Combat Resolution systems - what's your preference?

Quoted from the thread about naval combat:

Lexicus said:

But, it seems extreme to me because my puny human brain isn't good with probability

Also, to be clear I'm not faulting the RNG, I'm faulting the way combat works.

I agree with those who think that changing the way combat works to "smooth out" the results given, without changing the RNG, would be a good idea. I can understand those who disagree though.

Click to expand...

Exactly. The complaint about losing 3 90%+ odds battles in a row isn’t an RNG argument – it works, probably as it was intended to. It’s more that the way that combats are resolved isn’t to everyone’s liking. So, let’s look at the (other) options, for example:

1. Strongest unit always wins, and takes no damage.

2. Strongest unit always wins and takes a set amount of damage (proportionate to the ratio of the defenders strength to the attacker’s strength, for example)

3. Strongest unit always wins and takes a random amount of damage (degree of randomness can vary with relative strength of attacker and defender, or not)

4. Strongest unit usually wins, and winner takes no damage (the Civ1 model)

5. Strongest unit usually wins, and winner takes a set amount of damage (proportionate to the ratio of the defenders strength to the attacker’s strength, for example)

6. Strongest unit usually wins and winner takes a random amount of damage (degree of randomness can vary with relative strength of attacker and defender, or not) (This is the Civ4 model)

There are other ways to resolve combats – you could have units not battling to the death (like how flanking units can survive battles in Civ4, only all the time), or you could even have weaker units always winning in certain circumstances (like the first combat against barbarians in lower levels of Civ4). But for the sake of argument, let’s look at these 6 options.

Option 1 heavily favours the player with the stronger units and makes fighting and winning at a technological disadvantage nearly impossible, so that should be out of the mix.

Option 2 would work well for those who favour early rushes. With a small amount of units in play, a bad RNG outcome can ruin a game, but when you have a stack of 50 units, even 5 consecutive high-odds losses isn’t crippling. Option 2 would make rushes easier to plan for.

Example: AI has 4 defending Archers, you have 8 Swordsmen, you can calculate that each Archer will beat the first Swordman it faces, but will suffer enough damage to lose to the second Swordsman. If the AI defenders number more than half of the attackers, the attack will fail. Depending on the damage formula chosen, you could write programs to determine exactly how many units you need in a given situation, to attack or defend. Perhaps you’d need a dozen Chariots to beat 4 fortified CG1 Archers… or 16 Chariots, if the Archers are on a hill. Or just 4 Praetorians? It’d be rewarding for those players who worked to get into a winning position, but a bit predictable (read: boring).

Option 3 would add a degree of randomness. You’re still losing your first 4 Swordsmen against the 4 fortified Archers… and if you’re unlucky, one of the 4 Archers would suffer little or no damage, so it would still be stronger than the 4 remaining healthy Swordsmen. Like option 1, this favours the side with the stronger units.

Option 4 is the Civ1 model. I remember throwing several bombers at a Mech Inf fortified at the top of a mountain and not even scratching it, until eventually one lucky bomber would beat the odds and kill the MI. The model favours the side with stronger units, because the stronger units can’t be worn down by multiple attacks of weaker units. It was frustrating at times in Civ1, and it would be even worse if the units were stackable – a stack of fortified Protective Longbows might be effectively invulnerable until Cannon.

Option 5 is a middle ground to option 2 and option 6. You’re still going to lose some 99% battles and win some 1% battles, but at least you won’t have to deal with the “I lost three times and didn’t scratch the top defender” scenario.

Option 6 is what we have now in Civ4.

So - pick your preferred way to resolve combats in the poll above.

And I'll add this question: Is there a way to mod the way combats are resolved?

Current system is fine. Risk management makes the game interesting. Game should not be resolved by spreadsheets but rather by player. The backbone of CIV is to make interesting choices. Have a Plan B if Plan A fails. Ask any pokerplayer or daytrader about how important skills in moneymanagement (here: troops management) is, to survive in the game.

Lindsay40k has a well written post about how the alternatives will work out in the other thread.

I voted 6 from the list of options although I would like to see a system where if the strongest or even weaker (but close) unit loses the damage it does is more significant and less random than the current system. I think more combat rounds would achieve this without changing the current system much.

An option that isn't there and I would like to vote for is max number of combat rounds not fight to the death. I think this is more realistic and could be more fun.

