Civ3/Civ4?

[T.A JONES]

Ok then you''l not be effected at all. The Ge Force cancels out any mischeif The onboard can do. Feel free to take it to the limits.
THe World SIZES Tab found in the BIC file will put you in bizness. It took me a while to relize you could change the world size and number of Civs. Its one big advantage over Civ4 right now. And You don't have to worry about slowdowns (unless you use a "Giga Map", but that's just crazy talk"

Edit: fixed loc of #Civ/wld size option. (Scenario propts was incorrect tab) sorry

 

[Turner]

For example. In the differences between a tank and a tank destroyer, the tanks had better armour, but the tank destroyer usually had the more powerful gun. Common sense might then dictate that the tank being given a higher defence rating and a lower offense rating than the tank destroyer. But that doesn't take into account how these units were used. In practice, the tank destroyers were most successful when used defensively. IE: seclude them in defensive cover and wait for the assaulting armour to come to them.

And that's exactly how the TOW Infantry works in C3C. I'm thinking the defense is 16, and the attack 12. A 16 defensive rating is the same as the Tank's 16 attack rating, which means on grassland unfortified the TOW has a defense of about 18 (17.6) against the Tank's 16... Fortify it, put it in a city or metro, and a TOW Infantry has a good chance of surviving even against a Modern Armor.

 

[T.A JONES]

Here! Here! Very good Debate. Civ 3 is the defending champ. Next Challenge!

 

[Bungus]

Oh its over? I was just about to post this:

gunkalator, you have selective quoting.

I'd agree if I understood what separate A/D models are trying to model. I still can't figure out out why strength value in battle depends on whether or not I initiate the battle - excepting of course the already modeled terrain, fortification and city defense bonuses. Why should the oucome of two Med Infs slugging it out in an open field depend so much on who starts the fight?

I've explained this twice before. Re-read the post you quoted me from, or just stop. I have this new to add, and I will put it in as simple terms as possible.:
You're saying there should not be seperate A/D values. When I gave you my rifleman vs rifleman example, I said the rifleman holding a position (ie defender!) has an easier job than the guy trying to take it (attacker!), so I said rifleman should have a higher defense. You said raise terrain bonuses to compensate, as 10% for grasslands was hardly any difference in the outcome.
You also say Medieval infantry should be equal offense and defense, so they can "slug it out, slugger". If aforementioned terrain bonuses are increased, our two medieval infantry are not equal, the defender has a substantial advantage (how ever much the defending rifleman gets). In this scenario, the only way for two medieval infantry to be at equal odds with each other, is to give them a lower defense rating. I agree.
As meisen and I have already stated, the default unit values are silly. 4-2 for M.I. is nonsense, 5-4 is a more appropriate value (provided other values are adjusted accordingly. OT, Cost-to-value ratio actually decreases in some unit lines).
Aside from strategic and tactical factors, there is a physiological element. Take the Viking, or some such raider unit. A group of men accustomed to lightning raids and pillaging might not perform as well when they're the ones being attacked. Especially if the group is know for drinking and debauchery.

Separate A/D values doesn't mean they always have to be different. But by arguing that A/D values should be combined, you are claiming there is not a single instance where one value should be higher or lower than the other. If after all this, you still believe that to be the case, you're either stupid or stubborn.

 

[T.A JONES]

I like this thread. You can tell it like is while not having to worry bout those official Civ 4 Fansite/internet publistists zeroing in on you with pre made bogus rebutts,or phony praise posts. Its all so obvious, if Fireaxis had spent half as much time programming as they did on silly marketing gimics we'd all be lovin Civ4. Word serious

 

[FascistRepublic]

I play both, and i use Civ 3 for making scenarios and that god stuff, while if i just one one of the compys radomly generated games, i'll fire up civ 4.

 

[Bungus]

I'd agree to that statement (default civ 3 sucks). I juist don't play random games that much

Perhaps in a couple years the modding community will flesh out civ 4 by taking advantage of its scripting. I think it has a long way to though.
It reminds me of one of the few penny arcade strips I really laughed at:

Game producer: "Im proud to reveall our latest game 'Project Balsa'
Kid: "But it's just a block of wood!"
Game Producer: "We're really hoping the modding community puts the polish this one."

