Immortal troops - the real problem with Civ 5

[Varvar]

Civ 5 has many problems, but from reading the forums I couldn't find any mention of what I found to be the least realistic/most problematic part of Civ 5.

My troops never die. They get wounded, roughed up etc... but they never actually die, unless I make a big mistake. Most people attribute it to inferior AI - but losses should be part of war...

The AI merely doesn't seem to realize that rebuilding a unit takes 20-30 times longer then healing it. Short of protecting your capital (maybe not even then every time) it doesn't seem worth it to lose a unit to defend a city - ludicrous historically, yet true in Civ 5 world.

The developers merely designed the AI to do the historically logical, not the Civ 5 logical thing - protect your cities and territory from intruders (In all previous Civilization versions defending your cities was the smart thing to do as I recall. Thus AI seemed superior, yet it did the exact same thing).
And we all knowingly or unknowingly exploit this design flaw mercilessly.


Here is a brief description of my last battle (deity/small):
6 of my Companion Cavalry are staring at 5 of Gandhi's knights, a pikeman, couple of warriors and a walled city. Demographics has me slightly behind in army size, but I believe I have maybe 20% advantage in that battle (due to promotions).
I have a pretty good battle using the element of surprise, most of my guys lose 2-3 health, 1-2 of them are in the yellow, a couple get promoted, and all of Gandhi's troops are wiped out.

So far so good, the strength of my army is at 70-80% of the original, he is wiped out, roughly what is historically accurate with the actual battles of Alexander (kill 5 lose 1 is not bad for a good general).

Problem is - 3 turns later all my troops are healed up at no gold/hammer cost to me. In fact my army is now 5-10% stronger due to promotions! Even at deity Gandhi has no hope.

So lets recap: I attack somebody, and instead of losing troops I have to replace, my army gets stronger with every battle. This is completely and utterly unrealistic and imbalances the game in the following ways:

- There is no penalty or even downside to building an army early. Unless you are a peace-loving hippie, you will need an army eventually, so the earlier you build your army, the better promoted it will be. Since you can simply upgrade your warriors once the next technology becomes available, your army will never be truly obsolete.

This makes no sense historically - roman legions were legendary, far superior to their contemporaries, sure... But that doesn't mean that modern Italian army is superior to other armies.

- Keeping the invasion going is effortless - as your never have to build replacement troops. This is also unrealistic. Real life Alexander - perhaps the greatest conqueror/strategist the world has ever seen still 'ran out' of his well trained Greek troops, and thus had to quit his conquests (morale was an issue as well as loses, but the original greek veterans were significantly diluted by Persian recruits).

Don't even get me started on Napoleon - who had recruit 15-16 year old kids to fight Waterloo, as France was literally running out of able bodied young man to fuel his conquests.

- Your troops becoming obsolete is never really an issue, especially if you go swords/catapults. Upgrading is actually much cheaper then buying/building new troops. In some games you never actually build more then swords... Yet end up with promoted mech infantry. How realistic is that?

- AI strategy seems to be defending territory, which is historically accurate, and logical. Unfortunately it doesn't work in the current system, as I would much rather lose a city for a couple of turns then lose a trained (or even untrained) unit. Besides I raze 90% of conquests anyway - cities are worthless and not the goal of conquests.

Imagine if rather then fighting Germans in WW1 the French said: go ahead and take our cities, its cool. We don't want to lose our army defending these crappy cities anyways. Just wait and see your unhappiness plummet! lol.

In conclusion, except for an arguably broken (and frankly more difficult to execute at Deity) REX ICS, a strategy of permanent, millenniums long warfare is far far superior to anything semi-peaceful. I have nothing against militarism, but you should have to stop, rebuild/retrain your fallen legions, pull them back to retrain them, get a "war is bad" happiness penalty... Something! Maintaining a massive conquering army should slow down your research and economic development, which in the long run would make you technologically backwards to a peaceful civ.
Well what about a peaceful culture victory you ask? Peaceful civs I kill last would have to be 2 eras more advanced to match my fully promoted army.


While I do enjoy combat in Civ 5 way more in Civ 4, the fact that at tech parity I had to lose 3-4 catapults in Civ4 to soften a city before I could take it, meant that war was costly as it should be. Attacking a weaker civilization to 'train' your troops was an expensive proposition. Rushing had a downside - your 10-20 axe rush would stall your development to a halt, and half your army would die as you conquer your neighbor - a much more natural strategic situation.

