Biggest technological gap?
- Thread starter blazer-glory
- Start date
demokratickid
King
- Joined
- Jun 11, 2007
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Rifleman vs. Spearman. Noble.
Strategos
Autokrator
Are you sure its that specific of a representation? I always kinda saw the rifleman as using a distinctly better technology than mere musketmen. i.e., rifled bores vs. smooth bores. Not as a specific type of riflemen themselves, early or later.
Whether they were using good rifles or primitive rifles, they were immensely better in war than musketmen, who were superior to longbowmen, macemen, etc.
Besides, how prolific of a unit was a "maceman"? This is the first civ incarnation to use them, and I don't think any civilization in RL fielded a heavily armored formation of dudes with nothing but a giant mace on a regular basis. Maybe a few did, but it could only have been in limited cases and for special reasons. In all my scholastic pursuits in history, I've never seen anything that would suggest they were as important to changes in warfare as say a phalanx, legion, longbowman, armored knight, tank, etc. Even crossbows weren't a very prolific technology. Besides the Chinese and some city-states of the southern mediterranean in the late middle ages, no one used them that much. But probably more did than armies full of macemen, though.
Which I guess brings me to a point I've wanted to voice for awhile. I'd say they do ... but it doesn't figure highly into their fomrulae. Other things seem to take precedence over realism ... which isn't so bad I guess since the end result is a game and not a history book. That said ...
I've played civ from the very first. Two was the best IMO. In all those years the only thing I can think of to properly justify some of the whackiness is just plain balance.
The designers and everyone else involved (Sid, too) want to make a new game, different enough from the previous, with enough new ideas and units and such. Then when they're done, they have to balance all that stuff out, too. Now, not only do we have macemen, but we have to ensure that the strength of a maceman isn't too unbalanced against other units => guys with maces can kill guys with rifles in more circumstances than many of us feel comfortable with. Maybe that doesn't happen in RL, but there's much less balance in RL as well.
Civ keeps me coming back for more. But as more games are released, it seems that "simulating" real history is taking a backseat to fantasizing about it. We each have our own preference, and it is just a game, but at some point, people (like in this thread) are going to start throwing down the BS flag more often.
Lol ... I do it multiple times per game!
blazer-glory
Chieftain
What level was you playing??
anonymous4402
Chieftain
On Monarch my colonial Cavalry ran into some Swordsmen. However they had the tech to make Grenadiers and especially Cannons. But I guess after I destroyed several of their main stacks they decided to build a few less hammer-intensive units. Though at the very end they did have Machine Gunners, at that point I was continuing the war literally for Great General points.
Of course in that game I'm at tech parity with the second-strongest civ who also happens to be on my continent, and there's a second continent with the third, fourth, and sixth-place civs who are actually ahead of me in tech. The war I was fighting was a 'colonial' war against the backwards third continent, which is only one layer of techs behind now. But what's interesting is that the Zulu has the entire northern third of the content with the high-tech civs, and it is painfully behind. They must have most certainly overextended in the beginning and let their techrate go to hell. If I wanted I could go to war with Zulu now with Tanks vs. Musketmen, but I have a little bit of cleaning up to do on my own continent first...
Of course in that game I'm at tech parity with the second-strongest civ who also happens to be on my continent, and there's a second continent with the third, fourth, and sixth-place civs who are actually ahead of me in tech. The war I was fighting was a 'colonial' war against the backwards third continent, which is only one layer of techs behind now. But what's interesting is that the Zulu has the entire northern third of the content with the high-tech civs, and it is painfully behind. They must have most certainly overextended in the beginning and let their techrate go to hell. If I wanted I could go to war with Zulu now with Tanks vs. Musketmen, but I have a little bit of cleaning up to do on my own continent first...
FoxURA
Warlord
- Joined
- Jan 20, 2006
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noble... The gap would have gotten much wider but I restarted the game.
