do you wish that unit vs unit battle damage was realistic?

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by Quandary


Zachriel maintained:

Um, that's a bit beyond the warfare we see in this game, don't you think? The whores concept could be what allows a city to culture flip, taking fortified units with it, but Sid the green doesn't have chemical or biological war in his game.

Don't confuse a tactical game with a strategy game. Each turn in Civ3 represents a long period of time and does include any and all of the effects mentioned; that is, all the factors out of the direct control of the strategic planner. When you move a unit in Civ3, you are setting in motion many unseen events. That is exactly why there is a randomizer.

Politicians in Washington sent Custer out west to suppress some Native Americans, and were shocked, shocked, that Custer and his troop were "massacred" by "primitives." The strategic planners even provided Custer with a machine gun, but he left it behind. What good is a weapon if the idiot you put in command leaves it behind? (To be fair, Custer preferred the mobility of unencumbered Cavalry.)

 

[dworkin]

And the question has to be. Why are you not bombarding the crapola out of your enemies? To ensure victory, use all those neat toys the planners give you.

Modern armies however just send in tanks and troops unaided. They park BBs off the coast and shell the area for days and weeks, Carriers fill the sky with planes which bomb anything that remotely looks like a threat, batteries of mobile howitzers shell the area for a couple of hours. Then the tanks roll in.

Broken, scattered and demoralised enemies (1/2 hp) get to die in CivIII.

 

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by dworkin

Broken, scattered and demoralised enemies (1/2 hp) get to die in CivIII.

Bombardment greatly reduces the role of chance in combat.

http://www.zachriel.com/BattleCivulation.asp

 

[Kryten]

From a very very old thread, for a very very old subject, originally posted by Kryten
"ATTENTION FIRAXIS: after 300 encounters of my tanks attacking Spearmen, I finally lost a tank. This is totally unrealistic! Don’t you know that all my tank crews live in their vehicles for months at a time, and never have to get out to refuel, rearm, sleep, eat, wash, or go to the toilet! Plus they are all led by military geniuses who would never allow themselves be ambushed at night or drive into minefields or tank pits, or suffer from ‘friendly fire’. It's a known fact that every tank formation in history has been led by competent officers, who have never misjudged the enemy or made tactical errors....so why should mine?
It's bad enough that units with an offensive value of 1 such as the Impi and Spearman can attack and destroy my Riflemen. Just because this happened in reality to the British at the battle of Isandhlwana in 1879 and to General Gordon in the siege of Khartoum in 1884 does NOT mean that it should ever happen in the game! PLEASE FIX IT!!!”

As you know, Settlers & Workers change their appearance in different eras.
Well, so can other units. Their name won’t change, nor will their stats, but they can be made to look different with the passing of time.
If Spearmen were renamed as say “City Militia”, then perhaps there would be less people whinging about them defeating Modern Armor if in the Modern Times they looked like civilians with automatic weapons and Molotov cocktails in their hands.
(And there are many new player created units in the “Unit Graphics Forum” that would fit this role)
Here is a very simple tutorial by pdescobar explaining how this can be done....
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=47486

However, having said that, it is true that Civ3 could be a little more 'realistic'.

Mojotronica has a current thread running in the "Customisation & Creation Forum" devoted to using the CURRENT editor to make modifications in order to make the game conform a little more to history.
Here is a short selection of some of the ideas submitted by various players:-

*Arranging it so that Aircraft Carriers cannot carry Bombers.
*Making Galleys ‘wheeled’ and oceans ‘impassable to wheeled’ to stop Ancient world colonization.
*Allowing forests to be mined to stop the AI cutting down every tree in sight.
*Making mountains ‘impassable’ and the effects this has on the realism, challenge and visual aspect of the game.
*Making AEGIS Cruisers carry Cruise Missiles for more realism.
*Why some foot troops should have 2 move points (skirmishers).
*Defensive bombardment: it’s effects and how to add it.
*The visual realism of not allowing cities to be built in deserts & tundra.
*How to make Shaman, Druids, Monks, and Priests lower the enemy’s morale by using defensive bombardment.
*Giving Barbarian Galleys the ability to make ‘pirate raids’ on your coast.
*Slowing down the tech race by moving the Republic, so that tanks are not built in the Middle Ages.
*Making the Immortals more realistic (they are far more powerful in Civ3 than they ever were in reality!).
*Using fortifying in a realistic manor (just how DO you fortify Chariots & Elephants?! )
*Fixing the historical errors in the tech tree.
*The fact that in reality foot troops were NOT ‘defensive only’, and COULD defeat other foot troops (providing they were not fortified, and sometimes even if they were!).
....plus many, many more.

