do you wish that unit vs unit battle damage was realistic?

armed2010

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I sorta get steamed when one of my tanks get destroyed by a rifleman from the civil war era. And everyone knows about the spearman defeat modern armor stuff. Should Sid Meires just forget about the roll a dice method for damage and just tinker everything to be realstic when a unit is pitted against another unit?
 

Knowze Gungk

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No, I don't think so. The fact there is a remote possibility of having a spearman destroy a MA, makes the game more interesting.
 

lord42

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This would unbalance the game as tech rushing would become too powerful.
 

mdenison

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REMOTE?!?! LOL! When I'm the spearman I have a REMOTE chance of winning, but when the computer is the spearman I'd say they have a good 30% chance of winning, lol!
 

Knowze Gungk

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30% if you're down to one HP maybe. I'd say it's more like a chance of one in the thousands.
 

Divvy

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What's the bonus for a spearman in a metropolis with civil defense? ...on a hill... surrounded by rivers.

100% Metropolis
50% Civil Defense
50% Hill
25% River
25% Fortified
250% total if you just add up the bonuses? Im not sure if it works that way.

So the spearman should have:
7/31=23% chance of winning against MA (is that realistic?). Almost 1 out of 4. eek... imagine if such a city was full of MIs, only a nuke could take it out.
 

Zouave

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Originally posted by Knowze Gungk
No, I don't think so. The fact there is a remote possibility of having a spearman destroy a MA, makes the game more interesting.

If you enjoy yourself, that's great.

But for those many of us who loved Civ 2 and hoped for a LITTLE realism and historical accuracy in Civ 3, well, we were very disappointed. It is merely a Fantasy game, in fact. :(

But I hope you have fun, nonetheless.
 

Anti-EUA

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actually divvy it is 7/31 each round, so if your spearmen has 3 hp and the modern armor has 5 or 6, it's even smaller. you are assuming that they have the same hp right?
 

Zouave

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I can't believe you people didn't mod Firaxis' crazy values ages ago.
 

Zachriel

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Originally posted by Divvy
What's the bonus for a spearman in a metropolis with civil defense? ...on a hill... surrounded by rivers.

100% Metropolis
50% Civil Defense
50% Hill
25% River
25% Fortified
250% total if you just add up the bonuses? Im not sure if it works that way.

So the spearman should have:
7/31=23% chance of winning against MA (is that realistic?). Almost 1 out of 4. eek... imagine if such a city was full of MIs, only a nuke could take it out.

23% is a single round. Losing a single hitpoint is like using up gas or ammo. After the combat, the unit has to wait a turn for resupply.

For four-hitpoint Veterans, Armor has a 92% chance of victory in that extreme example, and a 98% survival rate due to retreat. I wouldn't complain about losing a very occasional Armored unit when the enemy is defending with Spearmen. Gee whiz! How much easier do you want the game to be?

http://www.zachriel.com/BattleCivulation.asp

And yes, primitive units can defeat Armor some of the time -- but not by standing in infantry lines. A few possibilities include subterfuge, betrayal, mines, weather, accidents, friendly fire, stealing weapons, disease, bribery, pits of fire, mutiny, weak supply lines, bad decisions by local commanders, and really, really bad decisions by local commanders.

Consider that Stone Age Native Americans beat Custer's Cavalry at Little Big Horn.
 

Shillen

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Realism should be tossed for increased gameplay at all times. Making a spearman or rifleman unable to defend against a tank would ruin the game. Whoever got tanks first would just steamroll every other civ with ease. A 100% realistic game would really suck.
 

Zouave

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As I said, it is a Fantasy game - if spearmen or pikemen have any chance against tanks that is what it is. I would say it is about TEN percent realistic. I would have hoped for twenty. Even naval warfare was dumbed down compared even to Civ 2! Too bad. You enjoy yourselves, but I haven't played it in months.
 

armed2010

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I understand the whole thing about technology rushing and stuff, but isnt that how it basically is in the real world? The united states is the most powerful nation in the world because its technology is greater. Technology allows civilizations to be strong. I want some realism in the game, and having a civil war guy kill my tank isnt part of my realism.
 

Mullet Crusader

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Well, actually China is probably the most powerful country in the world right now, but the U.S. still leads in technology which gives us a big edge. I think a little realism wouldnt hurt, as in, giving older units slightly less chance of beating newer units depending on how far apart they are on the time scale, so it wouldn't be too one-sided but you also wouldnt lose Marines to guys with sharp sticks so often ;)
 

farting bob

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if it was one unit has a chance of killing one unit, but this one does not, causse its weaponry was simply not advanced enough, then once you got tanks everyones defense will e reduced dramatically, sinc only other tanks, MA's, MI's and infantry could actually take out atank. if your a few techs behind and soemone atacks you wih tanks then your screwed.
 

Zachriel

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Originally posted by armed2010
I understand the whole thing about technology rushing and stuff, but isnt that how it basically is in the real world? The united states is the most powerful nation in the world because its technology is greater. Technology allows civilizations to be strong. I want some realism in the game, and having a civil war guy kill my tank isnt part of my realism.

That IS how it is in the real world. If there is a war, there are almost always casualties on both sides. A stack of Tanks and a stack of Spearmen: Perhaps, perhaps, one Tank may be destroyed, but the final result is obvious. That is the historically correct result (within such an abstracted gaming system).

Do you contend that if your country were invaded with a technologically superior force, you would not try to find a way to kill some of the invaders? Of course you would. And of the thousands who died trying, a few may succeed. Perhaps you would make chlorine gas out of household products. Perhaps, your patriotic whores would slit their throats in the night. Perhaps you would blow up their fuel depot with a simple match. Perhaps the enemy commander is a total idiot who got his job from family connections. Or perhaps they will contract a disease naturally and die (War of the Worlds or Assyria v. Jerusalem).