6K Man
Bureaucrat
In my current Prince game (Vanilla), I have Tanks vs AI Longbows. Even the most advanced AI is just getting Muskets now.
sylvanllewelyn
Perma-newb
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- Oct 19, 2006
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- 2,036
I believe technological differences were widely debated and discussed somewhere else already. Basically, it's agreed that maceman represented medieval infantry, which were similar to axeman and swordsman, but with better training, practice and military structure and cohesion. In practice, pikemen and knights were more common in the West, while in the East it would be crossbows and pikeman. Pikes were cheap to make and easy to use, as the most common component in any medieval army would be untrained, conscripted peasents. I wonder human players don't attack cities with pikemen...
Do you count barbarian cities as technological gap? If so, it has to be axeman versus riflemen.
Do you count barbarian cities as technological gap? If so, it has to be axeman versus riflemen.
Biggest gap the other way around was me being Napoleon but isolated. Couldn't find another vic. Didn't know enough yet about isolated starts at prince. When the first civ did find me however I found out that I was behind something like machinery, metal casting, civil service, calendar, compass and about 5 more techs and it wasn't even the tech leader I met.
Biggest gap was on great plains. Vasalised almost everybody. Met the last civ who was using longbows, macemen and knight while I was bringing infantries. 3 turns later domination win.
Biggest gap was on great plains. Vasalised almost everybody. Met the last civ who was using longbows, macemen and knight while I was bringing infantries. 3 turns later domination win.
Turinturambar
Prince
- Joined
- Dec 19, 2005
- Messages
- 368
Tanks vs muskets and later modern armor vs rifles on immortal. Was with agg ai/no tech trading/no vassal states settings.
carmen510
Deity
Modern Armor vs. Warriors 
Of course, that city was cut off from the rest of the empire...
Of course, that city was cut off from the rest of the empire...
Civfan333
full metal alchemist
I played a game where I invaded these two isolated Civs and it was literally my huge marine army against their longbowmen. In the last city I took, they finally managed to crank out a musketmen right before I burned the city to the ground.
Zhuge_Liang
The greatest strategist
- Joined
- Sep 6, 2007
- Messages
- 734
Nukes vs. barbarian city and warrior,
Modern armor vs. Tigers and wolves and
galley vs. destroyer.
Modern armor vs. Tigers and wolves and
galley vs. destroyer.
I've had tanks with artillery/air support against longbows on Monarch - that's not a pretty sight.
The biggest lopsided the other way was AI destroyers against my Caravels. Got stuck in a protracted war on my home continent... the other continent were friendly and ran away with tech. That was an early emperor test game.
Re: 'realistic' unit performance.
I'm glad they didn't make the game work that way.
Rifles beating longbows 99.9% of the time might be historically accurate. However, IMO doesn't make for a fun game - I don't want to automatically win because I managed to advance 1 or 2 levels of military tech over my opponents.
With a bit of care of your units and some artillery it's kinda that way with that sort of tech gap, but you can't just automove your way to victory with a tech lead.
The biggest lopsided the other way was AI destroyers against my Caravels. Got stuck in a protracted war on my home continent... the other continent were friendly and ran away with tech. That was an early emperor test game.
Re: 'realistic' unit performance.
I'm glad they didn't make the game work that way.
Rifles beating longbows 99.9% of the time might be historically accurate. However, IMO doesn't make for a fun game - I don't want to automatically win because I managed to advance 1 or 2 levels of military tech over my opponents.
With a bit of care of your units and some artillery it's kinda that way with that sort of tech gap, but you can't just automove your way to victory with a tech lead.
As an intresting side point outdated Indian fighter jets won in war games against modern American jets when satllites were removed from the war games.
Which is why the USA is scared shitless of China and it's ability to missle our sats from the ground.
It's not guns vs axes that allows technologically advanced armies to win out, it's improved information. When you know exactly what/where/how your enemy is doing there isn't much chance for them to win unless they know the same about you or can neutralize your satallites.
How about a tech opening with sats that makes any 2:1 combat odds invunerble to the lower ranking odd holder?
Which is why the USA is scared shitless of China and it's ability to missle our sats from the ground.
It's not guns vs axes that allows technologically advanced armies to win out, it's improved information. When you know exactly what/where/how your enemy is doing there isn't much chance for them to win unless they know the same about you or can neutralize your satallites.
