Immortal troops - the real problem with Civ 5

[ezwip]

City states don't even create enough units to be effective in a battle. Most of the time I don't even notice when I'm at war with half a dozen of them. If they coordinated attacks it might not be so utterly hopeless for them. When I fight other civilizations it's always on my terms, even if they surprise me with a joint attack. It's like dangling a carrot from a stick. They come after me and I lead them to the artillery. Then they run into the main line. Most of them die, then the next turn I mop them up. Let them heal for a few turns, and claim every city. There is only minor resistance after that. I can conquer an endless amount of cities and turn them into puppets. The only thing slowing growth is the happiness factor. For whatever reason I'm bloody rich with a huge army, massive science, plenty of culture and I'm just royal b-smacking the hell out anyone that looks at me funny. This game is great if you want to be freaking awesome! On Civ BTS if I tried that I'd choke from unhappiness and lack of cash. Negative money and happiness really doesn't do much. It takes hundreds of turns of completely ignoring it while it's wildly out of control to really make an impact. Cities defend themselves so it's everyone to the front. If necessary I can always buy units on the fly for any undefended area. After all I've got tons of cash from going buckwild all over the map. I already know goober is going to attack pretty soon so I'll immediately follow peace with this guy with war on them. Then I'll be close enough to the next continent that I can bring that caravel back and have the entire army jump in the water... and then ninja attack everyone on the shoreline after announcing my declaration of another war. By this time as the op stated my units are immortals.

 

[pickle]

How about a "replacements" pool which is depleated whenever a unit repairs itself. It can be replenished by building a special item in a city (like wealth at the moment), which uses food and production - essentially halting growth and production for that city. For a big war it may become neccisary to have several of your cities building this, making wars somewhat more of a trade off....

this idea I like a lot and it should be do-able to put this into the game, either by a mod (maybe?) or in a patch or expansion.
between something like this and making the AI value their units more highly so they suicide them less there could be major improvement to the combat.

 

[Varvar]

How about a "replacements" pool which is depleated whenever a unit repairs itself. It can be replenished by building a special item in a city (like wealth at the moment), which uses food and production - essentially halting growth and production for that city. For a big war it may become neccisary to have several of your cities building this, making wars somewhat more of a trade off....

Hm I was thinking more along the lines of your wounded unit goes back to your homeland and is rebuilt - rebuilding would be cheaper then building a new unit, but it would preserve promotions - certain balancing would be needed I guess. Your ideas makes sense to me though.

I don't like the idea of an avalanche invasion - I built 7 CC om large/immortal map and harassed the AI way into mid-Renaissance burning down every civilization located on passable ground (5 or 6 of them). 7 CC is a relatively small army, and cost very little in upkeep. I only had periods of peace to reposition my cavalry against the next target.
Later rifles/artillery accomplished the same basic strategy only slower. While I am planning to beat Deity without horses - I feel I would play swords/catapults similarly, although it would probably be more difficult.

Its just not realistic to never be penalized for constant warfare - and civilization series in my opinion has always felt realistic - I for one played my first game of Alpha Centauri in one siting completely amazed at the storyline - OMG is the planet gonna eat me now?!

Basically this puts science/economy and civil development way in the back burner in the current series, which is something I don't like... Once I get my army built, it barely matters what I research, which is kind of silly.

I ll check out some of the mods you guys suggested - thanks for all the comments.

 

[Nick Carpathia]

I like the idea of unit healing having a real cost. Free healing is a Civ4 throwback, where random battles would leave the victor crippled for several turns. In deterministic battles, the damage needs a higher cost than simply sitting still for several turns. In Civ4, both the winner and loser have to expend hammers, the winner because they have to expend some on suicide collateral and the inevitable losses at >90% odds, and the loser because they lost almost everything. In Civ5, it's even more lopsided, the winner loses nothing but time, the loser loses time and production.

I like the idea of some kind of hammer/gold costed healing system that can be used to regenerate your troops, make it so it's least healthoint efficient in enemy culture, a little better in neutral territory, higher in friendly territory, and most efficient in your own cities. Have your capital generate some natural and unstockpileable healing, and that takes care of the early game too.

 

[Öjevind Lång]

Sure.

Having income from trading posts to buy food from maritime city states to feed your scientists is much more difficult than deciding which amount of commerce to reserve for science and which to reserve for funding further actions.

Additionally, leaders complaining to you about having troops near their scouts is so much more meaningful than trying to press you to give technological secrets.