My solutions:
- Make units cheaper - a lot a lot cheaper. This way losing your units would not be a big deal, nor would a small amount of elite units be so overpowered - fronts would appear, and battles would feel more epic. Make buildings cheaper while ur at it.

- In the Total war series, your units would get promotions, but healing/rebuilding them would cost a comparable amount of money to building new ones - this is completely natural and perfectly logical: my horseman army defeats the enemy goes all red in the middle of a desert (I lose 10 000 troops according to demographics). Then we hang out in the desert for a few turns and suddenly 10 000 veteran horseman magically appear.

Have healing cost hammers/gold, and only available at cities you can build troops in (so not a city you just conquered that is in unrest).

- Upgrading doesn't seem natural either - it takes one turn to convert a massive roman legionary army to professional rifleman. Veteran rifleman.... Shooting a gun and wielding a sword is different isn't it?
Make upgrading more expensive... or have it delete your promotions, or both.
This way if you build a massive conquering army in the middle ages, it would become obsolete with gunpowder - like it should be, so that aztec's faced with superior Spanish weaponry cannot upgrade their jaguars overnight - historical accuracy.

Anyways, what do you think? Immortal super soldiers - an unintended consequence of otherwise superior combat system, or merely a testament of player's superiority over AI... cough sarcasm cough. Or am I missing something?

 

[DaveGold]

his way if you build a massive conquering army in the middle ages, it would become obsolete with gunpowder - like it should be, so that aztec's faced with superior Spanish weaponry cannot upgrade their jaguars overnight - historical accuracy

I think you'll find that the North American natives were able to use purchased guns. The basic principle is that if you have well drilled troops with high morale who take orders from good commanders then teaching them to point a rifle isn't a problem.

Fast and repeated healing of troops looks more reasonable when you consider that low unit health can represent low morale or disorganisation, not just deaths.

Preserving highly promoted troops and promoting them isn't a new CIV tactic. It worked in CIV4 as well. It obviously works better in CIV5, not least because you never lose a 97% battle. If the AI fought better wars in CIV5 then you would lose more key units as you'd need to put them into key positions to create bridgeheads or enforce ZOC.

Healing troops and upgrading promoted units actually rewards good play. I'm not sure I'd want a system where all your forces are disposable and military production is more important than battlefield skill. That would certainly be a massive boost for the stupid AI.

Having said all that, the basic premise of the OP is correct. Successful units can rampage through the ages at the moment.

 

[Lanstro]

Well thought out and well written OP. I agree that the Civ5 system is not realistic at all. However Civ isn't necessarily a realistic game, so that alone shouldn't condemn the system.

If they were able to make the AI smart enough to also value their experienced troops more than territory/cities, then I think the 'immortal troops' system is not bad. It adds an RPG-style element to the game, which I find fun (even if it is not at all realistic).

The problem is that they probably won't be able to make the AI that smart, so the AI will always be fighting with greenhorns against your veterans. From a gameplay perspective, I agree that at the least, upgrading costs should be much more than it currently is, and for barracks/armouries/military academies to be cheaper, so that building fresh troops is more attractive than upgrading your warrior from 4000 BC.

I'm not so sure about your suggestion that healing should cost money or hammers. I think alternate ways to penalise people for long wars would be preferable - eg increased unit maintenance when units are out of your borders, war weariness like Civ 4, reduced trade route income, etc. I think in some ways the unit maintenance cost represents the cost of replacing dead dudes in the front lines - so bumping that cost up would be the most elegant solution.

 

[Zack]

Go play Hearts of Iron if it's such a big deal to you.

 

[AfterShafter]

Well thought out and well written OP. I agree that the Civ5 system is not realistic at all. However Civ isn't necessarily a realistic game, so that alone shouldn't condemn the system.

Just going to dab in here, but... The OP's post isn't all about realism - if I took anything out of it, it's this:

"The AI merely doesn't seem to realize that rebuilding a unit takes 20-30 times longer then healing it. Short of protecting your capital (maybe not even then every time) it doesn't seem worth it to lose a unit to defend a city - ludicrous historically, yet true in Civ 5 world.

