Conquoring Squares

One thing that makes upsets me is when I have control of an enemy square but am not able to use even the road that are on the square that I am using.

Here is what I am proposing:

After a unit enters a square, the roads and railroads can be used by other units on the occupied square.

Also, after a after a city is captured, all the surrounding squares must be landed on to capture them from the enemy.

Response?

I suppose it is modelling resistance or careful movement in the way it handles road. I think either the way it is or a undefended road is a road, regardless of whose territory it falls unders. Ultimately this is to give the edge to the defender, but perhaps it would be more sensible to have to defend your territory/roads rather than have the enemy unit crippled. It would give you a better reason to set up an infrastructure of barricades. Rail could be treated as a standard road to the enemy. So in short, if you dont defend your terrain, then its your fault the enemy is comfortably cruising down your highways.

I dont like the idea of having to "touch" squares.

have like one entry in to the terrioty and have four or five units there to blockade also this prevents those damn allied settlers coming in and takeing ur land in back

I like the way it is...I see it as representing resistence.

I think it is handled well also, enemy roads are not a major annoyance. It can be frustrating to get stuck just short during an attack, but consider it a lesson in patience.

But is it accurate to model resistence by having the resistence instantly fall when the city falls?

Ask our soldiers in Iraq if this is the case.

I agree that resistance could be better modelled than it currently is, but probably not the way you're describing it. I've seen some people, elsewhere, talking about ongoing resistance in a city causing a few related effects-dependant on the degree of resistance.

1) Units occupying a resisting city have X% chance of recieving damage.

2) Every turn, and improvement in that city has an X% chance of being damaged or destroyed.

3) Every turn, a resisting city has an X% chance of 'spawning' a partisan/geurilla unit. This unit can sabotage units, city improvements and tile improvements until destroyed.

The only way to eliminate resistance would be to

a) Make them happy with your occupation-a fairly difficult, but not impossible task.

b) culturally assimilate the city's population-difficult to do if the city previously belonged to a deeply religious and/or nationalistic civ.

c) Commit Genocide-easy if you have the forces to do it, but at a potentially great loss to your international reputation. In addition, depending on how 'Libertarian', 'Militaristic' or 'Nationalistic' your own people are, this action could cause MAJOR unhappiness back home!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

a undefended road is a road

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It's not quite that simple. you have to consider both the timescale of the turn and the geographic scale of the square and the surrounding squares. All things in civ are simplified down to a playable level, but that does not mean that a road on the map is simply representing a road IRL. It reaaly has to represent a whole road network and infrastructure, including maintenance, repair and redevelopment. Now, a turn is a long time. So the loack of road movement in invaded territory not only models in some implied resistance (including sabotage) but also decay and disrepair and the problems of navigation in foreign territory (you can't expect clear signposts at every junction - we don't even have that in places we know reasonably well). In short it is unreasonable to allow invading forces the freedom of movement that prevail for the native inhabitants.

On a completely different tack: changing this rule makes invasion easier. Is the game so hard that we need to adjust the game balance that way? I am a fairly incompetent player, but I have never found that to be the case. In fact even with some of the improvements in civ 3 (such as the ability of some units to withdraw from combat and live to resist another turn), conquest can still become a bit of a roller-coaster way out of synch with historical experience where there are very few documented "easy" sweeps across whole continents. There is sometimes adanger when playing a particular position to think of a rule change that makes life easier, but what happens to the challenge of the game if we keep chopping out all the barriers and frustrating limitations?

Even slow advance on enemy roads represents resistance, I think tha the current model is not good. Think about it: even in enemy territory any real formation moves much faster on road then without road. I believe 2 different values could be used: first for allied roads (let say 4 squares a turn) and the second for enemy roads (let say 2 squares per turn).
Interesting question is what about neutral countries? you are not in war and not in passage agreement. So your units could not be attacked, therefore no military resistance. So why units movement will be as slow as in enemy territory? Probably need 3rd value

Basically this argument is answered by the later units with multiple moves...knights, cav, armor, etc. Allowing free use of road/rail squares would seriously tip the advantage to the attacker. Again, as noted above, you must keep the scale of the game in mind in both area and time. Not to say it isn't a valid real-life argument, but it does not translate to the scale and scope of the game.

I like the list, Aussie. To that, I would add "pile tons of troops in the city." Adding another unit should reduce the chance of sabotage by some amount. You'll never get it to zero until the resistance ends, but you can make it very small, if you're willing to tie down your troops that long. Perhaps there should be an explicit unit action 'Quell Resistance' where a unit just stays in place in the city. Quelling resistance would use up that unit's turn and would grant no defensive bonuses like Fortify does. Perhaps a city under resistance would offer a defensive penalty to the occupying forces, making counter-attack easier.

Regarding the rest, I posted a thread about securing infrastructure a few weeks back. It's a compromise between the excessive strength of being able to automatically use enemy infrastructure and the excessive weakness of never being able to use it, while making paratroopers much more useful. I think it's a bad idea for there to be automatic damage to your units that are just hanging out in the countryside. Is the grass attacking them? Your units should have to be attacked to get hurt. The city case is a realistic, good exception to that rule. Land mines would also be a better way of doing it. Then there are supply lines, which achieve a similar goal, but with a completely different mechanism. Also, I've seen the suggestion that defending units be able to set traps and ambush invaders, which also is a better way of achieving the same goal.

