Changing the way Military units are used

[dunkleosteus]

Last I checked, the current meta focused heavily on cavalry. The game is designed so that melee units can be divided into infantry, anti-cavalry and cavalry (heavy and light) and this is a very poor representation of ancient warfare. The anti-cavalry units are always the weakest melee unit of their era and are usually rather poor against cavalry because their advantage is countered by their lower combat strength.

In reality, spear units functioned as the vast majority of ancient armies. Spears are incredibly easy to manufacture, requiring less metal and training that swords and giving soldiers a fair reach. Humans have always had an aversion to being stabbed, so a weapon that allows you to keep your body as far from your enemy as possible is very popular.

Cavalry are not a superior attacking unit. Cavalry often does very little damage on their own. Horses are large, unarmorable and relatively unintelligent. 2 horses can stand in the same space that could be occupied by more than 10 men. The advantage that horses have are their speed and the fear they create in the enemy. They scatter and break the enemy line, disorienting them. Cavalry should never stop moving. Horses will not impale themselves on spears and from horseback, all of your attacks are easily blocked by a shield while your horses legs are knocked out.

For this reason, I believe that the current state of the game in which cavalry are incredibly superior to foot units is wrong. Cavalry units should be a useful support unit, aiding the main infantry of your armies.

The way cavalry units should function is that attacking deals a small amount of damage to the enemy unit (with little damage received back). Depending on how well trained (the promotions the enemy unit has) the cavalry charge may "break" the enemy line. If the enemy unit is broken, it receives a -50% defense penalty until the start of the civs next turn. This debuff can't stack with multiple cavalry charges per turn, only once.

The function this plays is to soften the enemy units in order to be taken out by your other military units.

Another important aspect of the cavalry is that they should have low defense- if they run out of movement points adjacent to an enemy unit and are attacked, they will take heavy damage. The way to use cavalry is to charge in, attack and retreat in a single turn.

 

[Victoria]

Yeah I used this argument before. Horses without stirrups were pretty useless in reality. And these Onager carts, I mean really? Onagers are that awesome? pffft!

However its a game and including more mechanics will just confuse the AI more

 

[dunkleosteus]

Actually there were many pre-stirrup solutions to keep riders in the saddle, such as molded leather that grabbed the rider around the thighs.

And I would argue that even with stirrups, cavalry are not meant to actually physically attack anyone. It is a very bad idea to expect to win a war with cavalry alone. Mounted soldiers are way more expensive and take up way more space. A 400 meter stretch of open battlefield could fit perhaps 800 men abreast, shoulder to shoulder. The same area might fit 200 or so horses, and even then, that would be dangerously close. When attacking from horseback, you are elevated above the heads of your targets. This means that every attack you make is angled down and aimed at their upper torso or head. Most shields are large enough to cover this area quite well. If you are close enough to swipe down at an enemy from horseback, there will be other enemy foot infantry within striking range of your horse. Regardless of what movies would have you believe, attacking infantry with cavalry is bad. A cavalry unit charges the enemy to try to break their formation. If the enemy line holds, the cavalry peel off and come back around for another charge.

Horses are incredibly vulnerable to attack. Their legs are easy to break with a well aimed swipe and they are often skittish. If a horse goes down, the rider loses every advantage they had- speed and maneuverability and are now surrounded and outnumbered on all sides. If you try to make horses less vulnerable or skittish by armoring them and putting them through intense training, you are making them slower with their own armor, and incredibly valuable- the cost in material and labor of armoring and training a horse means that when it DOES die (it is a war after all), you are taking a much greater financial hit, or if it is the rider's own horse, the rider does. In the end it is inevitable that attacking from horseback is a terrible idea.

Given the chance to lean out of the saddle and swipe a single enemy it is always worthwhile to do so but that cannot and will never win a war. It is not possible to defeat an army this way.

 

[Ryika]

I would really dislike a system that heavily relies on applying a debuff randomly.

Overall, I think the current system is mostly fine. Pikes just need more bonus-strength against Cavalry to actually counter them, and normal Melee may need to have better tools to deal with Pikes to complete the Rock-Paper-Scissors system, although that's hard to judge in a world where the domination of Cavalry is what makes them look overly weak.

 

[dunkleosteus]

I would really dislike a system that heavily relies on applying a debuff randomly.

