Combat Bonuses

[isau]

I don't mean this as a complaint per se, but personally I'm a little tired of "This Civ gets a combat bonus when..." stuff. It's not that bonuses in combat are bad. It's that there are more interesting ways to implement a "combat bonus" than just +3 or +5 or whatever.

I wish I was seeing more stuff that was like "When fighting in shallow water, this unit has a chance to anchor enemy ships for one turn after attacking." Or "when fighting near the capital, these archers have a chance to stun enemy units for 1 round." Or "When enemies enter your terrain on tundra, they have a chance to develop frostbite and are unable to heal until they return to warmer lands."

A lot of strategy games have status effects like Stun, Paralyze, Bleeding, Don't Heal, Poison, Slow, etc. Since Civ is all about 1 unit per tile now, why are we still using such an antiquated battle system? Status effects were too much to deal with back when we had megastacks, but now IMO they would serve to make the combat much more interesting than it is. With a lot more opportunities for interesting unique bonuses instead of more "Gets a combat bonus when..."

Thoughts?

 

[Gangrin]

It's a strategy game, not a trpg or a wargame. A CHANCE to stun, a CHANCE to bleed - no no no, god forbid, luck-based abilities are bad and i'm glad Civ pursues bland but simple flat bonuses

 

[MadDjinn]

yeah, that's the invasion of rpg elements into strategy games.

for blended game concepts that works ok sometimes.

 

[MarcoFurio]

It's a strategy game, not a trpg or a wargame. A CHANCE to stun, a CHANCE to bleed - no no no, god forbid, luck-based abilities are bad and i'm glad Civ pursues bland but simple flat bonuses

Totally agree with you.
Units represent and army, not a single person fighting. And tuns represent year, so how could an entire army be stunned or bleeding for 20 year?

 

[isau]

It's a strategy game, not a trpg or a wargame. A CHANCE to stun, a CHANCE to bleed - no no no, god forbid, luck-based abilities are bad and i'm glad Civ pursues bland but simple flat bonuses

It doesn't have to be chanced based.

You can see good examples of how it works in games like Age of Wonders 3. There is a mix of chance-based and not-chance based status effects there.

The specific examples I provided may not have been good, but I think they are a start.

The fact that there are multiple units in a stack IMO is not relevant. There are also multiple units in stacks in AoW3 and other games. Civ is the odd guy out in being practically devoid of status effects altogether.

Back in Civ V there was one kinda status effect, the aura that Maoi warriors had, but I think's about it. I guess we could count the Aztec "heal on kill" mechanic as a second one. But otherwise they mostly don't exist.

Really, just something more interesting than "+3." A little bit of that is fine. When every "bonus" is just that it gets stale. It wasn't as big a deal in Civ V because the number of unit bonuses was smaller, but now that practically every civ has some kind of combat bonus its really noticeable how repetitive it is.

Totally agree with you.
Units represent and army, not a single person fighting. And tuns represent year, so how could an entire army be stunned or bleeding for 20 year?

How does it take them 20 years to heal? What does "healing" even represent? How do people born in 4000 BC still live on in 2000 AD? It's the same thing. The whole army system is very abstract.

 

[Tomorrow's Dawn]

It's a strategy game, not a trpg or a wargame. A CHANCE to stun, a CHANCE to bleed - no no no, god forbid, luck-based abilities are bad and i'm glad Civ pursues bland but simple flat bonuses

Honestly, combat as implemented in Civ 5 is often touted as tactical, but it's really not as it really just boils down to massing ranged units and teamshotting/weakening certain opposing units.

Having things like Stuns and DoTs might actually make it "tactical".
They don't necessarily have to be luck based.

 

[Gintoki89]

Back in Civ V there was one kinda status effect, the aura that Maoi warriors had, but I think's about it. I guess we could count the Aztec "heal on kill" mechanic as a second one. But otherwise they mostly don't exist.

Carthage's elephants also had a kind of fear effect similar to the Maori Warrior, and there's also the very notable effect of the Winged Hussars being able to push foes back.

There were the beginnings of some really special effects in the Civ V expansions, and since Civ VI seems to be building from a base reminiscent of where Civ V left off after both expansions, I think we'll see some interesting bonuses sooner or later.

 

[Ryika]

It's a strategy game, not a trpg or a wargame. A CHANCE to stun, a CHANCE to bleed - no no no, god forbid, luck-based abilities are bad and i'm glad Civ pursues bland but simple flat bonuses

I disagree with the general idea that "luck-based abilities are bad". I think they're generally great, as they create scenarios where unexpected opportunities show up constantly, and if the system is good then it allows an experienced player to make WAY better use of them than a "newbie", pushing him ahead.

But of course the danger is that a bad system makes it so the battle is won by the side that has better luck. But that too can be prevented by a proper system. A "random" system does not have to mean that there's a "1 in 5" chance in every single shot, it can very well mean that there's a "1 in 5" chance for the first shot, and then that chance adjusts itself based on whether it procced or not - if not, the chance for the next shot is higher, if it did, then the chance is lower (or procs are even disabled for a few shots) to prevent situations that are way off the expected result. That sort of normalized rng actually works pretty well in more competitive rpgs.

