Better combat

One of the areas of CIV that IMHO is least satisfying is the combat. It lacks the tactical finesse that could make combat much more interesting.

For the first time I've really agreed with Zouave when he in another thread suggested stacked combat added to the game. I 'd like to expand his idea, and therefore make a wish list for civ combat:

1) Different units should be affected differently by terrain. This can further be divided in three parts:

1a)Movement: Horse mounted units and mechanical should move slower than today in woods, jungle and mountains, and faster in the open.

1b)Defense: The defense bonus of terrain should be different for different units, and sometimes be negative as well. Horse mounted units should be severly penalized for defending in woods/jungle, but should get a bonus for defending in plains.

1c)Attack: The terrain a unit is attacking from should matter, and give an attack modifier similar to the defense modifier today. Attacking from higher terrain should give a bonus, attacking from woods/jungle should be negative for horse mounted units. Attacking from open terrain should be negative for most units (but not for horse mounted units). Cannons/Artillery should get attack bonus and increased range when stationed on hills/mountains and attacking down.

Combined, these three would make it important to use different units differently. No longer will only the ADM factor matter, but also how suited a unit is for the terrain the fight will be in. Cavalry will try to engage the enemy in grasslands and plains while the infantry will keep in the woods.
This will also open up for a lot of new units. There could be jungle fighters that fights/moves better in jungle, and other units that have advantage in mountaneous terrain.

2)Stacked combat. This was Zouave's idea, which I fully support (but maybe with some modifications). Two swordmen attacking together should be more powerful than two attacking individuall, and it should be more difficult to take out two spearmen in the same square than two in adjacent squares.
This can be accomplished by giving units that attack together an attack bonus: Two units could get the attack factor of the best unit + 50% of the attack factor of the second - Two swordmen would get a combined attack factor of 4.5. Similar bonus could be given to the defender.

There should also be a bonus for combined arms. Tanks are vulnerable without infantry support, so tanks stacked with infantry should fight better than if being alone (or with other tanks units only).

Another idea is to give units bonus for having flanking suppor, and to be punished for being outflanked (and even more for being surrounded): Give a defender an additional bonus for other friendly (or allied) units in adjacent squares (especially if those squares are also adjacent to the attacker), and give the defender bonus for friendly units in other squares adjacent to the defender.


These are things that would improve the combat for me. Now it is only a matter of cranking out the best attacking unit as fast as possible, and going straight for the enemy.


Btw, one thing I don't want "improved" is the fact that a spearman has 2% (or whatever it is) chance fo successfully defening against tanks. This is unrealistic, but balances another unrealistic feature of the game, the fact that there are nations using spearmen as defenders against tanks. The only improvement I'd like to see here was if Firaxis changed the art (and maybe changed the name) of the speraman when its nation reaches later ages, so that it is no longer reprsented as a spearman but rather as a ragged defender with some rifles and molotow coctails.

You're so right, in agreeing with me, that is.

STACK combat is far more realistic than one individual unit somehow singling out and attacking an individual defending unit.

A MILITARY leader (if we had them) could add his bonus to the entire stack, which would in fact replace the not very useful army.

We could give orders to the stack such as "fighting withdrawl"; "hold at all costs"; "double envelopment"; etc. The AI would do the same. The right tactical maneuver could save your army, or lose it; it could result in great victory, or a meaningless draw.

COMBINED ARMS stacks would be stronger than one type of unit. That is one reason I changed knights to 5.2.2. They now should travel with supporting pikemen and maybe some catapults to HOLD territory the knights took. Another example is that pikemen and musketmen were designed to fight in groups together, not separately - the Spanish tercio for instance. Of course there was also a big difference between the early musketmen with slow firing unreliable matchlocks, and the later bayonet-armed flintlock muskets that came around in the 18th century. See my, or Plutarck's LWC mod on the Completed Mods forum.

So my point about COMBINED ARMS stacks is also that, in the right proportion there should be a bonus to the entire stack: a Napoleonic era army would always be most effective when using cannon, musketmen (the more modern kind; see the above mods), and what amount to latter-day knights (cuirassiers).

Horse mounted units can only really defend well if dismounted and firing rifles, as I assume cavalry would do. Otherwise, all mounted units can in fact do is counter-charge an attacker, which would be easier in the open.

When the Soviets attacked Finland in WW II they quickly learned that too many tanks with not enough infantry made the tanks too vulnerable. BUT, whether or not we can assume the tank units in the game are the more developed form with more MOBILE attached infantry support is another matter. Certainly German panzers had large numbers of halftrack-mounted panzer grenadiers acompanying the tanks.

Yes, some tactical considerations, in part based on terrain, would also be nice.

We of course need more and more accurate units - see the above mentioned mods.