Really, to successfully compete against an AI which is unable to pick even the easiest victory condition (the "diplomatic" [aka: bribery] victory) requires many thoughts and careful thinking.

Thanks for your posting, as it made perfectly clear for which kind of audience Civ5 has been designed.
Moderator Action: Insults are not allowed in this forum. If you can't post in a civil way, then just don't post here.

Pondering how many trading posts to build, and then finding a good city state to cultivate without alienating another civ one wants to cultivate isn't that simple. If you build too many trading posts, it affects the population expansion negatively; your citizens might even begin to starve. That's why the production choices in each city ("stress science", "strees food production" and so on) are there. But even they can only do so much if you have too many trading posts or too few mines or whatever.

I do like Civ V, which is full of excellent ideas although unfortunately, they are often badly executed. I liked Civ IV too, and even if I didn't, it would never occur to me to insult people for liking it. If you don't like Civ V, I would politely suggest that you stop posting in a forum designed for constructive discussion of the game.

 

[qwerty25]

How about a "replacements" pool which is depleated whenever a unit repairs itself. It can be replenished by building a special item in a city (like wealth at the moment), which uses food and production - essentially halting growth and production for that city. For a big war it may become neccisary to have several of your cities building this, making wars somewhat more of a trade off....

I would think an equipment degrade would be better. After you attack many times, your attack will become weaker. After getting your hp knocked down many times, your max hp will go down. You would need to get new equipment made from cities. Its around the same concept just the punishment is different.

 

[Howard Mahler]

Textbook example of the presentation of a false dichotomy, thereby supposedly making it pointless to ever discuss a particular subject.

Realism is not a yes/no.
One can think of it on a continuous scale.
It is probably better to think of several different aspects of "realism", each on its continuous scale.

im sorry, i never realised Civ5 was designed to be historically perfect, to every last detail.

 

[Öjevind Lång]

How about a "replacements" pool which is depleated whenever a unit repairs itself. It can be replenished by building a special item in a city (like wealth at the moment), which uses food and production - essentially halting growth and production for that city. For a big war it may become neccisary to have several of your cities building this, making wars somewhat more of a trade off....

I like that. Some kind of Home Guard or Holding Battalion function, where a city can, if you choose to, maintain some kind of unit (visible on the city screen but unable to leave the city) which would be very inferior if actually fighting but does supply lost points to damaged units - while losing those points itself. If you decide to turn such a unit into a real fighting unit, you'd have to pay for rushing it, and even so it would still perform less well than a regular unit, even if it emerges from a city with a barracks. And if the enemy attacks a city with such a unit, its defence value would be practically nil. Think of "scrapings of the barrel" units, such as the Volkssturm units thrown against the enemy by Hitler towards the end of WWII. Of course such reservist units should cost you in terms of production and money.

All the same, the general idea behind the "immortal tropps" - that a military unit may get depleted but is very seldom completely wiped out - is a good one. It's both historically correct and makes for a good game. What exacty is so exciting about having to build masses of new troops all the time? Building some new troops is unavoidable, but why the craving for building lots of new ones?

 

[Öjevind Lång]

City states don't even create enough units to be effective in a battle. Most of the time I don't even notice when I'm at war with half a dozen of them. If they coordinated attacks it might not be so utterly hopeless for them. When I fight other civilizations it's always on my terms, even if they surprise me with a joint attack. It's like dangling a carrot from a stick. They come after me and I lead them to the artillery. Then they run into the main line. Most of them die, then the next turn I mop them up. Let them heal for a few turns, and claim every city. There is only minor resistance after that. I can conquer an endless amount of cities and turn them into puppets. The only thing slowing growth is the happiness factor. For whatever reason I'm bloody rich with a huge army, massive science, plenty of culture and I'm just royal b-smacking the hell out anyone that looks at me funny. This game is great if you want to be freaking awesome! On Civ BTS if I tried that I'd choke from unhappiness and lack of cash. Negative money and happiness really doesn't do much. It takes hundreds of turns of completely ignoring it while it's wildly out of control to really make an impact. Cities defend themselves so it's everyone to the front. If necessary I can always buy units on the fly for any undefended area. After all I've got tons of cash from going buckwild all over the map. I already know goober is going to attack pretty soon so I'll immediately follow peace with this guy with war on them. Then I'll be close enough to the next continent that I can bring that caravel back and have the entire army jump in the water... and then ninja attack everyone on the shoreline after announcing my declaration of another war. By this time as the op stated my units are immortals.

