Should units always do a minimum of 1 damage?

crossmr

Warlord
Joined
Jul 29, 2007
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Seoul, South Korea
If there is a huge disparity between unit strengths..should the loser always do 1 damage?
I finally decided to go for the new world in my latest game, because I had no aluminum. I sent over a tank, a destroyer, and a settler. I couldn't get my settler near the aluminum, because as my destroyer pulled up to the cost, which had a kind of inlet, I could spot at least a dozen barbarian units. They just kept coming.
Having been untouched all game, there were several camps there, and they'd just been spawning units non-stop.
Eventually I had to just build my city on a small island near there, buy a couple paratroopers, didn't want to risk them getting picked off by boats, and then spend like 100 turns cleaning the area out.
It was like some kind of horrid meat grinder game. I had to pull the units back several times, and buy land across the channel (it was only 2 hexes wide) so they could heal in territory for a bonus, and even pull the destroyer back. Why? Because there were times when they were putting 3 or 4 archers along the cost and just hammering it.
But every fight was trivial. Should an archer really even be doing 1 damage to a destroyer?
Should guys with clubs really being doing 1 damage to modern armor? It was just unnecessarily tedious. When I fought the barbain musketmen, I could see allowing them to do damage to the paratroopers, and possibly the pikemen to the paratroopers. but really they should have been just cutting through the barbarians, which is even more annoying because at 30 xp, they stop getting xp from barbarians which meant for a lot of this time, I was getting no reward, despite taking heavy damage over time.
 
To see how barbarians can destroy modern military units, you can watch Star Wars: The Return of the Jedi.

Evoks ftw. :)
 
To see how barbarians can destroy modern military units, you can watch Star Wars: The Return of the Jedi.

Evoks ftw. :)

Yeah. no.
It's sketchy at best and actually lead by intelligent people. There really isn't much justification on how a bow and arrow can damage a destroyer.
 
There's always 1 damage so you can't go destroy an entire empire with a single unit. For example, in my very first game back at September 2010, I managed to bring down the whole Aztec empire with only one infantry unit.

It is for tatical combat and not ''I'm going to bring down the entire world with my GDR!'' Or at least I think so.
 
Think of it more like this;
The arrows are not damaging the destroyer. But the fact that the destroyer is under attack by archers has confused the crew somewhat and disrupted them a little. This is represented in game by 1 point of damage, which is healed by spending a turn having the crew regain their composure.
 
I'm against the minimum damage. I'm fine with fractional damage getting probabilistically rounded (so 0.1 damage would turn into 0 damage 90% of the time, and 1 damage 10% of the time).
 
Think of it more like this;
The arrows are not damaging the destroyer. But the fact that the destroyer is under attack by archers has confused the crew somewhat and disrupted them a little. This is represented in game by 1 point of damage, which is healed by spending a turn having the crew regain their composure.
That's some serious apologist reasoning there.

There's always 1 damage so you can't go destroy an entire empire with a single unit. For example, in my very first game back at September 2010, I managed to bring down the whole Aztec empire with only one infantry unit.

It is for tatical combat and not ''I'm going to bring down the entire world with my GDR!'' Or at least I think so.

But at the same time it unfairly penalizes the player with the more powerful units. if some empire has a ton of units, but has technologically fallen behind, it can still be a serious invasion problem. We expect things like tanks to roll over people with sticks, and we expect them to be none the worse for it.

I think if one side has more than 10x the strength of the other, there really should be a percent, say 50%, chance that they take no damage, and archers/crossbows should never be able to damage modern naval units.

And if that's not the case, then we need to still be able to acquire XP from fighting barbarians past level 3. It's still time consuming, and even potentially dangerous since you can someone send a modern unit to attack a barb on a hill only to find after he's slaughtered him there to be several archer units on the other side ready to slice him up in one turn.
I had modern armor, 2 paratroopers supported by a destroyer. They really should have had no issues clearing that area, but just being constantly worn down made it ridiculously slow going.
 
a GDR walks into a bar, and encouters 10 archers that suddenly want to fight him. The GDR kills one archer (taking 1 damage.) He then gets killed by the other 9 archers

Firaxis: THIS IS BALANCED LOL

I think it's inherently stupid that the damage system is based on luck, and not simple number comparison. I also think the damage system would be dramatically improved if everyone's health points were set to 100. Damage done is also X10 but what previously was rounded up now is not. Then minute differences as well as large gulfs in power are accurately represented.

In fact, the large part luck plays in civ 5 is idiotic considering how much of a turn investment each unit is.
 
But at the same time it unfairly penalizes the player with the more powerful units. if some empire has a ton of units, but has technologically fallen behind, it can still be a serious invasion problem. We expect things like tanks to roll over people with sticks, and we expect them to be none the worse for it.

