Progressive complex battles implementation

[Naokaukodem]

Thinking about the scale of units, and particularly the scale of ranged units, one can say for sure that their apparent range doesn't fit their size. For example, one could certainly assume that they can fire five tiles away and maybe more, instead of two tiles away only. That's why I imagined battles to be solved in kinds of cinematics, japanese-arcade way. I think this kind of battles would fit well within the Civ philosophy of keeping everything and particularly battles simple.

Those civnematics could show several types of units moving around each others, and maybe more types of units than the one we've built in the first place. For example, an archer firing two tiles away a enemy warrior could show some melee units shocking each others, with archers each side firing, and even horses on the flanks, with possibly some kind of imbalance regarding the proportions of each type of units, lead by the type of unit we built / we are fighting with.

Those battles would just be eye candy, and if we could see generals in them giving orders and complex troop movements, the real numbers behind them wouldn't be so complicated.

What I find interesting in this idea is that developers could set up some programmation rules as to create those cinematics in a first move, and, in the next episodes or expansions, make them slightly more and more real battle rules and more and more controllable by the player. This is this progression in real battle rules that I like, because I think that it's a good way in order to work for programmers.

The complex battle rules might depend on how they programmed the automatic battles in a first place. They could pick up ideas from them, considering there would be some to exploit.

 

[killmeplease]

i like automatic battles idea, it fits civ much more than tactical screen which is typically proposed by people who want changes.
there could be a smart auto-combat, like in Warlords 3 (one of my top-fav games though its pretty old, 1997), where outcome depends on the orders you give before the battle (fight order).

there are quite complex rules, with alot of fine points
e.g. a 4-hitpoint unit can't be killed by a Missile attack, or flying units are immune to Trample etc.