unbalanced combat

Eigenvector

Molekh has nothing on me!
Joined
Nov 21, 2005
Messages
175
Location
Seattle
I thought they were going to fix this? I am just about to finish a game and am cleaning up some of the last Islamic and French cities. They have longbowmen, I have mechanized infantry. For some reason I still lose troops when attacking cities. Yes I know city defences give an advantage, blah blah blah, but come on - since when is an archer going to phase the advance of a mechanized infantry platoon?

And I actually saw a war elephant take out an advanced tank! What the heck! I don't care if the tank was down to 5 out of 40 - that elephant wouldn't have had a chance! Dangit, balance the combat system better. There's no reason for a modern army to get chewed up by guys wearing bronze breastplates and throwing pointy spears

Here's another one I saw - archers taking out attack choppers! I don't care if that archer had "20% percent city defense and 30% forest and jungle defense and 1st strike" Its a bow and arrow, not much of a threat to a chopper carrying Hellfire missles or a 20mm chain gun. That chopper was at full strength!
 
A seriously wounded unit in this combat system can be beaten by anything.
 
I very, very rarely see it happen now if my units are at full strength...a legion of hundreds of spearmen aught to be able to find some way to take out a tank brigade reduced to 2 vehicles, after all. Think of it as armed civilians, civilians can take out tanks or choppers even if they have inferior weaponry.
 
Eigenvector said:
I thought they were going to fix this? I am just about to finish a game and am cleaning up some of the last Islamic and French cities. They have longbowmen, I have mechanized infantry. For some reason I still lose troops when attacking cities. Yes I know city defences give an advantage, blah blah blah, but come on - since when is an archer going to phase the advance of a mechanized infantry platoon?

And I actually saw a war elephant take out an advanced tank! What the heck! I don't care if the tank was down to 5 out of 40 - that elephant wouldn't have had a chance! Dangit, balance the combat system better. There's no reason for a modern army to get chewed up by guys wearing bronze breastplates and throwing pointy spears

Here's another one I saw - archers taking out attack choppers! I don't care if that archer had "20% percent city defense and 30% forest and jungle defense and 1st strike" Its a bow and arrow, not much of a threat to a chopper carrying Hellfire missles or a 20mm chain gun. That chopper was at full strength!

If you make a platoon of tanks charge endlessly trough cities, they may end up taking out some of them, you know soldiers don't stay all the time in tanks, they need rest too, they could be killed during the ngiht ... etc, trough guerilla or resistance ... etc

Thinking that because you have superior weaponry means that you will suffer no losses at all is ... oh well you know what happened in some recent wars ...
 
Armed Civilians has been known to be able to take down tanks in situations that looks as if the more modern army was going to win. Try history of Molotov Cocktail, it describes that the Finns in the Winter War was using molotov cocktails against tanks, and I believe that they were successful enough that the army end up mass producing it.
I'm wondering if a couple of elephants are able to topple some of the lighter tanks.
 
Why do people always have problems with that? Civ4 is by FAR the most balanced game in the series. Now with the new battle system it's QUITE believable that you get the results you get. MUCH fewer "wierd" wins and losses.

Just imagine:

Your mech inf is hurt, hurt bad. Down to "5 out of 32" health. That means that the brigade has lost 95% of its tanks, and the reaminder all are out of fuel. They stand there in the countryside, waiting for reinforcements. Then, out through the woods, comes 2 000 longbowmen. The last 25 men in their tank fight for their lives. They've got no mobility, almost no rounds left in the guns... but they fight.

At the end of the struggle, the forest is littered by a thousand dead bowmen. But also, all 25 guys from the mechanized brigade lie dead, all with 22 arrows each penetrating their bodies.



....



If a unit is hurt, then it - logically - doesn't stand as much a chance as a unhurt one. It doesn't mean that you've got as strong a unit, it means - as the game says - that the power of the unit is seriously hurt. Better than it used to be, when a tank could lose to a phalanx straight up.

No, the new system is lovely!
 
