BATTLE ENGINE - The most unrealistic aspect of the game.

[Jonathan]

2 warriers in the city against 1 infantry. Infantry attacks and killes the warrier with no prob. But than it has to wait ONE WHOLE turn to attack the other.

The reason for this is the stupid combat system, whereby you have two stacks of units but they can fight each other only one at a time.

This is stupid not just because it's unrealistic (battles don't work like this) but because it's so tedious. If I have 12 units fighting 10 units, I don't want to have to work my way through them one at a time, I want to select my 12 units, point them at the target, and have the program resolve the battle at once.

 

[Frewfrux]

It sounds to me, reading your origonal post, that you don't so much have a problem with the battle engine (you do...but) but, rather, more of a problem with the time sequences.

If that's the case then I have two things to say:

1) You miss-titled this thread.

2) Rather then me saying to you "it's just a game", how about "Do you have any suggestions to improve the game?" How is it that you propose to fix the problem that you percieve? Keep in mind that the game still needs to be playable (you can't have even just 1 year per turn for 6000+ years).

I would actually be interested in sugestions to fix this little problem of civ. It's an aspect of the game that has plagued the serries ever since it started. Not that I think it ruins the game, it is just a game after all It's just that I've allways thought it could use some improvement, but never been able to think just what improvement that might be. Maybe that's a sign that they got it as right as it could be.

 

[Tavenier]

Well, first of all those warriors in the time of rifles and gunpowder represent not cavemen with clubs, but something like guerillas or militias.

And your example of Russia invading a small country... Cheznia? Mountainfolk of nearly one million inhabitants holding off one of the largest armies in the world for a decade!

 

[Jonathan]

Civ IV is a largely abstract game, especially with regards to combat. Deal with it, or return the game.

Civilization is certainly not an abstract game, it's a historical simulation game. It goes to a considerable amount of trouble to look like a historical simulation game. I'm not quite sure why Firaxis went to all that trouble in some ways and then just didn't bother in other ways. Personally, I wish they'd taken the same trouble in all aspects of the game, and made it a realistic historical simulation.

Telling people to return the game if they don't like some aspects of it isn't constructive. Obviously they would have done so already if they had no use for the game at all. The problem is that the game is good in some ways, but could be better (as is the case with all games...).

One reason for this forum is so that people can talk about how the game might be improved.

 

[jeremiahrounds]

These arguments about modern unit balance are... they are "sigh". The game wouldnt function if infantry could roll over as many pregunpowder units as are stacked in the destination square in one turn. So whats the point?

And also it just seems to toss out the fact that everything is a metaphor. I mean those warriors arnt immortal are they? So their numbers were replaced with my modern people right? And my modern people arnt going to fight with clubs and loin cloths are they? So whats going on there?

I say they are being autoupgrading to maintain their 2 str relative to modern weapons. They have 2 str relative to a 20 str infantry. So as time goes by they get autograded to be 1/10th of an infantry unit.

 

[Jonathan]

1) You miss-titled this thread.

2) Rather then me saying to you "it's just a game", how about "Do you have any suggestions to improve the game?" How is it that you propose to fix the problem that you percieve? Keep in mind that the game still needs to be playable...

1) You can argue about whether the combat system is the most unrealistic aspect of the game, but it's certainly one of the major and most irritating unrealistic aspects of the game -- and it's what causes the problem discussed in this thread. The thread title does well enough for me.

2) I have suggestions.

2a) A battle should be resolved as one battle, not as a series of single combats. One infantry fighting two warriors is one battle; the warriors lose; end of battle.

2b) A much simpler change would allow any unit to go on making repeated attacks within a single turn, as long as all the attacks are against a single square.

It shouldn't take a unit a year or more to roll over two vastly inferior units. If it does take a year or more, they can't be vastly inferior after all.

In Civ terms, the Russians took the Chechen cities. They just haven't been able to make them productive, because of the angry population...

