SalmonSoil
Prince
- Joined
- May 17, 2010
- Messages
- 358
No justification? Dearmad was being very rude for no reason whatsoever. Brawndo certainly had every right to post that way.
"But teacher, he started it!"
No justification? Dearmad was being very rude for no reason whatsoever. Brawndo certainly had every right to post that way.
I wasn't up for a arms race of quoting ever more minor paragraphs and sentences of each others posts, and writing long paragraphs in response . Better to sum up my over-all objections in a few short lines.You need a wall of text to respond to a wall of text ... unless you want and can be of short words
Whether it is realistic for some spearmen to overcome a tank or not is perhaps a discussion worth having, but it's not quite on topic of what goes through a gamer's head after having lost a battle a battle he expected to win. What goes through a players head is that they were screwed by the RNG, not the hypothetical scenarios that might enable a spearmen to get lucky.1) No, I'm not confusing suspension of disbeleif with "realism realism". I was just comparing 2 stories and commenting on what one would be more credible in general. A tank with a life line from Vanhalla regarding combats againt spears is a huge suspension of disbeleif, IMHO far bigger than beleiving that sometimes things can go wrong to the stronger unit. It is is just more spread out, but, as this is a game where you actually are suposed to think for hours to play it, it is far more damaging for the supension of disbeleif a steady attack to it than a short exposition to a strong corrosive, and this especially if you actually find yourself on the short side of the stick
You still have to determine the amount of damage the weaker unit deals.2) If they are clear regarding this issue it is less bad , indeed. But that doesn't change the fact that a combat where only one can win hardly deseves the name of combat In fact, if there is no combat ( aka you know the result before the battle ), why lose processing time doing it at all ?
I'm just saying that there is a point where too much risk makes the game less fun. And in general, real life things have more risk then you want in their video game counter parts.3) The RL vs game worse dificulty is completely irrelevant for what is being discussed ( I just spoke of it because you brought it , not consciously maybe ) and I only pointed that you should expect in a strategy game with a random element that you need to do risk assesement ... and that if you can't stomach that, you maybe should be playing something else more suited to your tastes.
Having combat less predictable doesn't make it more fun, even for the disadvantaged side. Sure it feels nice when your spearmen is the one doing the tank busting, but if the game looks like a loss, the theoretical 1% chance of tank busting isn't going to make most people keep playing. And the fact that plans are more likely to go awry still sucks for the disadvantaged player.Second, the fun element ... full circle on this issue, no ? Like I already said a lot of times in here, some people might actually find unfun to play a game where you have 0 chances of winning a combat if you are in the short side of the stick. It is already highly frustrating in Civ IV to be invaded by a technologically superior force because they are hard to stop even if you can zerg the enemy, so i don't want to think how frustrating it would be to being completely unable by design to stop a technologically advanced invasion just because the designer didn't wanted to expose people to a odd from time to time ... you must agree that is pretty much a "shelf game, never play it again and loudmouth it if possible" event. And, like I said, a compromise could had been acheived between avoiding both the and the scenarios as much as possible, instead of pretending that no one will ever try to play a level higher than their current skills
Ok, i think that if you said "my" instead of " a players" head things would be more correct Now think, what passes through "a players" head when , due to bad luck, "they" find themselfes in need of throwing the kitchen sink to the enemy , and then discover that he has exactly 0 chances of winning that fight?Whether it is realistic for some spearmen to overcome a tank or not is perhaps a discussion worth having, but it's not quite on topic of what goes through a gamer's head after having lost a battle a battle he expected to win. What goes through a players head is that they were screwed by the RNG, not the hypothetical scenarios that might enable a spearmen to get lucky.
No battle is completely one sided in RL and God knows how many battles were lost/won due to deficient evaluation of the chances they really had But that is besides the point.You still have to determine the amount of damage the weaker unit deals.
Sometimes battles are one sided. The loser general knows he's in a bind and gonna lose. If he decides to fight it anyway, it's not because of a lack of confidence in his own ability to predict the battle outcome.
