Immortal troops - the real problem with Civ 5

[neptune2000]

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.

I'm not trying to get into an argument here, but that's not entirely true. The Roman Empire dealt with many uprisings in conquered groups, especially to the North. Ancient Middle Eastern civs had often tenuous holds. And the Greeks never got used to Persian rule. It's really with Feudalism that your point really takes hold. And there it's confusing because for example the English kings were often more French or German than English so holding French lands might not always have been as big a deal. Of course often it was only the "elites" that were the ones who cared (they had the most to lose) but there has often been a general resentment of outside rule, often enough that I think it could be generalized into Civ as an everpresent issue.

A good way for an ancient ruler to placate his newly conquered peoples (beyond sheer force) was to have a strong impressive civilization and attempt to integrate the new people into it or allow them to continue much as they had been. My memory is terrible but some of the ancient Middle Eastern civs were more successful when they brought an "advanced" culture and allowed people to for example worship as they had (or integrate their worship into the conquerors' as for example the Christians eventually did later in Europe). Of course if they were dominant enough they could just squash the existing peoples or scatter them. Some people, like the Celts or the Greeks, were nationalistic and made this harder. In Civ terms this could translate to culture, influenced perhaps by other factors (tech/social policy/civ/etc of both civs in the conflict).

This is why I miss the expanding and overlapping culture of Civ IV, which fits well with the above mention of partisans. If I take a border city that my strong culture has been influencing for a long time, I should see less resistance/fewer partisans. If I attempt to take a distant city or a city with a strong cultural identity, it should take a long time to quell unrest.

This post is of course oversimplifying things; I'm just trying to say that I think a concept of partisans, either real or in some sort of cost, is viable from a "realism" standpoint.

 

[the343danny]

I hardly lost units in Civ 4 besides siege units, which is quite strange because you would think they would be the last to fall in a battle. Real problem is the AI which likes to go on the offensive. Simplest yet most effective method of improving battle AI in my opinion is simply to make the AI prefer defense far more than it does now.

 

[Darvi]

Many problems but also easy solutions in theory, someone just needs to implement them. The problem would be how affect the AI I guess. Unrealism is almost always a negative. It can be accepted is comes from simplifying of increases playability enough some other way.

1) Units shouldnt heal completely at front. They could heal something like 25% (just to gain morale back) in truly friendly territory (not occupied land) over some turns, but beyond that should have to go to barracks to heal completely with additional shield, money and food costs. Nothing should be free.

1.1) Units should lose morale in enemy territory and in lost battles. They should gain it back in friendly territory or when they win battles. Also the experience should be based on where they fought. You could still have some promotion choices, but fighting in rough terrain should improve fighting in rough terrain. Defending should improve defending not attacking and so on.

2) There should also be an alternative for returning to base and that would be joining to damaged same type units together. This is how unit could be promoted during a campaign. Lets say two riflemen get damaged to 50% and 60%. Joining them together would create one full unit with 105% HP (say half of the extra would be lost in management) plus what ever XP:s they had. Then you would have a full unit with only veterans and have their balanced XP:s calculated together. Just what is done in real wars. Combine squads that have lost men.

3) Units should be able to upgrade only in barracks and only to a similar units of the same era. Swordsmen to Long swordsmen and riflemen to infantry. Not Long swordsmen to riflemen. And the end of an era they should just become obsolete. This could be balanced by making the production of completely new units more costly as it is in real life. Only after several units made would the cost settle to normal level.

 

[Sonereal]

1.) That would work if there were no such thing as field hospitals, aid stations, and actual logistics and reinforcements.

1.1) I agreed with the last three sentences. I disagree with implementing morale because at that point, I should just go ahead and play a Paradox game.

2.) XP should be lost and health shouldn't go over 100%. Why should XP be lost? 1.) For balance and 2.) Because REGIMENTAL+ reorganizaiton isn't as easy as squad reorganization. Things will get loss. If anything, it should maybe be the average of the two.

3.) You do understand that you can train people to use different weapons, right? And that the men inside the ill-defined unit aren't the same men you had back in 4000 BC if its 2000 BC. Long Swordsmen should be able to upgrade to rifles. The jump between longswords and rifles isn't the same as the jump between say, cavs and tanks or cavs and gunships.

 

[Darvi]

1.) Sure you could have field hospitals as in the ability to heal a little in enemy territory too after you have discovered medicine and perhaps implemented that to units. How do logistic raise the dead or heal the wounded? It doesnt. It only makes it so that you dont lose more. Reinforcements are the new units you create in your cities! You really want some free invisible reinforcement instead of producing new units that cost resources and marching them to help out in battle? In that case I think you are missing part of the Civs point.

