Better Unit Movement and Military Strategy

[Camikaze]

In Civ IV, most units are only able to engage in one battle per turn. The same restriction applies here. Not to mention most if not all of the attacking units would be hit by city-based or front line defenders along the way, so unless you've got all your units out in the field with unobstructed paths leading to your cities (remember that defending units intercept all attacking units within several tiles), what you're saying just wouldn't happen.

If is pretty easy to discern a path through enemy territory that is unobstructed, and if your stack is big enough, and you have enough air attack/potential to cause collateral damage, a stack of say, 100 units, could, relatively easily, wipe out almost an entire civilization before it has time to react. Even if it doesn't manage to take every city, taking half of them wouldn't be all that hard. This would certainly not be good for game balance.

 

[Ramesses]

If is pretty easy to discern a path through enemy territory that is unobstructed, and if your stack is big enough, and you have enough air attack/potential to cause collateral damage, a stack of say, 100 units, could, relatively easily, wipe out almost an entire civilization before it has time to react. Even if it doesn't manage to take every city, taking half of them wouldn't be all that hard. This would certainly not be good for game balance.

And how often do you encounter a stack of 100 units?

 

[CDarwin1701]

I think I see the opposite problem to what most people seemed to have responded too. Wouldn't this make movement really frustratingly slow and micro-manage-y? It seems like exploring territory in the early game would be particularly difficult, which would make it hard to expand with new cities.

I don't like the movement speed of Civ now either, though. There is no way it can be called "realistic." In 2000 BC, it didn't take 200 years to move a catapult one tile. All your armies in the ancient age are apparently mutli-generational as they advance across the interior of your empire. It makes it hard to sustain offensives if your industrial cities are deep within your territory and it takes three turns even in the very late game to get to the front. I can really only stand to use cavalry. If the real world obeyed Civ IV's movement rules, it would have been 1950 before Zhukov's troops ever made it to Stalingrad from Siberia. I liked Civ 3's railroads, actually, which let you move a unit across friendly rail networks in '0' turns.

And isn't cavalry moving faster than infantry or siege weapons in itself quite tactical? I don't think most cavalry armies moved around full gallop; they went at about the marching speed of the average infantryman.

 

[Argetnyx]

OK I haven't seen this in a while, so...

Rogue units: Very good idea, but should not be bought.

Unit Black Market: Probably not, too complicated and large-scale to be realistic.

Reaserching flight for no rogue: Why?

MP-> Bonus Attack: No, too tactical.

whereby you can hire barbarian units to do your bidding for you, with the risk that they may rebel against your leadership, posing a significant problem for you.

If you're thinking of the Roman use of barbarian soldiers, no. They were people from conquered territories.

:::MORALE:::
Too tactical. Initiative, maybe, but not morale. In a military front, when things are going well your units are do better. When they are not, your units lose their independence and they are harder to control (move, attack, defend, etc.).

Marines want to see the inhabited world, not the wilderness.

I think he meant the Royal Marines, from Britain.

 

[Camikaze]

And how often do you encounter a stack of 100 units?

You currently don't generally see stacks of 100 units so much as, say, 4 stacks of 25 units. But, having the ability to do severe and unchallenged damage to a civ by combining the stacks (although you could still achieve the same thing with separate stacks), would make them much more prevalent.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

And how often do you encounter a stack of 100 units?

Sometimes on immortal and it's really not uncommon in a lot of deity games...I don't have many successful deity attempts but games where the best beat a map it's often via beating such stacks.

 

[Ramesses]

As far as I can figure, whether or not attacking armies can charge into your empire seemingly out of nowhere doesn't make any difference in terms of your units' defensive power, thus the number of enemies you are capable of defeating. Yes, it does affect how many cities your enemy is able to take within a single turn, but I believe there is already a mechanism in place which discourages stacks of doom from spreading their attack too much, which is: resisting cities (newly captured cities) do not provide defensive bonuses. At least, I think that's true...

So let's say 100 soldiers attack an empire of 10 cities, each holding 10 defenders. The attackers and defenders are equally powerful, so defenders have a 50-50 chance to win. Each attacker can engage in only one battle.

In one scenario, the attacker chooses to simply fight through each stack of defenders it comes across. After fighting through the defenders, the attacking army has managed to capture 5 cities with 50 surviving unis. The cities are in resistance, and providing no defense to the wounded units. Your surviving defenders in the cities which were not touched by the attackers can then swoop in and gain control of most, if not all, of the captured cities. With armies on both sides nearly decimated, the war ends almost as quickly as it began. Since the captured cities were retaken before resistance was quelled, no lasting damage has been done.