I think if one side has more than 10x the strength of the other, there really should be a percent, say 50%, chance that they take no damage, and archers/crossbows should never be able to damage modern naval units.

And if that's not the case, then we need to still be able to acquire XP from fighting barbarians past level 3. It's still time consuming, and even potentially dangerous since you can someone send a modern unit to attack a barb on a hill only to find after he's slaughtered him there to be several archer units on the other side ready to slice him up in one turn.
I had modern armor, 2 paratroopers supported by a destroyer. They really should have had no issues clearing that area, but just being constantly worn down made it ridiculously slow going.

Well, this is a gameplay vs realism issue.

Let's consider that you have a city with 80 defense and you're fighting warriors and archers. Even if they managed to bring down the city's HP to 1, it is still impossible to take the city for the attacking side. A warrior with 6 strength will be killed by a 80-defense city if the warrior tries to capture it.

However, if the tecnological advantage is not so huge, then we have a problem. A city in the modern era (let's say, 1930AD) could be taken by an army with cannons and riflemen. I think the game is programed so you can't say ''Nah, they're primitive. No big deal''.

The lower their tecnology, the lower the risk. But you must stay alert anyway.

In the situation you mentioned... Well, defense is always easier than attacking. However, it is actually incredible that they managed to slow you down. But I still agree on having always 1 damage. Maybe this was one of those times in History that an army out-teched managed to survive for that long. I don't know what else to say.

About getting more XP against barbarians past level 3... I'm agree. But I would put ''1 XP for each primitive unit killed''.

(Sorry for bad English, and sorry if I didn't express myself well.)
 
No it's lame.
At a certain point, units shouldn't do any damage at all.
Archers shouldn't be able to even hurt a tank for example.
 
However, it is actually incredible that they managed to slow you down.
It's not at all given the huge volume of barbarians I was facing.
There were several camps repeatedly pumping out units for the entire game. There must have been well over 50 barbarians in the area I landed, and a lot of them were ranged units. Despite fighting primitives, due to the soldiers and tanks getting hammered by 3 or 4 range units in a turn I had to frequently pull back and heal a unit. Of course while i'm busy healing, the 4 camps are spawning more units and sending them in our direction.
It took a ridiculous amount of time to clear the area, which really shouldn't have happened.We might also consider giving modern units bonus attacks vs primitives. At least we could steamroll through a few range units and significantly reduce the extra damage we're taking.
 
It's not at all given the huge volume of barbarians I was facing.
There were several camps repeatedly pumping out units for the entire game. There must have been well over 50 barbarians in the area I landed, and a lot of them were ranged units. Despite fighting primitives, due to the soldiers and tanks getting hammered by 3 or 4 range units in a turn I had to frequently pull back and heal a unit. Of course while i'm busy healing, the 4 camps are spawning more units and sending them in our direction.
It took a ridiculous amount of time to clear the area, which really shouldn't have happened.We might also consider giving modern units bonus attacks vs primitives. At least we could steamroll through a few range units and significantly reduce the extra damage we're taking.

So it was 3 units versus 50 barbarians. So the carpet of doom actually exists! :lol:

OK, I think you didn't have enough units to handle it. And also, you didn't have any artillery at all. Maybe those 50 barbarians represent about 500.000 barbs, versus 7.500 soldiers of your side. This was way too extreme to pull it off with 3 units. Try using artillery, naval units. bombers... Or try to flank them. Look for their camp and use your support units to clean up that area.

Spoiler :
But if anything works, you can always nuke them!!! :rolleyes:
 
So it was 3 units versus 50 barbarians. So the carpet of doom actually exists! :lol:

OK, I think you didn't have enough units to handle it. And also, you didn't have any artillery at all. Maybe those 50 barbarians represent about 500.000 barbs, versus 7.500 soldiers of your side. This was way too extreme to pull it off with 3 units. Try using artillery, naval units. bombers... Or try to flank them. Look for their camp and use your support units to clean up that area.

Spoiler :
But if anything works, you can always nuke them!!! :rolleyes:

Because I was busy on the main continent. Satellites popped and show me some aluminum, so I headed over with a destroyer, tank and settler. I didn't know how many barbs were there, and it would have taken far too long to put together several other units to send over, so I spent the gold I could afford on a couple extra units and took them.

But again, the entire issue was utterly weak units simply wearing down advanced fighters that they had no business damaging. it wasn't 50,000 barbarians, it was 1 squad vs 1 squad. Flanking them would do nothing because they're already doing min damage, and I'm doing max damage. I knew where their camps were, it was a matter of fighting through to them. Until I called in the paratroopers my tank couldn't even make more than a hex or two headway. I'd like to see a tank be able to say attack 3 barbs and at the end of the turn maybe take 1 damage for the effort. That would be far more realistic, because right now the system is more annoying than practical.
 
