Civ 3 Army

[Infantry#14]

how about the return of the army from civ 3? The warlord can now create an army unit, which 3 (or more) of the same unit type can join the army. Battle follows that of civ 3 where the units will retreat and the next unit will fight. Best attacker of the army attacks and best defender defends. Experience is shared equally among all units. If there is one exp gain from battle, then only the fighter gets it. If the fighting unit has leadership, then that 1 exp goes to all units. Therefore, it is favorale to have leadership promo on all units. This should replace the warlord system, and all units in the army has access to GG promo. This should give a good boost to the imperalistic trait. Cities should be able to build army after building the national wonder military academy after military science. Army units is upgradeable (unlike civ 3).

Examples of allowed army:
1. Swords, Pike, Axe (all melee)
2. Musket, Grenadier, Rifle (all gunpowder)
Not-allowed
1. Longbow, Horse Archer, Crossbow (mounted and archery)

 

[Scilly_guy]

Not sure I understand why you can't have cavalry in the same army as archers? I mean I see what you are doing, trying to limit its strength, but I am not sure why.

 

[rysmiel]

Not sure I understand why you can't have cavalry in the same army as archers? I mean I see what you are doing, trying to limit its strength, but I am not sure why.

Well, in Civ 3, putting a cavalry unit and an archer unit in an army is inherently stupid, because the army's speed is defined around the slowest unit it contains. So there does not seem to be that much point in forbidding it, because there's no sense in doing it anyway. And the notion of not mixing melee and gunpowder units also pretty much falls out of common sense; by the time you can make gunpowder units, why on earth would you hobble an army by mixing obsolete weaker units in with them ?

The thing about Civ 3 armies is the Civ 3 AI never uses them, and almost never attacks them, and it would appear that making the AI grasp their uses was difficult enough to leave them out of Civ 4 altogether. I'd be happy to see them in Civ 5, but happier yet with an AI that understood how to use them, and I have no real idea how difficult a programming problem this might be.

 

[Scilly_guy]

Its not always about speed, cavalry have other strengths, and what about war elephants, I hardly ever got an army in Civ 3, was rare for me to have a strong enough unit. Guess my tactics just aren't up to scratch, oh well.

 

[rysmiel]

Its not always about speed, cavalry have other strengths, and what about war elephants, I hardly ever got an army in Civ 3, was rare for me to have a strong enough unit. Guess my tactics just aren't up to scratch, oh well.

If you're playing Civ 3 without using cavalry-type units mostly for the benefits of their speed, then yes, basically.

 

[Scilly_guy]

Well I can't remember in Civ 3, and I do use cavalry for their speed now, and I did then too, but what I am saying is that if you had an army, there might be an occasion when having some cavalry units in it and some other unit for defence. A knight, a longbow man and a pike man for instance. I am also thinking of real life, I mean really armies had cavalry as well as archers, pikemen, macemen.

 

[Infantry#14]

if different types can join the same army, then battle between 2 army would be awkard. For example:

Army 1: Crossbow, Pikeman, Horse Archer
Army 2: Maceman, Elephant, Crossbow

If these two army battles, maceman wants to fight pike and sword but not crossbow. Elephants wants to attack HorseArcher but not pike. It would be tough to tell who will fight who in between these armies.

 

[rysmiel]

if different types can join the same army, then battle between 2 army would be awkard. For example:

Army 1: Crossbow, Pikeman, Horse Archer
Army 2: Maceman, Elephant, Crossbow

If these two army battles, maceman wants to fight pike and sword but not crossbow. Elephants wants to attack HorseArcher but not pike. It would be tough to tell who will fight who in between these armies.

This is solvable by scrapping the rock/paper/scissors attack bonuses in Civ 4 and going back to attack and defence strengths as in the previous versions of Civ.

Or, if that does not appeal to you, it's also solvable by an army being treated as a single unit with attack strengths and preferences averaged from its component units (plus some benefit that makes it worth putting them in an army in the first place) rather than as separate units that can fight separately.

 

[Infantry#14]

This is solvable by scrapping the rock/paper/scissors attack bonuses in Civ 4 and going back to attack and defence strengths as in the previous versions of Civ.

Or, if that does not appeal to you, it's also solvable by an army being treated as a single unit with attack strengths and preferences averaged from its component units (plus some benefit that makes it worth putting them in an army in the first place) rather than as separate units that can fight separately.

The second option works. Civ 4 combat system is much superior than the atk and def system in civ 3. But then again, same type units should get better coordination and should be incentive to group them together than diverse units like knights, catapult and longbow.

 

[rysmiel]

The second option works. Civ 4 combat system is much superior than the atk and def system in civ 3.

Having an attack strength and a defense strength that can vary independently seems a much better system to me than just one "strength" to represent both, and then having to overlay a whole extra sytem of mechanics for who beats whom. You have a lot more freedom in how your units work.

But then again, same type units should get better coordination and should be incentive to group them together than diverse units like knights, catapult and longbow.

I agree with this much, at least.

 

[Infantry#14]

Having an attack strength and a defense strength that can vary independently seems a much better system to me than just one "strength" to represent both, and then having to overlay a whole extra sytem of mechanics for who beats whom. You have a lot more freedom in how your units work.


The attack and defense system in civ 3 is not a good combat system because they dont have strength modifers. A knight charging at a pikeman has the same chance as the maceman (medieval infantry) attacking the pikeman. Also, the probability of inferior defeating technologically advance unit is much higher. A modern armor has a atk of 24 while a spearman has a def value of 2. Therefore a spearman has a probability of 2/(2+24) of inflicting damage to a modern armor. In civ 4, a spearman basically have no chance of inflicting damage to modern armor.