 

[Ed Cogburn]

As an FYI, wargames have always historically given units a higher "strength" when on defense, because generally in warfare, defense is *vastly* easier to accomplish than offense, especially so since the end of the 18th century when defenders discarded the outdated notions of "honor" and began to actively use terrain to protect and hide themselves from an attacker while they did their best to make the attacker pay dearly for having exposed himself in the open. The only thing that can upset a well planned defense (aside from the usual culprits like incompetent generals or bad logistics) is for the attacker to have higher mobility and end up outflanking the defender's positions, so no, I don't agree with C4's use of one value for both, either, because *most* of the time they are *not* the same.

Also, as an aside about the "slugging it out" reference, that is absolutely the last thing any military commander wants. What an attacker wants is a superior if not an overwhelming advantage in firepower to allow the defender to be quickly killed to avoid friendly casualties. Since at least the 19th century or so, "slugfests" have always been avoided, although military or political mistakes, the fog of war, or the technology of the time would cause these "slugfests" to happen anyway. The point is, no military commander willing goes into a fight with only 1-1 combat odds, it is a weakness of the Civ games that they only model one-on-one unit combat, when in the real world "one-on-one" attacks are avoided like the plague. Google "combined arms theory". C3's "army" units was an attempt to alleviate this problem (multiple units in one "super unit" with the best unit chosen for the job at hand, attack or defense), but this is just one of the things they chose to leave out of C4.

As for C4 itself, I want to like it, I really do, but I ended up reinstalling C3C and RaR a little while ago because C4 is too light on features and too heavy on hardware requirements, IMHO, even with the latest 1.61 patch. The hardware requirements are very reasonable for an FPS shooter, but a turn-based strategy game? For small world games with a limited number of Civ's, its playable, and for the casual gamer, probably fun, but grognards yearning for huge worlds with 15+ AI opponents Civs will possibly/likely find themselves disappointed, as C4 just isn't stable enough to last deep into the late game before CTDs and inexplicable freezes and hangs, which happen during your own turn when all you're doing is scrolling the map or mousing over things in the view to get information start to mount. Long delays while loading the game or waiting for the AI are not the issue for me, its the instability that creeps in later in the game that just kills my enthusiasm. It is extremely clear the designers did not have the "large world, many civs" folks in mind when they did this game even though they should have known from the C3 modding community that this was a popular goal for lots of players. Whether they chose to avoid catering to that group because their target was casual gamers who don't want units with lots of different capabilities or large empires to manage, or perhaps because their own testing revealed their game couldn't handle the load, I don't know, but their Huge world is smaller than C3C's Huge world, their standard game has fewer units than C3, and their "empire size limiting mechanism" by default kicks in at just 6 cities even on their huge map! Sure you can change this, and the modding capabilities are great with this game, but if you change the limiting mechanism to allow for larger empires, for now, at least, all I get is CTDs every 6-10 turns starting about the time firearms units show up. Sigh. Although there is a lot to like about C4 (I generally like the interface - the ability to choose my own zoom distance is the one thing I really miss with C3C), to me it still ends up being a step backwards from C3C+RaR.

Call me a glutton for punishment, but in my mind "Empires" don't deserve that name if all they've got is just 6 cities to their credit, so if I can't have games where I can potentially have many more cities than that, I'm just not interested. Yes, once you can generate more revenue from certain advances and buildings you can move beyond this limiting mechanism, but if you're also trying to slow the game down by modding the research speed you'll find 2 things. 1) there is a really odd period of time early on where there is plenty of available and valuable territory free for the taking nearby, but you just can't afford to found another city right now and amazingly C4 left out the concept of a colony/outpost. Now if it were up to me, and the choice was between pretty 3D graphics and useful features like colonies, I'd have ditched the 3D and kept all those features of C3 that they left out. 2) Also, I suspect that the AI is cheating some on this one, as they seem to be capable of much larger empires early on without any apparent penalty to their economy, or at least not to their research ability. Or I'm just a really bad player!

