battle groups

[Ebonite]

Ah, it appears that you are misconstruing the methods of how these battle groups would to be used. Or, perhaps, you are inferring things not intended by those of us working out these proposals.

Firstly, "battle groups" would by no means be the only operable military power available to a civilization. Units could be combined or left as individuals as the player sees fit. If a player wants to have only one "battle group" and leave everything else unattached, so be it.

Secondly, a "battle group" would be as big or as small as the player wants. If I want to put two tanks in a battle group, and only those two tanks, then that's all that will be in there. If I later I want to add three infantry and a radar artillery, I could. In my own idea, I could put some 12 units in a battle group, unless some upper limit were imposed, like judgement suggested. In any case, however, units can be added to and removed from battle groups at the player's discretion.

Thirdly, a "battle group" would be no different than any other stack of units, in either attack or defence, except that multiple units can be given an attack order in a battle group. Those units would still attack separately, in order, in one-on-one engagements, until victorious, destroyed, or they retreat out of the battle. The whole group would not attack, or defend, as one unit. Absolutely no bonus, movement or otherwise, is conferred on a battle group.

Finally, not all players prefer to play in a militaristic manner, myself included. You may revel in sending out your forces and using each unit to it's utmost potential in a calculated, multi-pronged assault against multiple enemies. I would rather get the war over with as quickly as possible and get back to ensuring my cultural domination of the planet. I believe that this thread was started and contributed to by players who feel the same way I do. We just want a way to simplify battles so we can get back to the parts of Civ that we find fun and entertaining.

Now, if anyone would like to offer some constructive criticism on what I've stated here, or politely request further explanation of any item, or civilly debate any part of this post, or tell me to "take a flying leap" in a nice way, please do so. I would hate for anyone to think I'm speaking for them, and if I erroneously inferred anything in the context of these posts, my deepest apologies.

 

[King Alexander]

I'd like to see Naval Leaders and Air Leaders. It'd be simple: an elite Aegis/battleship produces a Naval Leader while defending or attacking, which in reality would be the same unit but with Army(Naval Army) properties. The player could then built the Naval Academy in a coastal city and begin producing Naval Armies(as with land Armies) and load in there whatever naval unit he wants. The same goes with Air Leaders.

I definetly want to be able to unload/upgrade units from Armies. It is useless to have an outdated Army.

Furthermore, there should be an option when you start the game, which would allow the player to choose if he want the Leaders(land, air, sea) to be automatically moved inside the player's capital, as it's frustrating to get a Leader, only to have him killed a moment later in the battlefield(if there is not left a unit to defend him).

 

[Sinapus]

Example 2
I assign a destroyer (move 7) to "escort" my transport (move 6). I then send the transport halfway around the world. After each turn on the way there, the destroyer will fortify (having one extra movement), and resume movement on the transport's automatic move. Once they get there, they get attacked by a bomber, which attacks the destroyer (which has higher defence, in this example anyway). After the bomber is done, a submarine attacks and chooses to attack the transport (stealth ability). The transport sinks, and on my next turn, the destroyer is a "ready" unit, since its "primary" has been destroyed.

I've seen the computer player do something like this in C3C when it has a faster unit escorting a slower unit. So it's not something impossible. (It's also not an option available in stack movement, alas.)

 

[Lennon]

One little thing about artillery or bomber groups is that you should be able to give them certain conditions when to stop. Like if the city's population goes down to 2, you may wanna call it quits with bombarding and attack with your ground troops, since if the city was bombarded down to 1, it would disappear when you captured it. Also perhaps you don't wanna bombard that last spearman down to 1 hp if you're attacking with tanks, may want to redirect your artillery or bombers to another objective instead.

 

[sir_schwick]

This post deals with two topics, so I'll put them both in bold so you scroll to what interests you.

Retreating

I think that once units engage in combat, the player has no control over how they behave. But they will be able to influence it in other ways. Each individual unit will have an SOP(Standard Operating Procedure). All units will be trained with a default SOP(which can be changed by the more micro-management oriented players). One can also change the SOP by either pressing one of the command buttons and chosing from a list(hotkey avaliable), or pressing a hotkey to cycle through SOPs. SOP libraries could be d/l online(b/c the experts here will invariably do it better). Groups of any kind could have their SOP changed all at once as well.

Here is what an SOP would do. It would have the orders that a unit is supposed to attempt under a number of specified combat conditions. These conditions include Battle Stance(attacking or defending), Modified defense value(with terrain and fortifications), modified opponent defender's value, enemy attacker's speed, enemy defender's speed, experience of enemy attacker/defender, experience of unit, units HP, enemies hitpoints. This sounds like a lot, and will be to an extent, but most units should have SOPs that work well and you will only have to tweak one or two values to get it to do what you want for specific situations. If Atari was nice, they would even include Suicide Attack and Defend To the Last Man type SOPs.