How about a tech opening with sats that makes any 2:1 combat odds invunerble to the lower ranking odd holder?
Hello Everyone,
I once made an all random game, on Prince, my first Prince game of CivIV, and landed on what seemed to be a very fractal map with lots of forests and jungles. Most civs were on their own odd island strip. No, not a strip of islands, a strip of land that had around 2-5 squares wide in most spaces. There was one large land mass which eventually 4 civilization, but only started with 2 to begin with. I'll explain later.
To say this game was economically taxing would be an understatement. I was losing all my money before I even made it to currency, and had to dip the research slider down to 10% and pray I made it to currency while focusing all of my cities on commerce and gold. This is tough to do without Currency, because you cannot convert your hammers to gold yet. It was going to be rough, and I was going to be just shy of making it to currency. However, lucky would have it, as I had a tech someone else wanted, and they were offering me Currency! I jumped at the chance, and instantly converted all of my cities to currency to help get this failing economy back into shape.
I wasn't very good at exploring, and even worse at trading, so I had only my little part of the world explored. But something I didn't understand at the time happened to me. Further and further into the game I got, the more civ's I found. Remember, this was a completely random game, so I had no idea how large the world was, nor how many started.
What was really happening was each civ was having trouble with money, and founding colonies. One civ even founded 3 colonies! One of the colonies was on this narrow poor place for a civilization to exist. Poor Elizabeth probably became her own colony around the 1000BC-0AD time on top of an island that had around 30 tiles, and all except 2 spaces were jungle. I think the island had 1 banana tile between all 3 cities, that's it. The poor girl never once cut the jungles; she must have been in peace with nature or something silly. Anyways, by the time I came around with destroyers, transports, and paratroopers I decided to put her out of her misery. The poor girl had Archers and Macemen to defend against my army that got bored because other civs had asked for peace after I roughed 'em up a bit.
It was truly an odd game, that really pushed me to the extent of my Civ limits that game. I finished in the tech lead, and I think I ended up researching Future Tech 2 just in time for a time victory.
Still, that mass technological difference made me chuckle, and I didn't think twice about claiming that prime real estate.
I once made an all random game, on Prince, my first Prince game of CivIV, and landed on what seemed to be a very fractal map with lots of forests and jungles. Most civs were on their own odd island strip. No, not a strip of islands, a strip of land that had around 2-5 squares wide in most spaces. There was one large land mass which eventually 4 civilization, but only started with 2 to begin with. I'll explain later.
To say this game was economically taxing would be an understatement. I was losing all my money before I even made it to currency, and had to dip the research slider down to 10% and pray I made it to currency while focusing all of my cities on commerce and gold. This is tough to do without Currency, because you cannot convert your hammers to gold yet. It was going to be rough, and I was going to be just shy of making it to currency. However, lucky would have it, as I had a tech someone else wanted, and they were offering me Currency! I jumped at the chance, and instantly converted all of my cities to currency to help get this failing economy back into shape.
I wasn't very good at exploring, and even worse at trading, so I had only my little part of the world explored. But something I didn't understand at the time happened to me. Further and further into the game I got, the more civ's I found. Remember, this was a completely random game, so I had no idea how large the world was, nor how many started.
What was really happening was each civ was having trouble with money, and founding colonies. One civ even founded 3 colonies! One of the colonies was on this narrow poor place for a civilization to exist. Poor Elizabeth probably became her own colony around the 1000BC-0AD time on top of an island that had around 30 tiles, and all except 2 spaces were jungle. I think the island had 1 banana tile between all 3 cities, that's it. The poor girl never once cut the jungles; she must have been in peace with nature or something silly. Anyways, by the time I came around with destroyers, transports, and paratroopers I decided to put her out of her misery. The poor girl had Archers and Macemen to defend against my army that got bored because other civs had asked for peace after I roughed 'em up a bit.
It was truly an odd game, that really pushed me to the extent of my Civ limits that game. I finished in the tech lead, and I think I ended up researching Future Tech 2 just in time for a time victory.
Still, that mass technological difference made me chuckle, and I didn't think twice about claiming that prime real estate.
(on noble, on marathon, on BtS)Similar threads
