a true attack-chopper discussion

[SenJarJar]

With apologies to Philips beard, I would like to start a new thread--devoid of the controversy surrounding the issue of the naming of America--concerning some questions and hopes I have about how attack choppers will be used in Civ4.

The inclusion of attack-helis seems to indicate that both movement and battle mechanics have been fundamentally altered from C3C. Why?

As a unit, a-c has more value and is more realistic if players can manually move them along the tiles. It is ridiculous to continue to confine helis to cities and not allow them to be parked on any land terrain (and carriers), especially near fronts and borders. Ah, but if this is the case, would this mean that we finally have a Civ unit which without the use of runways could attack and transport units over both land and water tiles while being manually controlled? Because, correct me if I'm wrong, helis can fly over water like they can fly over land.

And what about the transport ability? Many of us would use helis, Bradleys, trucks, ets as transports if it wasn't for the fact that ai in C3C doesn't do over-land transport--modern infantry advancing only one tile per turn in enemy territory is ludicrous. But now it seems we may be able to change that. While mechanized infantry transports can move foots further and safer on land, helis have the additional advantage of being able to carry them over water. So now, no more building an entire city on the coast just to invade an island that is sleeping on the other side of a strip of water one tile in width.

And what would be the range of attack? Helis should have the ability to close in on and strafe enemy units like a normal land unit. But helis are also equippable with longer-range armaments. Modern missile and shell technology allows both fighter planes and helis to bombard from miles away. Should helis have bombard capability?

Also, if you thought that the spear defeats armor phenomenon was ludicrous, what about the possibility in Civ4 that during a direct assault by a-c, defending spear defeats it? In other words, the new mechanic should allow for a-c, in a non-bombarment situation, to strafe some units without any potential for incurring damage to itself. If someone could mod this mechanic, then that would mean that we could use this mechanic for other units as well. For instance: 1) armor is immune to spear; 2) bombers are immune to spear; 3) orbital sattelites are immune to spear; 4) star destroyer is immune to spear.

And what about when helis are on defense, represented by the time between a player's turns. Why should we assume that this time frame represents the time when helis are grounded for refueling and reloading. Despite its name, you would think that the attack-chopper would be one of the most vital weapons used in the defense of forward positions and land units. Even in these cases, we should be able to play a game where spear is unable to assault the a-c. For example, if a player must uproot a-c guarding a choke point, cheap rpg or sam carrying infantry should be the ones with the ability to knock them down. In no way should a spear be able to touch the a-c, no matter how hard he chucks his stick.

Certainly, we can all imagine that the ai that will be shipped may not be able to handle the a-c any better than it can handle naval ships and planes--especially in the way of unit transporting. But I do hope that should Firaxis hard-code path-finding--or in any way leave it unmoddable (which is what some of the Python programmers in this forum seems to believe will happen)--it allows the a-c the type of movements we would like to see them have (travels over water and lighting on carriers/land terrain).

I'm assuming much but . . .

 

[Sullla]

Some neat thoughts there, but I agree that you've greatly over-analyzed something that we know very little about at this point. While I also enjoy this kind of speculation, I'd just caution everyone not to take it too seriously.

 

[SniperDevil]

What SenJarJar just said got me really excited about Civ 4. Lol.

 

[searcheagle]

I agree with this post and look forward to a true incorporation of helicopters, both attack and cargo. Civ 3 has no good way to even mod helicopters.

 

[The Fjonis]

I like the sound of it. But balancing it fairly will be a difficult task -- the way you portrayed it, it seemed like the ideal unit for transport, attack, support etc. It must be possible to counter them efficiently, too, remember..

 

[searcheagle]

I like the sound of it. But balancing it fairly will be a difficult task -- the way you portrayed it, it seemed like the ideal unit for transport, attack, support etc. It must be possible to counter them efficiently, too, remember..

That could be accomplished by a better air combat system, starting with fighter and ending with Flak and SAMs, and in general ground/sea units. The whole way air works needs to be thought out.

Bombing raids are too successful. That have high success rate with very little chance that they will fail, and even smaller that they will be intercepted by SAMs or Fighters. Pretty much every modern units has a chance of intercepting units and at least inflicting damage.

Also, the role of attack helo and transport I assume (and hope) they will be seperated.

 

[SenJarJar]

@searcheagle: I agree that just for gameplay's sake, transport and assault crafts should be separated.

 

[SenJarJar]

@The Fjonis: Balancing may be difficult but not impossible. The key to good wargames is the simple use of the old paper-rock-scissor mechanic. Attack chopper should have strong advantage over armor. Armor (and just about everyone else) should have strong advantage over rpg/sam infantry. Rpg/sam infantry should have strong advantage over heli.

In addition, rpg should be cloaked to attack-heli, which should curtail the brazen use of choppers in enemy territory, especially considering that a-cs are very expensive and rpg/sam very cheap.

Also, this is realistic.