If anyone is interested, here is the link.....
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=49529&pagenumber=1

 

[one_man_assault]

I sorta agree with Kryten there. CIV3 should be more realistic but should get in the way of fun

+ how bout trade routes...I dont see them. wait i think we send all our goods through portals that reach over seas miraculously.

+if you want to take it even farther.........how come late modern age were all in tanks....U know what the tank/serviceman ratio is in the US army...well I dont but I know that countrys armed forces should mostly consist of men. (Thanks Balou for Modern Infantry putin that unit to use )

+Why have allies if there going to be annoyed with you. (can think of very rare cases in history when this was true)

+Why the heck do archers attack. They should be like artillery cause if there were a brigade of archers and a brigade of spearmen on a field or something in REAL life archers would get slaughtered

 

[Quandary]

Zachriel replied:

Don't confuse a tactical game with a strategy game. Each turn in Civ3 represents a long period of time and does include any and all of the effects mentioned...(referring to his prior post)

I'm sorry, but if I don't see it, it isn't happening. If the city size defensive bonus is based on these concepts, somebody better tell the Civ citizens about it, because they lack any clue of what's happening to their nation.

When I see thirty invading units take over one of my cities, and another city, a few miles away, begins throwing a full scale temper tantrum because they just got cut off from silks, spices, gems, and the all important to human survival commodity of incense, then I know we have two separate and distinct games going on here, and one doesn't know what the other is doing.

The absolute only time the "common folk" in Civ 3 know there's a war going on is if the human is the aggressor, and then that's only to perform the Sid Meier version of I have a dream (that all humankind will live in peace with their brother while eliminating all forms of pollution, praise God) via their war weariness civil disorder nonsense. Something that owes more to an acid based fantasy of what he wishes the anti- Vietnam war protesters had managed to do rather than any form of reality as we know it.

and were shocked, shocked, that Custer and his troop were "massacred" by "primitives."

Understood and agreed, however Custer's men weren't encased in twenty tons of rolling steel either. An arrow shoots an unprotected man just as dead as a bullet does. That same arrow isn't going to pierce an armored vehicle... unless Rambo is shooting it in a Stallone fantasy movie.

This source mentions Custer might have expected to be outnumbered, but it is unlikely that he could have calculated the overwhelming numerical superiority of the Indians.

While this one further informs us: Custer made no attack, the whole movement being a retreat. Whether he thought only of withdrawing far enough back from the river to find a favorable position to make a stand, or had undertaken a long retreat to the mountains, cannot be told. The Sioux thought he was trying to reach the distant hills, and headed him off, forcing the retreat on a line more or less paralleling the river.

Hell, Custer's men weren't even wearing the hardened leather body gear that would have passed for armor a thousand years (or more) earlier, so they were "modern" only by virtue of having metal missile launchers rather than wooden ones.

This battle example would have been closer to the answering Armed2010's complaint if the fight had been the Sioux on horses verses a Rommel panzer brigade, but Custer's effort was one of unarmored people with bows on horses against other unarmored people with guns on horses, the latter being very much outnumbered.... something else Civ 3 wouldn't take into account.

 

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by Quandary

I'm sorry, but if I don't see it, it isn't happening.

When I attack I usually assume I will lose a few percent under the best of circumstances. Well, like abstract art, an abstract game is in the eye of the beholder.

Try modding up hitpoints for all units. That will iron out a lot of wrinkles.

 

[Divvy]

Regarding units breaking down... did you see that paladin blow up when it misfired a few days ago? Quite a nice firework... luckily noone got seriously hurt.

 

[Quandary]

Zachriel suggested:

Try modding up hitpoints for all units. That will iron out a lot of wrinkles.

