it's trying to simulate real life it's not going to be like an RTS, in real life the most important factors are economics and productive capacity, not really tactics. So really Civ should attempt less 1v1 fighting and permit stack combat. You'd still have stacks of doom, I suppose, but it would go much quicker and the game would hopefully not completely revolve around collateral damage like it does now.I agree to some degree, it might be more appealing to create abstract "armies" which you can build in strength over time and weaken through attrition but never get fully destroyed, and you managed only strategically ("put on this front" or something) and not tactically at all -- making you more of a Leader (you just approve spending and declare war and peace) and not a general (directly ordering soldiers in the field), but ... since the way the series has worked since 1989 is with combat revolving around 1v1, with specialized units countering each other, I would not hold my breath :)

Paydro:
I agree, especially with the importance of economic and productive capacity. I think that is already simulated farily well, although it is a little too easy to maintain huge huge armies especailly late game where the AI often sends 80-120 units after me. Ugh, 3.13 fixed a lot of things, but the hostile AI changes have made my peacefull games a pain in the ass especially when I want to do something like a culture victory with only 3 cities. I just cant make enough troops to counter.

MarkM:
I think a high level tactical situation like you describe would suit the Civ series excelenty. Though I agree that it probably wont be implemented in any new gen Civ game anytime soon. I think a lot of builder players especailly would be happy with that. I'm already imgining a lead from the feild option for more warlike players where civ development goes to AI governers and battles go right to the players hand. Oh well.
Im glad for a good conversation about it anyway.

Tlalynet - the irony is that the game which Sid has said originally inspired him (besides the old PDP game "Empire") -- the board game "Civilization" (duh!) actually already had an abstract military conflict simulation mechanic. Sid consciously gutted it & put in its place the rock-paper-scissors we have today in its place. I'm guessing this was driven by sales concerns (I don't think SimCity had validated the idea of a strategy game without a concrete conflict mechanic yet)

Description/Review of Civilization board game (1981) from BoardGameGeek that succinctly summarizes military conflict mechanic (http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/77444)

That is a very intresting tidbit. I wonder if he will ever take it back.

That is a VERY abstract battle mechanic, Pop vs Pop untill there is no conflict. Its good as a game mechanic though, but I can kind of see why it wasnt used in the Civ seriese. Armies should cost population and food to maintain as well as the pithence of commerce we now pay. And a more general leader position would be beter in a lot of ways as well.

Hey Hey, before random events where introduced the only active random factors in civ where the map layouts and the battles. Random maps are Random maps, and you can get around those by simply writing a map to play on.
Real Time Strategy games have for quite a long time not had random damadge numbers and have been reasonably successfull at complex tactical battles (albeit they tend to be very rock paper scissors). Even games like Fire Emblem that have random factors can have much more tactical depth than civ offers.

The Civ battle mechanic, while it has improved drastically each and every civ game, is still not a particularily good one. It lends itself to the Stack of Doom phenomnina that has been widely complained about long before I ever posted here. Its not just untactical, its un fun for a lot of players to sit and created these stacks and to face them being throwen at them by the AI. Ive seen plenty of calls for more feild combat ect.
You're right to say that there is an element of chance in any given battle, and that that can have a very large effect, but there is a lot of room for more orginization and strategy then what we now have as well.
I dont think I'm out of line saying that less random is beter though, its the direction the Civ programmers have been taking since Civ I. We all have heard too many time about a Civ I spearman killing a stack of tanks. II reduced that with an increased number of Seed calles per battle, III Filled out Exp levels a lot, and IV has become much more tolerable for chance as their algorthim gives <0.01% in a tank VS warrior situations.
Civ I wasnt built to focus on tactics, so a random system was tossed in, but as it progreeses its going to a much less random system with more strategy in combat as well as in Civ building, and I hope they continue to make it less random as the serise progresses. The Randomess is becasue of how the serise is developed, not because Civ is too complex for a non or very limited random battle system.



You should go play online a little...Man would you be raped.