1.1) Love it or leave it argument much? Other games are irrelevant.

2.) Why shouldnt the health go beyond 100% if the health is just a measure of the combined health of individual soldier. The more soldiers a unit has the more health. Apparently you didnt undestand my point about calculating the units HP:s and XP:s together when merging. 50% + 60% = 110% not 105% as the new unit would have. I meant that half of the HP:s going over 100% would be lost because the unit would get too big to handle as effectively. The combined XP of the new unit should be balanced average of the previous. So 50% with 50 xp + 60% with 30 xp = 43 xp for the new unit. But sure there could be some loss there too.

3.) You do understand that training wont compensate talent and abilities? Armies arent created out of clones from the same enviroments. People are picked for specific jobs because of their specific abilities. Melee combat is very different from shooting a gun. Shooters dont need to strong and fast they need to be accurate. Being aggressive is much more useful in hand to hand battle then it is when aiming. If you cant understand or accept this Im going to have to give up on you.

 

[Derpy Hooves]

Well written and though out OP, as far as realism is concerned you are definitely correct, sadly enough excessive realism is not necessarily good for the actual gameplay, which in a game always should be the first priority.
Humans have this tendency to bond, from a stack of marauding keshiks one can have an early range promotion that has served you well in the last battle conquering London, we know that keeping the unit alive will make it more powerful so we try to nurture and that's about where the human 'caring' kicks in, basically pokemon, they did'nt shove an xp-system in there because of 'tactics' y'know, stick and carrot.
It tends to feel more personal if units only die because you either had to make a (possibly) hard sacifice to capture an important city or defeat a strong army then the stack of doom method in CIV.
Also, from a more practical standpoint, if player unit's wheren't immortal the higher dificulties would be impossible, unless Firaxis makes a working war AI, but let's be honest, it's more likely that the modding community will concern themselves with that then those idiots.

 

[Darvi]

Also, from a more practical standpoint, if player unit's wheren't immortal the higher dificulties would be impossible, unless Firaxis makes a working war AI, but let's be honest, it's more likely that the modding community will concern themselves with that then those idiots.

Really? You dont think that mortality of units wouldnt be weighted when determining the difficulty of certain level. Its contradictory to give advantages to cpu palyer because of lack of AI and then give unrealistic advantages to the human player. Just remove unrealistic advantages from both sides.

If there is a longbowman you like it wont be after uppgrade. People value more something that they can lose it. War is boring if you cant lose units. If you cant lose something you care about here is less excitement.

 

[Derpy Hooves]

Really? You dont think that mortality of units wouldnt be weighted when determining the difficulty of certain level. Its contradictory to give advantages to cpu palyer because of lack of AI and then give unrealistic advantages to the human player. Just remove unrealistic advantages from both sides.

If there is a longbowman you like it wont be after uppgrade. People value more something that they can lose it. War is boring if you cant lose units. If you cant lose something you care about here is less excitement.

I think you misunderstand the point, altough having mortal units due to tactical competence on the AI's part would be absolutely fantastic and would dispense with the need for the massive bonusses the AI gets, the amount of work that is needed to make a working war AI is most likely humongous and I don't believe they've ever rewritten an AI, apart from some minor things that easily get lost during a war I hav'nt seen any progression on the AI's tactical side since the release, and I believe in CIV they even borrowed/stole modders AI for the expo packs and that was with stacks of doom, I seriously doubt, unless we have a group of about 10 people working on it in some form of professional manner, that the modders will be able to make this AI work.
As noted before, writing a tactical AI for a game like this is like programming a chess AI that can deal with different kinds of terrains, including water, adaptable attack formations, 6 directions and exponentially more tiles that can be moved to and around 40 different pieces all with their own specialties and 20 different promotions that are to be acquired, with most of the late ones being somewhat game breaking.
I doubt the modding community, fervent as it might be is capable of this as this would most likely require 10+ professional programmers or extremely gifted modders working in unison, cross checking everything, working free of charge for months to years, I might be overestimated it's dificulty a bit but I doubt I'm far off.

And because the game is already released and most of their sales have likely already been made spending even half a year to make something like this is simply not cost efficient for them, sure they might make a mediocre game into a great one but it simply won't make the same amount of money as making another mediocre game like this or doing their whole crossover to facebook and I'm guessing at some point consoles. This is assuming Firaxis is even capable of creating a decent AI, reading a thread here somewhere that they just ripped most of the code from the CIV war AI you start to wonder if there's still anyone with talent associated with the project that is'nt working in the leader model department.