I'm actually eyeing the list of suggestions posted above by Kryten. There are a few I don't care for, but most of them make a great deal of sense to me.

Good job, Kryten. (other than the roleplaying fantasy aspect of the preceding commentary that is )

 

[Quandary]

Okay, sorry to spam here, but I was thinking about this line by Kryten: (using sarcasm, in case you didn't notice that )

This is totally unrealistic! Don?t you know that all my tank crews live in their vehicles for months at a time, and never have to get out to refuel, rearm, sleep, eat, wash, or go to the toilet!

Rather than rebut by way of mentioning that it's assumed these battles are taking place in real time, not over the course of one to two years depending on era....

We take a city, and what do we have? Resisters, of course.

Now as the game stands, the only thing resisters really do is stop you from getting full control of the city, but.

What if, after the invasion is done, the resisters could destroy the tanks, burn down their factories, cut the throats of those leaders and their men until, unchecked, they remove the last opposing unit and restore that city to the original nation?

Sort of like a pro-active, turn by turn, version of culture flipping.

Domestic advisor tells you: "Terrible news, boss! The resisters in Xanadu have destroyed five of our units! We only have one unit left trying to keep control!"

Wouldn't that be a bit better than the spearman 86ing the tank scenario?

Plus it would really work on the level of these fantasy role play game motives and tactics that people here use to defend the RNG allowing this type of defeat. Yes, the tank always/ beats that spearman, but the citizens, the resisters, can make holding their city hell for the attacker afterward.

No?

 

[Kryten]

Originally posted by Quandary
No?

Yes!

Originally posted by Kryten
….as I said before, in REAL LIFE tank crews have to get out to refuel, rearm, sleep, eat, wash and go to the toilet.

And at the end of a hard day's advance, with faulty intelligence about the enemy's position, it's possible that the 1st platoon thinks that the 2nd platoon will be on picket duty as it is their turn....but due to unforeseen delays the 2nd platoon was at the back of the column, so they tell the formation's commander that they won't be on station that night....and the commander, tied up with paperwork, has forgotten to tell the 3rd platoon....
....and at 3 o'clock in the morning, while the whole crew of the tank unit is outside of their 60 ton monsters, and are all snuggled up snoozing in their sleeping bags, several hundred Spearmen sneak up and massacre the whole lot of them in under 3 minutes.....
Could never happen?
NEVER?

Well....maybe in the future, when all wars are fought by robots, it won't happen....but while human beings are in charge, mistakes WILL be made, things WILL go wrong, and in warfare the unexpected can sometimes happen.

Here is some more….

Originally posted by Kryten
I am assuming of course that each turn of combat in Civ3 sometimes includes some sort of 'counter attack' by the defenders, where appropriate (you don't honestly think that Civ3 mounted units are stationary and are just going to sit and watch patiently as the foot units run up to them and pull them out of their saddles do you? Isn't it more of a case of the mounted unit being caught off guard, and their 'counter attack' being disorganised and disorded when they are attacked, and that is why their defence value is so much lower than their attack value?).

It seems as if you want to reduce the year long civ turn, with all the variable seasons and vulnerable night times, down to just a single hour....the single hour where the unstoppable tanks charge the defenceless line of Spearmen.
If you want to remove all the embarrassing vulnerable moments and events from the equation, then yes, the tanks will win.
Or will they?......

.....suppose you order one of your tank battalions/regiments to attack a bunch of Spearmen (between 500 and 5,000 men, depending upon the period), who are entrench at the top of a hill.
Seeing that all the roads up the hill are barricaded, your local tank commander decides that the easiest route is through a valley along a dried-up riverbed. Off they go, full of confidence, knowing that blokes with pointed sticks can't harm 60 ton tanks.

But as the lead tanks round a bend, they see in front of them a huge wooden dam held together with ropes which is holding back a man-made lake.....and the Spearmen are cutting the ropes!
Suddenly, a 10 meter wall of water is thundering down the dried-up riverbed, overturning some tanks and completely drowning the others. Some crewmen manage to 'bail-out' and swim to the surface, only to be picked off by the Spearmen.....

Ok....I agree.....it is unlikely. Chances of failure = about 99% (which just happens to be the odds of tanks in Civ3 losing to Spearmen).
But you've got to admit, YOU didn't see it coming.
NOR did your local tank commander.
"Sometimes in battle, the unexpected CAN happen."

