Should units always do a minimum of 1 damage?

So basically, it's to make barb mop up easier on a few maps? Can't you just send a couple Logistics Crossbows to deal with that? Heck, take the first Honor policy to reap a ton of Culture to boot!
If it you happen to have a couple of those on hand. Even a couple logistic crossbows wouldn't have done well against what I found on the map.

Speaking of apologist excuses, what about the other side of the coin? Care to give us a reason, clear and objective, that making it so that obsoleted units can't possibly damage more advanced ones is BETTER for gameplay?
Yes. Because players and AI will generally not encounter this situation unless one civ just basically gives up science. So any concern there is gone. The only time this will really be encountered is when a civ is trying to make landfall in an area where no one else has and barbs have been left to spawn endlessly. The amount of time invested in trying to clean this up so that it can be safe enough to get a settler where you need it, isn't really justified. In my game, I ended up spending so long trying to get my settler into that spot, that it was no longer justified after all the turn investment. The 40 or so units that were there on landfall, plus the ones that just kept spawning from 4 close camps, meant it took the 4 modern units forever to clear them out and it was a direct result of arrows vs armor. Constantly having to pull back to heal doubled or tripled the time it would have taken to clear it out, unless I was planning to send a dozen or more units over there, but that would also have required I first produce them, then spend 15+ turns getting them across the ocean. Maintaining my advantage on the main continent tied up most of my cities, so I could only spare 1 or 2 cities to make units (not main ones), so you could have been looking at over 100 turns before I could have gotten those 12 units built and across the water.

The 100 turns eaten up, plus the turns I'd already spent getting those guys over there and discovering the problem, all coming after you've got the ability to cross the ocean, really makes this a bit of a waste late game. So gameplay wise, having your tanks mow through clubs and arrows makes a lot of sense, and results in a better game.

Much as I hate the "reality" muck, the ability of backwards units to damage advanced ones has some basis in reality. Once backwards guys start seeing what their opponents do, of course they're going to try to adapt to their opponents.
This is reflected with Barbarians getting better units.
 
crossmr:

I have my doubts about that. Logistics Crossbows with the right terrain promotions will one-shot Archers and Warrior Barbarians, especially with the first point in Honor (but the latter isn't really necessary). This means you're killing 4 units a turn, some 40 units in 10 turns. How many of these units are there, exactly?

If you have Rocketry against Archers, you can get a pair of Blitz Helicopter with Air Repair and a Medic Mech Inf. That'll wipe those units out faster than they can come forward. How will this not do well against an infinite amount of Barbarian Archers? I mean, that's basically a Culture Win there with honor.
 
crossmr:

I have my doubts about that. Logistics Crossbows with the right terrain promotions will one-shot Archers and Warrior Barbarians, especially with the first point in Honor (but the latter isn't really necessary). This means you're killing 4 units a turn, some 40 units in 10 turns. How many of these units are there, exactly?

If you have Rocketry against Archers, you can get a pair of Blitz Helicopter with Air Repair and a Medic Mech Inf. That'll wipe those units out faster than they can come forward. How will this not do well against an infinite amount of Barbarian Archers? I mean, that's basically a Culture Win there with honor.

As I said, IF you have units upgraded as such available, but when I'm fielding mech infantry, I don't keep crossbow units around. You're trying to make a very special case where a couple of units (with the right policies, upgrades, etc could do this job) but most people aren't training a couple of special purpose units to go clear a continent of barbarians. As I said, there were over 40 barbarians of varying levels (from archers to musketmen) in the immediate area where I landed, and on top of that there were 4 camps present pumping out units (with rage turned on) in the immediate area, and more in the surrounding area that could have been contributing to the swarm over time.

Even crossbows wouldn't have lasted, as there were many range units, more than they could have killed in a turn, which meant they'd slowly get worn down. But again: Who would bother field crossbows when they have mech infantry and tanks available?

