A revamped combat idea

[Lord_all_Mighty]

As it stands now, the civ combat system is a little too simplistic, essentially a buildup-and-destroy formula with little thought required about tactics. This is why I’m proposing this idea: Instead of a military network in which one unit represents 10,000 units of the same type, I think that you should be able to customize what your military divisions consist of.

For example, say one complete military unit will consist of 3 “slots”, into each slot you will place a unit from a list of available units(like how armies work now), and your decisions on how you fill them will represent how effective they are at doing what is needed (i.e. you could place archers in one slot, and spearmen in the two others to have a simple skirmish force, best used in open field combat). The total shield cost of the unit will be determined by the forces the unit consists of (i.e. one archer would cost 8 shields, and the 2 spearmen would cost 6 shields each, for a total cost of 20 shields). Complete units in the same tile can exchange unit sections with other unit sections (i.e. say you wanted that force of 2 spearmen and an archer to be made entirely of spearmen, you would send that unit to a tile with another unit with at least 1 spearmen and then you’d exchange the archer for the spearmen). Siege units could be augmented into the unit slots to make the entire military division more effective at taking enemy fortifications, support units (like archers) could be used to make the division more effective at defense, cavalry could be added to a unit to help prevent an enemy unit from retreating (of course the cavalry would be slowed down due to units in the other sections having lower movement rates), the possibilities are huge! To avoid tedium, you could create a military unit and save it to your build selection allowing you to do build orders on the go (similar to Alpha Centauri’s unit workshop). You'd upgrade them by simply improving the section that can be updated (the 2 spearmen, 1 archer unit would become a 2 pikemen, 1 archer after being upgraded, then that archer could be upgraded into a longbowman when the option becomes available).

Personally, I think this system is not complicated, yet its depth is incredible. This could add an entire dimension to the somewhat shallow combat system which is apparent in the current civ games. I am open to thoughts, comments and criticism.

 

[Lee1026]

I like the idea. I think that the "stuff" you put into the Division should be fairly small like a battlion. That way there is far more custmization allowed. And I also think that there should be transportation unit that allows your army to travel faster. I.E. putting trucks in an infanty army to make it go faster.

 

[socralynnek]

Oh yeah, a nice idea that adds a little strategical depth and isn't too complicated altough it is a little micromanagment, it isn't too much (like a lot of other proposals to make combat better)

So nothing more to say, almost perfect idea...

 

[Fake Gustave]

Kind of like how an army works now? just that every unit is an army?

 

[Suki]

sweet!
I thought of this too

have a significant cost for unloading subunits, don't even make it possible at first.
It's comparable to using the smac desighn thing but allowing for up to three special abilities And the use of multiple chassis types within a single unit.

mechanised infantry: two infantry and an APC, the APC's abilitsn't mahe see it doey is to increase the move rate of the two infantry, or also have an infantry fighting vechule(IFV), with better A/D/M that will increase the move of one infantry so you can use the slot for other fast units. but for a couple of abilities, like paratrooper and anphibi-assault it's a little more complicated...

what if you have one paratrooper sun in a unit of normals? two? I think air assault missions should be alloowed with just one para-subunit but better with more. have insertion without full airborn qualification damage the unit, slow it down, and give it a penalty that first turn. but if you can do it with only a partially qualified then you shpule be able to do it with an unqualified unit too, just at a much larger penalty. I mean sure some things are designed to be dropped (like the sherridan tank USA, and BMD russia) but riggers using big chutes, crumble zones and sometimes even retro rockets can get a notmal take to land in one piece...

smae logic works for anphib-assault units, anyone can do it just some better than others. in fact in my opinion this is how it sholud get invented in the first place, any civ should get the ability to build those units only after either participating in many such assaults, on either side, or getting "blueprints" from other civs. have the first and second slots remove the negatives and the third slot give a bonus. and it's not unthinkable to have landing craft as an ability for transport ships that would increase the anphib-assault ability of contained units.

I also think damage should be randomly distributed between the subunits during combat and the subunits should get killed individually insted of the whole unit at once. but that also leads to the posibility of having substrength units, I mean a scout unit doesn't need to be bigger than one slot anyway, neither might a police unit.

this also allows us to do the same with workers, having general purpose and specialist worker subunits, which you'll usually only combine into worker units but you might also want to try a "mason" specialist worker into some of your infantry divisions to build then forts as they go...

 

[rcoutme]

It sounds sort of like always creating the equivalent of Civ3 armies for each unit, except that you could pull the subunits out and exchange them. Is that what you are proposing?

 

[scoutsout]

Though the concept of mixing units in a "division" sounds interesting, I don't know how you could make the mechanics of it work. The problem I see is that you would lose control of the units within the army. Using the archer/2 spears example, you can't make the army retreat after the archer is redlined, which leaves you attacking with a 1/2 spear...(I almost never mix unit types in an Army...)

The present system works well enough for combined arms. With Infantry, Artillery, and Cavalry organized in a stack, I can bombard with the Arty, attack with the cav, and protect the stack with the infantry. Though tedious, it also works well enough when I get a lot of different types of units into the mix in the late industrial or early modern era.

Just my $0.02...

 

[Lucius Sulla]

Anybody remembers here the SMAC model?

I would have loved to have something like that... as in having to choose between bows, spears, swords, then upgrading material stone to bronze to iron...

You could complement that idea using a similar model.

 

[Lord_all_Mighty]

Though the concept of mixing units in a "division" sounds interesting, I don't know how you could make the mechanics of it work. The problem I see is that you would lose control of the units within the army. Using the archer/2 spears example, you can't make the army retreat after the archer is redlined, which leaves you attacking with a 1/2 spear...(I almost never mix unit types in an Army...)

Well, what I was thinking was that the entire unit would be 1 unit, individuals in the army would not be destroyed and they'd all atack at once, once the entire unit lost all of it's health, everything contained within would be destroyed as well.