The Secret Navy

I think the name "healing" is misleading ...

At that time ...
- if a soldier was killed during battle, healing could not bring him back ...
- if a soldier was wounded during battle, in most cases he died because of his wounds or an infection or he later left hospital as a cripple.
- only a minor part of the wounded were probably able to return to weapons.

So the idea of healing units is a rather non-realistic game-feature ...

In fact the "healing" has to be interpreted more in a sense of "reorganization", including repair and resupply, boost of moral, replacement of lost troops and gathering of scattered troops. The Medic I, II, III - promotions should be better named "Logistics/Reorganisation I,II,III". In the game it is a highly abstract feature without any details except the Combat Strength of the unit ...

I think healing is meant more as the healing of the unit as a whole, which would fit with your definition, and abstract is the way [in my opinion] it has to stay for a game on the scale of Civ / Col.
A soldier is just a cog in the machine, and when he gets killed he gets replaced like anything else. I remember reading about this one unit in WWII that was completely replaced like three times throughout the war.
The point about having wounded brings up another one, however, about the long-term costs of war as far as taking care of disabled veterans; I saw this thing an TV once about how much it's starting to cost to keep the VA in the states running with the extra burden the Iraq war is placing on it, and if there could be some additional penalty for the next several turns after a unit sustains damage, especially for the more 'civilized' forms of government, that would also add a touch of realism [and another reason for you to think twice before sending your boys marching off to war.]

historix69 said:

- Global Good / Bad Luck :
In most games you will encounter a situation where the next attack you will order will be definetely a failure due to unfavorable RNG-values since RNG is global and not local... no matter if you will attack in Europe, Asia or America, even when you use a tank to attack a spearman ... you won't have a chance to win ... This is totally un-fun since you cannot do anything against it ... the game has decided by coin flipping that you are not allowed to win the next battle. Transfered to real live, this does not make much sense ... In this situation there are only two options you have : 1. sacrifice a unit and continue your attacks this turn or 2. stop fighting for this turn if you are strong enough on defense and hope for better luck next turn ...

Click to expand...

Your other comments were insightful, but this is just plain wrong.

There is no way to know that the next battle will result in a win or a loss without actually fighting it. And after you've fought it the battle will always be won or lost, with 100% certainty.

What you are seeing is an artefact of the save/reloading cheat. By default the random seed is preserved, so the same sequence of actions have the same result. One reason, possibly the only reason, for that behaviour is to lessen the impact of save/reloading.

If you want to remove this feature, use custom start and set the 'New random seed on load' option.


There is no real world equivalent of save/reload, but that hasn't stopped con artists, like Nostradamus and the Oracle of Delphi, from making money off it.

There is no way to know that the next battle will result in a win or a loss without actually fighting it. And after you've fought it the battle will always be won or lost, with 100% certainty.

Click to expand...

This is true for Real Life but not for the game where you can save/load ... Via Save/Load you can evaluate the "state" of your game and as I explained you can find situations where you cannot win even with good odds ...

I don't want to discuss this problem further ... for me it is just an unfortunate choice of game design.

I do have an idea for a Mod to just remove the RNG from combat and instead replace it by a mathematical function ... To make the game more strategical, a single combat between two equal units would only cause about 40% damage (based on current strength) to both units instead of destroying one unit completely ... so fight would be separated into several rounds / turns where units have to be weakened before they can be destroyed ... allowing all units to retreat ... to destroy a group of units you would have to use better strategy (e.g. better defence positions) or a superiority in number or quality of units or a clever choice of "counter"-units (e.g. pikemen against cavalry) ... so combat-result would be totally dependant from your own strategical skill and not from RNG ... as long as you do not force your units to attack against all odds or let your army get surrounded by superior enemy forces (-> pocket), you could pull your units out to save them ...

I'd think it would be nice to have a retreat mechanism, similar to withdrawal on attacking, where your unit backs away to the safest square.

Hmm, now do I add veteran 1 to my unit, or coward 1 to my unit?

Well, if you've evaluated it thorougly using save/load, then I would agree that the unwinnable battles thing sucks and should've probably been programmed a different way.
As far as changing the mechanics of combat outside of RNG, I would be wary of anything that's going to drag combats out longer, again because of the scale of the game: when it already can take 20 years [I realize that this is only near the beginning of the game] for a single battle to take place, I don't think much realism is added by having it take 40 or 60.
I think the sort of ideas you're bringing up here would be a lot more at home in a scenario where a turn represents more like a few days to a month, like the recreation of a single war or campaign, where the details of fighting are more the focus of the game than all of the other stuff you have to worry about in a full game of Civ IV.

I usually play on marathon where all things take 3 times longer.

The number of turns for war would depend on the strategic situation ...
- If one side is well prepared and attacks an unprepared enemy with a 3-times-superiority (3:1), it may still crush the enemy units in a single turn ...
- If both sides have equal forces, there won't be a fast victory and it would be better to look for good defensive positions until having built up a superior force ...

historix69 said:

This is true for Real Life but not for the game where you can save/load ... Via Save/Load you can evaluate the "state" of your game and as I explained you can find situations where you cannot win even with good odds ...

I don't want to discuss this problem further ... for me it is just an unfortunate choice of game design.

Click to expand...

If you use save/reload, I think it's unfair to complain that it's unrealistic...

I'll just repeat: If you want to remove this feature, use custom start and set the 'New random seed on load' option.

I always do.

Hmm... I'm wondering now how the randomizer behind the scenes works, because even if the outcome of a battle is determined long before you even give the order, even if all possible battles were determined at the beginning of the game, as long as the win/lose chance that the battle had when it was being calculated was the same as the value that the game gives you when you're weighing your options, it's all transparent to the user and the integrity of the game is preserved, so I think I'm going to have to change my mind about this one, because I'm willing to assume that Firaxis considered this and programmed the game to work fairly with it.

This whole, RNG ruins the game thing is rubbish.

Total flukey lucky wins happen all the time. On paper, Spurs should beat Stoke everytime. But they dont.

At school, some kid 3 times the size of me picked a fight with me. I kicked him in the knee, he fell, hit his head and KO'd. I lucked out. 99/100 I'd have been murdered.

On the Save/Load thing... as already said, thats easily rectified by RSOL. And like.... thats really only an annoying problem is you Save/Load in normal play..... in which case.... Its a bit rich to moan about a game being broken when you are going out your way to break it. Its not realistic to save load, well... until you develop time travel anyway.

Did you stomp him out after he fell?
You know that if you don't, he'll be back at full health the next turn, and there's no way you'll get two critical hit rolls in a row, not a chance.

Back on the Navy issue, today I made an armarda 0f 26 ships about 75% were SoL. Of course the king didn't feel threatened by this as I wasn't making liberty bells. I rushed my bells up in the last 50 turns and quickly got to 50% rebel, declared independance and won the battle within 3 turn of his first ship turning up.

The REF needs to build up to face the opposition, why when I had 26 ships when I started making bells and quite a few more by independance did the REF not add a single MoW.

This game may have fundamental issues that can't be patched out, I hope it isn't so.