Combat results and slow navies. Conceptually.

[4Lorn]

In CIV3 the unit icons represent large groups of men, machines, aircraft and all thier supporting components.

Assume that the battleship icon is actually taskforce of 2 or 3 battleships, several destoyers and a cluster of assorted transpots and tankers. These sevice vessels must rotate back to home base to replenish. The slow movement rates could be seen as representing the difficulties of setting up the logistics of the task force represented by a single battleship icon.

This concept goes a long way in explaining how an ironclad can be so damaging to a battleship unit. In RL an ironclad, even a group, sinking a battleship would be a fluke. But what if the ironclads got loose among the transports and tankers. Without transports for food and tankers for fuel the battleships would be much weaker. In RL the battleships would be forced to retreat due to lack of support.

Ground units. Some people seem to think that tank units are made up of only tanks. Even a modern RL armored division has unarmored or lightly armored vehicles. Trucks and hummers, cooks and quartermasters all are necessary to keep the division running. Spearmen among the cooks could do real damage.

 

[ApocalypseKurtz]

I'm following you on the naval units; that is as good an explanation as I've heard thus far

But I don't know about spearmen damaging a tank by killing cooks a tank really could just run over or fire at a group of spearmen. Still, I don't mind the slight opportunity for an ancient unit to defeat a modern unit .

 

[ironfang]

I know most of you do not understand what a modern Armor Division is like, so let me explain.

A modern combined arms Armor Division looks kinda like this.

3. Armor Brigades
1. Mech Inf Brigade
1. Artillery Brigade
1. Air Defense Battalion
1. Signal Battalion
1. Combat Service Support Battalion

1. Armor Brigade (consists of)
4. Armor Battalions

1. Armor Battalion (consists of)
4. Armor Companies

1. Armor Company (consists of)
10. M1A[1-2]'s

Go ahead and do the Math. Your spearmen are TOAST at this point. If you want to further break down your math, here is a few more statistics to kill your calculations.

The modern Armor Division consists of roughly 15,000 soldiers. Yes. They are ALL trained for combat, while each may not be the greatest soldier, in a combat environment, even the pay clerk is issued the standard M-16/Ak-47.

Now, go ahead and consult your history books. The average Roman legion consisted of roughly 5,000 combat soldiers. Now, they also had logistic support, but they were not equiped in the same manner as the Legionaire. Therefore, even without the Technological advancements, the Modern Armor Unit outnumbers the Ancient Legion 3-1. If you threw in the fact that everyone in the division has access to M-16s/Ak-47/74 Rifles, the odds go to like... well... it would be outrageous.

Now. If you look at the combat service support battalion, and how they deploy in a combat environment, they deploy at least 20 Kilometers behind the combat units. In order to get to these "cooks" you have to get through two layers of Tanks and Mech Inf. If you get past them you are going to have to deal with a seperate reserve force, usualy an Armor battalion consisting of three Armor Companies and a Mech. Inf. Company. If some how your spearmen got past the reserve, they would have to face the cooks, who are driving Hummers, have M-16's and they DO have heavy weapons crews in their companies that consist of SAWS.

If anyone here would like to see the outcome of a 10 spearmen versus ONE SOLDIER with a SAW. Let me know, I will give you and your friends spears while I have my SAW. I garuntee none of you would walk away.

Dont forget, even the cooks are trained for combat.

ironfang

 

[4Lorn]

Dead cooks means no hot meals. Tankers get peevish without hot food on a regular basis and tend to aim thier guns at thier commanders. j/k.

Kill a trucker and the fuel carrier he drives doesn't get the fuel to the tanks. Kill the quartermaster group and the tankers soon run out of bullets, shells and replacement parts. The finest tank in the world without supply and command support is just scrap metal.

There is a saying in the military. "Amateurs talk tactics. Professionals talk logistics."If you are interested in the subject read a bit about the desert war in WW2. logistical problems controled the battles.

Remember that that division can have a supply tail of several thousand miles. Even given a relatively small area if a division, and we could be talking a batalion here, was to deploy in an all round defence they would be ineffective on offence. Units on offence always have gaps and while support toops can fight valiantly the greatest weakness they have is boredom , inexperience and not knowing where the enemy is. While it wasn't against armor the Philipines 1912 demostrates my point.

 

[Malys Faisent]

Its still rather ridiculous to think a group of Iron clad ships (much less wooden ships) could have any serious effect on a battleship 'fleet'. For sake of argument any supply ship attached to a battle ship group would be able to outmaneuver, outspeed, and have a well more armored hull than the Iron Clads. Sure it might not be able to fight back, but it certainly could evade an Iron Clad's few cannon and then radio or semaphore over the Iron Clad's position...and a few seconds later there wouldn't be an Iron Clad to worry about.

What really gets me about these posts are the way they try to defend the in-game lack of realism with one-in-a-million real world rationalization. When in fact, the combat system needs to be looked at to stay within the realism we've already gotten as a precedent from Civ 2...the whole reason they added in firepower in the firstplace was to prevent this exact kind of thing from happening with any regularity. The Civilization series took a step in a different direction (my first impulse is to say backwards) by removing this safeguard against inane combat results, its just that simple.