gunkulator
Emperor
El Justo said:just b/c civ4 allows for these bonuses does not mean that it simulates the civ3 A/D formula.
I believe it means precisely that, although I confess to not knowing all the innards of Civ4 combat. If I give a Civ4 Spearman (strength 4) a 50% defensive bonus against everything, it is effectively a 4/6 unit.
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.
YMMV. Recall that Civ2 did have unit type specific bonuses and Civ3 lost them forcing you to categorize units as offensive or defensive. I for one, am happy to have speciality bonuses back in Civ4.
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.
Kind of. If you give it stealth and a high attack, there's nothing to stop you from using it against any unit, including infantry. Constrast to Civ4 where you can actually make a unit tougher against just tanks. That to me is a better approximation of a tank killer.
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.
And my point is that since you can simulate A/D with bonuses, the concept is effectively obsolete.
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".
You can create pure defensive units. The Explorer, Scout and Machine Gun units all have a strength but they cannot initiate combat. They can only defend.
As to bombardment, you are partly right. You cannot bombard from sea to land at all, however, I found the success rate of Civ3 sea-to-land bombardment to so low as to be pretty tedious, at least until destroyers. By the time destroyers come about, assuming tech parity, the AI destroyers will sink you if you try it. If the AI doesn't have destroyers, then chances are you've already won.
For sea-to-sea bombardment, Civ4 has First Strike promotions, which are like defensive bombards in Civ3 except they work offensively as well. If you have enough First Strikes, you can signficantly reduce your opponents strength.
For land-to-land bombardment, Civ4 works differently. There are two kinds: one that reduces a city's defensive rating and one that causes collateral damage. Collateral damage is the counter to the SOD. Up to 6 units can take damage from a single bombardment.
What no longer exists in Civ4 is ability to bombard with no risk to the bombarding unit. With 20 artillery and a rail system, you were pretty safe from AI incursions in Civ3. The AI's use of bombard units in Civ3 is abysmal. They don't use them on attack at all and won't concentrate all their artillery on your advancing SOD even if they have a complete rail net. So IMO, arty were an exploit of Civ3 on par with armies. You use them right. The AI doesn't. So, no, bombardment doesn't work the same in Civ4 and that I believe to be a good thing.