Late game combat tedious

[Stageon]

Maybe it's just me, but the weaknesses of the game's combat system - talking about the interface more than mechanics here - becomes really apparent in the modern age, especially on maps bigger than "small". It almost seems like another game...I really enjoy combat in the ancient, medieval, rennaissance, industrial ages, but once each civ starts stockpiling huge numbers of units, eveything slows to a crawl. There's a dearth of options for selecting and controlling particular groups and everything seems to lag pretty bad behind clicks. I have a pretty decent system too.

I'm not complaining per se, I mean I love the game overall. It just seems like not enough though was put into doing things en masse. I know about the grouping, selection, and rally point options that exist, it just seems like everything seems way more difficult and clunkier than it should be. We've gotten lots of ideas brought in from RTS game, like a scrolling world map, 3D graphics, and so on, but maybe more could have been/will be done in this regard.

Any opinions? Am I the only one who doesn't enjoy the late game/massive battles as much as smaller scale tactical affairs with a manageable number of cities?

 

[mutax2003]

Use the stack attack option, will take the tandum out of controlling your massive modern army

 

[Renobe]

I have had the game only a very short time, but I am amazed at the large file size an cpu usage of this game considering the fact that their does not seem to be that much going on. An RTW a real time game, their can be thousands of men locked an combat, an the graghics take a back seat to no game, yet the resource use is less than Civ 4.

 

[Simon Appleton]

I rather like the late game combat - the existence of railways makes it a brisker affair, as does the availability of bombers. Even on huge terra, I don't that big a military - maybe only 20 or so "frontline" land units.

But I agree later wars are often less engaging than earlier ones either (a) because I outmatch the AI (whereas earlier conflicts are much more battles for my survival); or (b) because it is overshadowed by the space race.

 

[shadow2k]

Use the stack attack option, will take the tandum out of controlling your massive modern army

It also takes away your advantage of not being the AI. I often make decisions on what unit to attack with based on which units need promotions, which units will stay and cover the wounded attackers, which can still move into a city after attacking and such...not necessarily who the best attacker is.

He's not talking about the number of units, just the overall lag in the game mechanics once you get to that stage. It's horrendous. There's absolutely no reason a turn based strategy game should perform so poorly on high-end systems.

 

[al_thor]

Yeah, revert to 'stacked attack' and you might as well be the AI. Stupid. What if you want to bombard with half of your arty and attack with the other half? Want a specific unit promoted? Want to preserve your best unit to get him up to level 7? Not happening with the mindless stack attack.......

edit: typos

 

[ticktockclok]

For me, I either complete the game before the modern age or stop the game once I reach it. It gets so boring and so much micromanaging is required, that you can compare it to Civ 3's workers.

 

[al_thor]

Yes, late game combat IS tedious. And all those jets flying intercept? I don't need to see them circling about above my cities. This is broken anyway, at least visually - when you load the game back up (after getting some much needed sleep) all of the fighters/jets flying intercept have to be re-set.

 

[Reinhard]

Agree, I can usually only play one turn in one sitting in a modern war situation, because it gets so very very boring and I have to save&quit.

 

[illram]

For me the most annoying thing is the bombers. It's really annoying when the computer bombs the hell out of you and all you see is a slow crawl of text messages saying he bombed something. The messages last seemingly an entire turn, obscuring the left side of the map, and you can never actually see where the bombing was. (It's impossible to actually click all the little bombing icons that pop up, obviously.)

 

[Zekrazey1]

Unless every single unit is treated differently, I don't see why you wouldn't use stack attack. It doesn't have to mean the whole stack, it can mean any group of units you have selected.

What if you want to bombard with half of your arty and attack with the other half?

So select half your arty for bombarding and select the other half when you're attacking. If there's a group of units you want to save for hitting weakened units, you can treat them all individually.

I'm a little confused as to why having stack attack on takes away your ability to choose different levels of control. I'm reasonably sure the difference between stack and no stack attack is that the group of units you have selected either all attack on one click or attack one unit per click (respectively).

