BATTLE ENGINE - The most unrealistic aspect of the game.

[riot_girl]

If you really want to get "THIS ISNT REAL ENOUGH!" how do leaders live for some 4050 years with out aging a bit!?!? i want what ever face cream isabella uses to stay so young.

 

[Mr. Blonde]

Why not having to manage every city like in SimCity? I find that city managing is unrealistic! The economy is also unrealistic! Why not having the possibility to have income dependant taxes, VAT, ect. You can not even choose to fund the schools public or private!

Seriously: The combat is as abstract as other aspects of the game. Going into detail won´t neccessarily increase the fun of gaming. Heck, I need 15+ hours on standard speed and maps to finish. And units are graphical representations of strength (loosely based on RL but also balanced internally) and special abilities (that were not existant in previous versions). Cool down and learn to appreciate what you have - an excellent 4X game.

 

[riot_girl]

I allways imagined the units as armys, my 3 musketmen is a full army of musketmen. They go into a city guarded by archers, sure theyed easly beat a army of archers in a open feild. But in a city, they go in think they win only to find the archers popping out of windows releasing hails of arrows on them before they can respond then returning back inside and hidding til the next barage happens. For example right now america is in bagdad, they've been there for like 4 years but they dont control it.

 

[Pvblivs]

If you really want to get "THIS ISNT REAL ENOUGH!" how do leaders live for some 4050 years with out aging a bit!?!? i want what ever face cream isabella uses to stay so young.

You really want to live thos 6.000 years yourself? Believe me, if isabella would'nt use her "face cream" her face would be a terrible book were you could read what human players have done to her during this quite long life

 

[Smidlee]

You must be thinking of the original Civilization game from Hartland Trefoil, later taken over by Avalon Hill. That was a completely different game, nothing to do with Sid Meier's Civilization. I still have a copy of the Avalon Hill version.

Sid Meier's Civilization started out as a computer game. Much later, a board game version has been made of it.

The first board game was different but no doubt the idea of Sid Meier game came from it. This is what got my attention of PC civ the start with while the PC game was more complex. Avalon Hill produced a lot of "chess like" strategy games. The main difference between chess and chess-like games dice rolls/luck involve in the latter. Civ is also just a "chess-like" board game and not a simulation of any kind. Civ4 has finally added the bishops on the board.

 

[CyberChrist]

The definition of the term 'Simulation' is not very specific and certainly not to the degree that some of you seem to think. It covers any setup that seeks to emulate one or more aspects of something else - and no particular degree of succesfullness in this emulation attempt is required in order to qualify for the term 'Simulation'.

 

[Pvblivs]

The definition of the term 'Simulation' is not very specific and certainly not to the degree that some of you seem to think. It covers any setup that seeks to emulate one or more aspects of something else - and no particular degree of succesfullness in this emulation attempt is required in order to qualify for the term 'Simulation'.

Right. It depends on the point of view. Civilization is a simulation. But as I said above: This is not the point. How do you distinguish a flight simulator from civ then in a simple way? With this way of categorizing games almost every game would be a simulation. -> We define: "A simulation game is a game were some aspect is emulated". What is that good for? What exactly is simulated in Civ4? And what is the level of abstraction of it?

I do not think this to be a issue at all, wether Civ4 is a simulation or not. My issue comes into play where people say: "Because civ is a simulation I want this or that to be simulated more accurately. I want mountains to be passable, I want tunnels, I want A/D-Values (what has this to do with simulation anyway?), I want my cities be like sim city.

The problem is that "Simulation" is such an abstract term, that it is of no use calling a Civilization feature to be good or bad for the game.

And that is, why this simulation discussion started. So with saying "yes, the game is a simulation" another one comes out of a box again saying "he said civ to be a simulation so I want my forests to grow more slowly and I want hurricans, but on the real world map only over the yellow and carribean sea and I want the ocean currents to be emulated correctly so that global warming causes europe to freeze to ice.".