I should have done a screenshot or two because it was just a ridiculous situation, made worse by having to take these modern destroyers and tanks and rest them because they'd quickly gotten worn down by arrows for which they received no experience.

The entire thread is, as I expected it would be, full of people who want to try and come up with all these very precise and fanciful situations to either excuse or deal with the situation, but these don't really do anything to address existing gameplay issues or provide a general solution for this situation. Late game, clearing out barbarians shouldn't remotely be the same as going to war against a player. It certainly isn't early game. You can take out a barbarian encampment with 1 or 2 units, when a player city requires 3-4 if you're lucky. Yet let game, to handle this in any kind of quick manner I would have had to send at least a dozen units which is probably more than what I would have sent to take out a couple of AI cities.
 
So basically you can just mass produce warriors for the entire game as they will always do damage...

...era matched units I can see the argument, but that brings you into the really nasty territory of what happens when you take on a technologically superior Civ.

Working alright as it is methinks.
 
Special case?!? I almost always have a bunch of triple shock anti-tanks ready to get upgraded to Blitz for Helis. I generally get two Blitz Helis at the least coming into Rocketry, sometimes 3 or 4. I don't need to go Honor to do that, and I'm not even dealing with Deity numerical forces. You can do that on Prince. That is absolutely not a special case, and Blitz Helis are generally useful enough that it's useful to build Lancers just for the eventual anti-tank, and then Heli upgrade (and Lancers aren't bad now, actually).

As to Logistics Crossbowmen - those are relatively easy to get. Why wouldn't you keep a couple of those around? They're not useful upgraded to Riflemen and they'd still be useful against barbs.

If you want to clear a continent of just (and I mean just) 40 Barbarians, you could train up 5 anti-unit Bombers with Logistics (use Brandenburg Gate). You'll clear the area in 4 turns, no problem. If you took Honor beforehand, you'll gain 240 Culture for your troubles, plus the odd gold coin from camps.

Those Bombers are universally useful, not just for Barb hunting - you'll use them against the AI anyway.

So where's the problem?

The issue seems to be largely you getting a problem in your specific map setting that you didn't know how to deal with, despite the tools being there for you to deal with it. A dozen units is overkill. You don't need that many units to deal with 40 barb units.
 
If I recall correctly, when the game was introduced minnimum dammage was 0, this was patched because of the 4-horsemen-of-death strategy.
Actually when it was patched horsemen got a strength nerf, a city attack nerf and the 1 minnimum dammage nerf.

To me this explains the "for gameplay reasons" argument.

I do not agree with the 1 minnimum dammage rule, I would much prefer that it was changed so that less than 1 dammage turned into a chance of 1 or 0 dammage.
 
1) Archer units in a gunpowder world are not going to be soley armed with bows - they will have picked up some guns from the general diffusion of technology.

(this pic (http://images.imagestate.com/Watermark/1197034.jpg) is a good example of what I see as a swordsman in the gunpowder era - 18th century Indian warrior)

2) Zulus armed with spears and shields still managed to occasionally overpower gatling guns and rifle lines through numbers and tactics.

3) Mechanised units always temporarily lose material from mechanical failure. If you send your tank regiment to clear out a bunch of bandits you might not lose any men, but your regiment is unlikely to be at full operational strength without a period of rest and fixing broken tracks an' ting.

4) 'Primitives' will use asymetrical tactics against technologically superior forces: ambushes, suicide attacks, traps, etc.

All in all I think the loss of 1HP is both game balancing and a fair reflection of war.
 
1) Archer units in a gunpowder world are not going to be soley armed with bows - they will have picked up some guns from the general diffusion of technology.

(this pic (http://images.imagestate.com/Watermark/1197034.jpg) is a good example of what I see as a swordsman in the gunpowder era - 18th century Indian warrior)

2) Zulus armed with spears and shields still managed to occasionally overpower gatling guns and rifle lines through numbers and tactics.