 

[SenJarJar]

In continuation of above:

What I don't like in C3C is the fact that a fat herd of Mod Armor and Mech-Inf is pretty much all you need to win the final era of the game. This was because the extent of military strategy employed by C3C was: more raw power=victory. This makes for a numbingly dull game. The rock-paper-scissor mechanic forces us to diversify our forces. It can be used to take away the raw strength of the Mod Armor just as well as the a-c.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

That won't change the strength = power, it just means that you'll need a fat herd of A/c, MA, and Anti Air Infantry ...It may slow your advance, but thats about it.

 

[SniperDevil]

Well the way they have describe Civ4 supports the rock papers scissor fighting style.
They say that spearmen have advantages over cavalry and cav over ranged units and so on. Yet i do not understand how the Strength factor will be included into this mechanic.

 

[The Fjonis]

Sorry for straying somewhat off topic , but this got me thinking:

Although I agree that a larger diversity of "useful" units is a good thing, so that one avoids for example the use of only modern armor / mech. infantry in the modern era, I am a bit anxious about how they will actually implement this rock paper scissors-theory in practice. For example, say that helicopters have an advantage over tanks, and that some other unit, say a mobile anti-air battery, counters helicopters. This means that in order to be able to defend my city against any possible attack, I would need loads and loads of different types of units in my city to be able to counter the different attacking units. If I only had armour, I'd be in deep trouble if the enemy sent a load of helicopters... You see where I'm getting? This will make it very hard to effectively defend cities.

I noticed that in some interview, they said that some units, like archers, would have a city defense bonus. If so, does that mean that archers will be the preferred city defending unit in this era regardless of which type of unit the enemy sends at your city? (cavalry, swordsmen, pikes, catapults etc) That could sort of deal with the problem described above, but then again this would lead to a smaller unit diversity since you'd prefer archers no matter what, and we're back where we started, with minimal unit diversity... I hope Firaxis has done some serious thinking about this.

 

[Avayaman]

i guess the inclusion of an attack helo might mean a greater delineation of roles between a fighter planes and helos, which means that it is a gameplay issue.
fundamentally speaking, airplanes are mostly used for air superiority, which helicopters are unable to achieve. on the other hand, helicopters can support troops and engage troops.
the inclusion could be important given that battles in civ normally drags over turns, and that newly conquered cities are made into bases which cannot support fighters but can support helos, thereby making control of the air more important than ever, and maybe giving more diversity to those annoying super dooper stacks of tanks/mech infantry one is prone to see in modern era battles.

 

[searcheagle]

i guess the inclusion of an attack helo might mean a greater delineation of roles between a fighter planes and helos, which means that it is a gameplay issue.
fundamentally speaking, airplanes are mostly used for air superiority, which helicopters are unable to achieve. on the other hand, helicopters can support troops and engage troops.
the inclusion could be important given that battles in civ normally drags over turns, and that newly conquered cities are made into bases which cannot support fighters but can support helos, thereby making control of the air more important than ever, and maybe giving more diversity to those annoying super dooper stacks of tanks/mech infantry one is prone to see in modern era battles.

Avayman, I you are mistaken as the role of air combat in the world.

Airplanes, especially Attack and bomber airplanes, but also Fighters are quite capable of engaging in Air-to-ground combat. Bombers perform the excellently, especially, with the use of precision ammunition. Attack and fighter aircraft are both capable of carrying large amounts of ammo in comparison to helos.

Helos are capable of air-to-air combat. However, due to there slow speeds, 300 mph for the fastest, they can only interfer with attack and bomber aircraft in the vicinity.

 

[SenJarJar]

That won't change the strength = power, it just means that you'll need a fat herd of A/c, MA, and Anti Air Infantry ...It may slow your advance, but thats about it.

@krikkitone: Well, you're right. The fella with the much stronger, larger army should be able to defeat the fella who has a smaller, inferior army. But this is no argument against using RPS.

If done right, RPS should make it more costly for "paper units" to defeat "scissor units" (except in cases like a-c vs spear, where a-c should be immune to spear). So for example, if we make defending pikes very powerful against knights, this means that the cost of defeating just one unit of fortified pike should be the destruction of many units of attacking knights. If you have way too much income and the ability to outproduce your rival, then maybe you wouldn't care about losing many expensive knights to defeat one cheap pike. But the attacker who isn't so lucky would have to first throw strong melee foots and archers against the pikes to open up the opportunity to throw knights into the battle. I'll grant that the limitation of Civ-style warfare does not allow us to use RPS in a way that would seem exactly true to life.
But this fact shouldn't make PRS mechanic any less appealing to implement because without RPS, it would mean less incentive for diversifying and less ability to experience the illusion of battle tactics.

 

[SenJarJar]

Well the way they have describe Civ4 supports the rock papers scissor fighting style.
They say that spearmen have advantages over cavalry and cav over ranged units and so on. Yet i do not understand how the Strength factor will be included into this mechanic.