That's the problem with simulating-civ

 

[Tholomeo]

Hey guys, you forgot one but IMPORTANT thing!
In modern life there are no warriors and archers in armed forces of any country.
Any country, even "thoroughly inferior", can have machine-gun equipped arms in 20th century. Say, the US in Vietnam (or, Russians in Afghanistan) fought not vs. longbowmen or War Elephants or Camel Archers - the units on the "savage" side were almost on the same scale as on the "enlightened" side: rifles, kalashnikovs, grenade launchers, portable SAM missile launchers etc.
Some historician (hm, don't remember who) called our century the "posthistorical" time. Savage tribes in Africa watch TV in their huts, every country in the world has railroads, supermarkets and internet.
I am positive that such feature as "leakage of technologies" MUST be implemented into a game!
Thus, we can get rid of those ludicrous situations of mech.infantries fighting against horse archers. We can preserve the balance, by reviewing the barracks system in the game. My idea is to make barracks gradeable and upgradeable...=)
e.g. barracks for ancient melee units
barracks for archery units (costs some more)
barracks for gunpowder units (costs twice more)
barracks for modern units (costs six times more)
You can build modern units in a city without appropriate barracks, but at a higher expence, and units appear without initial experience. And vice versa, building modern barracks seriously reduces production times for units, allows multiple upgrades for them.
Let me dream even further...
I want units to be built in barracks, not influencing city's building construction activities. E.g., in my Moscow city, my "Air Force barracks" builds stealth bomber, my "Infantry barracks" builds a Mech.inf. unit, and at the same time my city is constructing a hospital.
Ahh, dreams, dreams...

 

[Pvblivs]

Hi,

I am positive that such feature as "leakage of technologies" MUST be implemented into a game!
Thus, we can get rid of those ludicrous situations of mech.infantries fighting against horse archers. We can preserve the balance, by reviewing the barracks system in the game. My idea is to make barracks gradeable and upgradeable...=)

yes, that is a thing that I am always bothering about: Why it is so damn difficult in civ to keep up with standards once you are back in technology. Without technology you cannot survive in civ. But even the Afghans managed to push over the technologically advanced Sovjets some days ago

I would implement it that way that a technology is easier to develop the more foreign nations with open borders to you having already discovered this tech.
This would pay some respect on the influence of trades to technologies. E.g. the weapons that were delivered into the Iraq during their war against Iran. This could also put some pressure on my allies to sell their newest technology rather sooner than later to me, before I discover it to fast for them to have any advantage of it.
It would also represent accurately that nations isolating themselves (with multiple wars or simply by politics) may have problems keeping up with the tech race because they are simply refused many trades.

Additionally a nation could get increased traderoute income for trade routes to cities that do not profit from a technology yet.

I want units to be built in barracks, not influencing city's building construction activities. E.g., in my Moscow city, my "Air Force barracks" builds stealth bomber, my "Infantry barracks" builds a Mech.inf. unit, and at the same time my city is constructing a hospital.
Ahh, dreams, dreams...

I would not want that. This breaks with the old simple but important civilization principle of "decide what to do". Do you want to improve your military power now OR do you want to improve your city. This decision is strategically difficult. Either build a wall and try to defend the city with archer+wall or build another archer.

 

[Tholomeo]

Yes, Publius, we can talk further=)
You decide to sacrifice reality for game balance, and I am the ultimate fan of realism in Civ games. We're not going to argue about that, okay.

And actually, the kinda "paradox" is that Afghani or Vietnam do not produce firearms. They use Russian or American weapons! They do not "produce" military units. It is not even a "draft", because it does not cause unhappiness=))

 

[riot_girl]

If you get the internet prodject done, all technologies are shared.

 

[Pvblivs]

Maybe they should add some civic that removes research, cultural advance, non-military building and stuff like that but that is perfect for training cheap guerillas that are technologically level with barbarians but start with a combined promotion of "city2, guerilla2 and woodsman2" that is only working within your cultural borders.