The end result is vast stretches of land known to everyone on the continent that is left unoccupied until someone starts building markets/grociers to improve their income. If the limiting mechanism were more gradual it would still be ok, but its like a brick wall you hit at 8-10 cities, that then normally goes away completely once you've boosted your income by 50% or so with a couple of buildings. In a normal (fast) game this is probably not an issue, but if slowing the game speed down is also a goal (and its a popular one as well based on C4 forum discussions - and their addition of the "Marathon" game speed in one of the early patches) then that limiting mechanism sticks out like an ugly, sore thumb.

Maybe they'll fix the instability problems eventually in a patch down the road, but given the steep resources needed by the game, which appear to rise exponentially as the world size and number of AI civs increase, I'm not going to hold my breath. This game will probably never be able to handle "large worlds, many civs" scenarios, unless they did something unlikely like include a vastly simpler 2D interface option in a future patch to avoid the horsepower and memory requirements of all the 3D processing it now does. Note: having the graphics horsepower still doesn't save you from the problem of the main memory requirements being massive (to store and manipulate all that graphics data that 3D requires), which at the moment is exacerbated by apparent memory leaks or other memory management problems that render the game unstable once a lot of things are going on in the visible-to-the-player world.

FWIW, and sorry for the length, scrolling up, I now see this post got way out of hand.

 

[El Justo]

wow! you guys have been busy!

while i agree that the civ4 format for unit promotions and specialized attack & defense features are excellent, i still can't get over the 'single value' aspects b/c A/D values do matter imo.

as for why some units are, say, 2A/4D and other 4A/2D is beyond me. it's very subjective. however, i have found that if one mods it properly, the A/D set-up is extremely successful.

case in point:
i had a problem w/ A/D values for my TCW scenario some time last year. by this i mean that i had just about all of the MBTs w/ really high A/D values while other units such as infantry and mechanized infantry were much lower. the net result was that both the AI and the human player would build these MBTs exclusively. this wasn't good...so...what we did was an across-the-board adjustment to all A/D values. MBTs now had the highest A values, the mechanized infantry had the highest D values and the infantry units were smack-dab in the middle. the AI seemed to really grasp this format as did any human player; and to be honest, it cured the initial problem of making certain units useless.

the bottom line is that if you give the civ3 AI a reason to build something, it most definitely will. thus A/D values are at the core of this format.

i s'pose that in civ4, one could make adjustments to the specialty attack/defense features. however, the 'single value' method of civ4 precludes the modder from diversifying his/her navy w/ CAs/PCs/BCs, DDs, and SSs. someone had already mentioned this i and i agree 100%.

i must also admit that i have probably gotten more out of the civ3 editor than almost anyone around. so i have nno real beef w/ how it functions. of course, there are some small things i'd have liked to have seen implemented. however, on the whole, i would say that the civ3 editor is okay.

i don't particualry have a strong desire to learn Python coding. so modding civ4, for me, isn't in the cards anytime soon. i will remain w/ civ3 for the foreseeable future. i even have a new scenario in the works and it is by far the best work i've ever done w/ the editor and most importantly, getting the AI to build what i think it should be building.

lastly, it'll be quite a while before anyone on these forums is able to produce a good civ4 scenario. there just aren't enough good resources available yet. in time, yes. however, atm, there is little hope that any civ4 scenario will 'out do' any civ3 scenario.

 

[gunkulator]

Nope. The offensive factor determines how good the unit is when on the offense and the defensive factor dermines how good it is when defending. Armour could be part of it, but not necessarily.

For example. In the differences between a tank and a tank destroyer, the tanks had better armour, but the tank destroyer usually had the more powerful gun.

So in C3C you would have a high A for a tank destroyer but a low D, yes? That works fine as long as the world of units consists of nothing but tanks and tank destroyers. As soon as you add infantry to battlefield, the model falls apart. The armor penatrating shell of a tank destroyer is not all that effective against ground troops, yet it retains its high attack value. In Civ4, you give a tank destroyer a low strength (so it is easily defeated by ground troops) but a large bonus against armor units.

The way I understand how combat works is the attacker's offense rating is matched up against the defender's defensive rating (plus whatever bonuses and minuses each has relating to experience, terrain, etc) and they then duke it out round after round that way till one is destroyed (or retreats in rare cases). That is how the manual describes it, that is how I've seen combat explained by others here and that is how the combat simulators simulate combat.