I also find it annoying that if I gift units to a city state, they are used so inefficiently. For one thing, it takes several turns for them to turn up, which means that often the help comes too late. Secondly, for some reason they then appear outside the city limits (having marched all the way from your own country? That's probably the idea behind this, but it's a bad one), which means that generally they get eaten alive by the attacker before they can defend anything. And thirdly, if they do make it into the city's territory, they are then used without any intelligence at all.

I would not like to see a function where you had to send units back home to replenish. That's not how it's done in real life; replacements are shipped out, unless the unit is so badly hurt that it has to be brought home for a complete overhaul. And that's why the slow healing feature was introduced. Think of it as the unit waiting for replacements and new equipment to arrive. What I would like to see removed is the "instant healing" function. What a silly and frustrating thing that is.

 

[ezysquire]

Partisans spwaning randomly around the conquered city that attack immediately would help solve the problem of endlessly preserving units.

The randomness of the partisan spawning anywhere in the conquered city's territory would open up the battlefield and prevent easy protection of a player's elite units.

The tangible counter is for a player to have a bigger army and so be able to use more fodder type units to finish off a city. This means MORE units though, so would definitely stop the 'very small army dominance' situation.

So army upkeep would be more expensive if preserving elite units is the preferred strategy.
If necessary to further increase the cost of the army, then each promotion could add +1 in upkeep.

Imcreasing army upkeep seems an easy change to make to help in reducing power of elite units.

 

[Tabarnak]

You have to play mods or wait further patches/expansions to see changes.

If you dont want to wait and want to lose units, all you have to do is play multiplayer. You will find what you want, and more.

civ4>civ5 in sp mode
civ5>civ4 in mp mode

Edit : nice idea ezysquire

 

[Harald]

Partisans spwaning randomly around the conquered city that attack immediately would help solve the problem of endlessly preserving units.

The randomness of the partisan spawning anywhere in the conquered city's territory would open up the battlefield and prevent easy protection of a player's elite units.

The tangible counter is for a player to have a bigger army and so be able to use more fodder type units to finish off a city. This means MORE units though, so would definitely stop the 'very small army dominance' situation.

Partisans is an interesting idea, could definitely reduce effectiveness of small but well used armies running rampart.

So army upkeep would be more expensive if preserving elite units is the preferred strategy.
If necessary to further increase the cost of the army, then each promotion could add +1 in upkeep.
Imcreasing army upkeep seems an easy change to make to help in reducing power of elite units.

My personal idea for upkeep would be to let units gradually have more expensive upkeep if they are in friendly, neutral or hostile territory. The problem is that this would benefit small elite armies and hamper larger ones. At least when on the offense, defensively it would be relatively easy to have a larger force provided that the difference in upkeep cost would be properly balanced. Might be a bit to powerful of a detriment for war though.

EDIT: An exception could be made for 'exploration' units such as scouts and caravels.

 

[MadRat]

ReL supplies
I'd just factor it into upkeep costs. I would scrap the current asinine upkeep calculation and have a flat fee per unit*era and have the base cost inside home nation borders/allies, 1.5*in open areas/highseas and friendly territory (open borders only) and 2* when in enemy territory.

Rat

 

[lschnarch]

Pondering how many trading posts to build, and then finding a good city state to cultivate without alienating another civ one wants to cultivate isn't that simple. If you build too many trading posts, it affects the population expansion negatively; your citizens might even begin to starve. That's why the production choices in each city ("stress science", "strees food production" and so on) are there. But even they can only do so much if you have too many trading posts or too few mines or whatever.

In the current state of the game, there simply can't be too many trading posts.
A trading post beats any other "improvement" (except of course for luxuries and "strategic" resources, and even those you can just buy for cheap money).
The trading post doesn't hinder the population expansion, it propels it. Similar it is with production: trading posts allow for buying "just in time" which is by far the most effective way of getting units and improvements.

I do like Civ V, which is full of excellent ideas although unfortunately, they are often badly executed. I liked Civ IV too, and even if I didn't, it would never occur to me to insult people for liking it. If you don't like Civ V, I would politely suggest that you stop posting in a forum designed for constructive discussion of the game.

Actually, as you seem to have not quite understood the way in which trading posts work in the game, your advise comes back to you.
You are not discussing the game as it is, you are discussing some kind of image of what you would like the game to be.

Partisans spwaning randomly around the conquered city that attack immediately would help solve the problem of endlessly preserving units.

Unfortunately, partisans only make sense after the concept of nationalism. Prior to that, the conquest of a city typically meant that the peasants around just had to get used to a new master.

