Combat speculation

From this article: "The new system allows your lines to stand longer than they could before, so you, as a player, can make smarter tactical decisions without worrying about a single unlucky roll of the dice."

Now I'm always suspicious about any point being overly stressed. Which player has substantial problems keeping units alive? Exactly: the AI. Increasing unit hit points will allow it a better chance at achieving its goals without being wiped out on the spot, in what to the human seems like a mindless suicide attack.
Sounds like this system will also make big attack waves (blanket of death) less viable or needed. Units could be more expensive to reduce cluttering. Higher difficulties could even increase AI hit points (they are redoing it after all); damage would be calculated based on percentage and is not influenced. Making AI units stronger would not be fun to play against, but how do you feel about units that just take longer to kill?

On the downside, I'm already fearing how this would be an inferior alternative to better programming

If we are lucky, the new combat system in G&K will fix the major issues in CiV which are:

- Ranged units overpowered, especially the artillery which completely breaks what was left of combat balance before someone researches that tech.
- Melee units too weak and only used to protect the ranged units and take cities.
- Cavalry useless most of the time and tactically non viable.

Moriboe said:

Units could be more expensive to reduce cluttering.

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Exactly.

I belive that units are going to be more slow to produce than before and that they are going to be more expensive to maintain than before.

If we are going to have significantly more durable units than before, then I belive that we must also reduce the overall number of units.

I might be wrong though but thats just how I see it.

I am interested to see how city combat works. Right now, it takes a lot of units to bring down a city in the early game. That's what permits us to defend cities in the early game with the city defenses and an archer. If less damage will be inflicted per attack, thus allowing the attacker to make multiple attacks without being destroyed, early cities will go down more easily. I guess the thought process would be that now, human players will have to build more early units than many of us have been used to.

Anyway, if units will last longer in heavy combat, than cities will probably also get a defense upgrade. Another option that the developers have would be to cause the AI to build fewer units, understanding that they will last longer. We'll have to wait and see.

After trying out the speculation combat mod, I can say that I find it difficult to return to vanilla. The game is just so much more interesting (and units upgrade much quicker. I started a game in the renaissance era and after a war with just 2 civs I had 5 units with blitz and march.) The fights are more tense, and it makes the technological difference much more staggering. Rifleman versus archer now resulted in 100 damage vs 4, instead of 10 vs 1. Those 6 points could've been detrimental in the long run. And all of these longer-lasting units no longer feel like cannon fodder.

I don't feel that artillery is overpowered. Don't forget, if caught in melee combat they are killed extemely easily. Also, in WWI more soldiers were killed by artillery than anything else. At least in the early modern era, artillery IS extremely powerful, that's why the game is designed that way. You can always take them out with tanks or aircraft.

On the whole arty thing... G&K is adding a lot of new units in the WW1 era. I think it's pretty likely that one of those will be a new artillery. So the first artillery will get indirect fire, and the second will have the 3 range bonus. That way, it'll be a little more staggered, and a person who gets the artillery tech can't just steamroll right away. That's just me being hopeful though.
About the OP: I think it's going to make armies smaller, more expensive, and more durable. I'm a fan of that, it will make the AI's blanket of death less effective, and it will make army movement a little less tedious.

aluelkdf said:

in WWI more soldiers were killed by artillery than anything else.

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Except for disease, of course....

krc said:

Except for disease, of course....

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worst part was that most of the artillery deads where from their own fire

Consensuses seems to be that taking longer to build units is a good thing. I'm not so sure it seems to me that it already takes way too much time to build units as it is. even on epic it sometimes feel that by the time a produce a decent army I've already tecked to the point where I need to upgrade most of them.

If anything more powerful units will allow you to field a viable army quicker and get more use out of them. which is what I hope for.

A couple of things:

1. I agree with a few of you that ranged units are simply too powerful at this point. By making them do less damage, or by bulking up unit health, or whatever, that does remedy the situation somewhat. That said, does anyone worry that G&K will go maybe too far? The intent in the expansion seems to be to make melee units more meaningful by weakening ranged unit effectiveness, but the unintended consequence might be that ranged units that aren't specifically designed to target cities (archers, crossbows, and their UU's) will become a lot less useful since siege-style ranged units will have plenty of time to set-up behind the stronger melee lines, allowing siege-type ranged units to function like the old archers and crossbows.