With the addition that you cannot come out of this civic, let's call it "the desperate civic", as long as there is military activity (lets say within the last 5 turns) on your territory. This would be important as it would be to powerful otherwise to switch it on and off every 5 and 10 turns.

Coming out of "desperate" mode all guerillas are removed or converted to some weaker kind of soldier.

 

[EdCase]

The first board game was different but no doubt the idea of Sid Meier game came from it. This is what got my attention of PC civ the start with while the PC game was more complex. Avalon Hill produced a lot of "chess like" strategy games. The main difference between chess and chess-like games dice rolls/luck involve in the latter. Civ is also just a "chess-like" board game and not a simulation of any kind. Civ4 has finally added the bishops on the board.

Sid did indeed get his inspiration from the boardgame. So much so in fact, that the U.S. distributor Avalon Hill actually took him to court (they lost). Ironically enough both Microprose and Avalon Hill ended up being purchased by Hasbro.
Oh! and sorry to correct whoever said it,but Hartland Trefoil became part of Gibson Games NOT Avalon Hill in the UK.

 

[CyberChrist]

How do you distinguish a flight simulator from civ then in a simple way?

You said it yourself - we call one a Flight Simulator - and the other Civilization

 

[MattJek]

CIV is basically a computerized board game where all the piece movements and dice throws are done electronically in split seconds. This battle and timeline system has been part of CIV since the original Civilization almost 15 years ago so I dont see why people are discovering that its not realistic just now. If you want something that has a more realistic unit movement/ battle system and timeline than play a RTS game. After reading this post, all Ive seen is people complaining without offering any solutions. Its seems like everyone is an expert at finding and pointing out problems, but no one has any solutions.

 

[Tholomeo]

If you get the internet prodject done, all technologies are shared.

It is the silliest wonder in all the series of Civilization games ever.
It has high tech prerequisite, it takes ages to build it, and it is not hurryable!

 

[Breunor]

Sid did indeed get his inspiration from the boardgame. So much so in fact, that the U.S. distributor Avalon Hill actually took him to court (they lost). Ironically enough both Microprose and Avalon Hill ended up being purchased by Hasbro.
Oh! and sorry to correct whoever said it,but Hartland Trefoil became part of Gibson Games NOT Avalon Hill in the UK.

I'm pretty sure that Hasbro/Microsoft bought Avalon Hill to settle the lawsuit -- at that point, AH's value was so low it was easier to just buy the company. Ironically, paying for hte lawsuit was the straw that broke the camel's back at AH IIRC. I think AH won the first round in court but the fight went on. (I may be worng on this -- I'm relying on memory from the time).

Breunor

 

[TSteamer]

Situation:

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. Which represents years of time.

Now imagining this in reality. If Russia was to attack one city in Azerbayian with intention of destroying it and killing everybody around. Would that take years?

If I put 10 warriors in the city, I can hold off 2 infantries for 5 turns....that is a hell of a lot years. Which is nonsense, because no matter how many of warriors the infantry is facing, there should be more bulllets on the infantry side than soldierson the warriors side.

I had a spearman in the city killing my infantry, canon, and cavalry. They were a bit damaged, but still I ask .... WHAT?

A very simple solution to this situation would be a new promotion called "Multiple Engagement". With it, a unit could divide its strength in order to take on more than one unit.

Ex: Infantry (Str 20) vs 2 Warriors (Str 2) would then receive combat odds of 10 vs 2. Then the battles would be calculated separately and, rightly, the single division of rifle and bayonette toting infantry would mop up the two divisions of club and stone wielding warriors.

It wouldnt be until you tried to take on 10 warriors at once (20 divided by 10 = 2) that the odds would become even. This is the not enough bullets-to-bodies argument.

The theory works well across most genres: Machine Gun (18) vs Archers (3) is a no-brainer, but also Modern Armor (40) vs Infantry (20) works out too.

-TSteamer

 

[gunnergoz]

I like the game battle engine just fine. Adapt and learn. Why bend the game to your preferences?

 

[Krill]

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

Yeah, luckily only the Designers and the Beta Testers can do this...