 

[Jonathan]

The game wouldnt function if infantry could roll over as many pregunpowder units as are stacked in the destination square in one turn.

I think it would work better than it does now. It would be possible to have quick victories instead of tedious slow victories.

And it really doesn't matter whether warriors are armed with clubs or whether they're a tenth of an infantry unit. Two of them should get rolled over by a full infantry unit quite easily in the space of a year, regardless.

 

[Kissamies]

Perhaps the original poster's infantry should have tried gently banging some bottles against each other while yelling "Warriors, come out to play-ay." in a high pitched voice. Seriously though, perhaps there should be an "overrun" feature where an unit gets another attack if it beats vastly inferior unit without taking any damage.

 

[Darkness]

Civilization is certainly not an abstract game, it's a historical simulation game.

No, it is NOT!

If it were a historical simulation game the civs/tribes would not all start at 4000BC. If we follow that train of thought, America would begin play somewhere in the 18th century. Rome would start in the latter BC's. Etc., etc.... Now that wouldn't be a lot of fun gameplay-wise, now would it?

The game works the way it works because these are the principles of Turn-Based-Strategy games. Now if I am reading the topic-starters' post correctly, I think he/she expected it to be more fluent and more movement-based. I think that perhaps he/she expected it to be more like Real-Time-Strategy.

Unfortunately for him/her this is just not the way Turn-Based works. Turn-Based is all about Gameplay. Everything else (realism, graphics, etc.) comes as a distant second. And if you don't like that, then there's two options: Either mod the game to your liking, or start playing another game.

 

[CyberChrist]

It is a bit odd though that an Infantry(or whatever) unit that is only allowed to attack and kill one single club wielding warrior each turn, is perfectly able to defend against - and kill - any number of that (now dead) warrior's equally stone age challenged buddies with ease on the very same turn (in theory anyway).

I spot a lack of consistency in logic here.


However, I must admit that I don't loose any sleep over this particular state of affairs.

 

[BearMan]

Realism or no Realism....

There have to be a balance, You can't ignore realism, after all,
the game is based on our world.

When game balance have to come first, it just have to come first.
Things like movement, time, combat odds, number of attacks per turn etc, You can't change these things without changing the balance and pase of the game to a non-civ game.

But there are areas were realism is preferable, since it wouldn't hurt gameplay to fix it. These are things like:
gunships get's penalties for attacking across rivers or nuclearpowerplants just destroy a couple of your cities, and gives no power advantage over a steam producing coal plant.

it wouldn't hurt gameplay to try to get these things "right". And, people get happy when they don't need to get into the manual / civilopedia to figure out how to use units/building, they like when they can assume that a helicopter can fly over rivers and a nuclearpowerplant produce power without blowing up your cities, since that is what they know these things do in real life.

 

[daengle]

2) I have suggestions.

2a) A battle should be resolved as one battle, not as a series of single combats. One infantry fighting two warriors is one battle; the warriors lose; end of battle.

2b) A much simpler change would allow any unit to go on making repeated attacks within a single turn, as long as all the attacks are against a single square.

IMHO, the combat system is fine. However, I do understand the complaint. But, I think you haven't thought through all the problems with your proposed solutions.

When an attack by a single infantry against a large stack of warriors is resolved as a single event, if we sum the warriors' strengths, it would be possible for a very large stack of warriors to be impervious to any attack by the infantry. This is an even worse problem than now where these kinds of battles just take too many turns.

Alternatively, giving the infantry bliz and/or collateral damage like abilities will solve your problem but destroy the uniqueness of tanks and artillery. That will make the use of combined arms less important, which is definitely the wrong direction to go.

 

[Sorceresss]

There have to be a balance, You can't ignore realism, after all, the game is based on our world.

Your Weltanschauung needs a radical paradigm-shift if you really believe that !

 

[Jonathan]

If it were a historical simulation game the civs/tribes would not all start at 4000BC. If we follow that train of thought, America would begin play somewhere in the 18th century. Rome would start in the latter BC's. Etc., etc.... Now that wouldn't be a lot of fun gameplay-wise, now would it?

