What is so great about the combat?

[cdcuase]

I love the new mechanic, but what I've found out is the AI absolutely sucks with it. I've managed to beat back civs that had superior armies than me. They'll allow me to do things like line up tiremes along a coast where my defending city is and send army after army right into their line of fire. Other posters have already mentioned the AI's tendency to hurl troops into a choke point which I have personally seen myself happen. The AI also can't handle embarkment invasions well, their armies getting pounded while in the water and then finally getting wiped out when they land. I surely hope Firaxis or some talented modders can fix this. I can imagine every player wanting to go the conquer route after finding out how easy the AI is to manhandle during wartime.

 

[Shackel]

I'd prefer 3-stacks.

 

[PChildress]

One oddity I noticed in the demo: if you save before a combat and reload you get the exact same results every single time. Is every battle pre-determined or is this an example of WAD?

 

[juanbobo]

Civ 4 did deal with the stack of doom problem with collateral damage and units being effective against particular enemies. I don't really have a problem with a new system, but I don't think it's necessarily superior. I wish at least you could have units swap tiles and/or allow multiple workers per tile or a worker with another unit.

 

[juanbobo]

One oddity I noticed in the demo: if you save before a combat and reload you get the exact same results every single time. Is every battle pre-determined or is this an example of WAD?

Sounds like they reuse the same random seed when reloading. Don't know how it was in Civ 4, but maybe they do this to prevent people from going back to "rewrite history" It may be a bug.

 

[CandleJack]

Less units and less room to move around, really forces you to use units full strengths, such as archers to weaken armies, siege to crush city defenses and such.

 

[Earthling]

Not that I miss stacks of doom, was just wondering what is so wonderful about the new system because it seems to be the feature people are most excited about.

(i)1upt makes it easier to beat any nonhuman opponent in tactics, and for multiplayer might be whatever some player and his friends prefer.
(ii)The combat system also generally encourages more time and gameplay focus spent on combat in the game as opposed to other management of a civilization.
(iii)while NOT specific to a 1upt system, the combat system as a whole aimed to decrease the number of units involved in fights, so people who had performance issues with their machines and so on might be able to run things better now on smaller games.
(iv)Many players like winning all the time and seeing direct, "easy" things that verify they are winning, like slaughtering AI units

So that's why the combat system is liked. There are also BAD reasons people say they like the combat system for but which aren't actually true:
(a) it leads to more competitive single player gameplay
(b) it leads to more challenge/harder to play against the AI
(c) it leads to quicker combat and less time being spent on battles

(It should be easy to also note that some of a-c contradict i-iv and vice versa, but obviously lots of people aren't consistent in their understanding of the game or in just having emotional opinions)

Collectively these things on player's opinions have been true for months before release, that's the end of the story. Now the list of why people might dislike the system is different though but don't think that needs to be fully gone into

In practice, the AI is lacking, IMO. Gonna play more before writing a mother of a post describing failings of the tactical AI. First impression (after conquest and lots of war victory) is that the AI programmer should've read the "intro to hex-based combat" "basic strategy and tactics" articles at the Wesnoth site.

Wesnoth developers have done great after a lot of time but I will give them this - the civ system in its intent is probably much harder for them to code an AI for. Wesnoth was at least much stricter and bound by many commonalities not so much seen in civ.

Now, anyone on the dev team who actually thought it would be easy for them to code their AI for civ5 is a total failure, they should have recognized that, sure. But the massive variety of units and changing unit composition over time, combined with real strategic concerns to worry about (Wesnoth has a very minimal concern over anything except your armies, AIs must understand how to defend and fight on a macroscopic level), and the inclusion of elements like RANGED combat (which Wesnoth was really smart not to delve far into and absolutely destroys AI in pretty much any tactical game ever...) are all pieces of the puzzle.

 

[ranger101]

I hated the SoD. We kept our units piled up in 1 city. The AI kept their stack piled up in their city. Then either we attacked the AI, or they attacked us. Every square between the 2 cities was of zero consequence. The only terrain feature in the game that mattered was whether the city was built on a hill. There was little point in attacking the AI's SOD. Even if the player built some horse units (which were costly), the AI usually built enough spearmen/pikeman to defend their stack. I really ended up disliking combat in Civ4.

From what I have read, my concern with Civ5 is that the AI cannot adequately handle the tactical combat. Hopefully, this can be patched or modded. Or that the AI's bonuses in other areas are enough to overcome this.

 

[Saarud]

Does anyone remember the Civ 1 combats? There you could stack as you'd like but unless you stacked in a fortress or in a city all the units where wiped out if you lost a defensive combat. You rarely build SoDs but you did stack to increase the front units.