One thing is certain, the tedium of Modern period battles would be reduced with STACK battles. You say you want more control of the course of the fight? That could be achieved with orders being given in realtime to the stack as the battle progresses. As I remember, we were able to do that even in older games such as Kingmaker, for those who remember that depiction of the War of the Roses.

Anyway, maybe if some other company does Civ 4 we'll see it.

Originally posted by TheNiceOne
1a)Movement: Horse mounted units and mechanical should move slower than today in woods, jungle and mountains, and faster in the open.

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Are you sure about this? Movement is already considerably slower in the terrains you mention; I don't quite see the reason to increase this difference.

Otherwise, I agree with your points. Stack combat would give us both more realism and more elegant gameplay.

One problem is whether and when the attacker should be able to withdraw. It wouldn't be reasonable for the attacker not to be able to pull back at all (assume the stack contains slow units) since that would mean risking the entire stack at the moment of attack. If the attacker was allowed to withdraw during the battle (regardless of movement rates), that would undermine the advantages of fast units.

Originally posted by alver
Are you sure about this? Movement is already considerably slower in the terrains you mention; I don't quite see the reason to increase this difference.

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My reason is that horses sucks in woods and jungle, and should probably move slower than infantry in such terrain. Today, everyone moves slower in woods, but cavalry is still faster than infantry there.

My main reasoning is to get more diversion between unit types. Today, a knight has all three of the ADM factors one better than a swordman, so the use of a knight instead of a swordman is a no-brainer. If, however a swordman was better suited than the knight if the combat was in wood or jungle, then it would force you to use a more mixed force approach, and think more tactically about fighting the wars in terrain that are suitable for your units.

Otherwise, I agree with your points. Stack combat would give us both more realism and more elegant gameplay.

One problem is whether and when the attacker should be able to withdraw. It wouldn't be reasonable for the attacker not to be able to pull back at all (assume the stack contains slow units) since that would mean risking the entire stack at the moment of attack. If the attacker was allowed to withdraw during the battle (regardless of movement rates), that would undermine the advantages of fast units.

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Good point about withdrawal. A solution could be to allow all units to withdraw, but to increase the chance for faster units. Another factor could be to decrease the withdrawak chance if the unit has enemy units in other adjacent squares.

Fantastic ideas TheNiceOne and Zouave

You should also make it that tanks and other armoured vehicles like mech infantry cannot cross rivers unless there is a bridge. A good tactic for defenders would be to destroy all bridges, thus an all tank military would be useless unless they got workers up there....who would get killed by the enemy's infantry or other foot soldiers who can cross water.

Mountains can also play a bigger part in combat. Foot soldiers who are carrying projectile weapons eg. infantry, riflemen. They should have a bonus to other infantry and "Organic" units eg. calvary, pikemen ect. while fortified on the mountain. Bombers would be ineffective as they're not known for their accuracy, but any unit with the precision strike ability can take down MASSIVE amounts of health off entrenched units.

I agree that spearmen should change in modern time to mercanries.

btw I liked the fact that in civII the resistance became infrantry outside the city... much better.

Originally posted by Zouave
You're so right, in agreeing with me, that is.

STACK combat is far more realistic than one individual unit somehow singling out and attacking an individual defending unit.

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Just want to point out that 1 unit is not actually 1 Spearman etc. That's not how I see it anyway, 1 spearman is a regiment of spearman. (That's just how I see it...)

Anyway, all Ideas here are very good. I like em!


But one thing about these combined forces stacks; they must have a limit, otherwise it will always be the ones with the largest stacks that win, and that's not realistic (just because yiu have a large army, doesn't mean you are more strategic then your opponent). Maybe set the restriction pretty low, and then maybe set it so that you have to use units of several kinds.

I disagree comprehensively with everything TheNiceOne and Zouave have said. I could single each thing out and pick faults, but that would take all night.

When you have stacked units, you can use them each for their specific purposes and no bonuses are necessary. I think it's working nicely as it is. One thing that I think would be useful is a guerilla warfare option for infantry units, where they couldn't be seen (like subs)(also may depend on terrain but maybe not), and could get a surpise attack bonus. I guess you could make a unit that could do it (the paratrooper could actually be useful) uniquely. But that's the only place i see any detail left out, the rest have bonuses etc that account for any defence procedures. The move stuff in forests and mountains looks right to me too.

Originally posted by bobgote
I disagree comprehensively with everything TheNiceOne and Zouave have said. I could single each thing out and pick faults, but that would take all night.

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Ok, but let's look at the one argument you have against the idea:

When you have stacked units, you can use them each for their specific purposes and no bonuses are necessary. I think it's working nicely as it is.

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Well, take tanks as an example. When attacking a city (before mech inf/modern armour is abailable), I normally use tanks only, simply because they're the best attackers. The infantry may be moved in after the city is taken for defense, but they're not necessary for the attack.