3) Mechanised units always temporarily lose material from mechanical failure. If you send your tank regiment to clear out a bunch of bandits you might not lose any men, but your regiment is unlikely to be at full operational strength without a period of rest and fixing broken tracks an' ting.

4) 'Primitives' will use asymetrical tactics against technologically superior forces: ambushes, suicide attacks, traps, etc.

All in all I think the loss of 1HP is both game balancing and a fair reflection of war.

These again are all special circumstances to try and excuse away this. Why don't your tanks take 1 damage just from moving? Etc..

Special case?!?
Yes, you like many others are trying to create extremely tailor made situations or excuses as to why this is unnecessary that often only apply limited cases rather than simply addressing this as a general issue.

As to Logistics Crossbowmen - those are relatively easy to get. Why wouldn't you keep a couple of those around?
Because what good are they really around mechanized infantry, tanks and GDRs?

If you want to clear a continent of just (and I mean just) 40 Barbarians, you could train up 5 anti-unit Bombers with Logistics (use Brandenburg Gate). You'll clear the area in 4 turns, no problem. If you took Honor beforehand, you'll gain 240 Culture for your troubles, plus the odd gold coin from camps.
They could take upwards of 4 damage a turn from bombing. They're not going to last 4 turns to clear those out. You'd also need to put units on the ground to scout, and clear empty camps, so you're still looking at 9 units at a minimum, pretty close to 12.
40 was a conservative estimate. I know I probably killed over 100 by the time it was all said and done, and even then I ended up winning space race by the time it was cleared.
 
Hordes and hordes of barbs on another continent SHOULD be a slog, generally...or at least require some skill to mop up without too much effort.

What about farming a few of them until you have logistics with ranged? What about march? If you have a reasonable military city a few units with march and 1 medic (medic you can reach from buildings alone, mind you) can easily go around mopping up droves of barb units. Take something like a 4-5 man cavalry squad over there and if you get some march/medic/eventually blitz you should be able to routinely waste the barbs.

With mechinf it should be a cakewalk unless they're throwing around rifles or probably infantry at you, at which point them damaging shouldn't be a source of complaint ;).
 
Hordes and hordes of barbs on another continent SHOULD be a slog, generally...or at least require some skill to mop up without too much effort.

What about farming a few of them until you have logistics with ranged? What about march? If you have a reasonable military city a few units with march and 1 medic (medic you can reach from buildings alone, mind you) can easily go around mopping up droves of barb units. Take something like a 4-5 man cavalry squad over there and if you get some march/medic/eventually blitz you should be able to routinely waste the barbs.

With mechinf it should be a cakewalk unless they're throwing around rifles or probably infantry at you, at which point them damaging shouldn't be a source of complaint ;).

There is a 30 xp limmit from barbarians, so you never get to logistics or march.
There is the possibility to send these experienced units over there to clean up though.

A bomber plane will do alot more than 4 dammage to a brute, maybe even kill them in one attack. Also the bomber plane has a very good line of sight.
 
At the very least, you could set up some arty + defenses for them and make a pillbox. Naval fire would help tremendously also and battleships have range 3 out of the gate. Neither battleships nor arty take damage from firing...
 
One side effect of 1 min damage rule is that cover promotions are almost useless. In the worst case, a GDR with Cover 2 will always receive 2 damage from an archer with logistics.

I don't like the 1 min damage rule, but if it's not removed from the game, at least cover promotions should be tweaked to bypass the rule.
 
Oh my, this is a trolling topic?

You don't like the 1 HP at least and you don't see it realistic. OK, the game works that way, get over with it.

You go with 2 units and a settler... got outnumbered? bring enough units to raze the opposition. you just can't do always the things the way you would like.

You want to kill 100 units with 2? then mod the game.

Moderator Action: If you don't have anything constructive to add to a discussion you are welcome to not post in it. Trolling or calling other users trolls is not acceptable in any case. - ori
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889
 
crossmr:

Yes, you like many others are trying to create extremely tailor made situations or excuses as to why this is unnecessary that often only apply limited cases rather than simply addressing this as a general issue.