Stacks are the way to go. Mixing units together to face all kind of opposition. Field combat? why would you simply send 1-2-3 untis at a time into enemy land? that would be really easy to kill and simply would give the defender easy XP. If you are complaining about it and saying you cant build enoug hunits to fight them, well then obviously the CPU is doing good since its killing you. Its much harder to kill a mega stack than saly small groups of units. In the late game you have bomber and advanced artillery. You could slay any stacks with that.

Playing "3 city challenge"...of course other nations could kill you. They outproduce you, what do you expect?

Paydro:
I agree, especially with the importance of economic and productive capacity. I think that is already simulated farily well, although it is a little too easy to maintain huge huge armies especailly late game where the AI often sends 80-120 units after me. Ugh, 3.13 fixed a lot of things, but the hostile AI changes have made my peacefull games a pain in the ass especially when I want to do something like a culture victory with only 3 cities. I just cant make enough troops to counter.

MarkM:
I think a high level tactical situation like you describe would suit the Civ series excelenty. Though I agree that it probably wont be implemented in any new gen Civ game anytime soon. I think a lot of builder players especailly would be happy with that. I'm already imgining a lead from the feild option for more warlike players where civ development goes to AI governers and battles go right to the players hand. Oh well.
Im glad for a good conversation about it anyway.

Again, you need to go play online. You would learn how to defend yourself and you would also learn playing a simple builder game is boring. The real fun of this game comes from conquest.

When i play offline now, i always rape the AI. I won an earth game on domination (immortal level) with Rome by killing 15 civs before spaceship. Its much more fun to do that than playing 3 city challenge culture victory...

The problem is that wars take FOREVER. I can complete normal games in 4-5 hours if I stay peaceful, but even just taking over a neighbor or two and still winning without domination extends games to 10-12 hours. So we're talking about 6+ hours of just moving around units... why?

I know it's not likely to change, but it would make much more sense to have stacks attack as groups. The idea of dispatching units to "fronts" also is nice in that it would prevent the ridiculousness of having people walk around stacks to get to wherever they want to go, or units that can't effectively hurt one another in the field. However it would feel a little more "out of my control" than it should be, I think. Maybe we should go back to the days of being unable to move around an "enemy" unit?

Molson... did you read that post at all? He's saying the system is unrealistic and that the stack of doom is stupid and that there should be more combat outside of cities. At no time does he say he "can't" build stacks or that it's too hard or something... it's just a stupid mechanism to build this one giant army and march it from city to city conquering.

....okay captain hardass, you wreck the AI every time, us puny builder types must lose every game we play because we think stacks are unrealistic. Honestly, you're pasting us talking about realism and you post something that has nothing to do with it.

molson ... you do get that the answer for a person that doesn't like the tedium of building SOD is not that they should go to a playing environment (online) where they have absolutely no choice but to do what they just said they don't want to do ... right? I mean I know you want to brag & all, but your suggestion is basically at total odds with the Qs in this thread.

Just bored so commenting.
Not sure what size a unit would be in real life, but at least by the time you get to tanks, I figure it is about a 10,000 man unit of armor.

For BTS, the combat results overall seem to be fairly realistic, with occasional WTF. There must be some randomness to the combat as real life is not pure strategy by any means, in fact chaos theory seems to be the most applicable to real life combat theory in that the outcome is very likely to be between two possible extremes, but not go outside those extremes, it is the in-between that is hard to predict thus the chaos or random part of the equation.

As to maximum stacks, I would add in a little bit of the loss for stacking effect of the one scenario where you defend the cities, I can't remember the name of right now. Call it getting in the way and with enough targets you are bound to hit someone. I would not make it as drastic as the scenario had it, but maybe have it come up after the first 4-6 units.

Lastly, a thought about adding a more tactical combat would be to have a companion game that with an option set the units would transfer to that module to conduct the tatical battle, with the results transfering back after it is over. To work the best, the option would have three boxes, never, ask me, and always.

Just some thoughts,