In real life, this would be a suicde attack. Anyone trying to attack a city with tanks alone would suffer horrendous losses, since the tanks are much too vulnerable without infantry support, especially in a city.

In civ, you don't have to bother with the tactics of combined arms like this, nor with the fact that some unit types are handicapped in some types of terrain in real life. You may be happy with the way it is now, since more tactical depth in the combat makes the game as a whole more complicated. But civ's combat model in itself is quite boring and totally lacks variation or tactical depth.

TheNiceOne: I think your issue should be more with the AI rather than with the battle technique. It is tactically smarter to send mech inf. and artillery with your tanks. By sending just tanks, the AI should take the advantage and counter attack. The AI needs a bit of work, i admit, but the battle technique is just fine.

Also if you want me to gainsay your statements, give me a couple of points that you think are strong and I'll give you my opinion

Originally posted by TheNiceOne
I normally use tanks only, simply because they're the best attackers. The infantry may be moved in after the city is taken for defense, but they're not necessary for the attack.

In real life, this would be a suicde attack. Anyone trying to attack a city with tanks alone would suffer horrendous losses, since the tanks are much too vulnerable without infantry support, especially in a city.

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I think substantially increasing the shield cost of tanks would be sufficient to fix this particular problem. Generals wouldn't leave them in the open if they were expensive to replace.

Eerrrrr... Have you guys played Call To Power ? Because stacked combat was a lot like you want Civ fighting to be, with flanking unit being able to attack at the same time, long-range units having to be protected, etc.
It was great, by the way, and working fine. You had to have balanced armies in order to win. The only drawback was that stacking was limited to 12 units.

Maskerouge, it's been a while, and I can't remember how you could bring flanking units into the same attack in Call To Power. But it does seem easy enough, programming-wise. Just click the targeted enemy stack, click all your attacking units, and click "execute attack". I agree, the CTP system was nice, at least by comparison.

If the click-your-units-then-execute-attack system were used, it would be easy to implement "combined arms" type rules. One rule along that line that I'd like to see is spotters for aircraft or artillery bombardment. I.e., IF you have committed some ground troops to an attack, your bombardment has more effect on the enemy than it does otherwise. That would simulate not just spotters, but also the fact that it's a lot harder to lay at the bottom of your foxhole, not move, and not peek out, when the enemy soldiers could appear at the top of your foxhole at any moment.

Well another idea to add here.....how about combat engineers? Do special things like bridges to allow tanks and such to cross rives, make turrets in a terrain to increase an infantrys' units firepower during battle. and another COOL THING, APCs!!!!! mwehee!!!!! That'd be sweet! If you had APCs you should (with the exception of certain terrains) be able to transport troops super fast , although you may say something about railroad, I don't think an AI would have a train pick you up to transport around your guys to kill alll his cities (in other words railroads should not be used by the enemy in wartime). Just a few ideas I'd like to throw.

But one more question, don't armies allow you to stack?

Yes, armies allow you to stack, but this shouldn't be such a rare event as to have to wait for a great leader. Instead, as Zouave suggested:

A MILITARY leader (if we had them) could add his bonus to the entire stack, which would in fact replace the not very useful army.

And on APC's: Civ3 has 'em. They're called Mech Infantry.

TheNiceOne: Your suggestions are all pretty good. Making combat a lot more terrain dependent would add a lot to the game. However, IMHO, there are many improvements in the combat system that would be simpler and enhance game play at least as much. Let me give you examples:

1) The simplest fix: bring back the "odds window" before combat from SMAC. That was very useful. Of course, make that option removable in the preferences. I hate to calculate probabilities when I'm playing a game (but I understand that others might not want to see them, they want to keep that feeling of "it's just a game").

2) Another huge problem with Civ3: the lack of units. I'm not saying we need 2000 units or anything. Consider this: The game is separated into ages: ancient, medieval, industrial, modern. Anyone who's ever played civ3 will know that that's not the way it works. You've got:
- the preswordman era
- the swordman horseman era
- the knight era
- the cavalry era
- the era of tanks (and modern armor)

If you're a builder you might not agree but the bottom line is that in terms of combat, except in the ancient era, you only have one good attacking unit and one best defending unit. I guess this relates to what TheNiceOne was saying: it would be great to have a game where different situations require different units. Ok, there's also the artillery but considering how useless catapults and cannons are, artillery comes too late (and should have a range of 3!).

Consider the following example. What's the point of longbowmen? At 4/1/1, they are useless. One might argue that they don't require strategic resources but if your opponent has knights and you don't, you're toast anyway. So, why not have the longbowmen at 5/3/1 ? That way, they're slower than knights but at least they have a higher attack so then, you've got to make a compromise: speed or attack.