"The hell of it was that a nineteenth-century bullet or even a Stone Age spear could still kill a twenty-third-century marine. It shouldn't. It should not be allowed. And that was it — it was your sense of superiority that killed you."
— Tour Of The Merrimack: The Myriad

Believe it or not, a sword slash, a bow shoot or a club swing as still just as deadly today as they were centuries ago.
Weapons keep getting easier and easier to use (a handgun is much easier than a crossbow, which is absurdly much easier than a bow), but the increase in damaging power is pretty much overkill as far as human targets go.
If a modern squad of soldiers comes under multiple volleys of arrows, there's bound to be casualties, I believe.

But them there's the matter of vehicles. I could, possibly, understand that a constant volley of arrows would pick apart some of the crew in a battleship at times, or that some "lucky" arrows could damage a tank.... But yeah, against this type of target, I believe primitive attacks should usually deal 0 damage. A decimal number would be nice here, if it was possible.


From a game design point of view, I believe 0 damage isn't good. Once again, I believe a decimal amount would be the ideal here, so that focus firing with multiples primitive units against a single modrn target during a round would total to about 1 or 2 damage.
 
But again, the entire issue was utterly weak units simply wearing down advanced fighters that they had no business damaging. it wasn't 50,000 barbarians, it was 1 squad vs 1 squad. Flanking them would do nothing because they're already doing min damage, and I'm doing max damage. I knew where their camps were, it was a matter of fighting through to them. Until I called in the paratroopers my tank couldn't even make more than a hex or two headway. I'd like to see a tank be able to say attack 3 barbs and at the end of the turn maybe take 1 damage for the effort. That would be far more realistic, because right now the system is more annoying than practical.

I understand you. How come some arrows can do real damage to our modern military? We could say: because ammo and fuel runs out, accidents while fighting, ambushes... But then, we say: if we consider that -1 HP is because of losing fuel, then should our tanks lose 1 HP when moving? That would be stupid for gameplay reasons.

But without including that 1 damage, then you can go destroy an out-teched empire with a single unit. That's not strategy at all (and I find it boring). But with this, the situation you mentioned happens.

So... Gameplay or Realism? A huge issue, all right.

I agree on a tank killing three barbs with taking 1 damage. I also agree with those who say that units should have 100 HP (and 250 HP for cities).
 
...
I'd like to see a tank be able to say attack 3 barbs and at the end of the turn maybe take 1 damage for the effort. That would be far more realistic, because right now the system is more annoying than practical.

I agree with that, maybe some random roll. If the dammage ends in 0.3 then give it 30% chance to do 1 dammage.

If you had experienced mele units with march and medics, that whole situation would have been easier to handle. The 30xp limmit really is anoying. The suggestion to reduce xp after the 30 marker is actually really good.
Your story tempts me to try something similar with Monty.

Historically more advanced units have been able to face vastly suerior numbers without being decimated like this, just look at something like the Battle of Alesia
 
Believe it or not, a sword slash, a bow shoot or a club swing as still just as deadly today as they were centuries ago.
Weapons keep getting easier and easier to use (a handgun is much easier than a crossbow, which is absurdly much easier than a bow), but the increase in damaging power is pretty much overkill as far as human targets go.
If a modern squad of soldiers comes under multiple volleys of arrows, there's bound to be casualties, I believe.
Yes, but clubs against automatic weapons is a no brainer. Yes, we could get into the whole ambush/etc scenario, but then you're really just reaching to try and justify a design choice.

While arrows still hurt, I guess the point is that well the gun powder units should be far more powerful than the archery units. Why don't gun powder units get a range attack? A gun can shoot as far as a bow..and is deadlier to a much farther distance. and archers upgrade into them..

So... Gameplay or Realism? A huge issue, all right.
It is, and I don't think it was handled right in this case.
 
Why don't gun powder units get a range attack? A gun can shoot as far as a bow..and is deadlier to a much farther distance. and archers upgrade into them..
Yeah, this I find weird, too. But mostly from a gameplay streamlining perspective, actually.
I believe the reasoning is that you can't shoot guns "upwards", like you can shoot arrows, and therefore bullets would most likely find obstacles before reaching their intended targets.
 
Our military forces like to pretend that sufficient technological advantage makes you invulnerable and none of our kids will die. The daily news says otherwise.
Where you find your realism differs from person to person.

If get yourself in a situation where your GDR can be attacked by 10 archers, you deserve to lose that GDR. Gameplay value decisions also differ from person to person.

Every battle is a risk and has consequences. I like that on both levels.
 
I can see the OP's point, but from a gameplay perspective, I think it's a necessary evil. You do need to give lower-teched units SOME chance of beating a higher-teched unit.
 
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