Bring back "firepower"

After watching a M.A. lose to a fortified pikeman (across a river, metropolis, the M.A. got down to 1 hitpoint), I think it is time to re-introduce firepower.

In Civ2, I believe they had firepower numbers for each unit, which represented a technological level such that tanks wouldn't get beaten by pikemen. Tanks and other advanced units should not have difficulties with a pikeman.

Civ4 really needs a way to determine the technological power of a unit. Using only the A/D numbers seems insufficient. Some modifier to affect these A/D numbers when units of different tech levels interact.

mythinks that if you see too much of this, then you should move up a level.

i didnt like the idea of firepower in civ 2

it is possible to disable the tracks on a tank with nothing else than a large piece of metal,and a set of big hairy brass ones

although not a very effective way to stop tanks

in a metro, you are fighting not so mucgh against the pikeman as the citizens throwing rocks/motov cocktails at you, sure the pikeman may be the only governmentsponsered opposition you'll face, but there is more than meets the eye

Pikeman are not a problem. It's the clever Spearmen that the modern armored troops have to watch out for!

You can´t take out a Modern Tank with a junk of metal or a molotov cocktail. These warmachines are very stable. There should be a bonus/malus when a certain unit fights a unit from a different age!

All it takes is to dig a hole. Or to pry open the hatch.

depend on what u mean by taking out,u can defenitly achieve mobility kill on a tank by lodging a large hunk of metal in the right spot(kind of hard to explain in english for me exactly where) in the tracks

it has been done,its not info im pulling outta my ass

after that,if u have them surrounded, all u have to do is to sit around and wait,the bastards inside will have to take a dump sooner or later


a sniper can take out a tank,how?

be at the right place when the crew has to refuel,get food/ammo!!

im pretty sure u can make a mess of the optics on a tank with something heavy

human ingeniuty that gave birth to tanks in the first place,will continue to be the most feared weapon ever

not too long ago a few palestininans blew up a merkave tank with 50kg explosives,delivery system?

dude on foot,running!!


ps.there is a bonus when a pikeman 1.3.1
is fighting a unit from a diffrent age,MA 24.16.3

the MA has 24/1=24 times the attack value and 16/3=5.33 times the defence value

now thats what i call advantage!

Firepower and Independent hitpoints. Please explain to me how the calculations for attack and defence work in Civ 3, and also how they did in Civ 2.

I tend to agree with the orginal poster...though the reply about moving up levels is also true...on chieftan you do lose armor to guys with the tech-rating of the average side salad....but on 'sid'....its a little better, cuz you're the guy with the spearman hoping like heck he doesn't decide the afterlife will probably hurt a lot less than the next five minutes of his life facing the abrams...

its a popular hollywood myth/(insert your local mythmaker wherever you are) about a lone guy with a bucket and some mud taking out a tank...yeah it can be done...but in theory you can swallow charcoal and produce a diamond...possible and probably likely are 2 diff'rent things.

it is why rich countries invest in tanks rather than guys with pointy sticks.

I had addressed this in another thread but anyways here goes. The spearman facing the tank is not, I repeat, not using a spear. He is using relatively modern weapons, he just isn't trained with them. This is Civ's way of having the international weapons sales.

Consider Afghanistan: The Taliban probably had a tech equivalent to muskets. This did not mean that they could not fight. It meant that most of the weapons were inferior and that their realistic chances of victory were very small. Consider also, the Sioux, Iroquois, Apache, etc. They did not have the technology to produce firearms and yet Custer was literally outgunned at the battle of Little Bighorn.

Getting to the potential fix. Allow that each era change give a factor of 2 advantage to the higher unit, thus a swordsman vs spearman is 3 to 2, a Med. Inf. vs the spearman is 8 to 2.

In addition, one could allow an attacker to attack multiple targets at the same time, but in doing so the defender adds both his hp and defensive values for the entire combat. Thus, in a similar above case, the tank is 64 vs spearmen. If it attacks 3 spearmen at one time, then their combined defense is 6 with 9 hp. However, if tow infantry are hiding in the stack--oops! Also, disallow or reduce the chance of retreat of attacking forces when using this attack technique.

Sorry to post twice, but I had failed to mention that the factor of 2 alteration does, in fact, work. I have altered scenarios where I simply changed the attack and defense values and the combat was as the original poster was looking for. The reason to apply the 2 factor to the values is to allow the civilians and improvements to be able to have some survivability in the modern ages and some risk in the AA.