I think the argument over realism can never end. some will say imagine the units not exactly as the picture, and others will disagree (and argue it's impossible etc, and that the units come from the techs needed)

Whatever the case, the point is it peeves some players off bigtime if a very ancient unit beats your modern age unit (or wears it down significantly).

Civ3 was worst for this because while it was almost impossibel for their wooden ship to attack your aircraft carrier and win - they made it nearly certain that it would do a point of damage, and thus 3 wooden ships ganging up on a aircraft carrier (carrier defending), in civ3, it meant it was more likely than not the carrier would die.

However getting back to the point, it's just an issue of balance - how much advantage should many extra techs give. IMHO, civ3 got it wrong, very wrong. But, easy fixed by modding modern to have x2 attack and defense and an extra hp (i gave intermediate units x1.5 and everything else no advantage). Made it about just right.

I haven't played enough of Civ4 to decide if i should do some light modding for an increased advantage for more modern units, but so far I think its not as bad as an unmodded civ3 was.
 
Well if you have a 5/40 tank you might want to see it as a unfuelled unsupplied unit, so you have people inside a metal chunk figting with poor weaponry against a horde of spearmen.

the tank will win on most situations excepting the more extremes against the more veteran better fortified units.
 
jim1013 said:
I think the argument over realism can never end. some will say imagine the units not exactly as the picture, and others will disagree (and argue it's impossible etc, and that the units come from the techs needed)
And some of us will argue that the war is more realistic when you actually have to use bombardment, combinded arms, reinforce your wounded units etc. No war in history has been fought without such considerations, so it isn't realistic to expect such lack of tactic to win out without losses in cIV either.

...and then it's the question of play balance of course, where they now try to have a balance where a tech lead doesn't hand you the game uncontested...

Whatever the case, the point is it peeves some players off bigtime if a very ancient unit beats your modern age unit (or wears it down significantly).
Yes, it certainly seems so. To me, it looks like this is players that know very little of actual war tactics though...

However getting back to the point, it's just an issue of balance - how much advantage should many extra techs give. IMHO, civ3 got it wrong, very wrong. But, easy fixed by modding modern to have x2 attack and defense and an extra hp (i gave intermediate units x1.5 and everything else no advantage). Made it about just right.
Personally, I think civ3 got it about right. I very much appreciate that the strenght to a unit goes down when it is hit in cIV though, as it makes strength in numbers more important than in CIV3.
 
Eigenvector said:
I thought they were going to fix this? I am just about to finish a game and am cleaning up some of the last Islamic and French cities. They have longbowmen, I have mechanized infantry. For some reason I still lose troops when attacking cities. Yes I know city defences give an advantage, blah blah blah, but come on - since when is an archer going to phase the advance of a mechanized infantry platoon?

And I actually saw a war elephant take out an advanced tank! What the heck! I don't care if the tank was down to 5 out of 40 - that elephant wouldn't have had a chance! Dangit, balance the combat system better. There's no reason for a modern army to get chewed up by guys wearing bronze breastplates and throwing pointy spears

Here's another one I saw - archers taking out attack choppers! I don't care if that archer had "20% percent city defense and 30% forest and jungle defense and 1st strike" Its a bow and arrow, not much of a threat to a chopper carrying Hellfire missles or a 20mm chain gun. That chopper was at full strength!

man, you can be armed with a bazooka and I with a kitchen knife, but if you're on your knees and don't even have the strength to hold the bazooka and aim at me, I seriously doubt you can win a "battle" against me.

The system is quite realistic under this point of view.
 
Whatever, sounds like most people here assumed I used poor tactics, I'm not going to change your minds so I won't bother with you. For the rest of you...

You did a nice job explaining the tank - I think your explanation was bogus, but now explain how an archer could take down a full strength attack chopper?:mad:



Let's look at the combat from a more realistic standpoint.

So you have a tank platoon with some losses and now you're down to your last unit. Its armed but alone - which is how I interpret a 5/40 situation. So you're out on the plains (which is where this happened) and you see a group of elephants coming at you. Explain why the tank wouldn't have just opened fire at 2000 yards and then machine gunned the survivors? Its the plains, you can see for miles out there - so don't give me that sneak attack baloney.