@SniperDevil: I'm sure only a couple dozen people know how the battle mechanics will be implemented in the unmodded game. But we can at least discuss ways to mod the mechanics if we don't like it. This is the beauty of what Firaxis is offering.

Let me give you a simplified version of what I think should happen.

Say that we give a knight unit a stat of 40strength. And let's give a pike unit 20strength. And let's assume no other variables except this: in knight vs pike battle, knight's strength stat is divided by 8 (or 4). Then should they fight, the knight would find himself with only 5strength (or 10strength) against the 20stength pike, a clear advantage of the pike over the knight.

But of course, other factors (such as terrain, power-up promotions) will have to factor into the calculation also.

 

[SenJarJar]

Sorry for straying somewhat off topic , but this got me thinking:

Although I agree that a larger diversity of "useful" units is a good thing, so that one avoids for example the use of only modern armor / mech. infantry in the modern era, I am a bit anxious about how they will actually implement this rock paper scissors-theory in practice. For example, say that helicopters have an advantage over tanks, and that some other unit, say a mobile anti-air battery, counters helicopters. This means that in order to be able to defend my city against any possible attack, I would need loads and loads of different types of units in my city to be able to counter the different attacking units. If I only had armour, I'd be in deep trouble if the enemy sent a load of helicopters... You see where I'm getting? This will make it very hard to effectively defend cities.

@The Fjonis: This is true. But at the same time, it would also be more difficult to produce a diversified invasion force in Civ4 than in C3C, depending on how we price our military units, set our revenue per trade resource value, etc. This should buy you time to build a diversified army for attack and defense too, hopefully.

 

[SenJarJar]

I noticed that in some interview, they said that some units, like archers, would have a city defense bonus. If so, does that mean that archers will be the preferred city defending unit in this era regardless of which type of unit the enemy sends at your city? (cavalry, swordsmen, pikes, catapults etc) That could sort of deal with the problem described above, but then again this would lead to a smaller unit diversity since you'd prefer archers no matter what, and we're back where we started, with minimal unit diversity... I hope Firaxis has done some serious thinking about this.

@Fjonis:

If archers could defeat every beseiging unit, then there would be a broken link in the systems of RPSs needed to make RPS work. For you see, there always has to be a counter, otherwise, it wouldn't be RPS.

And the counter doesn't necessarily have to be only in the form of a military unit. For instance, perhaps a merry band of archers could be formidable defending a beseiged city. But they wouldn't be able to stop the beseigers from pillaging and laying waste to the countryside and economy because archers in the open field would be weak, especially to fast units.

 

[SenJarJar]

@Searcheagle:

Searcheagle, based on your professed interest in improving the air combat system, it is hard for me to believe that you have not thought about it a little. Would you mind sharing some of your thoughts?

I have some ideas too, but it would involve adding strata to the map: have a land strata for land units and one or two air strata above it so that not only could air and land units of rival Civs occupy the same verticle set of tiles, but it would also allow us to move air units around like land units without there being any confusion but with the benefit of turning air combat into something like ground combat. In my mind this would be the most important improvement a TBS game like Civ could implement to improve air combat.

 

[searcheagle]

@Searcheagle:

Searcheagle, based on your professed interest in improving the air combat system, it is hard for me to believe that you have not thought about it a little. Would you mind sharing some of your thoughts?

I have some ideas too, but it would involve adding strata to the map: have a land strata for land units and one or two air strata above it so that not only could air and land units of rival Civs occupy the same verticle set of tiles, but it would also allow us to move air units around like land units without there being any confusion but with the benefit of turning air combat into something like ground combat. In my mind this would be the most important improvement a TBS game like Civ could implement to improve air combat.

The Civ 3 air combat system was one of my biggest dissappointment in the game. I was excited whenever I first saw the function that would be included, such as rebase and recon. There was also a fear, which was confirmed that they would be moving air units out of the hands of the player.

It got even worse when air units couldn't destroy units on their own in Civ 3. It was even worse when in C3C they COULD do damage because intercepting them was a long shot best. And when they were intercepted, it was still 50/50 whether they would actually lose the battle to FIGHTERS.

I'm trying to remember the big scheme air revision that I had thought out.

Your layers idea has merit.

1. High Sky-Only be attacked by Fighters and SAMs (IE anti air systems)
2. Low Sky-Attacked by any anti air system (Fighters, Heli, and any unit armed with guns)
3. Ground/Sea-Attacked by any unit with the capablity. NOTE: To attack a ground unit, an air unit would change alitude to Low sky when they got with in 2 squares of the target, with the possible exceptions of either Precision weapons or Stealth Bombers.
4. Below the ocean-Can be attacked by any unit with Sonar, which they have detected. I would have fail rates of 50% for patrol (anti sub) aircraft, with the except of the helicopter, Ships (with Sonar) and helos 25%, and fellow subs- 5%.

If a unit is not in the cube, (I guess thats what it would be called) enemy units could enter the square.

My Ideas abound, but the time does not. Back to work.