Should attack AND defense ratio's be used in Civ5?

So. I said yes. Separate attack and Defense bonuses should be used. But I still think bonuses against different types of units should be used to encourage using different types of units instead of 4/5. Mech Infantry, Modern Armor, Radar Artillery, and Stealth Bombers (Jet fighters sometimes).

Subtract one from no and add one to yes because one person messed up.

Yeah, it makes sense, I guess. It would definitely help with the whole promotions problem, and would lead to a more diversified army. I think this should come in combination with a wider array of units to choose from, so as to be able to choose the optimum mix of defence and attack.

No. And defensive bonus should go away.

I like the current system... seems more realistic.

It also leads to a more combined arms approach.

Whoops. Voted wrong. I meant to vote "Yes" instead of "No", but got confused by the first post and was thinking "Should bonuses against different types of units be used?" to which I do think "No" is the correct answer.

Having played both Civ3 and Civ4, I found the bonuses against certain types of units to be one of the major items I disliked in Civ4. It works well in a game like Age of Empires II, or even III. There, if you are attacking with Knights and Two-Handed Swordsmen, and they have Pikemen and Crossbowmen to defend with, part of the challenge is to get your Knights to their Crossbowmen and your Swordsmen to their Pikemen. You might come out on top, or your enemy might - it depends on how both of you play. In Civ4, if you attack with the Knights, you'll have to face their Pikeman with the Knights, and if you attack with the Swordsman, you'll have to face their Crossbowman. It's a lose-lose situation. And it's not more realistic. The defender is not always successful in getting the ideal troops to defend their camp or gates.

Civ3 isn't perfect, either - if the enemy has all Pikemen and you send in Knights, you should do worse than if you send in Medieval Infantry, and this isn't the case in Civ3. But at least you don't have the discouraging Civ4 system where no matter what you do on the offensive, the defender always gets an ideal defending unit if they have combined arms.

So while the idea behind the bonuses versus different types of units wasn't bad in principle, it didn't work well in practice. There needs to be some way for a Knight to attack a Pikeman/Crossbow stack and actually reach the Crossbow. Maybe a trait "Can avoid ideal defender - 30%", that could be upgraded with the promotion system. If the Knight succeeded, it would face the strongest defender before any bonuses against certain types of units were factored in. It'd throw a monkey wrench in the current combined-arms defence system, but I think it would be an improvement overall.

The alternative is to factor in all the different units in a tile and have some conglomerate of that determine the odds. But that gets away from the one unit vs. one unit system, and could lead to all sorts of consequences (think Giant Stack of Doom Uberstategy). Not that it can't work (a la Total War), but it may be a larger departure from the classic Civ that's been around since 1990 than would be good for the series.

7/6
Pretty close

Truronian said:

I like the current system... seems more realistic.

It also leads to a more combined arms approach.

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I don't think so. This prevents people from attacking a city, capturing it, moving in, and keeping it. You then have to bring defenders also. If both are used it would encourage using more units so you have defensive units of every type and offfensive units of every type.

It could be a bit detrimental to solving the SoD problem, though. It would mean that stacks would virtually have to double in size to have the same power.

Gamemaster77 said:

I don't think so. This prevents people from attacking a city, capturing it, moving in, and keeping it. You then have to bring defenders also. If both are used it would encourage using more units so you have defensive units of every type and offfensive units of every type.

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No, you only have to bring one type of offensive and one type of defensive... all others are going to be an inferior choice. In the current system it is generally wise to bring a few of each unit type to cover all possibilities.

Re: SoD... Civ3 suffered from these as well. Something major needs to be done to gimp them. More powerful bombardment makes the most sense IMO.

I voted yes because of the battleship vs phalanx problem where a numerous offense number should destroy a miniscule defense number. If both attack & defend numbers are removed plus stripping all other combat factors, the entire system will be brought back to that of Civ1.

Truronian said:

I don't think so. This prevents people from attacking a city, capturing it, moving in, and keeping it. You then have to bring defenders also. If both are used it would encourage using more units so you have defensive units of every type and offfensive units of every type.