How about this one.....
.....one of your advancing tank units, after overrunning village after village, has accumulated a hoard of captured fresh food (in the tradition of all victorious soldiers).
They decide to make use of this booty....so much better than K-rations.....by having a good meal before the next push.
Half an hour later there are radio reports of tank crews suffering from terrible stomach cramps and falling into a coma. Within an hour, half the crews are dead and the rest are unconscious.
What has happened? The food was POISONED!!!.

Ok....I agree.....it is unlikely. Chances of failure = about 99% (which just happens to be the odds of tanks in Civ3 losing to Spearmen).
But you've got to admit, YOU didn't see it coming.
NOR did your local tank commander.
"Sometimes in battle, the unexpected CAN happen."

Now I'm not saying that any of the above events could happen.
They are just possible examples of the "unexpected".

So next time you lose a tank, try not to think of yourself as being IN that tank, surrounded by thick armour, with spears/arrows/musket balls bouncing off.
Try to imagine yourself as the leader of the Spearmen.....and think how YOU would stop tanks.

Rather than me quoting the whole thread, here is the link if anyone can find anything new to say....

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?threadid=39351&pagenumber=3

 

[Quandary]

Yep, fantasy role playing game scenarios to explain the unexplainable.

I'd need several pages to explain how my level 50 Dark Age of Camelot Armsman got beaten by a muck snake (level 1-2 monster).

Oddly, that's part of how I think of this game too. First there's the reality aspect, then there's the "What! Six of my level 5 MA got beaten by one level 3 rifleman?!?"

In online RPGs, I hated levels and the treadmill. Now I wish the game I'm playing had unit levels in it.

Who'd have guessed? :arrow:

 

[Kryten]

Very well, let us discard the 'what-if-fantasy-scenarios', and just stay with the FACTS.

How did the Finns defeat so many Soviet armoured tank columns in the 'Winter War' of 1939-1940, when they had NO anti-tank guns?
(Remembering that rifles are about as much use as a spear when it comes to stopping tanks?)

 

[YNCS]

Kryten,

What the Finns did was block the roads with downed trees (this was in the middle of thick forest, so the tanks had to stay on the roads) to immobilize the tanks, sniped at anyone trying to remove the roadblocks or just moving outside of the vehicles, and let the Soviets freeze and starve. Essentially, the Finns carried out seige operations against armored columns.

 

[Kryten]

Originally posted by YNCS
Kryten,
What the Finns did was block the roads with downed trees (this was in the middle of thick forest, so the tanks had to stay on the roads) to immobilize the tanks, sniped at anyone trying to remove the roadblocks or just moving outside of the vehicles, and let the Soviets freeze and starve. Essentially, the Finns carried out seige operations against armored columns.

So what you are saying is that the Finns didn't stand in lines awaiting the the Soviet tank attack, but instead they took the initiative and stopped the columns, then attacked the crews when they were OUTSIDE of their armoured monsters....at night, while they were rearming, while they were eating, while they were sleeping.

"....in warfare the unexpected can sometimes happen."

 

[Quandary]

....wherefore we once more get back to fantasy role playing scenarios.

Sorry if you don't like that label, but creating stories about how one unit defeated another unit by having the native girls flash their naughty bits at the men and then others hiding in the bushes sneaked out to slit throats when the fools came out for a closer look is fantasy role playing.

Yes, the entirety of all the tank operators which make up one unit decided, en masse, that it was time to empty themselves of the metabolic residues from their lunch, in the dead of night, and the spearmen noticed this and ran over to shove those poles where the sun don't shine while said operators were trying to figure out who was supposed to have brought the toilet paper and argued so loudly over this distressing omission that they didn't hear the opportunistic pole wielders until bloody intestines littered the snow, which then drew several local packs of underfed and ravenous wolves which also fell upon those luckless tankmen, making of them a grand meal indeed, and thus was the battle of Xanadu won, a tale they still sing of to this very day, though they usually forget to give a fair share of credit to the assisting wolf packs, something which the wolves are, unfortunately, in no position to correct on their own and so are denied their rightful place in the civilization hall of fame.

