New idea for unit special ability

Escape:
An equivalent of the withdrawal chance, but on defense. Out of gameplay reasons it would be much better to drop the realism a bit. It would result in the defender staying where he is and the attacker withdrawing from victorious combat without killing the enemy unit and leaving it only with little (but getting still full XP).
For naval units it would be completely linked with withdrawal chance. Withdrawal chance = Escape chance. But for land units it would be developed with a separate upgrade. Withdrawal chance <> Escape Chance.
Mounted and Armor units would have escape chances given as a special ability, but no upgrade to enhance it. Infantry would mostly develop it from a Drill II requiring upgrade "Discipline" +30% escape chance. Naval units would be eligible for it, but it would only improve both bonuses by 15%.
Furthermore, a unit that has successfully used this ability or has less than one :movement: left has its chances halved.
The question how to have the subs nerfed now is open, the easiest solution is to have their escape/withdrawal base bonus decreased to 30% leaving them still as a very interesting weapon(and much more realistic: quite easy to neutralize and force into hiding, hard to hunt down and kill).

If you are going to add an escape, the unit should retreat off the tile. I would also prohibit escape if the retrat moves the unit towards a known enemy unit, and prohibit offensive action until it recovers at least 50% of full health.
I guess that is a little of the Squad Leader fan in me showing through, but it would reflect the reality of a broken army much more than having the unit hold in place.

Yeah, that's what I thought in the beginning, but in case of Civ4 it would be better to drop the realism here in favor of not rocking the boat of the entire combat system philosophy which is not space-based.

I like the idea of defender beeing abel to "Escape".

I dont like the idea of leaving him where he is - hereby denying the victorius unit to advance into the tile - which the unit earned by victory.

Perhaps a possible solution would be to dump the escaping unit in the nearest friendly city (and delete it, if there is no friendly city within - say 5 plots) and lock it there for one turn (this is possible - there are random events doing that).
This would achive multiple things:
- The victorious unit is not denied the earned advance.
- The escaped unit actually does have a chance to survive - leaving it where it is would make it easy pray for the next attacker.
- The escaped unit is not ready for immediate action - it needs time to re-rally.

If the defeated unit stays in the place, other units in the stack may "cover its retreat". It simply resembles a situation where the unit was capable of holding the enemy back with the skin of it's teeth, while not doing much damage to the enemy.
Removing the unit into a city is all what it kills the essence of the idea.This upgrade is supposed to give you tactical advantage by forcing the enemy to have a second unit nearby to kill off the routers before they rally, not a strategic one, by saving unit production. The idea is to make capable multiple destroyers to hunt down a sub and kill it, while a single destroyer will most likely be unable to destroy the sub at all. The combat system is not space based in any other aspect, so it does little difference to the realism weather the unit stays where it is or weather it retreats to an adjacent tile. For city defense purposes: the "disciplined" defenders will have the capability of keeping out much stronger forces making sieges more interesting.
It makes no sense to resign from interesting playability options in favor of some realism that doesn't exist in this game anyway.

PS I don't even think halving the chance after a successful escape is required. Furthermore a horse archer with escape chance can slow the advance of your units while still loosing combat. that's more or less the idea of it.

You are right - if the unit is covered by a stack, there is no need to move it to a nearest friendly city. So let instead make the ability only work, if the unit is in a stack - that is even better, than making it retreat into a friendly city - the stack could indeed be covering retreat and helping to escape.

Your approach seems brocken - imho - if it comes to a single unit, which might loose, and nevertheless prevent enemy advance. (Or slow it down, od force the stack to split up (because the unit fighting - and winning - the first battle was unable to advance))

You might be right about sea battles beeing not space based - most of the time. It is different if units do block a small strait - in that case a single loosing sub might be blocking the strait - despite the fact tha it was "neutralized" by a destroyer.

The land combat is space based most of the time - it does matter - for example - gain a hill near a city, to be able to attack/advance from there.
If that hill is defended by a single unit, it can be gained without splitting the stack - the attacking unit wins and advances. If the attacking unit looses, it - of course - does not advance.
In your system a victorious unit might be denied the advance - without any explicable reason - by a 'running away' enemy.

What you describe is a way to slow down enemy advance, by making it harder to gain ground via a arbitrary modifier. If that's your goal - go ahead - it is however not what i understand from the notion of "Escaping"

Even if it is made the way that you limit the ejection to units that are not in a stack: put 2 horsemen on a tile and you get the same until one unsuccessfully escapes.
I called this escape, but what I meant was rather a small tactical retreat, not a "run for your lives" escape, which IMHO would add nothing to the game.
And yeah a single unit with almost no force is capable of holding off an incomparably stronger enemy while not really damaging him in a narrow gorge. Woodsman III and Guerrilla III units should have also capability of doing it in their power terrain. A sub can blockade straights or a peninsula forcing a longer route of the ships as long as it is not successfully killed off - subs really did that.
About this attribute being arbitrary: all attributes are arbitrary in this game. Many people have complained on guerrilla warfare in civ4, this might be the answer.
PS Maybe "escape" is the wrong name, maybe it should be "survival" or something like that. The whole idea is that you have all the aces and crushing firepower advantage, but then the enemy flips the entire chessboard upside down and while capitalizing on it's weaknesses prevents you from gaining ground control, while not really inflicting much damage.

