Option for disableing random in battles

[Andas]

Ok.. from what i read i think it will be possible to disable it from modding .... but it will be nice to have directly an option.
I can't play Civ3 becouse of this stupid random in battles.... is not hard to enable /disable random IF you have the source code....
Please add this option.

 

[apatheist]

Then as soon as any civ gets a tech advantage, they'll be able to conquer the world.

 

[warpstorm]

I have to second apatheist on this. It would mean that any miltary tech advantage was a guaranteed win.

 

[Trade-peror]

Warpstorm and apatheist are right. However, I do support decreasing the randomness of battles, but instead increasing the number of economic and political factors that must be considered before embarking on world conquest. Currently, the economic, social, and political consequences of military action are close to nothing (compared to what can be gained and what is usually dealt with anyway), and that should change. The solution to preventing military advantage from automatically becoming overall advantage should not be through randomization.

 

[mastertyguy]

I am with you, for sure! There MUST be randomness some where. I prefer that is 1:10000000000000000000000000000000000000000 than 0.

 

[MusicLaunch]

Maybe a smaller country with happier citizens could increase the chances of a unit winning?

ie: I'm doing poorly in this game; I only have 3 cities, but they are happy. You have expanded nicely, but are facing unhappiness due to city maintenance eating the luxury money. So, in order to favor the weaker nations, my archer would be better than your archer due to morale (?) or culture (?). And as the game progresses, and I conquer more of your land, the unit bonus would shift in your favour, because you are weaker now.

Smaller country = Unit bonus, so that you can wage wars better and come back into the game.
Larger country = Normal Units, but because you've expanded a lot, you've gotta defend your land better:
Your civilization's future will not be 'set' as much in the early ages as you've got to defend from weaker nations.

 

[Civman2004]

I thought I read that they were reducing the randomness element by increasing the hit-power of the more modern units, so that there was less chance of the

By having more hit-points, you increase the number of times in a row the spearman needs to get lucky to destroy the tank, for example, and so you reduce the chance that it will happen, but it's still possible.

 

[andrewlt]

Then as soon as any civ gets a tech advantage, they'll be able to conquer the world.

Which they should do, if the tech advantage is significant enough. I'm not talking about 1 tech level, but the increases should be exponential once you get to 2 or more levels up the progression. Spearman went to pikeman then to musket man then to rifleman then to infantry then to mech infantry in Civ 3 if I'm not mistaken. There may not be a big difference between spearman and pikeman but there's a very big difference between spearman and musket man and the game should reflect the exponential increases in tech.

If you're too behind in tech, that's your fault. If the AI is too far behind and you find it boring, you should go to a higher difficulty.

Now, I love the idea of hp but I think it's not going to work for this kind of game and it is pushing things too far. However, I find that Civ 3's random output had too high of a standard deviation and too large a chance for much higher tech units to defeat lower tech units. I like that they're introducing something like firepower in Civ2 but streamlining it. There should be obselescence in units and you have to upgrade or disband old units and also keep up somewhat in tech and build better units.

 

[frekk]

There may not be a big difference between spearman and pikeman but there's a very big difference between spearman and musket man and the game should reflect the exponential increases in tech.

Not big enough that the muskets should win every time ... spearmen defeated muskets a number of times. The musket really was inferior even to the longbow, but anybody could use it with little training so it allowed the raising of large armies at (relatively) little expense. It's only with the invention of the rifle that hand weapons became more or less obsolete, and even then, one can point to numerous examples during battles in North America where hand weapons were used to devastating effect once melee was closed.

The real advantages of colonial powers in most battles with natives were cannon, and sometimes steel armour and hand weapons.

 

[Andas]

ok... I don't want to eliminate the random just to MAKE AN OPTION to reduce it or eliminate it IF YOU WANT !
I play chess... i like to know exactly whats happening... and offcurse the one who have tech advantage will not win every time... if you attack let's say an infantry with 3 rifleman.. offcourse the infantry will loose.
So an option like that I don;t think will hurt anybody..... I don;t play Civ 3 anymore becouse of this stupid random... to great for my taste.

