Jolly Rogerer
Prince
- Joined
- May 16, 2008
- Messages
- 402
lines? this the point...i can agreed on the matter that Sod can fit best the Stategic view of a conflict...but the lines...where are the lines in civ? front line, supply lines comunication lines, front, rear , flanks...really important things of strategic warfare in the whole history ,with sod you break no lines because no lines are here, you only have a giant army that can trash the basic aspect of strategy and smash the enemy piece by piece...this is why i never like it...
Portraying tactical and operational combat on a strategic map is an obvious weakness in the Civ series from the beginning. An equally problematic factor is the time scale. In a game where the minimum turn length is one year it's ridiculous that you can't move your forces more than a few tiles at a time. A soldier could be recruited and retire by the time his unit moved between friendly cities in the ancient era. How many years would it take to simulate Operation Desert Storm in a Civ game?
The reason that movement is so slow on the strategic map is that it is also the tactical map. In a turn based game where the minimum turn length is one year this can't realistically work. So they slowed the movement scale way down to give defenders an opportunity to react. It's a real immersion killer and makes wars and force redeployments last forever.
The problem with the SoD in Civ 4 wasn't a lack of realism, it's by far the most realistic portrayal of operational movement and combat in the Civ series. But it was implemented poorly. Specifically the decision to retain the asynchronous "it's my turn so my artillery gets to shoot and yours doesn't" factor, and the reduction of army vs army combat to a series of one on one match ups with the defender getting a massive advantage in choosing his champion last.[b/]
Fixing the problems with Civ 4's SoD system by using an algorithm to auto-calc the battle results between armies, or using a simple tactical map subsystem like MoM, HoMM etc. or even a more complex subsystem like the Total War series would be fairly simple. My preference would be for a simple subsystem with an option to auto-calc. It might even look a lot like the current 1upt system, albeit thankfully divorced from the strategic time scale and fought on a map that is dynamically scaled to the forces involved. Instead Fireaxis decided to reinvest once more in the tactical game on a strategic map paradigm. What's more they've introduced more unrealism and significant problems for the AI as well as the human by eliminating stacking altogether on the map.
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As for the lack of static front lines, it's historically only a problem of the 20th century on the strategic scale of Civ. Before that populations and armies were simply too small for anything other than static point defense. Note that even the Romans couldn't keep invading armies out of their territory, despite their population and degree of organization. It wasn't until WW1 that armies were so large and their firepower so great that they could cover an entire battle front. Before that it was armies maneuvering across large spaces where it was difficult if not impossible to bring an unwilling defender to battle.
The main inhibitor of a SoD historically was logistical. For one thing forces were limited by what the transportation network could handle. For forces with access and control of the sea or a navigable river this was not a problem. But for forces which relied on overland transport distance and capacity could significantly limit the amount of supplies you could get to your army. This gave a defender opportunities to inhibit a superior force. They could for example build fortifications along the likely lines of advance and now the attacker is faced with a tough decision. Wait and reduce the forts while the defender's own SoD mobilizes and yours slowly wears away as winter approaches, or invest the forts and weaken your main army that way, or leave them and allow the bypassed forces to potentially threaten your supply lines. It's too bad none of these games models even rudimentary supply status, it would have been an interesting counter to an SoD bee-lining for your capital.
As for modern warfare it seems impossible to satisfactorily do it justice in a game of this scale in a turn based environment without some method of effectively making one strategic turn into a lot of tactical turns. In Desert Storm a force of 500,000 was brought together from all over the world, deployed, fought and returned home in the space of one Civ turn. I guess you could hand operational control over to your AI generals, assigning them forces and giving them objectives and hitting the end turn button after a short prayer. That's an idea that I personally find interesting, but I know would be difficult to implement and is almost certain to be unpopular.