I see some problems with this. For example, lets say I am defending a city. Do I escape out of the city? And what if I am the last in the city? Then obviously I probably shouldn't leave...

Just seems like it would need a lot of exceptions to it.

check out scenarios like afterworld for unit special abilities. For example, special ability like healing (this turn), set bomb on a tile, summon a new unit (robots), special attack, range attack, invisibility (maybe for future age units), teleport 3 tiles away (future age), etc

i think solution is escaped units to become non-combat at turn they escaped.
i.e. you have 2 units on a hill defending. enemy attacks first unit and it escapes. then enemy attacks the second, and it escapes too. but there are no more combat untis on the hill, so attacker moves to the hill plot and kills both escaped defenders.

i think "discipline" name is suitable for this ability.

killmeplease said:

i think solution is escaped units to become non-combat at turn they escaped.
i.e. you have 2 units on a hill defending. enemy attacks first unit and it escapes. then enemy attacks the second, and it escapes too. but there are no more combat untis on the hill, so attacker moves to the hill plot and kills both escaped defenders.

i think "discipline" name is suitable for this ability.

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What about subs then?

Mik1984 said:

What about subs then?

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i think they must act in a different way..

* rival ships and subs can move the same plot and must be at the same plot to attack each other.
* sub has a chance to retreat after attack, and able to get flank promotions.
* sub targets a transport units first (like a khmer elefant targets mounted)
* sub can not directly be attacked by ships but they can bomb (special action icon) it to death.

what do you think about it?

SOunds excellent. How about having units in stacks of a certains size (depending on mapsize?) stay, have units in cities with additional defenders stay, and have "lone" units leave the tile either for the tile with the highest protection % modifier or opposite of the attacking enemy?

killmeplease said:

...
* sub targets a transport units first (like a khmer elefant targets mounted)...

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I like this idea. A sub should be able to select targets.

killmeplease said:

i think they must act in a different way..

* rival ships and subs can move the same plot and must be at the same plot to attack each other.
* sub has a chance to retreat after attack, and able to get flank promotions.
* sub targets a transport units first (like a khmer elefant targets mounted)
* sub can not directly be attacked by ships but they can bomb (special action icon) it to death.

what do you think about it?

Click to expand...

Good enough for me. Subs can be bombed only by: destroyers, stealth destroyers, aircraft
But only the first two can bomb them to death.
Subs can be attacked by attack subs and then standard combat occurs.

Supr49er said:

I like this idea. A sub should be able to select targets.

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Didn't they used to do this in some version of CIV III?

And on a related matter... why can't I select the target of my guided missile?

Rusty Edge said:

Didn't they used to do this in some version of CIV III?

And on a related matter... why can't I select the target of my guided missile?

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I am not sure weather it would be a good idea given how the rest of combat is implemented.

A few thoughts...
1) I like the idea of a "tactical withdrawl" that can save a unit from destruction but I agree that the loser should never remain in control of the contested tile. In the US Civil War the losses during a battle were often even and the "victor" was whoever held or took the field of combat. Therefor the defending unit should be driven back 1 tile. Wasn't there something like this in CIV1? I seem to remember having to "chase" certain untis all over the map because they would withdraw from combat if defending and losing.
It also prevents the unrealistic bottlenecking that could occur if a sub was defending a strait. Sure the sub (or subs) might lose the battle but they can still prevent an entire armada (if there are enough of them) to pass through their tile even though they've lost every battle. I know you're not going for realism but that would be too much to ignore.

2) I also like the idea that air units can destroy subs but I would include fighters too. Many fighters were used to hunt subs during WWII as torpedo planes.

Good post...great ideas.

Al Capwn said:

Therefor the defending unit should be driven back 1 tile.

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That is out of question given the entire combat model of Civ4.

This could be implemented in civ5 if they reinstate the combat model of SMAC(best combat model possible of a civ game) making the combat actually space based.

What if retreat was possible only to an adjacent tile occupied by units of the retreating civ? If retreat were possible to multiple adjacent and occupied tiles, then the unit would always retreat to the most heavily occupied tile, i.e. the tile with the most units. If there are no adjacent tiles occupied by retreating civ, then the unit cannot retreat and is destroyed. This rule would encourage the use of formations to support units with retreat options.