Now for an example. The SOP for Longbowmen says that if it is defending and the attacker's mod. attack value is 3 or greater, it should try to retreat at all HP values. Tanks would retreat when attacked by all but highly weakened Tanks, Mech Inf, TOW Inf, and MA in open terrain. It would also allow you to easily get out of losing 10 Cavalry against an infantry cald metro, they would retreat if when at 2 HP.

Battlegroups

I think the battlegroup system for simple management purposes is a great idea. It should not confer bonuses(techs should) of any kind, just make my life easier. The grouping system should be able to be applied at multiple levels, even within a larger group. Groups could also be grouped together.

The obvious benefits of this system are (1) less clicks, (2) makes discussing wars more fun if you can name the groups, (3) feels more military-ish. There should also be a couple options to make organizing groups easier. One would be Auot Sub-Group by Type. Would make organizing before a campaign easier. You could then split up those groups of units you want in smaller contingents, and add units you want supporting from other groups. It could also be used in conjunction with the bombardment grid, but without the hassle of choosing individual units.

This is a little off topic, but I think all groups should have a made-up figurehead. This figure-head wouldn't do aything, or even be a unit, but would report certain events to you rather than the same adviser. If a group was occupying a city and resistance went down, the unit leader would report the news instead of your military advisor. Same when cities flipped or great leader's were created. Just adds a little variety and hopefully atari would make the names humurous.

 

[Lennon]

Haven't read through all the posts in this thread, but the first post is EXACTLY what I want to see too. I too thought that this was what Armies were going to be like when I first read about Civ 3. I don't necessarily want them in a stack though, just the ability to sort them in under a common name (1st army, 2nd army etc or Army Group North, Army Group Rostov etc), to keep track on them and be able to quickly rally them all to a specific location. You could even have sub groups, being able to divide armies into army groups.

 

[brinko]

There needs to some sort of high command for the air to carry out large scale bombing efforts on cities. maybe as a city improvement have a air command headquarters.

Ww2 air command would always send out sorties, 4 to 8 to 12 to however many they needed. maybe 8 bombers and 4 fights, which would be 3 sorties.

Like armies, where one aquires a leader or general to control 3-4 units, i would like to suggest that one should be able to require flight captains, (possibly as many as they need) to form sorties composed of 4 to 6 planes. this way if i have 50 bombers, and would like to bomb a city, i dont have to click 50 times on my bombers then another 50 times on the city. thats 100 times of clicking. yes if one wanted to go all out open bombing campaign, sending 4-6 planes in a sortie to destroy a road is a bit of a waste, especially if the road was on a plain. one would only need to send one plane, perhaps 2 if railed or in the hills.

or

Maybe this problem could be resolved by bombing roads individually first. then once secondary objectives have been met, one might be able to send the rest of stack bombers to city all at once in a wave bombing.

This problem has been already addressed and maybe not, if so i will remove.

 

[kram74]

I'd also like to add my support to the army/battlegroup idea (where they are simply used for unit stack management). This management feature would help people who like to use the 'stack of doom' approach (and there are a lot of them), and would confer a huge time-saving advantage - to me, this makes the game more fun; currently you are forced to micro-manage your forces.

Players do not need to use the large stack approach either - if people want to have units spread thinly across a wide front, they can.

Civ 3 style Armies should be implemented seperately, should be of limited size, and should require a MGL (or wonder).

In fact, if these 'armies' could be treated as stacks, perhaps a 'move up / move down' feature could allow players to customise attack order (for those who like to micro manage), but default to most-powerful attack order for those who can't be bothered working at the low level.

Stacks of bombers would have to all attack in one go (because they have to fly out and attack as a group); stacks of artillery, for example, could attack top-down until there are no more valid targets in the square, possibly leaving several unused artillery left over to attack another target.

 

[Tantor]

OOH, battlegroups exciting it is! I`m definitely hoping for a system like this in CIV 4. The ability to move and attack as a group would reduce micromanagement. But how does it work if I take one battlegroup with 10 units to attack another with only 2 units. Have all my battlegroup`s units used their turn or only those needed to defeat the other battlegroup?

I also like the concept of combined arms. Should there be bonuses for including different unit types in armies or battlegroups?

- Cavalry add ZOC and negates the enemys ability to retreat
- Missile troops give offensive and defensive bonuses
- Infantry add bonus if the battlegoups are fortified
- Scouts add the ability to see hidden units and increases recon
- artillery gives densive bombardement to neighbouring tiles (ZOC)

But this is perhaps more suited for the army concept...