Abstracting Warfare

[dagriggstar]

So this will be a fairly out there idea. I've always felt like wars take too long. Like you laid a 100 year siege of a city or wars lasting entire eras of gameplay etc.
So I had this idea where wars last one turn.

The attacking player declares the war. This creates a sort of "war turn". The attacking player will give their own units a set of instructions (where to move through on the map and what each units objective is). The defending player will tell their units which tiles to defend and which tiles they may attack into (ambushes). The game then resolves the entire war. You move every unit only once and have no idea on enemy troop composition, movements or positions (Without espionage).

In order to prevent "total annihilation" wars, I think the costs of warfare need to be quite high for the attacker. Do you tell your troops to live off the land, pillaging everything in sight and making the local populace angry at you (basically guaranteeing they will rebel often should you take a city) or pay high amounts of gold (like 100 gold per tile moved per unit) to maintain your supply convoys.
It should be designed in a way where wars just for plunder or small territorial gains are much more normal whereas a steamrolling should happen maybe once or twice a game.

 

[HorseshoeHermit]

It is pretty out there. I can't say I understood it. What exactly is being abstracted, it looked more like you just require all the decisions up front in some kind of impossible blindfolded chess game also played by newspaper where you enter your full opening and midgame up front, but you still presume an engine of resolving mechanics exactly the same as what we have - just in an automated blip. And also I have no idea how the branching decision paths could be set by the game designers, and your hedge against "total annihilation" as a possible result of your rules is concerning.

If you have tiles (defining the land controlled for living and production), then naturally the game also wants your military to be something you allocate on those tiles. At this point, the only third path to 1upt and stacks is to not have units. Some kind of military not individuated to unit productions at home. The military still has to be something you put at the tiles, or there isn't a link holding the fundamental tension together. So, I would wager at 100% that Civ7 will still have units, and the core of units will be that you tell them where to be and how to fight, in response to whatever grand strategy you deem necessary.
I would really consider it the mark of success of the mechanics, in this instance, where the gameplay would naturally lead to opposing sides, when they both have considerable armies, to plan the site of the battle in the ways that generals of history really did. At least, up through the middle ages. Corralling each other's armies, keeping foot and siege together, defining the engagement in pin and so on - and absolutely this game really wants to see supply lines. Something primitive, anything, the players are hungry for it. It's about time we got it. As to the bit about engagements, a key piece would seem to be the importance of making the tile and movement mechanics emphasize how you can physically blockade passage, and also to as deep a level of nuance that the game can handle; which, to be clear, means what the AI can handle,

because when the AI cannot play the game, it makes nothing in the game even exist past the City-builder, sandbox/tycoon layer. A lot of wasted design effort to serve up a game experience, when the AI doesn't step up to the plate.

 

[Marla_Singer]

To put it a bit pedantically, the issues you both refer to are related to the unicity of space and unicity of time in the gameplay. I think that's what generates the feeling of epicness when playing the game, but it also goes with limitations, and the great question is how to tackle them.

The attacking player declares the war. This creates a sort of "war turn". The attacking player will give their own units a set of instructions (where to move through on the map and what each units objective is). The defending player will tell their units which tiles to defend and which tiles they may attack into (ambushes). The game then resolves the entire war. You move every unit only once and have no idea on enemy troop composition, movements or positions (Without espionage).

This feels a bit as what we had with stacked units. Multiple units were on the same tile and attacking one after the other within the same turn. I believe a part of the problem goes with 1upt which considerably narrows the scale of "action" both in space and time, whereas the "theater" remains at global scale from Neolithic to space race.

If you have tiles (defining the land controlled for living and production), then naturally the game also wants your military to be something you allocate on those tiles. At this point, the only third path to 1upt and stacks is to not have units.