AFAIK, that is essentially correct. Again I go back to ancient and medievel combat where C3C default A and D values are non-sensical. If my Med Inf attacks yours out in the open, I win. If yours attacks mine, you win. Same with muskets and swords and cavalry and most every other unit. These are not highly specialized units like tanks and tank destroyers so what gives? Why can't equal units engage in battle out in the open on an equal footing?

Civ4 units have those earned abilities, but unless they can be modded into units as permanent, built in abilities inherent to the unit (as in civ3) they are not of much use to me. I may be wrong since I don't have the game, that's just my impression right now.

Yes, I believe they can be modded as permanent. For example, the blitz promotion is automatically given to all tanks and modern armor, however it has to be earned by other units. Same deal with the amphibious promotion and marines.

The stats of the units in the stock civ games are crap. Period. They don't relate very well to the historical units they are supposed to be representing. Practically the 1st thing I modded was unit stats and I changed them radically from what they originally were. The game was infinitely more enjoyable after those changes.

IMO, that means C3C is basically an unfinished work. Those of us without the time or skills to mod the game are left with an inferior product. Also, it becomes harder to discuss the game in forums like this since you can't be sure what mod people are using.

 

[Padma]

First, let me say that Civ is not a wargame. All combat is abstracted. They only gave the units names (i.e., tank, spearman, etc.) so we poor humans could visualize things better, and try to put things in a somewhat "historic" context.

IMO, that means C3C is basically an unfinished work. Those of us without the time or skills to mod the game are left with an inferior product. Also, it becomes harder to discuss the game in forums like this since you can't be sure what mod people are using.

Actually, this part is easy. Always assume people are talking about the fully-patched, unmodded game, unless they specify otherwise.

 

[gunkulator]

Oh its over? I was just about to post this:

Separate A/D values doesn't mean they always have to be different. But by arguing that A/D values should be combined, you are claiming there is not a single instance where one value should be higher or lower than the other. If after all this, you still believe that to be the case, you're either stupid or stubborn.

Let's not resort to name calling, OK? My argument is that there's nothing that separate A/D values accomplish that cannot also be accomplished by terrain bonuses, fortification bonuses and the Civ4 bonus system. So in answer to the original question as to why Civ4 dropped separate A/D values, the answer is: the game doesn't need them anymore than Civ3 "needs" Spy and Caravan units from Civ2. Both were abstracted away.

 

[El Justo]

Let's not resort to name calling, OK? My argument is that there's nothing that separate A/D values accomplish that cannot also be accomplished by terrain bonuses, fortification bonuses and the Civ4 bonus system. So in answer to the original question as to why Civ4 dropped separate A/D values, the answer is: the game doesn't need them anymore than Civ3 "needs" Spy and Caravan units from Civ2. Both were abstracted away.

i must disagree w/ this.

first off, we know not why they decided to drop the 'dual value' aspect.

secondly, there's an awful lot that can be accomplished by differentiating 2 different values (A & D). a few have used the sea units as a good example.

how can the 'single value' method take into account armour thickness, amount of guns, gun size, nautical speed, etc? i won't even get into the fact that civ4 won't allow for coastal bombardment. this is a farce imo.

simply modding terrain bonuses doesn't cut it for me. there should be another variable involved and that variable is a defensive value, not one single value.

lastly, i would've very much liked to have seen the spy units in civ3. this is only my opinion though...

 

[gunkulator]

i must disagree w/ this.

first off, we know not why they decided to drop the 'dual value' aspect.

Of course. I am only giving my opinion.

secondly, there's an awful lot that can be accomplished by differentiating 2 different values (A & D). a few have used the sea units as a good example.

how can the 'single value' method take into account armour thickness, amount of guns, gun size, nautical speed, etc?

So how do A/D values accurately model these? If you read above, I've already pointed out the difficulty of saying A=weaponry and D=armor.

i won't even get into the fact that civ4 won't allow for coastal bombardment. this is a farce imo.

YMMV. I never built much of a navy in Civ3 anyway. If you have the luxury of bombarding AI land with your navy and not having an AI ship show up the next turn to sink you, then you've probably already got the AI on the ropes. The only exception to this is the Dromon which comes early enough so that AI may not be able to pop out a ship right away.

simply modding terrain bonuses doesn't cut it for me. there should be another variable involved and that variable is a defensive value, not one single value.

