Mix RTS Combat with CIV

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marconos

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I'm a big RTS fan ... I'm also a big fan. I want to mix the two.

Here is my thought.

When you start a war ever battle is a small RTS fight. You attack their stack with your stack. The system then generates a battlefield that has the proper stuff for where you are fighting (right terrain, improvements etc). If you are attacking you start on the proper border (N/S/E/W) from where you attacked from. If you are the defender you start out fortied in the farm, oil well, etc whatever is in the area. You then have a RTS type of combat to resolve the combat. If you win you win the fight. If you loose all your units are dead.

IMO, this would help the computer out with combat a lot, examples would be Starcraft where the AI is pretty good.

Good or Bad Idea

2nd Idea: 1st person shooter for spy mission in a city....
 
Good I guess if you want to play that kind of game. I don't.

The main attraction of RTS games for me is the pure real-time experience, playing with friends & no down time. Your idea IMO would nerf that. And if you weren't playing a real person, purely tactical RTS play against an AI would get old ... quickly. Just like non-quick combat in civ ;)
 
There is already a game similar to what you describe. Its name: The Total War series. Pretty much exactly what you describe.
 
I like your suggestion but would say it reminds me of Medieval Total War. Whenever I take a break from Civ, I play MTW. You might like Total War if you have not tried it. The AI there does not however excel at the tactical level combat either though. What strikes me about combat in Civ is that it has little realism. In Total War, range, weapon type, terrain and a lot of other real world factors are important to tactical combat. In Civ, the combat seems more like a way to assess the development of the civ that brought the units to the battle.
 
Total War series... Age of Wonders... and some other games. Plus, if you want RTS-Civ just get Rise of Nations.
 
I liked going to RTS until I found that the 'rush' makes the human a winner every time.
 
The latest "Total War" series go to great pains to reflect the geography / military situation you see on the main map, with the type of battle that you then fight on the battle map, (i.e if there is a river on the left and enemy stacks North and South, then that's the actual battle you fight. The battles can involve several thousand units, if there are multiple stacks and the battle maps contain an extraordinary amount of detail, and more than you have asked for.....

But.........

"TW" just does not have the huge replaying power of Civ.

"TW" is well worth playing, but there are weaknesses to it's re playability:

1) The main continent map is always the same, the civs and resources always start in the same places, and there just isn't that feeling of discovery you get in the early part of Civ. Each Civ game is truly unique and every start is utterly random and unknown. TW has a completely predictable start, once you have played it a few times.

2) The TW "battle maps" are a huge amount of fun, and you can create a very unique army with different strengths and weaknesses, and every unit can gain veterancy or be upgraded by tech, but you have to fight a HUGE number of battles, Yes, you can risk the "auto resolve" button when faced with a simple battle you should win easily, but the human player can do a much, much better job than the computer, and you therefore have to fight every battle yourself, just to keep hold of your veteran troops and generals. As much fun as the battles are, the sheer number of battles you have to fight just becomes very frustrating after a while. If you think about how many battles there are to fight in some "civ" games the problem would become infinitely worse, if there was a "battle map" in Civ. If games developers could design an "auto resolve" that produced a result that was vaguely fair, then we would only have to fight the really important battles ourselves, (rather than every single one of them), but this tends to defeat the whole point of having a "battle map".

-------------

The "TW" series is soon to release their latest game in the series, and it will be set during the age of discovery, and many fans hope it will be an evolution on "TW2" which many people were mildly disappointed by. The previous version "TW:Rome" felt like a genuine evolution of the game series, whereas "Med2" just felt like Rome with a few new skins and fancier graphics.

So, the "TW" series does everything the OP asked for, and more, and it is great fun, but it just does not have the re playability of the Civ series, (yet?).

On balance I would therefore prefer it if Civ5 did NOT have a "battle map" as it just doesn't work yet.

I'm looking forward to the new "TW" game, (this Summer?), as it it will be the first game in the series to feature naval battle maps, and that should be extra fun. For me, the "Test of Time" (excuse the pun), of the new "TW" game will be how long it takes before I am forced to fight a battle on the "battle map" that I can't really be arsed to fight, because I am clearly going to win it, but if I hit auto resolve I risk an uncertain outcome and the loss of an unacceptable number of key troops / generals, so I have to fight it = groan.

Regards - Mr P
 
Not something I'd be interested in. I found that style to be very tedious and time consuming in the only version of Total War I've played.
 
I wouldn't want it. One of the best things about the Civilization series is that if you're not playing, nothing happens. You don't have to pause the game, and there is no pressure to act quickly. RTS games tend to be too nerve wracking to be much fun for me. I can't relax that way, and I play games to wind down, not get worked up. If the feature you describe is added to Civ 5 when (or if) it comes out, I probably wouldn't buy it because it would be eliminating one of the key reasons I like turn based games.
 
But if it was more like the combat system in Pirates, however, that could be interesting. But I think I would still prefer combat to work as it currently does.
 
I have to weigh in here - one of the best elements, in my opinion, of Civ is the fact that's it's a TBS, not RTS. I love TBS (and also turn-based tactics) games - I feel they generally are more complex and offer a deeper style of gameplay over real-time strategy, which (for me) tends to degrade into 'how fast can I click the mouse in the right place?"

Now, I know this is just my opinion, and different gamers need different things - but I think Civ is my last bastion of true turn-based strategy - so I'll have to vote bad idea on this one.... :)

(Not to thread-jack too badly, but I am also totally open to anyone who has any suggestions of other turn-based strategy or (better yet) turn based tactics games out there (example: the first XCOM games). It seems to me that games are almost entirely FPS or RTS these days - but I'd certainly love for someone to prove me wrong by steering me towards good turn-based titles!
 
jeffreyac said:
I have to weigh in here - one of the best elements, in my opinion, of Civ is the fact that's it's a TBS, not RTS. I love TBS (and also turn-based tactics) games - I feel they generally are more complex and offer a deeper style of gameplay over real-time strategy, which (for me) tends to degrade into 'how fast can I click the mouse in the right place?"
Click to expand...

That's exactly how I feel. Every time I play a RTS game, I do OK for a while, but sooner or later the crazy mouse clicking part of the game starts to take over, and I just can't (or don't find it fun to) keep up.
 
I would not mind an option to play the combat with TBS--like the city combat in Sid's Pirates (not the sword fighting part). When you attack stacks, you get the choice to let the computer run the odds or go into the combat TBS to control units until one side or the other is wiped out.

Then we could finally see how those tiny spearmen are whoopin arse on mech inf. Or the Caravel taking out a Destroyer. Firaxis already has the code in Pirates, so it would not be hard to link in. ;)
 
A more tactical version of combat could be interesting... I'd also like to see it do away with individual units, focusing more on Legions or Divisions that can be customized with specialist brigades or platoons. It would feature generals with different strengths of how to employ their troops on the field, and allow but not require micromanagement at the tactical level. I guess what I'm envisioning is kind of a combination with Hearts of Iron and Civ, although ideally it would be far less complicated and obtuse than HOI.
 
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