Having well-promoted units in the modern era is not a special case scenario. Like, at all.

Because what good are they really around mechanized infantry, tanks and GDRs?

They can kill 2 barbs at range 3 per turn.

They could take upwards of 4 damage a turn from bombing. They're not going to last 4 turns to clear those out. You'd also need to put units on the ground to scout, and clear empty camps, so you're still looking at 9 units at a minimum, pretty close to 12.
40 was a conservative estimate. I know I probably killed over 100 by the time it was all said and done, and even then I ended up winning space race by the time it was cleared.

4 damage a turn bombing Ancient Era barbs? Highly unlikely. Even Musketmen would generally only do one point per pass. I use Bombers a lot, you know. Unit-promoted Bombers are killer, capable of cleaning up even Riflemen and Infantry. It's ludicrous to suggest that they'd get damaged 4 a turn from primitive units, and barb units at that.

At 2 damage per turn, they'll easily last the 4 turns necessary for cleanup.

If you're clearing barbs, it seems likely to me that the point of it is to colonize the area. So just plunk down a city already and benefit from the 6 tile sight radius your Bombers afford you, without the necessity of scouts. Or you can use 2 Sentry-promoted Tanks if you really insist. 7 units.

And 100? Seems to me that you're just stacking the deck and exaggerating at this point. Removing 1 damage minimum will not relieve you of the tedium of attacking and killing 100 barb units. One unit won't even be able to do it - the spawn rate will probably overmatch killing just one unit per turn, so you'll have to get an army together to deal with the problem anyway.

And you know what? It's still just a corner case, worst case scenario that happened at an unusual game setting.
 
Having well-promoted units in the modern era is not a special case scenario. Like, at all.
Keeping Crossbow units around with GDRs and mech infantry is a special case. Who does that?

They can kill 2 barbs at range 3 per turn.
And are useless against other players.

And 100? Seems to me that you're just stacking the deck and exaggerating at this point.
Not even a little bit. I was at it for a very long time. Half of that time was spent healing. With all their range units, I had to frequently pull back and heal, during which time they spawned more units from the camps. There were 4 close by camps, and more nearby beyond that. I don't know how many those slightly farther away camps were contributing. But when I landed it was almost wall-to-wall barbarians and it remained like that for quite some time.

4 damage a turn bombing Ancient Era barbs? Highly unlikely. Even Musketmen would generally only do one point per pass.
I said they could take upwards up for 4 per turn, not that they would. The potential was there for them to take 1-2 per attack and 2 attacks per turn is 2-4 damage. It's tight to get 4 rounds out of that, and as their strength drops they're more likely to take more damage, but you still need to provide 9 units minimum to get the job done.

Or you can use 2 Sentry-promoted Tanks if you really insist. 7 units.
How were you planning on getting the bombers there? floating them over? You need 2 carriers to take them over there. Including a throw away city, 10. I had a specific location in mind because I needed aluminum. If I planted the city elsewhere, I'd need another settler.

One side effect of 1 min damage rule is that cover promotions are almost useless. In the worst case, a GDR with Cover 2 will always receive 2 damage from an archer with logistics.
Exactly 5 archers take down a GDR in 1 turn? Yeah, that makes sense.
 
Thal had an interesting solution to this in his mod. Essentially double all hitpoints and damage outputs but leave the min damage as is, so that effectively the minimum damage is now 0.5 instead of 1.
 
Who keeps Logistics Crossbowmen around? I do. They will always do a minimum of two damage a turn to any unit regardless of tech. This means that two such units could take out an attacker who attacked your city and got 4 damage for it, with your City Bombardment doing 2 more damage. Logistics is a pretty strong promo as you can see. I highly recommend that you don't disband logistics Crossbows, either. You'll have less problems with barbs, and as you can see, they're not actually useless against non-barb targets.

