Mongolia Jones
Chieftain
- Joined
- Oct 6, 2010
- Messages
- 60
I've played many, many war games in my life. My love affair with the genre started in my best friend's basement when he had laid out Avalon Hill's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. A grand strategy game of WWII.
Soon after whenever we had enough cash saved up, we bought a bunch of other games from the local hobby shop, Squad Leader, Tobruk, Flat Top, etc. Ultimately, in the 90's that led to purchasing computer based games like Panzer General I, II, IIIse, Strategic Command etc... You get the picture.
THE one thing that holds true in every war game I have played (from the squad level to grand strategy level), is that the attacker needs AT LEAST 2-to-1 firepower/strength ratio just to break even against a defending unit even in the most favorable of terrain.
This has been the case for every game until CIV 5.
I don't know if everyone knows this, mostly because it's not well documented, but units defending in open terrain get a standard -33% strength penalty. That essentially equates to an attacking unit of equal power having a 50% bonus on the attack... that's HUGE.
Note to your CIV-5 generals, if you see the enemy behind a river but on flat terrain, always, always attack. Yes, you get a -20% penalty for attacking over a river, but with the enemy's -33% flat terrain penalty, you can't go wrong.
The second problem is that there is too much of a difference in defending in flat vs rough terrain. Case in point: a strength 12 unit will defend as a strength 8 on flat and as a strength 15 in rough <- that's a HUGE spread (2x). Essentially you DOUBLE your units' defense strengths by sitting them in hills and forests vs clear. This spread need to be reduced to at most a 50% difference.
Lastly (and possibly the most important) is the AI. I've played a number of games (mostly small continents) where I've been able to befriend many of the AI civs and park ships off the coasts of their continents to make observations; and I have found a pattern. Those civs which share a large mostly flat-terrain continent ultimately get conquered by a single civ (usually before the modern or industrial ages). Probably the civ that ultimately ends up with the continent is the civ with the policy which gives a 33% bonus to defend in the home terrain, but this is just conjecture. On the other hand, those civs which are on hilly continents or have a deep hilly border typically remain intact (for the most part) till the modern ages.
As a long time civ player, there's nothing more frustrating than being on an small island-continent for 2000 years then traveling the oceans to the big continent in search of trade, culture and intrigue only to find that it has been totally conquered by one or two civilizations.
I think this is the main reason we are seeing so many CIV players take the conquest route vs the diplomatic, cultural or science victory routes. Conquest is so damn easy because the numbers are in the attackers' favor, even the AI can attest.
As a fledgling modder, I have solved this problem by coding out the 33% penalty for my own games. It seems to have changed the game for the better (I have only played one game since the change). But as a long time fan of the series I really want it to be changed via patch in vanilla CIV5 because I feel that it is ruining the overall gaming experience.
Thanks for reading
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Update Oct 20, 2010
Played for a while with 0% defense values on clear terrain. Not totally happy so going 1 step further.
Updated:
1) Clear terrain defense increased to +20% (-33% in vanilla)
2) Rough terrain defense increased to +50% (+25% in vanilla)
3) Fortify bonus decreased to +10%, max +20% for two rounds (+25% x2 in vanilla)
Rational:
-clear terrain bonus -> help melee vs horse units & slow down 1cpc (1 [AI] civ per continent)
-rough terrain bonus -> keep defense spread between rough vs clear terrain & slow down 1cpc
-fortify bonus reduction -> just being cautious so that stacking of defense bonuses don't get too high
Soon after whenever we had enough cash saved up, we bought a bunch of other games from the local hobby shop, Squad Leader, Tobruk, Flat Top, etc. Ultimately, in the 90's that led to purchasing computer based games like Panzer General I, II, IIIse, Strategic Command etc... You get the picture.
THE one thing that holds true in every war game I have played (from the squad level to grand strategy level), is that the attacker needs AT LEAST 2-to-1 firepower/strength ratio just to break even against a defending unit even in the most favorable of terrain.
This has been the case for every game until CIV 5.
I don't know if everyone knows this, mostly because it's not well documented, but units defending in open terrain get a standard -33% strength penalty. That essentially equates to an attacking unit of equal power having a 50% bonus on the attack... that's HUGE.
Note to your CIV-5 generals, if you see the enemy behind a river but on flat terrain, always, always attack. Yes, you get a -20% penalty for attacking over a river, but with the enemy's -33% flat terrain penalty, you can't go wrong.
The second problem is that there is too much of a difference in defending in flat vs rough terrain. Case in point: a strength 12 unit will defend as a strength 8 on flat and as a strength 15 in rough <- that's a HUGE spread (2x). Essentially you DOUBLE your units' defense strengths by sitting them in hills and forests vs clear. This spread need to be reduced to at most a 50% difference.
Lastly (and possibly the most important) is the AI. I've played a number of games (mostly small continents) where I've been able to befriend many of the AI civs and park ships off the coasts of their continents to make observations; and I have found a pattern. Those civs which share a large mostly flat-terrain continent ultimately get conquered by a single civ (usually before the modern or industrial ages). Probably the civ that ultimately ends up with the continent is the civ with the policy which gives a 33% bonus to defend in the home terrain, but this is just conjecture. On the other hand, those civs which are on hilly continents or have a deep hilly border typically remain intact (for the most part) till the modern ages.
As a long time civ player, there's nothing more frustrating than being on an small island-continent for 2000 years then traveling the oceans to the big continent in search of trade, culture and intrigue only to find that it has been totally conquered by one or two civilizations.
I think this is the main reason we are seeing so many CIV players take the conquest route vs the diplomatic, cultural or science victory routes. Conquest is so damn easy because the numbers are in the attackers' favor, even the AI can attest.
As a fledgling modder, I have solved this problem by coding out the 33% penalty for my own games. It seems to have changed the game for the better (I have only played one game since the change). But as a long time fan of the series I really want it to be changed via patch in vanilla CIV5 because I feel that it is ruining the overall gaming experience.
Thanks for reading
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Update Oct 20, 2010
Played for a while with 0% defense values on clear terrain. Not totally happy so going 1 step further.
Updated:
1) Clear terrain defense increased to +20% (-33% in vanilla)
2) Rough terrain defense increased to +50% (+25% in vanilla)
3) Fortify bonus decreased to +10%, max +20% for two rounds (+25% x2 in vanilla)
Rational:
-clear terrain bonus -> help melee vs horse units & slow down 1cpc (1 [AI] civ per continent)
-rough terrain bonus -> keep defense spread between rough vs clear terrain & slow down 1cpc
-fortify bonus reduction -> just being cautious so that stacking of defense bonuses don't get too high