That is true only because it's been decided to allocate units to tiles, but maybe this idea could be challenged. There could be other ways to do it. Either subdividing tiles for units, completely free their movements from tiles, or even get rid of tiles as a whole (which doesn't necessarily mean getting rid of turns, the game could work in keeping turns yet with no tile, both are unrelated).

There's been some ideas in the past to work on multiple scales rather than a "one size fits all". That's been done for instance in "Call to Power". I don't remember enough to judge it. That could increase fun or make things too complex, it all depends how it's implemented really.

Nowadays, it has become super easy to build lightweight prototypes. I could even work on my own all alone with php/javascript. If I could give an advice to Firaxis, that would be to not refuse any idea by principle and to work on multiple lightweight POCs built by small units of developpers, just to explore different solutions and play test them. See how it goes, if it is addictive, fun, immersive, easy to understand, if it still feels like "Civ", and so on.

because when the AI cannot play the game, it makes nothing in the game even exist past the City-builder, sandbox/tycoon layer. A lot of wasted design effort to serve up a game experience, when the AI doesn't step up to the plate.

Yes that is an important point. Empire building is fun in itself and sandbox isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it is the AI which makes the challenge and it's in struggling to beat it that the player gets a real feeling of achievement. Therefore the AI ability to actually handle the concept is key, I agree.

 

[HorseshoeHermit]

Either subdividing tiles for units, completely free their movements from tiles, or even get rid of tiles as a whole (which doesn't necessarily mean getting rid of turns, the game could work in keeping turns yet with no tile, both are unrelated).

Subdividing tiles for units is equivalent to making city features be multi-tile traits. As I said, there's no reason for this artifice; naturally, whatever is the scale of land exploitation is exactly the scale that is significant for militarization. Whatever scale it is that military fortifications hold, an answer should come out tailored to that precise stretch of land.

Nowadays, it has become super easy to build lightweight prototypes. I could even work on my own all alone with php/javascript.

In what way? What new development are you referring to?

Your point about unicity (after I looked up the word) does remind me of one thought I had about making a board game style of thing as a Civilization game. In such a thing, players might take more turns total than other players in a given phase, meant to simulate some epoch. But I didn't do more than sketch for a few minutes with my boardgame geek friend.

 

[Marla_Singer]

Subdividing tiles for units is equivalent to making city features be multi-tile traits. As I said, there's no reason for this artifice; naturally, whatever is the scale of land exploitation is exactly the scale that is significant for militarization.

We're getting off topic but how is that even true? Nature isn't divided in squares or hexagons operating all functions. In real world, there's no 1upt vs stack question because there's no tile in the first place. You don't "stack up" people in the real world, but they can get closer to one another increasing density. Tiles may be convenient approximations to make things simpler to apprehend for the player, but I wouldn't qualify them as "natural".

In what way? What new development are you referring to?

Nothing new at all. Only that programming has been made so easy in general that it doesn't take that much time to develop prototypes to playtest game concepts.

Getting back on topic, it's true that the tactical aspects of warfare don't fit well with the scale of the game, explaining why it's tempting to separate both, or to find other solutions to picture it as proposed by @dagriggstar. The only way to really know if those solutions can work and be fun is to develop them as prototypes and see how it goes.

 

[HorseshoeHermit]

We're getting off topic but how is that even true? Nature isn't divided in squares or hexagons operating all functions. In real world, there's no 1upt vs stack question because there's no tile in the first place. You don't "stack up" people in the real world, but they can get closer to one another increasing density. Tiles may be convenient approximations to make things simpler to apprehend for the player, but I wouldn't qualify them as "natural".

That isn't what I said. I wasnt talking about the question of using tiles.

 

[Marla_Singer]

That isn't what I said. I wasnt talking about the question of using tiles.

Sorry then, I don't think I've understood what you meant.

 

[Naokaukodem]

To begin with, and to stay close to the "pushing units" philosophy of the game, we could have units that teleport from one side of the empire to the other instantaneously.

We also could have ground units that act like planes, but do take backfire.