The other scenario is that the attacking army takes only one or two cities and splits its surviving units between the captured cities before ending their turn. By doing this, they ensure that retaking the city will be difficult. However, now that their turn is over, you now have a chance to reorganize your defenders so that your most vulnerable cities are well-protected for when the captured cities stop resisting and the next assault begins. Assuming the number of attackers and your defenders are still relatively equal, your ability to set up a strategically impassible defensive formation will determine whether you win or lose.

So as you can see, between two equally powered rivals, when the window of defensive opportunity arrives is not an issue. And if the two nations are imbalanced in power, well, the weaker one has less of a chance, but that's already the case anyway.

 

[Camikaze]

That doesn't take into account the exorbitant damage that can be done by collateral damage and air strikes. An attacking stack of 100 units, if applied correctly (with siege and air capabilities) would have no problems against 100 opposition units, and the opponent would not have any chance to strike back with their collateral damage and air strike capabilities, as most, if not all, of these units would be destroyed. Basically, the attacking stack has a big advantage on its first turn, when it is at full strength, and when it can inflict huge damage on the opponent. So, allowing them the opportunity to take many, many cities when they have a large advantage (so they will not be destroyed/injured much), will make any attempts at defence futile.

 

[Ramesses]

Okay, I think this is as good a place as any to pitch the latest version of a suggestion I've made many times before. This time, I think I've come up with a solution that will please everyone. But I can't make a new thread for it, since it's inseperably intertwined with this idea.

Everything in the game should not be calculated per turn, but per year. Food/yr, Hammers/yr, Culture/yr. But between turns, multiple years pass. How many pass depends on game speed. This eliminates artificial inflation in harvest rates, research rates, etc. But the biggest reason is because this system allows the game speed to change in the middle of the game.

Now I suggested that the player could manually stop the clock to give a new order, but that made it too much like an RTS. So then I suggested that the computer dynamically changed turn length in response to important developments, which had many of its own problems. So now I have a solution that should go over well with everyone. Am I going to stop the build up and just say it? Yes.

The speed reduces time passage to 1 month/turn for any player in a war.

When you declare war or have war declared on you, every subsequent turn until peace is made with everybody will represent 1 month of time. Soldiers will move at a pace very close to how soldiers currently move in Civ IV. Meanwhile, every civ that is not at war will play at the normal speed. This means civs at war will take more turns than civs not at war, but the same amount of time passes regardless, and since everything is calculated per year, the increased number of turns doesn't change harvest rate, production rate, research rate, etc.

The effect this has is that, when the player enters war, he is practically locked in time, where progress in all areas is perceived to practically slow to a stop. The only thing that matters during war is arranging your troops and defending what has already been built. As soon as the war ends, time passage returns to normal, and you can go back to managing your empire like normal.

The other effect this has is that when other civs go to war, the war is typically resolved in very few turns, sometimes one. If you have the pleasure of watching the fighting civs through espionage, what happens can be rather surreal. Large chunks and even entire empires can seemingly disappear in the blink of an eye. Of course to the losers, the defeat was excruciatingly slow. Meanwhile, it's business as usual for you.

 

[Argetnyx]

Now I suggested that the player could manually stop the clock to give a new order, but that made it too much like an RTS. So then I suggested that the computer dynamically changed turn length in response to important developments, which had many of its own problems. So now I have a solution that should go over well with everyone. Am I going to stop the build up and just say it? Yes.

What clock? You don't need a clock to do your turn.

The speed reduces time passage to 1 month/turn for any player in a war.

Way too slow. You would never get anywhere if it was like that, unless there were absolutely no wars.

When you declare war or have war declared on you, every subsequent turn until peace is made with everybody will represent 1 month of time. Soldiers will move at a pace very close to how soldiers currently move in Civ IV. Meanwhile, every civ that is not at war will play at the normal speed. This means civs at war will take more turns than civs not at war, but the same amount of time passes regardless, and since everything is calculated per year, the increased number of turns doesn't change harvest rate, production rate, research rate, etc.

Too complicated, and unrealistic. That way, the civs at peace are at a disadvantage, because they have to act slower.

The only way that this would work would be if there was no production, growth, culture, or reasearch going on during that time. Since most wars take years, that won't work either.

 

[rysmiel]

The speed reduces time passage to 1 month/turn for any player in a war.