Consider once again Custer. Yes, the Americans lost a single unit, but they won the war. There were plenty of other Cavalry available and they destroyed most of the remaining Native resistance in very short order. The tactical point being that, though the Natives were Stone Age, they had rifles acquired from their enemy, they had surprise, and they took advantage of a serious mistake by the more technologically advanced force.

Assume your proposition. Tanks are unbeatable by Riflemen. Now, the very first Tank will take every city on every continent in the world. You don't even have to make more than one! Is that realistic? Of course not. At the very least, the Riflemen can make mines out of gunpowder. More than likely, they will have advanced equipment and explosives which they might buy from your enemies or even from our own people. Real world example: Palestinians ocassionally destroying advanced Israeli Armor.

(Oh, and in the list in my previous post, I forgot to mention normal wear-and-tear. Tanks do break down on ocassion. Sometimes they even spontaneously explode. The 2% loss-rate mentioned above could just as well represent the repair girl telling you that the main doo-hickey is broke, and the whatchacallit is bent all out of shape, and it really isn't worth repair. Just buy a new one.)
 

etj4Eagle

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Originally posted by armed2010
I understand the whole thing about technology rushing and stuff, but isnt that how it basically is in the real world? The united states is the most powerful nation in the world because its technology is greater. Technology allows civilizations to be strong. I want some realism in the game, and having a civil war guy kill my tank isnt part of my realism.

However the technological difference that does exist in the world is not represented in Civ3. You only have two types of tanks and two types of infantry (or three infantry in PTW). You don't have the subtle improvements, which is where US military strength would be reflected. Instead a modern armor is a modern armor. Too add that level of detail would probably require adding hundreds of units and also substantially lengthing the number of turns in a game. (since you would need to allow at army to be outfitted with the basic tank model, then reoutfitted with improvement 1, then improvement 2.

I don't think I would want to play a civ game that takes 10x or longer to play. Though for a scenario start for a specific age, it would be nice. I prefer the simplified system that currently exists, and don't take the name/label of a unit as meaning anything. Making a real world parrallel, I would probably represent the regular Iraqi army on the game board as pikemen. Not because they are pikemen, they are infantry. But because their comparative effectiveness when compared the top deployed infantry is similar to the ratio of pikemen to mechanized infantry.

You know, maybe that would be the way to get rid of the combat system complaints. Make a mod that does nothing other than change the name of the units into generic names. Warrior becomes "1-1 fighter", samuri become "4-4 unit", infantry "6-10 defender"

Or maybe I am just crazy in playing the game with a view what is represented by a 1-1 unit increases over the course of the game. Such that at game end a 1-1 unit would probably be comparible to a 100-100 unit at game start.
 

smalltalk

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Originally posted by armed2010
... just tinker everything to be realstic ...
How realisitc is it, that you can have your spearman fortifed in the hills over centuries and he doesn't die of age nor of boredom? ;) There are real war games out there, where you have to supply your troops, consider weather and season etc. This level of realism might damage the flow of the CIV game. And after all, it's not a war game, it is called Civilization.

Maybe the basic problem here is, that we see units as real spearman or infantry or a tank. They have names derived from a historic context and come with fancy sprites and animatied moves. But in fact they are nothing but software concepts of units with a given stat.

Look at it from an abstracted point of view:

Your 16 attack unit just was defeated by 2 defense point unit: perfectly reasonable, his might happen once in a while. But a tank defeated by a spearmen? :rolleyes:


EDIT: @etj4Eagle: you beat me to it. :)
 

Quandary

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Shillen said:
Realism should be tossed for increased gameplay at all times. Making a spearman or rifleman unable to defend against a tank would ruin the game. Whoever got tanks first would just steamroll every other civ with ease. A 100% realistic game would really suck.

Artillery can kill tanks or disable them to the point where foot units can finish them off. I think most people could accept that anything in that line over the level of a catapult would damage the armored unit enough for this situation to apply.

Foot units alone verses armored units like tanks and above? Nope. How effective was the Polish calvary against the invading German tanks? I expect Warsaw was big enough to have a metropolis bonus.

Zachriel maintained:
Do you contend that if your country were invaded with a technologically superior force, you would not try to find a way to kill some of the invaders? ...... Perhaps you would make chlorine gas out of household products. Perhaps, your patriotic whores would slit their throats in the night.

Um, that's a bit beyond the warfare we see in this game, don't you think? The whores concept could be what allows a city to culture flip, taking fortified units with it, but Sid the green doesn't have chemical or biological war in his game.

We don't have molotov cocktail units, and the citizens are totally oblivious to the fact that their city is being invaded: They still riot if they don't get enough bread and circuses. In the middle of a war. With their very lives at stake. These are not "people" trying to help their nation survive.

That might be the most unrealistic aspect of general warfare in this game, but laborers only labor and only care about overcrowding and luxuries, even with nationalism in a representative nation. They don't become gorillas, terrorists, or form an underground.

In world war two, England, and to a lessor extent, the U.S., had severe shortages of many things, particularly luxuries. The citizens of the U.S. didn't riot because they couldn't get nylon stockings and chocolate, even though the enemy wasn't knocking on their door. The English didn't flip to Germany due to rationing of just about everything that could be rationed. Instead they grew "victory gardens", observed blackouts, put in a full day's work, and suffered the deprivations needed for their nation to survive.

Program some of that behavior into Civ 3, and then I'll deal with a musketman beating a panzer :D
 
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