Last, we could have a pool of previously built units, like the nukes in Civ6, and use them at will anywhere on the map where we are able to (near encampments, cities, or even outposts built by builders, workers, engineers or great people, or settlers or another special unit, or by scouts or any unit)

Added to the ability of cities to build other cities far away (more or less) directly in the production queue to the map (and the usual settlers for colonies but a lot more costy in terms of production and movement), we could have spheres of influence rapidely spread out from the start of the game, and the Loyalty system or even the "you settled too close to me" would have no more reason to be.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

The attacking player declares the war. This creates a sort of "war turn". The attacking player will give their own units a set of instructions (where to move through on the map and what each units objective is). The defending player will tell their units which tiles to defend and which tiles they may attack into (ambushes). The game then resolves the entire war. You move every unit only once and have no idea on enemy troop composition, movements or positions (Without espionage).

I like the idea of a war turn but I don't like the idea of auto-resolving the entire war based on player's orders. I think it takes too much control out of the player's hands. IMO, a better way to implement your idea of war turn would be to have X "war turns" where both sides are only allowed to move and attack with their units. They cannot do any non-military stuff. After the X war turns are over, the game would go to the next strategic turn where players could do the non-military stuff like city production, diplomacy, pick tech etc... After the strategic turn is over, the game would have another X war turns until the war is over.

Turns would look like this:

Strategic turn 1
War turn 1
War turn 2
War turn 3
War turn 4
War turn 5
Strategic turn 2
War turn 1
War turn 2
War turn 3
War turn 4
War turn 5
Strategic turn 3

This would have the effect of compressing war in between the strategic turns. I think this would work better with the scale of the game where strategic turns are supposed to represent decades. In the span of a strategic turn, you should be able to do more than just move units a few hexes. Now, you could go to war, fight X war turns, maybe take a city, then make peace. The entire war might take 1-2 strategic turn instead of "wasting" strategic turns. I like the idea compressing war because I think wars take too long in the standard game. In many of my games, in the time it takes to move units and take cities, one war can span the entire classical era. I would like to see wars compressed because that way, you could have more wars, more back and forth in territory in the same era.

One question would be how many war turns. In my example, I give 5 war turns but it could be a different number. It would need to be balanced so that you can fight a decent amount of the war in a single strategic turn but not too much that the player that launches a surprise war can just steamroll an entire civ in the span of a single strategic turn. I think 5-10 would be the right number of war turns.

 

[9gkj548hkm20vk79dj689bnj4]

Or just remove the year counter which doesn't really fulfill any purpose.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

Or just remove the year counter which doesn't really fulfill any purpose.

Yes, that would work. But I would still increase movement of units a little, make the movement scale with map size, and let all units attack after they move, just to help speed things up a bit. I'd also do limited stacks to reduce the micro of moving units.

 

[dagriggstar]

My starting point for this was "what if land combat was more like air combat". It kind of makes sense to have "military bases" and unit ranges (how far your supplies go), would make forts more useful, but ultimately that feels too restrictive to me, like you couldn't just be Napoleon and even try march your army to Moscow in that situation.

I dislike the idea of war turns, because in multiplayer from the perspective of anyone not involved in the war, game turns will take too long.
I also don't see the year counter as the issue here either, like if there's no year counter but I'm at war with someone and we technologically pass through the classical, medieval and renaissance eras, like that's weird. For most wars, the unit composition stays the same throughout the war....
I also want to keep units on the map. The starting positions before a war does have an impact, like for instance if you start light cav on a frontier and there is no unit there to oppose it, you can probably make a cheeky raid on them.

To divide things up a little
Movement instructions - Take this route, raid these lands only, defend supply line, deny these tiles
Objective - (Offense only) - Raid, besiege city, annex territory
Engagement - Always engage, take only favourable, defend, do not engage

It all plays out as an animation or a wartime summary overlay. It needs to be understandable.