As for 100 barb units, it seems to me that they only got that out of hand because you were really bad at dealing with the problem. If nothing else, wait for Telegraph and use a bunch of Battleships instead. They have Range 3 and won't get targeted. That's the fourth viable solution I've presented for your problem, without having to touch minimum damage.

Finally, for the bombers, the maximum damage they'll take, assuming really bad luck is 4. Therefore, they will take UP TO 4 damage a turn, not UPWARDS OF 4 damage a turn. If you're just dealing with 4 camps or so, just use the bombers to clear a path, use Amphibious troops to land as close to the camps as possible and blitz your way to the camp (you have Blitz units, right? Or is any kind of early war yet another special case?).

Or use a GG for a Citadel to defend your new city.

Or establish a beachfront with a limited front and use Medics behind highly promoted units to just absorb damage and destroy units en masse turn after turn.

The chief problem appears to me to be that you want Destroyers to take down Barb Archers easily, on a rare occurrence on an unusual map setting so as to justify the particular approach that you think should work. I don't see this situation to be important enough to mess with the fundamental mechanic.
 
Who keeps Logistics Crossbowmen around? I do.
Why?
They cost the same maintenance have lower strength and do less damage than artillery. They'll be wiped out in a single attack by any modern unit. They might be good for a single attack, but your opponent would likely bomb them out the next turn. At least artillery might survive a bombing.

As for 100 barb units, it seems to me that they only got that out of hand because you were really bad at dealing with the problem. If nothing else, wait for Telegraph and use a bunch of Battleships instead. They have Range 3 and won't get targeted. That's the fourth viable solution I've presented for your problem, without having to touch minimum damage.
Most of your solutions have relied heavily on special circumstances, or significantly upgraded units, so no, they're not really viable. The battleships only help you make landfall. The destroyer in this case had to drop out about half way through once the base near the cost was finally taken out, the other 3 bases were further inland and well out of its reach. All it did was cover a unit healing.

Finally, for the bombers, the maximum damage they'll take, assuming really bad luck is 4
They'll take minimum 2, 2x4 = 8 damage
if they get unlucky even twice, they're done.

Or use a GG for a Citadel to defend your new city.
City defense isn't the issue, getting in to where I needed to drop a city to get aluminum was the issue.
I ended up dropping a city that I used as a base, but it was no where near the aluminum.

The chief problem appears to me to be that you want Destroyers to take down Barb Archers easily, on a rare occurrence on an unusual map setting so as to justify the particular approach that you think should work. I don't see this situation to be important enough to mess with the fundamental mechanic.
No, I think all modern/future vehicles/navy/air force should take down archers/warriors/brutes without receiving damage, except perhaps in a very unlucky situation (or lucky from the perspective of those inferior units)

Despite all attempts to come up with these fantasy situations where the archers are actually all macgyver clones, and your units are nothing but inbred country bumpkins who don't know which way the end of a gun points, no one has really demonstrated any justification or gameplay reason for the 1 damage remaining. Someone cited some 4 horseman thing, but my suggestion has nothing to do with changing the damage to horseman.

The fact that people have to try and come up with these stories is evidence that the mechanic doesn't stand on its own.
 
The OP has been offered various solutions to the problem. In game and fanciful justifications for the 1point min damage. He is not going to accept it.
Personally I dont mind it. I keep it in mind when planning my attacks.
If I were playing on a terra map, with a new world, and had set the barbs to raging, then I would expect to see a continent controlled by the reds. And when I send my settler over, I'd send several bocyguards. Ships to clear the coast, and tanks & marines to mop up. This is just my view and how I would deal with it.
 
crossmr:

I have to agree here with Lunchmoney. At this point, it seems that you are simple dead set against any reasoning or logic against your assertion, so there's no further point discussing it.

None of my proposed solutions were specific or special. Even your Bomber damage estimate is completely off. Bombers take a minimum 1 damage, not two, and yes, I just checked by bombing a non-barb Musketman. Good luck in your quest. I don't mind either way, but clearly it must mean something to you to be bested by barbs.
 
Top Bottom