And with that said... in Civ 5 all units already already have a chance of doing bonus-damage with each attack purely based on rng. So the idea of "procs" already exists in the game - just not with special effects but as a damage boost.

 

[VCrakeV]

I believe that some unique combat effects would be cool, but some should stay out. DoT? Totally. Stun? Hell no.

Why not do something like in Civ BERT?

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[qwerty25]

I always thought itd be cool to play around with zone of control. Lile have horses ignore ZoC except spearman which would exert it over horses.

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[isau]

If we had more status effects, a benefit of Great Generals could be to make units in their radius immune to them.

Stun may have been an overpowered suggestion. But I can see something like "Blind" that prevents ranged attacks or limits them to just 1 tile, and "Daze" that prevents the unit from counter-attacking.

Also--why haven't we ever gotten units that can do AoE damage? That's another staple of tactical games that Civ doesn't explore, and I think it's a real shame. It's a great way to make units differ from each other, or to encourage diversity in unit building. The mechanics are even there in nukes to deliver radial AoE damages, but no units can do it besides those missiles.

Anyway I realize this is now veering down the path of a suggestion topic, which it isn't intended to be. More of a question about why Civ V and VI continue with the same combat mechanics that used to apply when we were in the stack of doom days. It's really unfortunate. I love Civ V and most about VI, but this one thing really stands out to me.

 

[Miravlix]

I feel the game is a bit too complicated, to add that people has to remember what random unit does what random effect.

The support unit's is already pushing the envelope and making things confusing.

 

[stealth_nsk]

I believe one of the reasons why developers moved to flat bonuses from percents is the ability to stack a lot of them and still being easy to calculate for a human. So I think that's intended.

 

[qwerty25]

If we had more status effects, a benefit of Great Generals could be to make units in their radius immune to them.

Stun may have been an overpowered suggestion. But I can see something like "Blind" that prevents ranged attacks or limits them to just 1 tile, and "Daze" that prevents the unit from counter-attacking.

Also--why haven't we ever gotten units that can do AoE damage? That's another staple of tactical games that Civ doesn't explore, and I think it's a real shame. It's a great way to make units differ from each other, or to encourage diversity in unit building. The mechanics are even there in nukes to deliver radial AoE damages, but no units can do it besides those missiles.

Anyway I realize this is now veering down the path of a suggestion topic, which it isn't intended to be. More of a question about why Civ V and VI continue with the same combat mechanics that used to apply when we were in the stack of doom days. It's really unfortunate. I love Civ V and most about VI, but this one thing really stands out to me.

I think part of the problem is that combat in civ6 is pretty simple. There's only attack and move. To make matters worse it can't work like fire emblem because the maps are too small for positioning.

So most stuff can only deal with strength bonus or movement stuff

 

[Brianstorm]

Chance worked well in Civ IV, even if people got mad when a spearmen beat a tank.

 

[Jaybe]

Just widen the spread of combat results to provide more tactical variability (lethargy, ambush, genius, idiocy, etc.).

Happens enough in real life.

 

[Aheadatime]

One thing I do think would be awesome would be AoE. Like a catapult/cannon unit that deals 10% of it's damage to all surrounding units upon firing. Or a Civ could have a fire archer UU that does the above.

 

[Big J Money]

yeah, that's the invasion of rpg elements into strategy games.

RPGs came from tabletop wargames. Which is where things like webbing attacks (chainmail fantasy minis gaming), artillery pinning (tabletop modern wargaming) and other kinds of status effects come from and RPGs drew inspiration from that.

The irony of people thinking RPGs are where tactical combat elements originated in a discussion on wargames. But yes, RPGs made them more popular and caused popular gaming to develop a lingo for things like "the tank", "crowd control" etc. But those things are all strategy game elements.

So much so, that RPGs are barely RPGs these days, but that's another discussion...

 

[ftl]

I think addition of complicated statuses is a thing for a different game.

You can certainly have a balanced and fun strategy game with all sorts of various effects. You can also have one without them. The latter is the route civ has chosen for now. There's no reason that couldn't change in a later civ or in an expansion, but it would be a whole new mechanic with lots of new balancing. Not sure it would work well if you just stuck it on the existing combat system.

 

[qwerty25]

I think addition of complicated statuses is a thing for a different game.

You can certainly have a balanced and fun strategy game with all sorts of various effects. You can also have one without them. The latter is the route civ has chosen for now. There's no reason that couldn't change in a later civ or in an expansion, but it would be a whole new mechanic with lots of new balancing. Not sure it would work well if you just stuck it on the existing combat system.

I think there are real merits for status effects and other more unique ways to increase tactics in civ. While civ 5 tried to use purely movement with the melee/ranged/cavalry, its obvious that civ has both too small maps and battles are too short to rely solely on movement for any tactics. It ends up being merely who has more hammers.