 

[King of Prussia]

Well here are some of my solutions:

Keep upgrading the same amount or even lower it a little on a few units.(ex Crossbowman to Rifleman is 300 gold and most of the promotions are useless) Main source of gold comes from gaming the AI.

Make units only upgradable around(1 maybe 2 tiles) or in cities.

Make Units and buildings a little cheeper tp produce but not to much to where war becomes a stalemate. Early game for me is one unit per city and that can last me till dynamite. I would like to have more early game combat.

Give units like crossbowman either an equivilent or some other promotion when upgrading to Rifleman. Same goes for helicopters and cavalry.

AI that can properly attack, defend, judge if they have the advantage or disadvantage.
Also have AI that has more than one plan so when their plan gets thwarted, they have a plan B, C, or even D. Tired of the AI either standing or running away even when they have the advantage.

These are off the top of my head.

 

[Vorlath]

I've seen other games that let up upgrade units. But you needed barracks and you needed to spend 10 turns or so where you effectively can no longer use the unit. It got longer the more advanced the unit was. This makes sense. While you can just hand someone a rifle and tell to go target practice, you just can't hand someone a helicopter and expect them to fly it right away.

edit: Also, there should be no insta-heal. It should be +1 or +2 right away and then it's per turn for a total of 10hp while still allowed to attack and move. If you're in your own territory, then it can be +3 or +4 right away and then that amount per turn. This would make it different than the auto-heal upgrade (if I remember it correctly).

 

[Darvi]

I think you misunderstand the point, altough having mortal units due to tactical competence on the AI's part would be absolutely fantastic and would dispense with the need for the massive bonusses the AI gets

I dont think I misunderstood anything since you haven corrected my assumptions. You misunderstood point I made. I didnt say to make AI better. I didnt say we could remove all the advantages given to AI. I said its stupit to give benefits to human player when the AI is behind anyway.

 

[Derpy Hooves]

Well tbh the human player does'nt get that much advantages apart from having a brain to make somewhat informed decisions, what player advantages would you take away? Healing? Promotions? The thing is that as mechanics these are not actually bad and can bring some much needed depth to warfare if the AI had some idea of how to use these, (I have seen the AI heal on not completely retarted locations mind you) but you run into the same problem as with general warfare and that is that the AI has no idea what's going on, like they took a FPS AI and are trying to force it to learn TBS.
If we're to remove promotions and healing because the AI can't use them we might as well remove 1UPT entirely because the AI is clearly incapable of doing that as well.

 

[Morpheas]

Many problems but also easy solutions in theory, someone just needs to implement them. The problem would be how affect the AI I guess. Unrealism is almost always a negative. It can be accepted is comes from simplifying of increases playability enough some other way.

1) Units shouldnt heal completely at front. They could heal something like 25% (just to gain morale back) in truly friendly territory (not occupied land) over some turns, but beyond that should have to go to barracks to heal completely with additional shield, money and food costs. Nothing should be free.

1.1) Units should lose morale in enemy territory and in lost battles. They should gain it back in friendly territory or when they win battles. Also the experience should be based on where they fought. You could still have some promotion choices, but fighting in rough terrain should improve fighting in rough terrain. Defending should improve defending not attacking and so on.

2) There should also be an alternative for returning to base and that would be joining to damaged same type units together. This is how unit could be promoted during a campaign. Lets say two riflemen get damaged to 50% and 60%. Joining them together would create one full unit with 105% HP (say half of the extra would be lost in management) plus what ever XP:s they had. Then you would have a full unit with only veterans and have their balanced XP:s calculated together. Just what is done in real wars. Combine squads that have lost men.

3) Units should be able to upgrade only in barracks and only to a similar units of the same era. Swordsmen to Long swordsmen and riflemen to infantry. Not Long swordsmen to riflemen. And the end of an era they should just become obsolete. This could be balanced by making the production of completely new units more costly as it is in real life. Only after several units made would the cost settle to normal level.

I hope you realize that you just revived a thread that was over a year old. Not sure if necroposting is allowed here.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

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?

I agree with "cost to heal".

With that change, then upgrading could be "realistic" ie you get to "upgrade" for free.. it just costs health (ie a 6 hp Horseman instantly becomes a 4 hp Knight, and so you need to buy 6 hp at "Knight cost" to get it to full hp.)

This way the "small # of units" model of CivV is retained.

You Should be able to heal in enemy territory, but it should be Slow (as it is now) or possibly expensive.