 

[mastertyguy]

With what I understand, spear defeats tank should be quite rare, and if anybody sees it happen in civ4, it would only be because we will because a large number of civ4 player playing an equally large number of civ4 games, and we actually use tanks against spears at some point, and one of us hasn't been lucky and .

 

[warpstorm]

Andas, my opinion is that options in major game subsystems are bad. Why? Because the developers only have so much time to balance the game. Making a major (and eliminating randomness in combat is MAJOR) option available to a subsystem has to be balanced for each way that option can be set times the number of other major options settings for each other major option. This can be a mammoth undertaking if their are too many major options. It may be an impossible undertaking if some of the options are mutually incompatible.

What defines a major option? Why, one that requires the game to be rebalanced if implemented.



FWIW, I've had exactly one tank lose to a spearman in all of my many games.

 

[Deep_Blue]

To prevent spearman from defeating Tank, units ranking can be used. Iam not sure if Ranking was discussed before, but here it is:
Divide all units to lets say 3 ranks :

1. Rank 1: spearman , swordman , archer....
2. Rank 2: Rifleman , cavlary,.....
3. Rank 3: Tank , modern armour....

Rank1 can beat Rank2 but it will never beat rank3
Rank 2 can beat Rank1 and rank3
Rank 3 can beat Rank 2 and It will never lose (or even injured) from rank 1

can : there is some probability high or low
never : probability = 0

 

[apatheist]

To elaborate on warpstorm's comment, every single aspect of the combat system has been designed assuming battles are a series of die rolls. If you take that one thing away without adjusting anything else, you will have an unbalanced game.

andrewlt, your comment is irrelevant. Of course a tank should defeat a spearman. If the OP's suggestion is followed, however, a Swordsman will always defeat a Spearman, and a Knight will always defeat a Pikeman. In fact, a Swordsman (on offense) will always defeat a Swordsman (on defense). That's not a tech advantage of an era or more, that's a one tech lead allowing you to potentially conquer the world. Then there are even greater problems: what about Horsemen (attack 2) against Spearman (defense 2)? Who wins then? The idea is just non-sensical.

 

[RCL]

I support Deep_Blue's idea of ranking. But I would rank not on the era, but rather on the weapons and armoury used by units. There are some things that should be considered:

1) Units not using armor-piercing weaponry and/or hand grenades can never win over armored units (mech infantry, tanks, etc). It's just not possible.

According to rumours, Polish cavalry once attacked German tanks during WW2 (or got ambushed by them, what is probably more true) :> They weren't able to damage a single tank :>

2) Units without any armour (Warriors, Archers) can never win against armored units like Knights. Possibility to inflict any damage to them is quite low and can be considered zero for all the practical reasons.

3) Units using firearms (Rifleman, Cavalry and higher ones) in practice are invincible for any units fighting in close combat. Again, possibility for spearmen etc to inflict any damage on them can be considered zero.

This all looks like it will ruin the gameplay, but I'm sure it can be balanced. Consider higher bonuses for fortifications and/or building fortresses right in the city (that way, only ranged units could attack that city).

 

[apatheist]

According to rumours, Polish cavalry once attacked German tanks during WW2 (or got ambushed by them, what is probably more true) :> They weren't able to damage a single tank :>

The story about Polish cavalry attempting to fight German tanks is mostly, if not completely, German propaganda to make the Poles look stupid.

 

[rickb]

Yep, if military history has taught us anything (and it hasn't) it's that wars are nice tidy, deterministic affairs and nothing has ever once not gone according to plan and nothing improbable has ever or will ever happen.

And Civ has taught us that wars are fought by 500 foot tall spearmen in single combat against 500 foot tall tanks.