Uh, huh

 

[Kryten]

Very well, no more “....fantasy role playing scenarios”

The Battle for Suomussalmi, 7th Dec 1939 to 8th Jan 1940.
“....The Finns only antitank weapons were grenades, satchel charges, crowbars, and "Molotov Cocktails”....
....The Finnish 27th Infantry Regiment (JR27) under COL Hjalmar Siilasvuo, was to destroy the Soviet 163rd Rifle Division and to protect central Finland and its centers of transportation, a tall order for a light infantry formation (of five battalions with the addition of MAJ Kari's Civic Guards) one third the size of its adversary and which possessed exactly zero artillery or anti-tank guns....
When the Finns took count after 8 Jan 1940, they found incredible booty. They had captured, intact, 65 tanks, 437 trucks, 10 motorcycles, 1,620 horses, 92 field guns, 78 anti-tank guns, 13 anti-aircraft guns, 6,000 rifles, 290 machine-guns, and a large quantity of precious communications equipment. From Piispajaervi in the north, to Raate in the south, they counted 27,500 Soviet dead, 43 destroyed tanks, and 270 other destroyed vehicles. Finn losses were 900 dead and 1,770 wounded."
http://home.interserv.com/~tazio/7dSuomu.htm

....and rifles are about as much use as spears when it comes to stopping tanks.
So how did the Finns win?

"....in warfare the unexpected can sometimes happen."

 

[alpha wolf 64]

from listening to the war news nonstop lately, the americans have not lost a single tank to direct fire. a couple were lost when the driver was killed and one drove off a bridge and another rolled onto something else which i cant recall at the moment. many were disabled and destroyed by the allies so as to not leave them behind since they couldnt stop. they've been telling stories about RPGs bouncing off over and over again. WW2 was still fairly new to tank warfare, but modern vehicles of the last 10-15 years need quite a bit to knock them out. i dont know what the counts are, but i've seen tons of burning t-72s and each time the embedded reporters report that no abrams were lost. thats just amazing to me.

someone please rescue me, i'm addicted to war news

 

[Stapel]

I guess, the one or two tanks lost by driving off bridges, matches the tanks lost in civ 3 when attacking a city.......

 

[Quandary]

I think part of the confusion here is my use of the word "fantasy".

In this context, I say "fantasy" to cover any explanation created by the player to explain how something which otherwise should not have happened, did happen.

Referencing the Finnish campaign, or a similar, in essence, type of trap used by the Soviets, is reality when talking about those two nations' efforts against the invading German tanks.

Referencing those two nations' campaigns as a way of explaining how a Civ 3 tank got destroyed by a Civ 3 spearman (or similar) is fantasy when talking about Civ 3, even though the fantasy is based on something that actually happened in the real world.

No matter how creative one might wish to be, Civ 3 does not in any way provide any type of background or support for a battle being influenced by waiting for tank operators to get out of the vehicle for toileting, whoring, or a good rousing sing-along around their virtual campfire.

Yes, a Civ 3 turn can be one, two, five, or fifty years long depending on the era, but there is no basis whatsoever to think that any given unit verses unit encounter is ever paused and rejoined after a night of quaffing some black and tans at a nearby pub.

When ancient warriors are sent to battle ancient barbarians a few squares away, I really don't think that anyone is sitting there creating stories about the four hundred and fifty year war that takes place (three turns to get to the barbarians and one or two to fight them), or pretends that the warriors sent to fight are dying of old age and givining birth to children which they train as new warriors replace them.

Nor should people attempt to explain a poorly devised combat number cruncher by creating stories of the five year long battle between those two units, and how tank operators had to get out to go potty.

You're perfectly free to entertain yourselves with this added, non-game provided, color and flights of fancy, but should feel somewhat less free to blithely, and even aggressivly, explain to a person complaining about idiotic results of the combat RNG that his tank was wiped because the guy running it got out to go for a stroll.

Especially when, in other threads, just about everyone talks about the concept of "unit" being an abstract term meant to cover a multiple number of individual virtual fighters.

Say that you don't care when the spearman kills the tank, I mostly don't care either, but don't try to wrap someone that does care into your creative battle saga, because you and he aren't playing the same game..