Again YMMV. I think Civ3 took a giant step backward when pikemen lost their bonus against horses. I think that kind of specialization makes more sense than having one blanket attack and defense value irregardless of who you are fighting.

lastly, i would've very much liked to have seen the spy units in civ3. this is only my opinion though...

Then you'll be pleased to learn that Spies are back as a unit in Civ4.

 

[conquer_dude]

Everything keeps from switchting to civ4. It looks weird, and the game really sucks. Especially when the graphics don't agree with laptops, as it was said in the technical problems.

 

[Bungus]

Let's not resort to name calling, OK? My argument is that there's nothing that separate A/D values accomplish that cannot also be accomplished by terrain bonuses, fortification bonuses and the Civ4 bonus system. So in answer to the original question as to why Civ4 dropped separate A/D values, the answer is: the game doesn't need them anymore than Civ3 "needs" Spy and Caravan units from Civ2. Both were abstracted away.

Stupid it is then! You didn't read a goddam word I wrote

 

[T.A JONES]

A lot of credit should be given to the recent modding acheivments in the Civ3 sector for the strong Backlash that currently plagues Civ4. I think Conquests served a la mod by the likes of any great artist tops off any Civ original composition (before and after civ3)
Promise of new work from artists and modders, are present like never before. established names like El Justo, Bungas, SoG, R8XFT, Steph, agglo and the Warhammer + Fallout team along with some others Im forgetting, have projects on the horizen and new faces that are arriving everyday graduating from the crash tutorials are helping to fuel the fire, building up a lasting renaissance.
Ive watched animations being taken to new levels of smoothness, Seen the bar raised in every graphic dept even watched my old habits broken by mods unlocking all the potential from the editer and still I hear gamers when comparing the two games, pitch Civ4 against Vaniila Conquests. Idiots !

I have nothin against Civ4. I know it has its moments.. My favorites when the game admits "T.A has just left the game" (and flipped in !!)
But really.... I wish all the best to the modders being " timetaxed" trying to tame this tricky lil snake. Here's a time when the CIV the franchise really needs its good modders. If they had a improved version of what they used in creatin the masterpiecies of the past,and present well, Civ4 could'a bin rescued from being a total disapointment, a fleshed out editer based on the original, being easy to learn and simple for pros to expliote would have turned things around., that is, at least for the players that have come to expect the standard in turn based strategy and modabilty.

Anyway Im glad the lastest venture was a $$$ success for Civ's new parent, TakeTwo, They sure took me, how about you.
Ya I played the fool like everyone else who rushed to buy what I'll call a beta, at best. But remember! We all did are part for gettin duped outta our hard earned cash. How else would we have gotten to see a Civ5?

 

[Ed Cogburn]

So in C3C you would have a high A for a tank destroyer but a low D, yes? That works fine as long as the world of units consists of nothing but tanks and tank destroyers. As soon as you add infantry to battlefield, the model falls apart.

As someone else mentioned, C3/C4 aren't wargames, so the "model", in this case, was broken to begin with. The difference here, is that we're talking about features that were already present in previous incarnations of the game. The A/D value system was already in C3, and they chose to remove it in favor of an even simpler, less realistic system. Same issue with colonies/outposts, and coastal bombardment as someone else just mentioned. Basically, C4 is a "pretty blonde", prettier than her older sister, but dumber as well. No, we don't expect a Civ game to start modeling armor penetration for tank rounds, or fuel usage of planes, or supply consumption of armies in the field, but removing useful features from a game and calling the dumbed-down version an "improvement" over the original usually only works with folks who never *played* the original.

If we wanted to play "Risk", by golly, that's what we'd be playing, and I'm afraid that may be where the Civ franchise is headed if the design decisions made for C4 are continued in the future. It may be inevitable, and financially justifiable, since I'm guessing there are more would-be "Risk" players out there than those who want a more sophisticated simulation.

You have yet to make a valid argument why A/D factors are less useful than a single factor in all the verbage you've posted so far and it looks to me that your core reason for posting on this thread is to promote civ4 at any cost, not to carry on an honest discussion.