No, you only have to bring one type of offensive and one type of defensive... all others are going to be an inferior choice. In the current system it is generally wise to bring a few of each unit type to cover all possibilities.

Re: SoD... Civ3 suffered from these as well. Something major needs to be done to gimp them. More powerful bombardment makes the most sense IMO.

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Not if bonus against different types of units are also uses which is what I suggest.

Gamemaster77 said:

Not if bonus against different types of units are also uses which is what I suggest.

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But then you have two systems fulfilling the same purpose... it would make the whole affair needlessly complicted.

Not to mention the ridiculousness of of attack/defence ratings. A spear's a spear, whether you're attacking or defending it still functions the same.

When a spear is defending it would keep it's shield close to it's body. And jab as the enemy comes near. While attacking it would charge,, keeping the shield at a distance, most likely using the spear as a lance type weapen.

And you think a large attack (SOD vs SOD) should be always attack and defense from oone to other side? Like if a huge army would attack a huge another army in 1 move? I think that in the battle field, sometime one "army" (part of it) should attack, and with the melee and re-organization of the troops through orders, should defend sometimes. Plus, in ancient melee battles, the two side most of the time charge in the same time, so in term of Civ4 would be translated in two attacks from each side, as well as two defenses from each side, at the same time.

That's why I say "take the Civ4 battle/unit strenght system and delete the defensive bonus".

Gamemaster77 said:

When a spear is defending it would keep it's shield close to it's body. And jab as the enemy comes near. While attacking it would charge,, keeping the shield at a distance, most likely using the spear as a lance type weapen.

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Individually, but Civ is on a much larger scale. A unit of spears serves the same purpose when attacking as it does when defending.

I think there is a general assumption that a unit comprises both the offensive and defensive aspects of what would normally comprise a military unit. But still, some units are always going to be stronger in attack than in defence, so this should probably be represented.

Going back to attack and defense would be bad IMO. I remember in CIV II I always were afraid of attacking the enemy units with my defenders (like using phalanx against a catapult near the city).
Bonuses (like city defense) is more realistic I believe.

I guess either all units are given an attack & defense factor or there are units specialized for defense only and others which are specialized for attack. I myself prefer the split attack & defense for all units.

I voted yes, but after thinking a bit more about it, I think I should have voted no.

KISS is a principle that seems to work (Keep It Simple Stupid) most of the time. Adding additional abilities (promotions), where you get to choose from a legal set of abilities depending on the unit. Afaik units doesn't get utterly unrealistic abilities to choose from. Pluss, I get to be in charge.

It would be too tedious to have to check yet another value. The strenght of an opposing force isn't really known until you are facing him (see the abilities). You check your odds and get the hell out of there if it sucks.

It would also be bad if I had to manually sit and pick targets manually by comparing numbers all the time. I agree it could be more random (maybe after a prolonged siege, simulating some sort of morale?) which enemy you ended up fighting with. Especially considering how (at least myself) find the AI always be perfectly matched against my stack.

Btw, I find Noble difficulty extremely challenging (equal terms my ass!, and I dislike micromanaging), so I'm not as experienced as most of you.
Btw2, I only play marathon on the largest possible maps as well. Not sure if that has something to do with it. Still the maps are just waaaaay too small

In Civ3 it wasn't that hard to find out battle win ratios. Much easier in fact then in civ4.

Attack and defense strengths can be emulated with free promotions in Civ4, and many other factors as well. I say just display effective attack and defense strength better (rather than just hit points cum combat strength) and make sure the AI thinks about it. In other words, I want separate hit points but still a combined combat strength with the effective combat strength being calculated using hit points times combat strength with other relevant modifiers also. Our tanks are still strong, there just aren't as many of them. Effective combat strength should determine the chances of the unit harming the other but remaining hit points should determine the number of chances to do this. Thus a tank with 1 hit point still has a combat of 28 versus a spearman with a combat of 4 and 3 hit points. The Spearman gets three chances at 4/28 to hit the tank while the tank gets 1 chance at 28/4 to hit the spearman.