Macksideshow said:

I voted 6 from the list of options although I would like to see a system where if the strongest or even weaker (but close) unit loses the damage it does is more significant and less random than the current system. I think more combat rounds would achieve this without changing the current system much.

An option that isn't there and I would like to vote for is max number of combat rounds not fight to the death. I think this is more realistic and could be more fun.

Click to expand...

EDIT: after rereading I think option 5 could be worth trying and achieve what I am hoping for. However I do like randomness

I would favour a system with two components:

The random victory is normalized to gradations of 5% probability, to line up with Human-manageable senses of chance. (People with faulty statistical intuition will still complain.) The odds calculator is tweaked to make small differences in strength not extremely counterbalancing, in contrast to the current system which awards (I believe) at least 67% chance to a stronger contender.

Then in addition to that, the amount of damage suffered depends on the difficulty of the fight, in general, with a probability distribution of compoundingly greater unlikelihood that a sure-victory might come with great losses. These losses could be capped, perhaps.

(Emergently, a dogpile of near technological power can take on a target, but numbers must more than make up for power.)

The RNG as it is just makes certain chancy scenarios stonecold kill games, and enables extremely cheesy victories in challenge/HoF contexts. As quote says, RNG is fine, but the combat is unlikeable.

I don't like making combat deterministic.

I think possibly a system where units do a variable amount of damage but don't always kill each other would be good, but I think to be balanced properly it would have to be coupled with changes to the healing system (ie, if units can't kill each other outright as easily, healing should cost something instead of just being a matter of waiting x turns).

Where is the "kiss and make up" option?

Probably on the the flip side of "the nuke them until they glow" option .

--option 7.8.7 (Dreamliner): If I win battle, I have sweet option to take enemy unit as slave (5 HP left, 0 promotions but free unit maintence.. for certain number of turns.. until that it should be dead anyway )

How do other TBSs resolve there battles? Anything interesting out there that you'd like to see in civ?

I can't remember which game this was from (some historical wargame, probably) but in that game, a defeated (defending) unit would withdraw from the tile instead of being destroyed, and the attacker would occupy the tile. It doesn't make sense that non-individual units should battle to the death, all the time - individual ships can be sunk, but defeated ground formations are almost never all killed/captured in battle.

I like the Civ5 style of combat best.

Heretic!!

Actually, Jackel has a bit of a valid point. While Civ 5 can barely hold my interest ( I only ply it because my youngest got it for me, and even then, heavily modded) for any length of time, the combat resolution is a bit better than the current RNG. Or to be fair, a bit more even in the outcome.
However, with that being said, the overall combat system itself in Civ V could use a helpful visit from Karadoc and Platy IMO.

6K Man said:

I can't remember which game this was from (some historical wargame, probably) but in that game, a defeated (defending) unit would withdraw from the tile instead of being destroyed, and the attacker would occupy the tile. It doesn't make sense that non-individual units should battle to the death, all the time - individual ships can be sunk, but defeated ground formations are almost never all killed/captured in battle.

Click to expand...

Reminds me of Pacific General, where ground units had a retreat chance if it was incurring heavy losses and had a free hex to move to. Else it would just surrender

Michkov said:

How do other TBSs resolve there battles? Anything interesting out there that you'd like to see in civ?

Click to expand...

Intelligent Systems' Advance Wars games basically has it like Civ V, only the lifespan of any unit is two attacks of similar calibre to itself (system gives an initiative bonus to the attacker), and random variation in damage (sustained) is wider at lower health, being basically deterministic for most of a unit's existence.

Civ V really could have used with making attacks actually possible. You wanna turtle up in this game, by Uranus, you can. In Civ IV it seems part of the design that you can sit in enemy territory infinitely just pillaging the countryside... my opinion is low enough that I think Civ V tweaking was done just not understanding how to actually fight a tactical battle.

I like the system in the Road to War mod where stacks kind of attack as a group, automatically doing damage in battles even when they were not ordered to attack. In regular civ, dislike how a stack of 10 units will beat a stack of 5 units almost all the time, but the attacker will lose about 5 units too! In open (non-siege) battles of history, dominant armies could often completely rout or kill the enemy with only minimal losses (like 5-1 death ratios), where it is kind of a subtraction problem in cIV. This is simulated well in Total War games where the player can take almost no casualties by simply surrounding and freaking out the enemy. cIV has no equivalent of this, so a battle between equivalent forces will turn in to a basic subtraction problem.