Overall, I think the current system is mostly fine. Pikes just need more bonus-strength against Cavalry to actually counter them, and normal Melee may need to have better tools to deal with Pikes to complete the Rock-Paper-Scissors system, although that's hard to judge in a world where the domination of Cavalry is what makes them look overly weak.

If I didn't make it clear, the debuff would only be random to a degree. Normally, the debuff would nearly always apply. Foot soldiers would have a promotion available to them that makes it more random by making them able to resist the charge instead of breaking their line.

And I understand that the current system is functional (somewhat). But that doesn't make it good. Civ calls itself a history game and I think they have a responsibility to live up to that. The game mechanics should not be designed before the history, that has already happened. History should define the game mechanics, at least as far as can be done to make a fun game.

If I wanted to play a game with the mechanics of Civ but without the history setting, I would play Beyond Earth. I play civ because I like history. Firaxis should take history more seriously.

 

[Captain Potato]

Cavalry are all about the flanking, which is difficult to fully appreciate in a game where units don't have a direction. There is a rudimentary flanking mechanic in the system though, when a unit is already locked in another's zone of influence. You could maybe make it so the anti-cavalry bonus was much larger but ignored completely when flanking.

But as Vicky says, every combat complication needs a better AI to actually use it. Also, the current Cavalry upgrade to tanks and helicopters; if you're going by realism these later units would need different mechanics entirely, and therefore, would they really be in the same upgrade class?

 

[dunkleosteus]

Cavalry are all about the flanking, which is difficult to fully appreciate in a game where units don't have a direction. There is a rudimentary flanking mechanic in the system though, when a unit is already locked in another's zone of influence. You could maybe make it so the anti-cavalry bonus was much larger but ignored completely when flanking.

But as Vicky says, every combat complication needs a better AI to actually use it. Also, the current Cavalry upgrade to tanks and helicopters; if you're going by realism these later units would need different mechanics entirely, and therefore, would they really be in the same upgrade class?

That's a good point, better AI would be required (but that would be nice anyway lol)

As for tanks and helicopters, I'd argue that yes, they should be their own unit class. The role thay mounted soldiers perform and that of tanks are very unrelated. The only thing they have in common (and the reason they are linked in civ, I think) is that they are highly mobile.

I don't think its a bad idea if tanks are the first unit in their unit class. Tanks were novel when they were produced, we didn't have a lot of military experience (at least not from cavalry charges) that helped us develop strategies to use them.

As for cavalry, it's possible that there's a place for them in the late game. It would have to be something that disrupts the enemy in some way, such as providing cover fire. Tanks are probably a bad choice for this, tanks can easily fortify and defend whereas cavalry are not good at that. Helicopters on the other hand might be. The only difference is that helicopters are probably better at attacking, but spraying bullets might be enough to make the enemy run for cover.

 

[VeronicaCardican]

We don't know exactly what damage constitutes. The attack power of cavalry does not necessarily mean that they kill manyopposing soldiers. Soldiers routed are soldiers lost. It doesn't matter too much on the scale of civ if they are injured, dead or scattered.

In the same way, a cavalry unit is not necessarily an army composed of nothing but mounted soldiers. They could be footmen with a strong supporting force of riders for all we know (anyone remember the old game Centurion? a cavalry legion was just a legion with additional mounted soldiers, not a pure riding formation like some of the barbarians).

 

[Elucidus]

I don't think we can assume any of the units are exactly and only what their graphics represent. Everything about civ is simplified, why would combat be any different. I think when they tried to get more strategic on the world map, they shot themselves In the foot with the combat realism, a hex represents how many square miles or kilometers? but I can only have one regiment of spearman on it...while we are at it, I love how we go from Bronzeworking straight to Ironworking, it's not like there was about 2000 years of significant history there that is not represented at all and with about 8 technologies per era, I mean come on. And let's not get into the fact that one of the largest impacts to the development of mankind isn't even represented at all, disease...we have trade routes, yet no disease...trade routes are how disease travelled the world...how many times did plagues nearly wipe out mankind? Sorry, Civ is not a game of history, perhaps the scenarios are closer, but Civ is a game that merely includes elements of history and those are pretty simplified. Sorry, unrelated rant over.