When you declare war or have war declared on you, every subsequent turn until peace is made with everybody will represent 1 month of time. Soldiers will move at a pace very close to how soldiers currently move in Civ IV. Meanwhile, every civ that is not at war will play at the normal speed. This means civs at war will take more turns than civs not at war, but the same amount of time passes regardless, and since everything is calculated per year, the increased number of turns doesn't change harvest rate, production rate, research rate, etc,

I'm not sure I see how one could scale unit and improvement costs to make that work, though. If units are cheap enough that you can build them meaningful numbers a month at a time, then even a single year-long turn should give you enough productivity to build a huge army out of nothing, no ? It would the logistical build-up aspect of a war really hair-trigger,

It also does not really allow you, while at peace, to get any diplomatic leverage out of interacting with two civilisations who are at war.

 

[Ramesses]

What clock? You don't need a clock to do your turn.

Earlier versions of this idea made the years pass by automatically until you pressed Space to begin a new turn. That's not in there anymore, obviously.

Way too slow. You would never get anywhere if it was like that, unless there were absolutely no wars.

So you think you can never go anywhere with the way Civ IV is now. Yep, those units sure do move slow.

Too complicated, and unrealistic. That way, the civs at peace are at a disadvantage, because they have to act slower.

But they're not at war. What would they use that precision for? If they're not setting up defenders or directing an attack force, they have no need for speed.

The only way that this would work would be if there was no production, growth, culture, or reasearch going on during that time. Since most wars take years, that won't work either.

I honestly have no idea how you jumped to that conclusion. Read my post again.

 

[Ramesses]

I'm not sure I see how one could scale unit and improvement costs to make that work, though. If units are cheap enough that you can build them meaningful numbers a month at a time,

They aren't, and you can't. You need to use whatever soldiers you already have. This is based on the assumption that outside of wartime you've been checking the power graph frequently and have been working to stay even with your rivals.

It also does not really allow you, while at peace, to get any diplomatic leverage out of interacting with two civilisations who are at war.

Could you elaborate on that?

 

[Camikaze]

I don't really like that idea (although it's not without its merits). It would completely eliminate phoney wars, which are an important part of diplomacy, and it would give war an advantage, with the elimination of the long-term costs of war, whereby you have to forgo a large chunk of development and research in order to be successful. And unit movement would be horribly out of whack. However much you standardised production, commerce, etc. unit movement would be very difficult to standardise, particularly when in war turns could be less than 1% of one out of war turn. This could be exploited quite a lot, with movement across a continent, or ocean, sped up with a DoW on some poor distant hated civ.

 

[Argetnyx]

I honestly have no idea how you jumped to that conclusion. Read my post again.

My point is, if the warring civs are sped up, they have a major advantage over the peaceful civs who have to move, produce, research, etc. much slower.

 

[Ramesses]

My point is, if the warring civs are sped up, they have a major advantage over the peaceful civs who have to move, produce, research, etc. much slower.

No, see, they take turns more frequently, but movement, production, and research still occur at the same rate per year. Whereas it might take a civ at peace 1 turn to advance 5 years, it takes a civ at war 60 turns to go to war...

You know what actually, forget this idea. It actually totally ruins the entire concept, as it completely eliminates the need for patrol zones and such. So let's stop talking about this and get back to whatever we were on before.

I think, with the way fog works (or is meant to work) in this idea, invading forces will have a hard time of navigating enemy territory unless they have enough of an espionage advantage that they know where most of their enemies cities and roads are. It perfectly corresponds with Sun Tzu's ideology: knowing your enemy, formulating a plan to victory, then going to war. If you haven't explored his territory or set up an extensive spy network, you would have to take many stabs in the dark. And the thing about wandering around in the dark is that you risk running through a patrol zone and getting attacked by a stack of defenders you weren't ready to fight.

As for the initiative problem, where the declarer naturally has a greater advantage, I think you could solve it by making it so that a declaration of war can only be made at the end of your turn. Then you have to wait until next turn to enter enemy lands, which gives the defender enough time to prepare to the best of his ability.

 

[Argetnyx]

As for the initiative problem, where the declarer naturally has a greater advantage, I think you could solve it by making it so that a declaration of war can only be made at the end of your turn. Then you have to wait until next turn to enter enemy lands, which gives the defender enough time to prepare to the best of his ability.

This will not work. The declarer usually does have an advantage, because they struck first.

 

[Hail]

This will not work. The declarer usually does have an advantage, because they struck first.

if the civ did not have an advantage, it would not have declared.

 

[Argetnyx]

That's part of my point... Giving the defender the advantage will not help at all.

 

[Ramesses]

That's part of my point... Giving the defender the advantage will not help at all.

Why would you go to war if you (plus possibly the combined strength of your allies) did not have a significant power advantage in the first place?