 

[Öjevind Lång]

In the current state of the game, there simply can't be too many trading posts.
A trading post beats any other "improvement" (except of course for luxuries and "strategic" resources, and even those you can just buy for cheap money).
The trading post doesn't hinder the population expansion, it propels it. Similar it is with production: trading posts allow for buying "just in time" which is by far the most effective way of getting units and improvements.

Actually, as you seem to have not quite understood the way in which trading posts work in the game, your advise comes back to you.
You are not discussing the game as it is, you are discussing some kind of image of what you would like the game to be.

Trading posts generate money and science. That's really all I need to know about them, isn't it?

 

[Öjevind Lång]

Partisans spwaning randomly around the conquered city that attack immediately would help solve the problem of endlessly preserving units.

I miss the partisans. I also think it was a good idea only to let them appear after the discovery of Nationalism (IIRC). Not that there weren't partisans before then, though they were not called partisans, but introducing them too early would make conquest almost impossible.

 

[lschnarch]

Trading posts generate money and science. That's really all I need to know about them, isn't it?

Unfortunately not.
You would have to understand how they're working in the context of the other game features.

At the current state of the game, they are clearly outracing ANY other improvement on a general level.

 

[Öjevind Lång]

Unfortunately not.
You would have to understand how they're working in the context of the other game features.

At the current state of the game, they are clearly outracing ANY other improvement on a general level.

Yes, I know that. It's not too different from how towns functioned in Civ IV. Perhaps we should end this discussion of what I know and don't know and go back to discussing the game?

 

[lschnarch]

Yes, I know that. It's not too different from how towns functioned in Civ IV. Perhaps we should end this discussion of what I know and don't know and go back to discussing the game?

We have been discussing the game.
To remind you, you have said:

Pondering how many trading posts to build, and then finding a good city state to cultivate without alienating another civ one wants to cultivate isn't that simple. If you build too many trading posts, it affects the population expansion negatively; your citizens might even begin to starve. That's why the production choices in each city ("stress science", "strees food production" and so on) are there. But even they can only do so much if you have too many trading posts or too few mines or whatever.

I am just pointing out that there can't be *too many* trading posts.

I am well aware that in the beginning of your paragraph you were claiming that you would not want to alienate other civs by allying with city states they assume to be in their "sphere of interest". Doing so in following "house rules" is fine and good and all, but it is just stupid doing so in the game as it is.
To stay at terms with any nation, you just have to have a decent military, which you buy and support by.... exactly, the trading posts.
And as having pointed out already, the trading posts are supported by allying with maritime city states.

Then you mentioned missing mines. Well, except for trying to build a wonder, mines aren't really helpful, as they come at the cost of not having the trading post.
Even worse, higher production doesn't help you in buy-rushing anything, may it be a unit or a city improvement.
Production doesn't help you a bit in trading resources, either. Money (from the trading posts) does.
By money you get units.
By money you get city improvements.
By money you get allies.
By money you get missing resources.
By money you even get the diplomatic victory.

By money you literally get each and everything in the game.
And money you get from trading posts. There isn't any reason why not to build a trading post if you can, except maybe in the case of wonder building.
And even then, it does help you enormously to have other cities spamming trading posts like no good.

Trading posts are the way to go. Unfortunately, as I will add.
It is just another design flaw of the game, since it limits the number of *meaningful* options.

Whereever you're looking at the game, the number of options not only are reduced, but the dominant option typically has a red, blinking neon sign on top.

 

[Öjevind Lång]

We have been discussing the game.
To remind you, you have said:


I am just pointing out that there can't be *too many* trading posts.

You pointed out the obvious. Except that one can indeed have too many trading posts, if it means your population starve. Yes, at present one can usually solve that by finding a couple of nice maritime city states and bribe them to feed you, which, as countless people have pointed out, is way too easy. But sometimes it isn't that easy to find the nice maritime city states, and if you do, an AI civ might get annoyed at you for grazing on their pasture. There is also the fact that having a large population means more production, which is a good thing, and one can't leave it exclusively to the maritime states to grow your population for you. IOW, one *can* overdo the trade post building. So everything does have to be balanced. The game designers are aware of the "lots of trading posts is the way to heaven" fallacy, which the AI civs are prone to, and they will deal with this overreliace by the AI civs on trading posts in the upcoming patch. That is to say, they'll cut down on the AI's tendency to build trade posts everywhere because it is not always the best policy. Important, but not the single paving stone on the way to paradise.