Agreed.

There's things to like about C4, but given the number of things they left out or dumbed-down from C3, I just can't call it an improvement of the Civ series. Hopefully they'll get back on track with C5... or go completely off the rails.

 

[gunkulator]

I'm not sure I've seen anything described that units can do in civ4 that they cant do in civ3. But it seems there are several imporatant things units get to do in civ3 that they cant do in civ4.

As I've mentioned several times now, in Civ4 you have can have bonuses against particular types of units but not against others. There is no way to do this in Civ3.

As your representation of my post post is completely opposite of what I wrote, I can see why you only left in the 1st sentence in quotations in the part of my post you are responding to here.

I misread what you posted, frankly because there is just so much written here. I apologize. Please let's keep the name calling out of this, OK? A tank destroyer struck me as an offensive unit, not a defensive one. My issue is still relevant. Why shouldn't infantry be able to attack and easily overrun a tank destroyer? A tank destroyer should be optimized to fight tanks. Against anything else it should be fairly vulnerable. There is no way to do this in Civ3.

You have yet to make a valid argument why A/D factors are less useful than a single factor in all the verbage you've posted so far and it looks to me that your core reason for posting on this thread is to promote civ4 at any cost, not to carry on an honest discussion.

For about the fifth time now: Separate A/D values can be created in Civ4 via bonuses and promotions. Most of the time, however, the bonuses are specialized towards certain types of units or certain types of attack/defense (amphibious, city raider, city defense, etc.) If you really wanted to, you could give units a bonus against everything for either attack or defense. Therefore you can simulate separate A/D values if you really want to. I'm going to turn your question around: Why do you find this less flexible?

And no, I'm not quoting any more of your post because I didn't find it relevent.

 

[El Justo]

I'm not sure I've seen anything described that units can do in civ4 that they cant do in civ3. But it seems there are several imporatant things units get to do in civ3 that they cant do in civ4.[/quoite]

As I've mentioned several times now, in Civ4 you have can have bonuses against particular types of units but not against others. There is no way to do this in Civ3.



I misread what you posted, frankly because there is just so much written here. I apologize. Please let's keep the name calling out of this, OK? A tank destroyer struck me as an offensive unit, not a defensive one. My issue is still relevant. Why shouldn't infantry be able to attack and easily overrun a tank destroyer? A tank destroyer should be optimized to fight tanks. Against anything else it should be fairly vulnerable. There is no way to do this in Civ3.



For about the fifth time now: Separate A/D values can be created in Civ4 via bonuses and promotions. Most of the time, however, the bonuses are specialized towards certain types of units or certain types of attack/defense (amphibious, city raider, city defense, etc.) If you really wanted to, you could give units a bonus against everything for either attack or defense. Therefore you can simulate separate A/D values if you really want to. I'm going to turn your question around: Why do you find this less flexible?

And no, I'm not quoting any more of your post because I didn't find it relevent.

just b/c civ4 allows for these bonuses does not mean that it simulates the civ3 A/D formula.

a tank destroyer is an offensive unit and yes, it isn't possible, really, to realize this type of unit in civ3. however, i shed no tears from that fact.

the closest thing to implementing this in civ3 is to provide it w/ the stealth attack option against armoured units. if it has a high A or high bombardment and low D then it is reasonable to assume that any infantry/foot unit can easily overrun the AT infantry. so, knowing this, there IS a way to do it in civ3. trust me dude...i've spent way too many hours in front of that editor. sure it has its deficiencies. but the fact remains that the A/D set-up allows for more flexibility in assiging certain units either a defensive role or an offensive one.

what you have failed to comment on, as far as i have gathered, is the fact the many of us here would greatly desire a hybrid set-up for civ4. by this i mean that it would've been splendid imo if civ4 retained the A/D system from civ3 but incorporated civ4's promotion and specialty features. i mean, why try and fix something that simply wasn't broken? it was a step back imo.

i personally find the civ4 format less flexible simply b/c their are key elements that are missing like bombardment for land and sea untis as well as the lack of a pure defensive unit. knowing that these features can't be "simulated" leads me to believe that it is "inflexible".