The developers merely designed the AI to do the historically logical, not the Civ 5 logical thing - protect your cities and territory from intruders (In all previous Civilization versions defending your cities was the smart thing to do as I recall. Thus AI seemed superior, yet it did the exact same thing).
And we all knowingly or unknowingly exploit this design flaw mercilessly. "

He's actually suggesting here that the AI trying to do the realistic thing is actually a mistake on the part of the AI - that Civ V, to be played effectively, demands that you oftentimes value troops more than cities. I think that's actually a pretty fair criticism that I don't see many people mention.

 

[AfterShafter]

Go play Hearts of Iron if it's such a big deal to you.

In a similar vein, if you're so dismissive of the thread, perhaps you should participate in another one rather than contribute soundbytes? The OP raises some pretty valid concerns and does so in a very articulate and well thought out manner. Consideration of some of his points might end up making Civ V a better game.

 

[Zack]

In a similar vein, if you're so dismissive of the thread, perhaps you should participate in another one rather than contribute soundbytes? The OP raises some pretty valid concerns and does so in a very articulate and well thought out manner. Consideration of some of his points might end up making Civ V a better game.

If he wants a realistic war game, Hearts of Iron is the way to go. That's all I'm saying.

Civ 5's combat system is sooooo much better than Civ 4's was.

 

[MadRat]

The problem in my opinion is that combat is relatively risk free as we know the results in advance (heck the game tells us this). War and battle have always been risky things despite tactics and tech. They in CiV there is no unknown and thus a campaign is little more than a tetris problem. Some of the greatest battles in history had both sides reasonably confident of victory only to have fortune smile on one side or another, sometimes to everyone's surprise.

Rat

 

[AfterShafter]

If he wants a realistic war game, Hearts of Iron is the way to go. That's all I'm saying.

Civ 5's combat system is sooooo much better than Civ 4's was.

Civ V's combat isn't perfect, and constructive analysis and criticism is helpful to improving it. Heck, one of the major criticisms of the game is "the AI sucks at war" and that's exactly what the OP is addressing. An attitude of "If you don't like it, play something else" - which is exactly what you said - is completely unhelpful in actually improving the game. The guy has some good analysis. If you want to contribute to a thread negatively, at least do so in something vaguely resembling a constructive manner.

Besides, whether Civ V's combat is better than Civ IV's or not, I think the AI understood Civ IV combat better than Civ V's AI understands Civ V combat. Again, this is a big part of what the OP was suggesting, and I think he's right. The Civ V AI does have a weak grasp of the value of sacrificing real-estate in favour of saving units - units are expensive, and in Civ V a heavily upgraded unit can be worth a fair bit more than a city. The AI just doesn't get this.

I'm not responding in this vein again, in any case. Don't want to derail a thoughtful thread.

 

[AfterShafter]

The problem in my opinion is that combat is relatively risk free as we know the results in advance (heck the game tells us this). War and battle have always been risky things despite tactics and tech. They in CiV there is no unknown and thus a campaign is little more than a tetris problem. Some of the greatest battles in history had both sides reasonably confident of victory only to have fortune smile on one side or another, sometimes to everyone's surprise.

Rat

Well, technically speaking, we always had access to the combat odds in Civ with a reasonable degree of accuracy - Civ V just does the math for us. Civ IV did too. I really can't remember past that, but, you could always do the calculations yourself. I've had fights go a fair bit off the projections though - that's all they really are.

 

[civcivv]

Thing is with V, there's a lot more stalemates, as in both units survive combat compared to previous iterations.

Also, abilities carrying over does create a bit of a problem at times. For instance Jaguars or Janissaries built at a Heroic Epic City and then racking up a fair bit of experience to go Infantry/Mech Inf become invincible using:
March, Medic (especially if you have 2 units with march), Blitz, Open/Rough Terrain 2-3 each and Cover at the more basic level. You can literally win a war with 1-2 units against an empire that is stronger than yours in numbers and equal in tech.

 

[Varvar]

If he wants a realistic war game, Hearts of Iron is the way to go. That's all I'm saying.

Civ 5's combat system is sooooo much better than Civ 4's was.

I don't want a realistic war game, I want a realistic civilization game . The point of my post is that peaceful development is vastly inferior to permanent warfare state, so if I am not attacking somebody, I feel as if I am wasting valuable time.

Civ 5 combat system is indeed more fun than Civ 4. But it does have the unintended consequence of the immortal units, much like Civ 4 had the death stacks.

I want to be penalized for warring. Even if my strategy is brilliant, I want losses to be a by-product of combat.

 

[Helmling]

How about every unit "heal" costs you population growth in a city or in all cities. That would address the realism aspect.

