Anyone else hate the insta-heal promotion?

[Roxlimn]

The biggest problem with MP is that Civ was never conceptualized to be a multiplayer experience. I highly doubt it was balanced with the MP experience in mind. Moreover, having simultaneous turns completely wrecks the foundation assumptions of Civ, since it is supposed to be a turn-based game. The insta heal shenanigans are simply one manifestation of this mismatch in MP.

The obvious solution isn't to remove Insta Heal. It's to remove simultaneous turns.

 

[GrayingGamer]

My OP did not have MP in mind.

I simply do not like insta-heal in single player games for multiple reasons:

1. Total lack of immersion. The other promotions may not be super-realistic, but they are at least along the right lines. A unit miraculously healing to full health is just ridiculous.

2. Very limited use for player - any human player is going to go for the long term gains of normal promotions. The insta-heal can be used to save a poorly placed unit, or to counter a run of bad luck, but this is rare, and ultimately not necessary. This is a strategy game, and players aren't going to think it's "un-fun" to lose a unit they deserved to lose.

3. A poor crutch for a poor AI. People seem to like that the AI makes 'good' use of this promotion, but I feel it's a very poor crutch for an AI that can churn out units en masse and then use them very poorly. I'd much rather they teach the AI how to withdraw units in danger and get rid of this promotion.

4. It encourages a level of micro-management in combat that is counter to the whole theme of this iteration of Civ. People actually NOT attacking a unit because they know it will result in the unit getting more health?? Ridiculous.

 

[Roxlimn]

Malachi256:

1. Individuals do not have health in Civ 5. Unit health represents the number of casualties it has taken and how far it is from its strength at full muster. It is not all that miraculous for a unit on the field to receive reinforcements large enough to bring it to full muster. In fact, I believe that that is what the Immortal ability represents. You might say that a green unit simply has easier-to-replace members, so it's easier to reinforce it from fresh recruits.

2. I disagree. Even when promos are not savable, you could produce green troops from cities without training facilities for express use as cannon fodder while your more experienced troops form the spearhead. Not many players like to do this, but it is effective nonetheless, for those who do.

3. I'm all for improving the AI. Until they do so, I'm not going to look askance at any little design that gives the AI a little more of a fighting chance.

4. It's not too micro. As a general rule, if the damage does less than 3 damage, don't attack as it's not an effective attack, unless you can kill the unit the same turn anyway. How is making considerations for what and when to attack enemy units BAD? Isn't that kind of the whole point?

 

[GrayingGamer]

Roxlimn

1. If you want reinforcements, either send a new unit to the area and swap places with them, or fortify the unit and have them 'heal' through reinforcements that way. A complete heal is a total break from reality.

2. A rare strategy, and I have trouble imagining situations where it's possible (the ability to mass produce throw away units) and then also necessary (that's the best use of those resources). Along these lines, it's also ridiculous that the greenest units have the 'miraculous complete heal/reinforcement' ability most readily available to them. I will concede that there will certainly be rare situations where this tactic might be reasonable, but it feels more like you're playing devil's advocate rather than arguing that this promotion has a valid and valuable place in the game.

3. It's still just a bad crutch. If you need more of a challenge, up the level of difficulty in lieu of them fixing their AI.

4. Maybe that's not too micro for you, but I find the concept of withholding attacks against an enemy unit to prevent it from healing itself to be totally bonkers.

 

[Roxlimn]

Malachi256:

1. In fact, the famous Charlie Company in WW2 was reinforced several times to full or partial muster during their campaign through Europe. Healing through fortification could be counted as waiting for partial reinforcement to occur. Insta-Heal could be counted as reinforcing the unit to full muster at any and all costs. It's not quite the break from reality you might think it is, I'm afraid.

2. Somewhat. I'm not either for or against the promo for myself. It's useful enough every now and then, but my main "use" for it is so the AI doesn't keel over quite as quickly as it normally does.

It's sometimes desirable to swell your forces with a unit or two purely for taking damage (and then you disband them after the war). I typically use Military State forces for this, but in the absence I sometimes build a green unit or two for the purpose. It adds another wrinkle to the strategy. A more promoted unit may take less damage in the long run, but without Insta Heal, it doesn't soak mass damage quite as well as a green unit. They're literally cannon fodder, in the Industrial Era.

3. I don't generally agree with Firaxis' way of providing AI bonuses by way of adjusting the difficulty settings. I'll accept that up to Emperor, but above that it just skews play way too much - to the point where players are settling on luxury resource purely for the benefit of selling them to the AI (and building ND for similar reasons!) In fact, I generally play on King. If I find an AI weakness, I generally try to avoid playing to take advantage of it. I have a lot of personal house rules, as you can imagine.

4. It's more timing the attacks so that the unit dies on the same turn. That's not altogether that alien of a concept. In real terms, you could say that you're coordinating attacks so as to induce a rout rather than a timely retreat from which the enemy could regroup.

There are better things you could be doing with your army than feeding XP to the enemy, after all, Insta-Heal or no.

 

[Becomedeath]

I lost a city last night due to the AI instantly healing.

I had taken one of Persias cities, I had taken a light army to do so as I was technologically higher than them and could do the job quickly.

I took the city, garrisoned a cannon and moved my units onto the next target.

Two persian pikemen and an archer attacked the weaked city, took out one, got the other into the red on the following turn. Cheeky sod healed up and smashed my front door in on the next pass....

I did not die from this. No harm came to my family or friends. No children starved as a result. No family pets were microwaved.

I was simply forced to go back and do it again because I didn't fight the battle well enough to take those units out on the first pass and afforded them the opportunity to heal.

The irony is, had I given that cannon unit a promotion instead of a heal itself during the initial seige, it would have take that pikeman out.


This whole thing is being taken faaaaaar too seriously. Accept that it's there, learn to work with it, remember it's a game.

 

[jtb1127]

I hate it too. I play with a mod to get rid of it sometimes. Can someone explain how an army can heal itself instantly? I'm a bit confused on that part.

 

[Ninakoru]

I don't understand such a problem with the insta-heal.

- Gives the promotion system more diversity, more options = more decissions = more strategy.

- It's an option to both humans and computers, so there's no imbalance in it.

- You can somehow work around it: instead of damaging a large group of units you should kill a small one before finishing the turn whenever possible.

 

[Anondod]

It annoys me because it arbitrarily creates situations where the enemy becomes more dangerous if you do more damage to them which to me seems just dumb.

 

[headcase]

Paying gold to heal them would make more sense imo, but that would... cause problems to say the least.

 

[Becomedeath]

I would support a move back to the Civ 4 style where a unit gets healed for X% (maximum of 50% in my opinion, 25% would seem optimal) when they get a promotion.