Military exercises become possible in a FFA multiplayer game?

[Szpilman]

I really don't think it's a major issue. As it's been pointed out, the merits of resource trading and research deals are probably good enough to warrant not going to war for pointless reasons, but I am still uncomfortable with the fact that agreeing to beat each other up is actually an alternative to other kinds of mutual agreements. It shouldn't be something that can even be considered advantageous.

"Lemme kill some of your boys and I'll let you kill some of mine, we'll all come stronger out of this! Except for their mothers."
Have they ever heard of simulation?

Completely agree with your post, and indeed I think the models may be interesting to develop upon and implement in a mod.

 

[PieceOfMind]

The same thing was possible in Revolutions, since it was possible to retreat from battle (and give the attacker a free promotion). I never saw it abused, but I barely played multiplayer.

It's still a design flaw, even if people don't rely on it frequently. It basically means that wars can be mutually beneficial to two players in a FFA game. It seems to me that they should be zero-sum or even negative sum.

One could devise an XP system that doesn't have this flaw. For instance, have units gain 1 XP per damage they deal, but healing costs XP. Two units beating on each other will just use up all the XP they earn healing themselves and not really get anywhere. The only way to profit from an encounter is to deal more damage than you take, so it would be impossible for two players to just trade hits. Extra XP would be earned for killing an enemy, but again you can only earn XP by taking something of value away from a player instead of dealing damage that ultimately doesn't matter.

The cost of promotions would probably have to be rebalanced since there would be less XP going around, but I think a system like that would work alright.

And what if both players have a unit that has 0xp? How would they heal? Or if they can heal, couldn't the two players just keep beating up on those 0xp units that don't need the xp?

 

[pi-r8]

Why not do this against a city state instead? You could attack a weak city state for 1000 years, constantly gaining experience with no real danger, as long as you never actually destroyed the city, and gave them time to rebuild/heal troops. There's no "war weariness" in civ 5, right?

 

[Szpilman]

Why not do this against a city state instead? You could attack a weak city state for 1000 years, constantly gaining experience with no real danger, as long as you never actually destroyed the city, and gave them time to rebuild/heal troops. There's no "war weariness" in civ 5, right?

I suppose there isn't, but on the other hand every City States will like you less for every other city state you oppress (even if it's their enemy, from my understanding), so if the designers were intelligent about it, they'll have designed that they also like you less the longer you oppress any given City State.

And after they've taken enough indirect or direct offense, they can actually declare "permanent war" on you, from which you can never have peace, and in fact it's possible that a whole coalition of City States does that at once, and they could bring their civ allies to the war, making it quite dangerous.

 

[CanuckSoldier]

That is one reason, among others, that in competitive MP we play Always War/Ctons and not full FFA's.

CS

 

[MasterDinadan]

That is one reason, among others, that in competitive MP we play Always War/Ctons and not full FFA's.

CS

That doesn't address the issue at all. It may even make it worse since you can't make research deals and resources trades as an alternative to making an "XP Deal."

 

[Silverwave]

Well, why not ? It would be kind of like an agreement between two nations to make simulation exercises so their troops get combat experience. It happens all the time between NATO countries. It's a viable strategy and can mimic real-life deals. Just make sure the civ you're doing this with is really your friend if you don't wanna end-up been back-stabbed

 

[MasterDinadan]

Well, why not ? It would be kind of like an agreement between two nations to make simulation exercises so their troops get combat experience. It happens all the time between NATO countries. It's a viable strategy and can mimic real-life deals. Just make sure the civ you're doing this with is really your friend if you don't wanna end-up been back-stabbed

Sure, but if that's the case, it doesn't make sense for the nations to actually go to war and be unable to trade as a result. It also doesn't make sense for the units to actually damage one another since they wouldn't use lethal weapons in a simulation.

If they want to allow "military simulations" like you described, they should just include it as another agreement similar to the research deal. Each civ pays a cost and for a certain duration their units can gain XP when they are next to the other civ's units.

Heck, they could even roll that into the defensive pact as extra incentive for the civs to fight side by side as a means to "support" one another.

 

[pi-r8]

I suppose there isn't, but on the other hand every City States will like you less for every other city state you oppress (even if it's their enemy, from my understanding), so if the designers were intelligent about it, they'll have designed that they also like you less the longer you oppress any given City State.

And after they've taken enough indirect or direct offense, they can actually declare "permanent war" on you, from which you can never have peace, and in fact it's possible that a whole coalition of City States does that at once, and they could bring their civ allies to the war, making it quite dangerous.

As I understand it, this anger from City States is based only on how many you've gone to war with, and isn't affected at all by the length of war or the number of units you kill. So if you just choose 1 state to be your XP farm, you shouldn't have any severe diplo penalties with the others. This is especially good if you're the Azteks, since they keep getting culture... that's pretty much what they did in real life anyway.

 

[MasterDinadan]

Though at the very least the city state will probably offer missions to its friendly civs to take you down. By attacking the city state, you will be making other enemies merely because they have extra incentives to attack you.

I think I'm okay with using the city states like that, since there is actually risk of losing units as a result of the fighting. You probably have to be pretty advanced to be at a point where you can routinely "cull" the city state without putting your units in harm's way.

 

[Craftsman]

I considered that as well but I started thinking of situations such as...
I flank the enemy's unit and then beat the crap out of it. It barely survives but it manages to escape. My units would earn no XP for this because it got away, and the hurt unit heals up with no consequences? Doesn't seem fair to me. I'd much rather see the attacker gain some XP for pulling off a good move like that, and the defending unit lose some XP to heal back up.

If you think about it, losing some XP for healing does make sense. Thematically, their archer unit is a whole group of archers. When you deal damage to them, you are basically killing off some of their archers. When they retreat back to their borders and "heal up" they are just replacing what they've lost. But since the units that are joining their forces are not experienced, the XP of the force as a whole goes down.

Great thread! IMO, this is a very relevant topic.

My first thought when I realized that, in most battles, both units survive after the fight was "Wow - nice!".

Then, I noticed the XP being awarded to both units. Mmmmm... Not very nice.

Let me share my idea with you, people:

- Attacking unit: receives its XP as usual.

- Defending unit: 50% (or more) chance of not receiving any XP. Game favors the attacker.

- Healing (after attack or defense): complete healing (from any amount of damage) decreases a *fixed* % of the XP from the unit. This fixed % would be determined by the damage suffered in the battle (Big Damage == Big %). This model agrees with the idea from MasterDinadan, quoted above, which considers a unit as a "group of individual soldiers" - the dead veteran soldiers must be replaced by rookies in the "healing" process. Also, deducing a fixed % from the XP would prevent the game from crashing.

And yes, past promotions, after the number crunching, may be lost. Sorry.

Let's try and create a model for this situation!

 

[The_Reckoning]

Surely this is the smaller of problems if two people are 100% collaborating in an FFA game?

 

[Narnia]

This is what is known as a War Game
I find it quite ironic that we are debating whether or not we can play War Games in a war game

PS: I think that in a future patch this should either be banned, or better yet they figure out how to get the AI to do it also. They have War Games in real life, why not in civ?

 

[Carwyn]

I play online games with good friends. We play FFA. We cheat, steal, backstab and rebackstab and that's in the same game. All's fair, except if you break an agreement all heck may break loose... unless my friends are impressed by the incredible gutsiness of the backstab. I've been backstabbed by one very dear friend at the behest of another. I got on the phone and arranged to backstab the other friend back again and one turned coat. Great fun! You people take this all too seriously.

Nobody cheats like the AI anyways!