 

[scratchthepitch]

In Civ4, the developers dumbed down the combat options, rather than improved the AI so it could handle the Civ3 combat. Instead of revamping the AI, they simplified the combat aspect of the game down to the point it was little better than the original Civ1 game. With Civ4, one may have as well been playing one of the Sims games.

 

[Varvar]

The problem in my opinion is that combat is relatively risk free as we know the results in advance (heck the game tells us this). War and battle have always been risky things despite tactics and tech. They in CiV there is no unknown and thus a campaign is little more than a tetris problem. Some of the greatest battles in history had both sides reasonably confident of victory only to have fortune smile on one side or another, sometimes to everyone's surprise.

Rat

Perhaps my background comes from playing a lot more Total War then Civ, so my expectations may not be realistic. In Total War when 2 equal size armies clash, you can expect to lose 20-40% of your soldiers in a successful battle (unless armies are severely mismatched - such as attacking horse archers with infantry), and those troops are gone. Dead.
So I don't so much want luck, but the dynamic of losing some of your hard fought veterans regardless of skill.

Here is a basic synopsis of my idea:

In Civ 4 midgame losses were inevitable mainly because you had to lose 3-4 cats(or cannons/artillery) to soften a stack before you could pwn it.
Therefore combat was one dimensional, yet waging war was 2 dimensional: attacking an AI involved both costs and benefits:
benefits - you gain more land
costs - you lose troops;
costs - you lose diplomatic friends, which is significant with your weakened army;

In Civ 5 loses never happen, so:
Combat is 2 dimensional - it is quite simply a lot more interesting and engaging.
Strategic choices (to attack or not to attack, to build troops or not to build troops) is one dimensional - attacking somebody you can beat carries the following costs/benefits:

benefits: you gain more land;
benefits: your army gets stronger; In fact it often gets stronger faster then your opponents can tech up - the first battle of the horses is often the hardest.

costs: - diplo. Which is irrelevant since your army is now stronger so once I become Warmonger I can pretty much tell Gandhi to shove it.

Therefore attacking somebody is not a strategic choice - it is a strategic necessity.

I actually want to have periods of peace in my game, and not feel like I am doing something strategically inferior.
I want the build army, attack, recover losses dynamic back. But with the Civ 5 superior combat system.

Is that too much to ask?

 

[davelisowski]

Half the reason to going to war is to promote your troops. Barbs only give up to 30 xp.

I don't know where you learned that losses are acceptable in war. I mean maybe a work boat or worker just because they have no defense. Or the random unit lost alone...

But if someone dies, then restart. Or NG.

 

[Haig]

I think that the instant heal option when gaining experience is a mistake, it's too easy to just magically heal a nearly annihilated unit and let it keep fighting.

 

[P-Zombie]

The biggest issue is really the AI. Even in your Civ4 examples, the unit losses you mention are essentially self-inflicted. You knew the math but you attacked anyway, after measuring costs against benefits. Civ4 and Civ5 aren't so different in that respect...which is a problem. It's not enough to have the AI rely on whipping out bows to make conquering harder. The AI in Civ5 must hit back, or you don't have a game.

Secondarily, I also find upgrading units to be a blah experience. The 'friendly territory' requirement is too easy, particularly if you're taking puppet cities as you go. It would make more sense to require that the unit be returned to a city you control the production of, where either money or hammers are spent to make the upgrade happen.

I wouldn't want to completely lose the sense of continuity of the unit, though. So maybe the promotions get stripped - experience level determined by the buildings present in the city (like any new unit) - but for each existing promotion, the unit gets a +10% 'Veteran' promotion.

That might be more realistic, and sounds more satisfying to me at least. Whether or not it would actually be fun though...harder to say. I'm sure there would be haters.

And that's what I think the current system is really all about: it's what the developers thought would make warfare the most fun for the most players. Realism takes a back seat. Or, sometimes it feels like realism is bound and gagged in the trunk.

I think basically your criticism boils down to "this is too easy". And I agree.

 

[Yzman]

I think the instant heals are a big cause of the OP's complaints. Its easy not to lose units because the second I am close to dying I usually have a auto heal. The patch is going to remedy this a bit with no allowing you to save up promotions. I never do this anyway, but I know some people do.

 

[Öjevind Lång]

I've had troops die on me, and I've killed many AI troops which, if anything, seemed to be too careless, and I've seen them kill each other. Frankly, I don't recognize this problem.