combat tactics – surrounding the enemy

I’ve always missed some tactical thinking when waging wars, other than straightforward throwing units to attack and fortifying them in cities for defense. One of the main principles in warfare is to attack the enemy where he doesn’t expect you, i.e. from the back. And if you have enough forces your goal should be to surround and destroy him with minimal loses. In Civ you can do that (attacking from the back, surrounding), but you don’t gain anything in combat with it (I am not talking here about attacking an empire from 2 different ends, I am talking about simple unit-on-unit combat). This is especially important during a siege on a city. Currently it doesn’t matter whether you have all your units in one plot, serially attacking the adjanced city plot, or you deploy them all around the city. So here’s my suggestion how to add some flavor to these oversimplified combats:

Each unit will have additional property – direction. Direction is towards one of the 8 adjanced tiles. It is automatically set according to the last movement of the unit, but can be changed while unit is staying in the same tile (new unit order – ‘rotate’). This new property affects the combat in the way that defender is strongest in the front and weakest from the back (attacking from the back will get you +50% (for instance), from the side 25% and direct attack in the front will be the same as it is now). Use of rotation unfortifies the unit (you must fortify it again in the desired direction).

This will get you:

- added value to surrounding the city – the defenders will have to try to defend from all the sides the danger is coming. Also, cities placed next to rivers, mountain ranges, etc. will be easier to defend (you can concentrate the defense on the open side, while river or mountain helps you from the other)
- added value to forts – you can’t just bypass tactically placed forts – one of them will get you easily from the back. You can plan your defense by allowing the enemy to pass only through some narrow places where you can easily trap them
- paratroopers will be really valuable to land behind enemy lines fortified in only one direction

I will try to make a mod for this, but the biggest problem will be to train the AI to use it. Without smart AI it makes no sense.

YES! I have said this before, or at least something similar. Anything that makes forts more useful is good. Such as introducing morale too, that way units stationed in a fort could have increase morale.

Your proposal is well described and as it increases the importance of city placement I think it is a good idea, you have my vote.

By introducing the concept of rotation/direction of armies, you're creating something too complicated for a game that doesn't revolve around combat. Although I wish that CIV combat had more tactics involved then just a huge SoD, having to decide which direction each of your units should face is simply too much work.

However, I've seen a flanking system used in Sid Meier's Pirates! when raiding cities, and it works well there. Although it doesn't implement rotation/direction of troops, your soldiers get an attack bonus if you have units on adjacent tiles. I think something simpler like that would be better and easier to mod.

There's some Facing stuff in the Afterworld mod. You can take units out of the Afterworld mod and put them in another mod and they keep it, too.

aokces said:

your soldiers get an attack bonus if you have units on adjacent tiles

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Hmmm, this is very good idea. Much easier to implement and could provide the same effects. I'll give it a try.

Well explained idea, but this kind of things will not force the players to play like the WWI unfolded: with front lines.

dexy said:

Hmmm, this is very good idea. Much easier to implement and could provide the same effects. I'll give it a try.

Click to expand...

It should be considered that a single unit on an adjacent tile should give less bonuses then multiple units on the same adjacent tile.

aokces said:

It should be considered that a single unit on an adjacent tile should give less bonuses then multiple units on the same adjacent tile.

Click to expand...

No.

Then units on the same plot as the attacker should give bonus as well. And to be fair to the defender - units on his plot should give bonus to him. Then we have actually the stack combat but that is not what I wanted to achieve. It's already implemented in some way in Total Realism and Revolution mods, but I didn't like it much. It adds no value to tactics other than producing more and more units.

I like the idea about units on adjacent tiles, but each tile will add only it's best attacker's strength to the bonus (a % of it, not full strength).

aokces said:

However, I've seen a flanking system used in Sid Meier's Pirates! when raiding cities, and it works well there. Although it doesn't implement rotation/direction of troops, your soldiers get an attack bonus if you have units on adjacent tiles. I think something simpler like that would be better and easier to mod.

Click to expand...

For the benefit of others:

The city raiding sub-game of Sid's Pirates! gives a 2X flanking bonus to the attacker. If the defender were facing "North" , we would be vulnerable to a flank attack from his W, SW, S, SE, and E squares. So it benefits the attacker to side-step and flank attack rather than go toe to toe, provided they don't end the turn in a position that invites a flanking attack on the enemy's turn.


Much as I like playing Pirates!, I like Civ as a strategic rather than tactical game.