That is a reason for less risk, not to take the risk at all from some areas. Nothing I haven't said so far.I'm just saying that there is a point where too much risk makes the game less fun. And in general, real life things have more risk then you want in their video game counter parts.
And exactly how does a tank rolling over everyone will make the player stick more to a strategy game, regardless of the side of the tank you are in? Ok, it feels good at the first times to simply roll on top of all those guys wearing sticks, but that wears out fast ( why do you think shoot'em ups have such a little shelf life ? ) and only leaves the sour taste of "no strategy inside beside getting tanks fast enough" in the aftermath [/sarcasm] That argument works both ways ...Having combat less predictable doesn't make it more fun, even for the disadvantaged side. Sure it feels nice when your spearmen is the one doing the tank busting, but if the game looks like a loss, the theoretical 1% chance of tank busting isn't going to make most people keep playing. And the fact that plans are more likely to go awry still sucks for the disadvantaged player.
You do want to make it so that a moderate tech lead doesn't equate to total military domination, of course. Don't construe anything I've said to say otherwise.
And this is where you go off the road.Ok, i think that if you said "my" instead of " a players" head things would be more correct Now think, what passes through "a players" head when , due to bad luck, "they" find themselfes in need of throwing the kitchen sink to the enemy , and then discover that he has exactly 0 chances of winning that fight?
Logic.And why not in the first fight? Give me a reason, just one ... bruised egos aside , that is.
Logic? lol.. let me rephrase it: what is the logic to force spear #1 to don't have a chance at all to destroy a tank ( not even a snowball chance in hell ) while spear #10 has chances just because spear #1 got beaten to pulp ... and how exactly that makes the go out ?Logic.
We play a game which depicts our history in a simplified way in order to have some fun. That's true that you can think of a cases like that company of Spearmen could get drunk a whole Armour unit, pour sugar into gas tanks and slaughter everyone while they sleep. But such action would require a whole story in order to make it believable.
We have no weather in Civ (like sandstorms etc) that could create a reason for such unbelievable outcome of a Spearmen vs Armour encounter, therefore it's been simplified so now you'll win if you'll attack Spearmen with your Armour.
You can be damaged, how damaged can be random, but you know that in the end you'll get the better end of the stick.
I think that best thing about Civ5 is that you no longer have die:live battles, that's much more realistic and fun imo.
EDIT
And that's the thing, I still can't see that tampering, cheating, lying about combat odds you're talking about, when you simply have combat results rounded up into classes. There's still flexibility, and adding several units into the fray can create all sorts of results.
Logic? lol.. let me rephrase it: what is the logic to force spear #1 to don't have a chance at all to destroy a tank ( not even a snowball chance in hell ) while spear #10 has chances just because spear #1 got beaten to pulp ... and how exactly that makes the go out
Sid disagrees .Ok, i think that if you said "my" instead of " a players" head things would be more correct .
The difference between 0% and 0.001% isn't that much, but it's still worth defending to try to deal some damage.Now think, what passes through "a players" head when , due to bad luck, "they" find themselfes in need of throwing the kitchen sink to the enemy , and then discover that he has exactly 0 chances of winning that fight?
It's a beat up either way. You attach too much value to a very tiny difference in odds.No battle is completely one sided in RL and God knows how many battles were lost/won due to deficient evaluation of the chances they really had But that is besides the point.
You are actually echoing me Would you buy the ticket for a basketball game where the only thing to know was to know if the big team was going to win by 100 points or 200 ? That is not a game, is a beat'em up OFC, you might like beat'em ups ( no wrong with that ), but it is highly discussible that beat'em ups should have places in a minimally enjoyable strategy game.
There's still risk in the game. Sometimes you decrease risk by lowering the odds of catastrophe, other times you decrease the number of possible catastrophes.]That is a reason for less risk, not to take the risk at all from some areas. Nothing I haven't said so far.