This is the main problem with simply increasing the combat values of later units. (...and also the reason that I do not alter the values as often as I used to. Boy! what a bloody mess to the cities I wreaked...)

well i didnt say it was an effective way to do it,but it was done during the soviet invasion of hungary(i think) or was checkoslovakia?


dont remember which eastern europe country it was, also done during the revolution in iran
although in both cases,the doers were angry crowds of demonstrators and the tank crews prolly decided not to open fire


modern tanks have at least 1 MG + airburst frag grenades on the back to take out infantry that is getting too close,however those r all 1 shot each and do run out

after that u would have to watch your ass,not get ran over by the tank

now,in a city enviorement,if u kill all the supporting infantry,an isolated tank is in deep doo doo

u can read about chechnya online somewhere as an example


ive actually never seen a lone guy take out a tank with a bucket of crap in a movie

i did see rambo take out an entire army in rambo3, but i havent watched hollywood movies much at all,since i turned 20,maybe 10 movies a year nowadays

hollywood = crap to 99.99%

if there is a myth out there,about a guy killing tanks with buckets, i have not heard it

btw,for a low-tech way of taking out tanks,i would recommend the road side bombs used in iraqs,the french underground first started using them against the nazis

a shaped charge,big enough,as in 50 kg +,will ruin yer ****,dosent matter if u r sitting in an abrams or not

by the time modern armour is around,ALL nations have discovered the benefits of explosives,as someone mentioned

I'm starting to love this thread...we'll get shut down soon for not being on topic...but it's fun while it lasts....

never saw a shape charged explosive stick before....

Ya gotta go back to the old 40's movies to see the myth creation of 1 guy without high-bang-bangs kill a tank, part of the homegaurd "don't worry about your boys" campaign....where mom's were told not to worry about Jr. being out in the field, they after all had...um..training, yeah yeah training....against a tiger tank...nuthin' can be better than um....training; and a bucket. It hadda be true the american government put their official okie dokie on it.

**This ad brought to you by the Coaliltion For I Don't Believe Nuthin' Which Comes Out Of A Committee & the Committee For Better Thought Control**

Originally posted by starrider
After watching a M.A. lose to a fortified pikeman (across a river, metropolis, the M.A. got down to 1 hitpoint), I think it is time to re-introduce firepower.

In Civ2, I believe they had firepower numbers for each unit, which represented a technological level such that tanks wouldn't get beaten by pikemen. Tanks and other advanced units should not have difficulties with a pikeman.

Civ4 really needs a way to determine the technological power of a unit. Using only the A/D numbers seems insufficient. Some modifier to affect these A/D numbers when units of different tech levels interact.

Click to expand...

Go to the editor and increase the number of hitpoints of the M.A. That represents the technological level.

Why have ATT/DEF values AND firepower? Why not just up the values that already exist?

I never understood why both were needed...

QUOTE]Originally posted by micmc
never saw a shape charged explosive stick before.... [/QUOTE]


u lost me there

cant think of a way to place 50 kg (thats around 100 pounds btw) of explosives on a stick,or why i for that matter

godz n fishez I'm turning into one of them "you said this, so I gotta add that" guys...*shrug* there could be worse things I suppose.

the high explosive on a stick thing was responding to the idea the "spearman" represents a modern day wholestic civilian population fighting against modern armor....it meant only the spearman I've always taken as an old-fashioned counter (squad leader chits) that was a guy with a pointy stick......it meant it is what it is, not something classier or with more real-world alegory and assigning poetic meanings to explain why a spearman stands up to modern armor so often is only explaining away a game flaw.

to put more simply my "high explosive on a stick" was sarcasm that a spearman is a spearman, not representive of modern-people fighting with weapons at hand which they may or may not have in the first place.

uh hum...ok


not that bad an idea actually

uve seen those magnetic boob shaped "grenades" the germans made towards the end of ww2?

its like a shaped charge,u r supposed to run up to the ass of a tank and stick it there,then run like hell

i think some added range(stick) with a way to disengage the stick after u delivered it to the target(maybe breaking off the stick!) would make the whole system more efficient

althought again,not a very good way to kill tanks



check this for some info on the few abrams taken out in iraq:

http://pub131.ezboard.com/fjpspanzersfrm26.showMessageRange?topicID=365.topic&start=1&stop=20

ps.i never said u can damage a tank with a spear,but u can make the tracks break if u lodge a whatucallem? steel beams?

the kind u use for building,but u would have to cut one side so it becomes pointy,so u can stick it in there,dosent have to be sharp,but pointy enough so u can get it in there

Lots of ways to successfully defend a city.

Why bother getting close to the tank with your bombs when you can:

-Stick them on a wall and explode that onto the tank
-Wait till the crew is sleeping and then stick a charge on it
-Blast it with an RPG (available in most black markets for the reasonable price of $5k or less) in the rear section between the turrent and the body
-Set up a booby trapped explosive in the street and draw the tank on top of it
-Ram the tank with a car filled with explosives (not recommended for those who like living, but then who says attacking a tank is safe?)
-Small arms fire. It is impressive what concentrated small arms fire can do to less armored sections of the tank, like the various ventilation ducts and all the optical equipment

Literally thousands of ways to take out a tank in a city. The things are pretty worthless there without plenty of infantry support, as they are designed for open country warfare... where they are still rather vulnerable. Infantry is the true power in warfare, which is why it is ridiculous that tanks have such a high defensive power.

There should be some way to join two units together to create a more effective one... like

Artillery+Infantry= Heavy Assault Unit
Infantry+Tank=Supported Armour

It would be nice to be able to customize/combign in-game.

We should start a new thread for this. I could talk/type for hours on guerrilla warfare... I am something of an addict, which is why it depresses me that CIV lacks any form of support for it.