 

[squadbroken]

Civ 4 did deal with the stack of doom problem with collateral damage and units being effective against particular enemies.

It didn't work.

 

[Jimmy Fantastic]

I think once the game has been out for a while there will be a lot of unfinished games of civ5 because of the new combat system. There comes a point in every civ game where you know you have won and all you have to do is march your SoD around from city to city. This is a bit boring but think how much worse it will be marching loads of units around when you know that you can't lose.

 

[kaltorak]

You can throw around the word "tactical" and whatnot

So in your opinion having 2 warriors in front, defending an archer behind while he shoots, or getting a ranged unit up a hill so he can shoot over a forest while the enmy archer can't, or attacking from 2 sides to get a flanking bonus, or blocking a small valley with few units against a marching army, is not more "tactical" than moving in with all those units in just one tile and just attack? It's just throwing the word "tactical" with no reason right?

 

[TLF]

How does the new combat stack up against the Paradox games like Hearts of Iron 2 or Arsenal of Democracy?

I think that mods will eventually give us a good AI. With the varied terrain of a civ map, a good AI and no stacks, or only limited stacks, it could become a good civ/war game.

 

[WuphonsReach]

Sounds like they reuse the same random seed when reloading. Don't know how it was in Civ 4, but maybe they do this to prevent people from going back to "rewrite history" It may be a bug.

Just like in Civ4, there's an option when you create a custom game to use a new random seed on each load.

It defaults to "off" so that you can't do the "reload to get a new outcome". However, just like in other games where you don't get a new seed when you reload a save, you can manipulate the seed by doing actions in a different order or doing additional actions that rely on the RNG before re-doing the action where you're trying to get a different outcome.

(Dunno if you can force it on by default in the INI option files.)

 

[lou4gehrig]

Nothing is great about the new system. they thru junk at the wall and are relying on the Civ community to root out the wheat from the chaff, and then create a workable product based on those findings The new system is slow and impossible for the A.I to deal with well. The developers new this but went ahead anyway. And why not?They got away with it in Civ IV didn't they?

This comment is ridiculous.

Isn't part of what you're buying in this game is a company that is willing to respond to user feedback and continue to update and improve the game over the course of many years?

"They got away with it in Civ IV didn't they". Hilarious. You people need to get a life and accept how a game development works. If you're not willing to stick it out, then go play Halo and leave the intelligent members of gaming community alone.

 

[cdcuase]

And if we want better AI calculating for the battles it will take up even more cpu cycles, and the turns are already slow enough as it is (compared to civ4).

Besides, it's not like they can go the chess route in programming a better battle AI. If anyone is familiar with the game Go, that is more in line with what the AI has to deal with in Civ5's system. And as of now no one has been able to program a competent Go AI.

 

[thungrim]

I like 1upt & ranged units because it takes one layer of abstraction off combat (something I've been wanting since Civ1)

In past Civs you'd witness a battle between the stacks and in your mind you'd say "somewhere in there artillery is firing, flanking is happening, and formations are forming and being broken, etc". You'd never have any control over that yourself though. You just piled stuff into the stack and it took care of itself.

Personally, I like the new system for the following reasons.
- I actually have to protect my archers and artillery from infantry and cavalry.
- Choke points become more deadly and well thought out (you need to push two units deep now instead of one, since most choke points will be bombardment with a unit "wall" in front")
- The logistics involved in moving units across the map is more involved than shifting the stack.
- Multi-move units are much more valuable. Rather than just "getting to the stack faster", they can actually outmaneuver infantry to take out the squishy artillery (or general!)
- Less abstraction on "Archer-Swordsman" fights. In previous civs it was always assumed that archers had the best conditions for the fight to maximize their defense against any attackers. Yet what would archers do in real life when flanked by infantry? They'd die that's what... and now they do.

 

[SomethingWitty]

Meh. Everyone used SoD for years and years. Now suddenly we see how horrible that was? Not really.

Everybody used stacks of doom for years because that was the only really viable method for combat in Civ IV.

 

[Reginleif]

SoD made combat boring in Civ I-IV, this new system is far superior in every way.

 

[Yfelsung]

It's all about tactics and field control now.

Let's say I have a one Hex mountain pass and it's your only option to get to me. I have 3 units, one blocking the pass, two behind providing fire support.

I get medic upgrades on all 3.

Now you could have some unholy army of death that's 18 times the size of mine, but did you ever watch 300?

You have to put 1 unit in the pass at a time, one unit being bombarded by two ranged units and being blocked by a melee unit fortified healing 3 a turn thanks to all the medic upgrades.

If you just try to brute force it, I may actually win with 3 units vs your 18.

This situation would not happen with stacks of doom, and that is why stacks of doom are bad.