For me the most annoying thing is the bombers. It's really annoying when the computer bombs the hell out of you and all you see is a slow crawl of text messages saying he bombed something. The messages last seemingly an entire turn, obscuring the left side of the map, and you can never actually see where the bombing was. (It's impossible to actually click all the little bombing icons that pop up, obviously.)

I reckon there should be an 'automatically rebuild prior improvements' option for workers .

 

[shadow2k]

Unless every single unit is treated differently, I don't see why you wouldn't use stack attack. It doesn't have to mean the whole stack, it can mean any group of units you have selected.


So select half your arty for bombarding and select the other half when you're attacking. If there's a group of units you want to save for hitting weakened units, you can treat them all individually.

I'm a little confused as to why having stack attack on takes away your ability to choose different levels of control.

Well for the arty, look at it like this. The city's defense isn't always taken down by a neat 10/15%. Sometimes it's 12% or whatever. Sometimes, leaving that city at 3%, or 6%, or even 20% is a better option, because you want to have enough cats to move that turn and roll towards the next city. Keeping the war machine rolling. That 20% you don't take off might not be necessary.

I treat every single unit differntly, yes. Because they are. Some I have dedicated for defense, some attack, some city guard, etc...

Just take a simple example. You have 4 maces ready to attack a city with two weak defenders. Two of your maces are City Raider 3, two are City Raider 2 and needs one more xp to promote.

What I would do is attack with the CR2's to promote them. The AI doesn't do that. It attacks with both CR3's for best odds, even though the CR2's are 99% to win or whatever.

This is a very simplistic example. Yes, you could just make a new group of the CR2's, but why? Does it save you any time to do that? And then when you want a different group, you have to regroup again. What's the point? The groupings are more of a hassle to me than anything else, except when I'm merely moving large groups around.

Then think about it on a more advanced scale. I don't want to go into any longwinded examples, but stack attack is merely using the AI's brain to do your job. In certain situations, you don't always want the best attacker going first. Maybe you're best attacker has crappy odds, and you don't want to lose him. Maybe you need that obsolete axe promoted to medic 2. Maybe you don't want to attack full force this turn, because you can't take the city until next turn even though you have 100% odds for every battle, but your ally will attack as well, and could take the city if you take out too many troops.

All sorts of situations dictate that you not rely on the AI to make your decisions for you. There is a reason the AI gets bonuses at higher levels, and it's because it is incapable of making these types of decisions. It bases it's decisions on mathematical calculations, where you have the ability to judge all the other factors in their context, such as enemy troops nearby that can counter next turn, promotions, value of certain troops and not wanting to lose them, need to press on without waiting to heal, etc...

Stack attack, and anything else that relies on the AI, is merely bringing you down to it's level.

 

[jaythewise]

I personally think air power in civ4 is crap, the only thing i liked better in civ3 is air power

 

[Renobe]

It also takes away your advantage of not being the AI. I often make decisions on what unit to attack with based on which units need promotions, which units will stay and cover the wounded attackers, which can still move into a city after attacking and such...not necessarily who the best attacker is.

He's not talking about the number of units, just the overall lag in the game mechanics once you get to that stage. It's horrendous. There's absolutely no reason a turn based strategy game should perform so poorly on high-end systems.

The lag is due to unit & improvement density.

The game slows down more and more as the map becomes more cluddered. By the time you reach the modern era the density of units and improvements is extremley high.
You can test this yourself by deleting most of all units & improvements, an the modern era, than checking game speed.
An your right about a turn based strategy game should not perform so poorly on high-end systems

 

[romelus]

i totally agree. even made a post in the suggestions forum, to add a key to select all healthy units in a stack. it would be extremely time saving to hit a key to have all healthy bombers attack and rest all injured ones, for example.

also helpful would be a key to select different promotion types. so we don't have to go through 50 mech infs to find the 5 city defenders we need to fortify.

i know civ 4 is trying to minimize pop ups, but this is one situation where a pop up stack management screen is sorely needed

if anyone wonders why i'd have 60 stealth bombers, 80 modern tanks and hundreds of mech infs in a game. i was playing 9 teams of 2, and my partner got creamed early, so i was fighting anywhere from 2 to 6 AIs at any given time, on monarch. i needed that many units