2. Cavalry units aren't useless in multiplayer. Which brings up a good point: the combat changes being made appear to me to be in order to liven up single-player combat. How some of these changes may affect multiplayer worries me a little. As with the previous point, the unintended consequences may actually make a whole new, different batch of units worthless rather than bring everything into balance. (As a side note, I at least assume those of us who do play multiplayer will be able to simply start the game without the expansion, or be able to change settings in-game, to use old combat mechanics if we like).

3. Changes to combat mechanics will drastically affect certain wonders. All of a sudden, ToA looks a lot less promising (popping out a lot of ranged units will no longer be a great strat, perhaps, after all). Likewise, Great Wall will be less useful since slowing down melee units will become no guarentee that ranged attacks from units or cities will do enough damage to them anymore. I haven't read enough yet, so does anyone know how combat-related wonders will be tweaked?

4. I agree with, again, a few other posts here: better combat AI would, paradoxically, make conquest victories less easy. Looks like that, rather than code a tougher (and maybe more central-processor-intense) AI, they've looked to fix combat via game mechanics. I'm not going to complain too much, since my processor is getting a little older and I wouldn't like waiting forever between turns, but, to be honest, mechanics are pretty good in multiplayer right now (IMO), so, in a perfect world they would just change the AI.

The articles and interviews did say they are also re-balancing the units, not just increasing the hitpoints. That could mean anything from adjusting the combat and ranged strengths to giving bonuses, or reducing/taking away penalties.

Monthar said:

The articles and interviews did say they are also re-balancing the units, not just increasing the hitpoints. That could mean anything from adjusting the combat and ranged strengths to giving bonuses, or reducing/taking away penalties.

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I've heard/read that, too. That's a good thing to remember (and something I forgot to bear in mind in my response a few minutes ago), that there looks like there will be a more general overhaul than just hitpoints and ranged effectiveness.

Really, when you think about it, there's so much they could choose to do to balance combat beyond changing the combat mechanics themselves, too, things which we may not hear about until later. Adjusting the number of hammers to build units, changing position in the tech tree for certain units (something I think happened with a few units in the Civ 4 expansions, where they were bumped up or pushed back, and, in particular, I remember this affecting muskets). And so forth.

Point being, I think you're right that it's going to be a lot more than just changes to hitpoints and one or two other things.

They could even do things like make siege units lose health just from attacking, which really would not be that absurd.

We already know of 3 new ranged units.
Compound Bow
Gatling Gun
Machine Gun

It seems like the progression is most likely.
Archer > Compound Bow > Crossbow > Gatling Gun > Machine Gun

I'd say it's safe to assume the ranged units will be adjusted to better fit the new health and damage model.

Monthar said:

We already know of 3 new ranged units.
Compound Bow
Gatling Gun
Machine Gun

It seems like the progression is most likely.
Archer > Compound Bow > Crossbow > Gatling Gun > Machine Gun

I'd say it's safe to assume the ranged units will be adjusted to better fit the new health and damage model.

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That's a great progression, too, since it will mean that promotions gained while a unit is an archer won't be useless should that unit survive to the later upgrades. Used to be pretty annoying knowing that early game promos of archers and crossbows became worthless once you upgraded them out of the ranged unit category.

My only (wee, tiny, small) complaint is that it's a pretty long time from Crossbows to Gatling Guns. I expect the Gatling Gun tech to be contemporary to (or the same as) the Riflemen's technology.

I'd be really happy seeing a new unit in almost every tech. They wouldn't have to be a huge upgrade, but if I am teching theology I could have Vatican Guard unit to hold off someone's swordman until I get something else.

Dang it, his G-man killed my Pinkerton!

cavalry will be extremely powerfull now just hitting the enemy and moving away

CivilizedPlayer said:

About the OP: I think it's going to make armies smaller, more expensive, and more durable. I'm a fan of that, it will make the AI's blanket of death less effective, and it will make army movement a little less tedious.

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I would be too. But I hope they also adjust the promotions accordingly. We shouldn't have Level 4 promotions just after a few battles, excepting specific situations with UU/UA. I also still would like to see insta-heal as a level 2 or 3 promotion.