I predict in the future that nuclear wars will all be fought by computer, the causalities will be totaled, and those determined to have been killed will report to disintegration booths, until a dashing starship captain teaches us the folly of our ways.

What's this abstraction thing you speak of? Things can represent other things in a non-literal sense? You mean to tell me that 1 hitpoint tank icon represents a few broken down tanks after heavy combat and a 5 hit point spearmen represents a few thousand men? I don't understand. Why doesn't the game show me little tanks and men drawn to scale to represent that? Why does it take me a hundred years to move a tile? I don't understand, you're blowing my mind man!!! Whoa, my mind if like expanding. Hey what if like the universe is just like this one atom of like this bigger universe?

 

[RCL]

rickb:

Well, I don't really understand your point (sorry, English is not my native language), but I feel the irony in your post

I agree that game mechanics should not be literally translated to real life. I understand, that when infantry unit wins over tank unit, we shouldn't think of that like they have shot the tanks with their rifles. Victory here represents a possibility for infantry to _somehow_ win over tanks (e.g. by using grenades).

Perhaps there is very very small probability that several thousand spearmen win over a tank unit (there's a joke in Russia about Chineese anti-tank regiment, which comprises of several thousand people whose task is to disassemble the tank faster than it manages to crush them ). But how real is that? I guess that in the game, such a probability can be considered zero.

And consider the psychological factor. In WW2, there was something called 'tank disease' among Russian soldiers. Recruits from far villages, who never saw any technics except maybe in late 1930s, were scared like hell when they saw armored machines approaching on them (indeed a shocking view, especially, when you are viewing them lying on the ground). The problem was so serious that special trainings were organized to get the troops accustomed to fight armor.

Considering all that, chance of any ancient unit inflicting _any_ damage to tanks should be 0 for the game. The same as fighting air units.

 

[warpstorm]

Guess you guys never heard of Molotov Cocktails, a remarkably low-tech device that can be made roughly the time you invent Greek Fire (600ish AD in our timeline). It is rumored to have allowed regular infantry (or even relatively unarmed mobs) to destroy tanks.

Once TNT, dynamite, or an equivalent high explosive has been invented (well before tanks (1860s) in our timeline) satchel charges become a real possiblity. Cheap, light, and effective; every squad can have few.

Look up how the Finns did the Winter War some time.

The defenders dug in on January 11th, when they were harassed from every direction

The west Lemetti Motti was very strong. The tanks had formed a ring of mobile pillboxes which proved out to be hard to destroy, as the Finns had only satchel charges and Molotov cocktails. Also the lack of artillery was a handicap. The infantry had entrenched between the tanks.

The West-Lemetti Motti was in two parts, the other one being the so-called "Mylly" ("Mill" in English) strongpoint. The western part was destroyed on February 2nd at 0315 hrs. After that the Finns concentrated against the strongpoint "Mylly", which was stormed on February 4th at 0430 hrs.

- From the western part, the following war booty was captured; 25 tanks (from which many were captured without damage) , 2 field guns (76 RK 27) , 1 AT-gun (45 mm) , 1 AA-mg , 2 field kitchens , 12 trucks . It appears that all rifles, mg's and lmg's were taken into use by the Finns immediately, because no data remains of the number of captured infantry weapons.

- From the strongpoint "Mylly", the following war booty was captured; 7 tanks , 2 field guns , 1 AT -gun , one 82 mm mortar , 13 front wagons for field guns , 4 field kitchens , 26 trucks , 4 cars , 10 horse carriages , 1 radio station , a field bakery , the equipment of the division's orchestra. Again, most of the infantry weapons were taken into use, but this time 5 LMG's , 1 MG and 210 rifles were handed over to be transported to the Finnish depots.

 

[RCL]

Molotov cocktail _could_ stop the tanks, agreed (putting aside the cost in human lives that it took to stop the tank such way). But spearmen just can't use it - or they are not spearmen anymore.