Civ is a historical simulation game: it simulates the process of history. Obviously, it doesn't follow the course of our history (and there would be no game if we were forced to follow history-as-we-know-it): it starts off on a different world and with a set of players most of whom didn't exist in 4000 BC. However, it simulates the process of history as it might have happened in this imaginary situation.

It's a simulation riddled with gross inaccuracies, but it's nevertheless quite obviously a simulation.

The game works the way it works because these are the principles of Turn-Based-Strategy games.

Well, no. I've been playing turn-based wargames since the 1960s, and most of them (even in the 1960s) had combat systems superior to what we find in Civ.

 

[Jonathan]

IMHO, the combat system is fine. However, I do understand the complaint. But, I think you haven't thought through all the problems with your proposed solutions.

When an attack by a single infantry against a large stack of warriors is resolved as a single event, if we sum the warriors' strengths, it would be possible for a very large stack of warriors to be impervious to any attack by the infantry. This is an even worse problem than now where these kinds of battles just take too many turns.

Alternatively, giving the infantry bliz and/or collateral damage like abilities will solve your problem but destroy the uniqueness of tanks and artillery. That will make the use of combined arms less important, which is definitely the wrong direction to go.

Thanks for the reasoned response. As for the single infantry unit versus a large stack of warriors, it depends on the formula you use to resolve the battle. You can choose any formula you like and get whatever results you like. The important thing to me is that it should be resolved as a single battle and not all these tedious one-on-one combats.

 

[Vaiks]

Pleeease,

Civ is not a military simulator or a historical representation of mankind! It's a strategy game with a set of rules. Use the rules and play the game the way it is meant to be played.

Don't try to change the game to something it is not and remember, the same rules are validy to the other side!

 

[Jonathan]

It is a bit odd though that an Infantry(or whatever) unit that is only allowed to attack and kill one single club wielding warrior each turn, is perfectly able to defend against - and kill - any number of that (now dead) warrior's equally stone age challenged buddies with ease on the very same turn (in theory anyway).

Good point, thank you.

 

[Jonathan]

Pleeease,

Civ is not a military simulator or a historical representation of mankind! It's a strategy game with a set of rules. Use the rules and play the game the way it is meant to be played.

Don't try to change the game to something it is not and remember, the same rules are validy to the other side!

You're entitled to your own view of the game. You're not entitled to impose it on other people. Fortunately.

 

[TheJediMaster]

But when you can model things like the effects of inflation, a new idea which was discovered in the modern age, in a game, you should be able to model combat, something that has happened since the beginning of time and vitally important to societies growing and falling, in a better manner.

Look, you can't simulate the full process of going to war. It would be rediclous to build and even worse to play. But this system in Civ4 is far from complex. Fraxis downgraded the Civ3 style of attack/defense stats to this combat system in Civ4. They should have added promotions to the attack/defend system to give more depth to combat.

But there should be even more destinctions between types of units. The rifleman shouldn't have to wait to fire until the maceman is right infront of him. Ranged verses melee units should be taken into consideration. Flight units verses ground units, naval verses flight, etc. Combat should include factoring the two types of units, the age it represents, and what type of terrain (aka air, water, ground) it is engaging in.

 

[randallman]

I did forget that bit about CTP - That was a bit closer to 'realistic' I suppose, but.... I agree with the rebuttles - you know the game rules - you want to take a city in one turn, bring enough offensive units to kill all of the defenders in said turn.

Giggle!

That said - Civ REFUSES to use one of the few things that CTP got right - it's combined forces army concept. Different units perform different roles simultaneously to resolve combat not Kung Fu movie style where the hero fights one enemy at a time, but on a scale that makes sense...

That said, I can live with the single unit needing to attack 10 times. Hey, it's not like Tenochtitlan was overrun the first day.

Venger