 

[rysmiel]

Having an attack strength and a defense strength that can vary independently seems a much better system to me than just one "strength" to represent both, and then having to overlay a whole extra sytem of mechanics for who beats whom. You have a lot more freedom in how your units work.

The attack and defense system in civ 3 is not a good combat system because they dont have strength modifers.

I don't think there's a logical connection between the first half and second half of that sentence at all; to my mind one of the ways it's a good system is because it does not have strength modifiers.

A knight charging at a pikeman has the same chance as the maceman (medieval infantry) attacking the pikeman.

Except the knight has more movement points, and therefore can either attack from further away, or be able to retreat from the battle if it's losing and has movement points left. Different tactical possibilities, different strategic choices.

If that example is meant to make the point I think it's meant to make, then I disagree anyway. Having attack and defence strengths be linear, such that at any given point in time there is a single best defender and a single best attacker, is IMO a good thing. It keeps the focus on building an empire that can crank out and support these units, getting your economy and your production and your tech advance all in good shape, rather than messing around with who has modifiers against whom.

Also, the probability of inferior defeating technologically advance unit is much higher. A modern armor has a atk of 24 while a spearman has a def value of 2. Therefore a spearman has a probability of 2/(2+24) of inflicting damage to a modern armor. In civ 4, a spearman basically have no chance of inflicting damage to modern armor.

While I agree that the probabilities for that in Civ 3 could do with modifying, there are very simple methods of doing that - change the scale so that the spearman defence is 2 and the modern armour attack is 256, for example. Without getting into the endless spearman/tank realism debate, I want gameplay where defeats across tech level gaps are unlikely but possible, because a game you win by just pumping your scientific research ahead of everyone else's and then rolling over them unstoppably with your tanks is not any lasting fun.

 

[Infantry#14]

I don't think there's a logical connection between the first half and second half of that sentence at all; to my mind one of the ways it's a good system is because it does not have strength modifiers.

By strength modifers I mean Axeman gets 50% bonus vs melee and Spearman gets 100% bonus against mounted units. If you put the modifier on the attack and defense systems, this gets much more complicated and unnecessary.

Except the knight has more movement points, and therefore can either attack from further away, or be able to retreat from the battle if it's losing and has movement points left. Different tactical possibilities, different strategic choices.

In civ 4, maceman gets 50% vs pikeman which translates that you should never defend or attack a pikeman against a maceman. In civ 3, a pikeman has atk 1 and def 3 while a mace has atk 4 and def 2. A pikeman in civ 3 therefore sucks at attacking anything and only good defending, while a maceman is good at attacking but weaker defending against everything. This is not realistic, but probably for game balance. In civ 4 with the strength modifiers I mention above, the combats are much more realistic than civ 3, specialized and balanced. Therefore, civ4 combat is much more superior than civ 3 combat system.

If that example is meant to make the point I think it's meant to make, then I disagree anyway. Having attack and defence strengths be linear, such that at any given point in time there is a single best defender and a single best attacker, is IMO a good thing. It keeps the focus on building an empire that can crank out and support these units, getting your economy and your production and your tech advance all in good shape, rather than messing around with who has modifiers against whom.

Civ 4 combat system also does that.

While I agree that the probabilities for that in Civ 3 could do with modifying, there are very simple methods of doing that - change the scale so that the spearman defence is 2 and the modern armour attack is 256, for example. Without getting into the endless spearman/tank realism debate, I want gameplay where defeats across tech level gaps are unlikely but possible, because a game you win by just pumping your scientific research ahead of everyone else's and then rolling over them unstoppably with your tanks is not any lasting fun.

Although you can increase the strength of more tech advanced units, the atk and def system also doesnt account for other special abilities and promotions, such as terrain promotion (ie woodsman), first strikes, withdrawal chance (civ 3 is based on the regular-veteran-elite system, kind of lame), and etc.

 

[rysmiel]

By strength modifers I mean Axeman gets 50% bonus vs melee and Spearman gets 100% bonus against mounted units. If you put the modifier on the attack and defense systems, this gets much more complicated and unnecessary.

I think I'm not making my point. I find the whole notion of these modifiers inappropriate in the first place.

In civ 3, a pikeman has atk 1 and def 3 while a mace has atk 4 and def 2. A pikeman in civ 3 therefore sucks at attacking anything and only good defending, while a maceman is good at attacking but weaker defending against everything. This is not realistic, but probably for game balance.

Realism, in and of itself, is not a virtue.

In civ 4 with the strength modifiers I mention above, the combats are much more realistic than civ 3, specialized and balanced. Therefore, civ4 combat is much more superior than civ 3 combat system.

If what you're interested in is a tactical combat game, yes. I know there are people who want more tactical combat elements in Civ; I don't find that an appropriate scale for an empire and city management game, IMO the military aspect is still way too heavily weighted.

Although you can increase the strength of more tech advanced units, the atk and def system also doesnt account for other special abilities and promotions, such as terrain promotion (ie woodsman), first strikes, withdrawal chance (civ 3 is based on the regular-veteran-elite system, kind of lame), and etc

All of which are also inappropriate. Promotions for individual units I can sort of see making sense in a game where each unit represents one actual unit; to play Civ on that scale, though, you'd need to build thousands or tens of thousands of the things to go to war at all, which does not seem a plausible way for future versions of Civ to go. (All Civ aspires to the condition of Azad).

Units on the scale they are in Civ, even allowing that Civ 4 is a smaller-scale game than Civ 3, don't represent individual tanks or spearmen or whatever, they are abstractions, and at that scale of abstraction simplicity and flexibility are virtues, and fiddly individual promotions, and having to keep track of individual units and their differences, are not.

 

[Infantry#14]

rysmiel, I guess we can agree to disagree!