BTW, I know I can mod the game but I don't want to! (and that's not why I paid 50$).

3) But the absolute biggest problem with combat in Civ in my opinion is that most fights are to the death. I'm not saying that fast units should always pull back (actually that was a good improvement in that last patch because before, fast units were just too powerful and unbalanced). Has any of you ever played Panzer General II? That was an amazing war game. Basically, combat worked like this. Every unit had a number of health points (just like health in civ3 or the shield in SMAC). Say a unit with 10 points attacked another of 10. Then, say the attacker was strong and the defender weak (let's be simplistic here), then both sides would suffer losses to different degrees, say the attacking unit would lose 2 points and the defending one 5. Those numbers were not always the same but the stronger side almost always lost fewer units. Then, in the same turn, another unit could attack that defender and make them lose even more health points. Finally, after a third attack, you could completely destroy this defending unit. The next turn, you could go back to a city to heal your units. By the way, it was possible to lose an attacking unit (generally against a very strong defender who had more health points than you).

Basically, I would summarize this last paragraph by:
- when an attack occurs where both units are at full strength, neither units die (you need multiple attacks).

4) Make players pay for healing.

The way it is now is like this: you attack and say you lose. Then your attacking unit is destroyed and the defender (after a while) heals up and in fact, from the other side point of view, it's like the attack never happened. Or the other way around, I attack, win, conquer the city and two turns later, I'm ready for another one. Healing is completely unrealistic right now. There should be some sort of fee (either money or production) to heal your units.

5) Increase the speed of naval units and the range of airplanes. This has been talked about to death.

Those are easy to implement and (I think) would make improve the combat system. Just to complete on #3, that change potentially change the way we view combat in civ. Right now, war in civ goes like this: make a lot of units, throw them at your opponent and capture city. Repeat. It often comes down to "can you make enough knights (or any other best attacking unit) to keep the war going?". Units feel (and are) disposable. I'd like to see them become small batalions, my "friends", my beloved pets, each with a name.

6) Almost all suggestions listed above. Frankly, I've been thinking about this for a while but some of these ideas are just great. I think my ideas are (generally) easier to implement but the idea of terrain-related tactics, that's just great.

7) Have a more realistic point system than A/D/M. Maybe something simple like Att a city, Att in the open, Def in city and Def in the open. Or something more complex taking terrain into account. I'm not sure.

Anyone remember Master of Orion 2? The tactical combats in that game were great. A system like that or like Heroes of might and magic... I'm just day dreaming here. Thanks for reading.

Originally posted by Grey Fox
Just want to point out that 1 unit is not actually 1 Spearman etc. That's not how I see it anyway, 1 spearman is a regiment of spearman. (That's just how I see it...)

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That's the way it is. Even in medieval times, one archer cannot take over a town of 50,000 people.

Plume, the lack of units (and their too weak values) is a well known problem. See the Completed Mods forum: Plutarck's LWC mod added many units by hacking, and the mod I posted added new units by replacing ones that are useless or I don't want.

Firaxis made the progression of warfare quite simplistic.

Combat Engineers I first mentioned many months ago, and the Romans should certainly have them perhaps as a UU. They were masters at that, but such would require changes in the code. Combat engineers should be able to weaken fortresses and fortifications.

Don't expect Firaxis to bother.

phooey, my ideas blew up like artillery smoke

TheNiceOne, I would like the ideas for a multiplayer tactical wargame, but not a predominately singleplayer stategic game. I would like to see a tactical wargame with empire building components in it, I just rather not Civ become that game.

1)AI. It currently performs poorly, it would do even worse with more details. While the AI could be improved, I don't think people would enjoy the long wait between turns or the price tag required to make the between turns time bearable. Deep Blue required 32 Parallel RISC processors in order to play real time and defeat Kasparov. With all that processing power it only won 2 of the 6 games. This is a game limited to an 8x8 grid, 32 total pieces, 9 types of pieces, one victory condition, no stacking, no building, and concrete results. (No RNG, you move atop another piece- you win the battle.)

2) Scale. The scale just doesn't seem right for a tactical game to me. On one square you in the middle of the plains. Move one square and then your at a peak of a mountain. A unit is generally considered scaled larger than I would like for tactical considerations as well.

3) Turn Based implimentation. The current way it is implimented would favor who is "up" too heavily. It would need to be changed to a plot moves/give orders, resolve moves/combat simulatanious type of system to avoid that fovoratism.

I would prefer work be done to lessen the micromanaging required in Civ. Tell the governors to maintain WLTKD as long as growth is occuring, as long as no starvation, or even if starvation. Things like that.

PS. Realistically increased height would have negligable affect on the range of artillery. Nothing wrong if adding it for gameplay purposes, but not if trying to make it more realistic. I can see increasing the "to hit" probablities due to increased viewing distances.