I think it ought to be possible to gain temporary control of enemy territory during war without taking a city. I'd suggest that when an infantry unit fortifies itself on an enemy controlled tile that is adjacent to one of its civ's tiles for an entire turn its civ gains control of it. Mounted units/tanks would not have this ability. Up until mech inf this means only units with 1 movement would have the ability, so it would take 3 turns to gain control. One to move to the tile, 1 to fortify, 1 to hold it. Cease fire terms could include return of captured territory. If it wasn't returned, eventually the original civ would regain it anyway but if there was an important resource, or it was a strategically important tile, or you could be crippling the output of the city, they'd want it back right away.

This would allow for more minor border disputes between civs.


-Leuf

Would this be a border extension? i.e., you move a unit onto some other civ's territory and you somehow "claim" it as yours. Your borders wrap around that unit until they fight you off or something. As long as you can assert your claim over it, you can tap its resources, work the tile, etc. Is that what you mean? The idea has potential, but I fear it could be buried by complications.

I see that as a potentially distinct case compared to securing roads or railroads for invasions.

This would remove the emphasis of guarding cities (good? bad?), and create the need for battle fronts. Historically battles took place on fields or designated locations. That is, until World War I.

apatheist said:

Would this be a border extension? i.e., you move a unit onto some other civ's territory and you somehow "claim" it as yours. Your borders wrap around that unit until they fight you off or something. As long as you can assert your claim over it, you can tap its resources, work the tile, etc. Is that what you mean? The idea has potential, but I fear it could be buried by complications.

I see that as a potentially distinct case compared to securing roads or railroads for invasions.

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It could be that a unit has to stand stand on the square for x number of turns.

So, for some reason, you want a tile that is currently owned by the Germans between Osaka and Dresden. You park your Rifleman on it. The Germans tell you to get out. You politely decline. The Germans tell you again. You politely decline. They declare war on you. You stay put. The Germans attack Kyoto. You attack Leipzig. The Rifleman stays put. Eventually, you make peace, possibly with cities changing hands. Maybe you keep the tile, maybe not. What was the point of all that? If the tile is valuable enough to claim like that, it's valuable enough to go after Dresden itself, because the Germans are going to go after your cities to get you out. If it's not that valuable, why are you starting a war over it?

Being able to extend borders like that is fraught with complication. How do you determine how big x is? What happens if the unit leaves? If you retain control after the unit leaves, what happens if the other civ has a border expansion due to culture? What if it flips to another civ or gets captured? What if your nearby city flips or gets captured?

The initial discussion centered on enabling use of infrastructure during war time. I think sticking to that aspect will keep things from getting crazy.

apatheist said:

So, for some reason, you want a tile that is currently owned by the Germans between Osaka and Dresden. You park your Rifleman on it. The Germans tell you to get out. You politely decline. The Germans tell you again. You politely decline. They declare war on you. You stay put. The Germans attack Kyoto. You attack Leipzig. The Rifleman stays put. Eventually, you make peace, possibly with cities changing hands. Maybe you keep the tile, maybe not. What was the point of all that? If the tile is valuable enough to claim like that, it's valuable enough to go after Dresden itself, because the Germans are going to go after your cities to get you out. If it's not that valuable, why are you starting a war over it?

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If it's not that valuable then you are an idiot to start a war over it. Maybe Osaka and Dresden's city radii overlap. You don't need another city, but you want to build a wonder in Osaka and getting control of that cattle tile would cut the number of turns down by 5. Or maybe you know that Dresden is building the same wonder and you want to slow them down. This is the sort of squabbling over territory that happens a lot more than actual cities trading hands.

apatheist said:

Being able to extend borders like that is fraught with complication. How do you determine how big x is? What happens if the unit leaves? If you retain control after the unit leaves, what happens if the other civ has a border expansion due to culture? What if it flips to another civ or gets captured? What if your nearby city flips or gets captured?

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Well personally I think having borders defined entirely by culture and not at all by the military power of the civ is not realistic, but that's beyond the scope of this discussion. If you've got the might to back it up, you ought to be able to say hey buddy, that land over there is mine now without going to the extreme of taking a city.

apatheist said:

The initial discussion centered on enabling use of infrastructure during war time. I think sticking to that aspect will keep things from getting crazy.

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This would allow a way to gain control of the infrastructure, but in a way that the defender could see was happening and could take action to defend against. And well, look at the title of the thread

-Leuf

Leuf said:

If it's not that valuable then you are an idiot to start a war over it. Maybe Osaka and Dresden's city radii overlap. You don't need another city, but you want to build a wonder in Osaka and getting control of that cattle tile would cut the number of turns down by 5. Or maybe you know that Dresden is building the same wonder and you want to slow them down. This is the sort of squabbling over territory that happens a lot more than actual cities trading hands.

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I don't see enough benefit in being able to define borders that finely. If you really want that tile so much, I'm fine with making you put in the investment to go after the city that commands it. Most of the time, that's what you'll have to do anyway to settle the issue.

Leuf said:

Well personally I think having borders defined entirely by culture and not at all by the military power of the civ is not realistic, but that's beyond the scope of this discussion.

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There's overt control and there's subtle control. If your citizens' only link to you is that you command them, they won't long be yours. If they identify with you, though, then they'll stick with you in the long run. Borders represent the loyalties of the invisible people living on the land. The stronger your culture, the more loyalty you can command.