Another thing, and this is really where I take issue. Half of modern armament is the different tactics used with the equipment. How a spearman approaches battle is WHOLLY different than how an infantry platoon approaches battle. That alone should be the deciding factor in a battle vs. lower techs. ***If there was no benefit to researching new weaponry, then nobody would do it.*** Period, end of story. Those billions of dollars the US throws into the Defence Department budget serves a very real purpose - it gives the US Army an edge against their opponents in battle. Please look at the Nazi German attacks on Poland and France for evidence. If all it took was a really veteran group of footsoldiers in bronze breastplates carrying shields and spears to take down a tank platoon - no one in the world would have ever researched tanks in the first place.

I should not have to micromanage the tactics my troop use in combat, I can deploy them but not fight for them. When I send 4 mechanized infantry units into battle against a city full of 2 archers, 1 axemen, and 1 spearmen I don't expect to get routed. Certainly not after using stealth bombers and jet fighters against them. Is it difficult taking cities in real life - yes just look at the US's efforts in Iraq. Is it possible that a bunch of rag tag men carrying axes could take out a mechanized infantry platoon - possibly but then this isn't a combat simulation I'm playing its Civilization.

Am I pissed that I got whittled down - absolutely. Is it a big deal to me in the end - no. I'm gonna win anyway so I don't really care about some minor setbacks but it tells me that Firaxis didn't fix the battle simulation after all.
 
Eigenvector said:
Am I pissed that I got whittled down - absolutely. Is it a big deal to me in the end - no. I'm gonna win anyway so I don't really care about some minor setbacks but it tells me that Firaxis didn't fix the battle simulation after all.

Then what do you suggest? If you don't want to take damage from obsolete units then maybe the game should remove them when a new tech is developed or a new age is reached, that way you won't suffer any losses to inferior troops.

btw, while your tanks are firing at those elefants, what's to say some of their riders using equipment stolen from the dead bodies of your soldiers, didn't sneak up and kill them from behind?
 
Eigenvector said:
You did a nice job explaining the tank - I think your explanation was bogus, but now explain how an archer could take down a full strength attack chopper?:mad:

Havn't you ever seen the Rambo movies? that explain how it's done :lol:
 
Let's look at the combat from a more realistic standpoint.

Err... why?

Civ4 is not a wargame. You want that, go play Advanced Squad Leader with a group of friends.

Civ4 is a civilization game. War is an aspect - certainly not the most important - of the game, and is approximized. Can archers take out attack choppers? Sure, lucky shot to the balancing rotor or something. "20" on a d20. Who cares? It's not a wargame. It's a game that approximates 4000 years of human advancement in a 5-10 hours game time. Why are you complaining about this and not about, say, the fact that the same leader is around for 4000 years? There's nothing to fix.
 
Eigenvector, don't take this the wrong way, but Civ has never been the most "realistic" game.

Take the following example for, err... example. I started a game as the Russians in the year 4000BC, led by some guy named Peter. Just now I'm approaching end game so it's nearly the 2000AD and get this - Peter is still alive! Forget about an archer beating a tank, this guy's 6000 years old, how's that for un-realism? Outrageous.

My point is, Civ is not a simulation game. By your logic a single unit of modern armour could take out the entire army of a less advanced civ, and that would be ballanced to you?

If you're after a great real world war game try Op Flash or even something like Rome, beacause CivIV is not one.

EDIT - Lightnng sort of got in with this point before I could post. Sorry for the apparent plagiarism.

P.S. Excellent point, Lightnng :)
 
to Eigenvector

what about the Return of the Jedi, when the walking droids get defeated by small furry stone age warriors (ewoks)?
 
The units in civ represent numbers, is all. Most people think of it in hard terms of "This guy is a tank, and he's going to attack that archer." In real life, the tank would no doubt win. But in the game, it's not a tank. It's a number.

Next time you see an inferior unit beating an superior one, look at the combat odds beforehand. You'll see that even though it might be weird having your uber unit lose, the numbers usually add up.
 
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