Look, the chance of doing enough damage to a tank in time can be modeled as a normal distributed dice roll of how much damage is done. All that's happening is that that normal curve now has a smaller standard deviation, and the precision at the extremities is less. Apparently it makes a better combat formula.And exactly how does a tank rolling over everyone will make the player stick more to a strategy game, regardless of the side of the tank you are in? Ok, it feels good at the first times to simply roll on top of all those guys wearing sticks, but that wears out fast ( why do you think shoot'em ups have such a little shelf life ? ) and only leaves the sour taste of "no strategy inside beside getting tanks fast enough" in the aftermath [/sarcasm] That argument works both ways ...
It's not 1:7 becoming 0:7, as that would presuppose existing odds and establish that they are wrong. Rather 7 and 1 are strength ratios, and in Sid's algorithm, and with such a large difference, it's not possible for the weaker unit to win a combat.Anyway we are going away from the issue. The fact is that Sid construed a argument regarding pretending that high odds are certains just to pamper some players ego and infact adopted a highly dubious truncating algorythim in CivRev ( IIRC 1:7 odds and the weaker unit insta runs away from battle or something like that ) and I suppose that Civ V will act close from that. I do not like from that pampering, but that is not my point: my point is that making a combat engine that gives 1:7 odds and then pretend that 1:7 = 0:7 is both stupid in terms of programming when there are alternatives that give similar results with less result tampering and will not add a iota in terms of game satisfaction overall, because some players will be pissed with that odd manipulation as much or more than the others that when they see the odd
It was all done in order to simplify things, and I see no viciousness in that.1)Vicious circle fallacy detected: " As the first unit can't win,, they should not be allowed to win"
It doesn't, and I have no problem with the fact that ten units of 7 each can be sacrificed to wear down one tank unit at 40 I dislike however when my 40 tank falls victim to one measly Spearmen unit.2)Again, exactly how does this do anything to remove the ? it will be beaten by a spear anyway
Yes they do gang up now They get bonuses for each allied unit in vicinity, also presence of Great Generals improves their strength too. Wounded units fight less efficiently (unless they're Japanese )3) Units in civ games do not gang up ( edit ,except Civ III and Civrev armies. Anyway, pretty marginal ) The battles are independent, so no pack effect. We don't have 7x1 battles , we have 7 1x1 battles. If the first spear has no chances , the last should have not as well. If the last one has chances, the first one should have ... because there is no fundamental diference between spear #1 and spear #7. There is no logical aternative
Exactly. We're not talking mathematics here, we're talking about simplified depiction of a world, where certain things have to be removed or changed in order to entertain players. Losing at 97.5% wasn't enjoyable and was causing people to reload, so in order to change that Sid introduced different combat model in Civ5. Which you can dislike of course, and (on the contrary to other crappy developers nowadays) you'll be free to mod it out4) Don't mix up logic with beleivabilty, even if believability depends a lot of what the people in question consider believable
People, how about you just watch the damned thing
I don't know about the planet you live in , but in this planet archers were pretty good beating knights. In fact a certain Civ IV unit got famous exactly by excelling at that job Ranged attack + lots of arrows + no complete armor in most cases ( even if the knight it self had it, the horse normally didn't ) meant that it was pretty much assured that a knight in charge would be injured before getting close of a archer company .Consider an archer versus a knight. An armored knight on horseback is, in the real world, basically unkillable by an archer. Bows in that era don't have the penetration power to get through armor, and hitting something on horseback is very difficult. Add in the closing speed, and you've got a pretty much no win scenario.
And there are a number of historic examples of this. Many times, people attacked Constantinople showed up, looked at the walls, sat around for a while, then packed up and went home.Similarly, attacking a walled city without proper wall busting tech is just as futile.
Ancient era shortbows != late medieval English longbows.I don't know about the planet you live in , but in this planet archers were pretty good beating knights. In fact a certain Civ IV unit got famous exactly by excelling at that job
Absolutely...I do NOT want the odds manipulated behind the scenes. Present the odds, let me take the chance.