Ranged combat and mordern warfare

[Ahriman]

Don't think of it as "ranged". Think of it as having a "bombardment" ability.

Archers and siege units bombard. Rifles and tanks don't.

 

[Brawndo]

So all ranged units have the same range, it wouldn't suprise if tanks and cavalry had the same movement. It's ridiculous that infantry and tanks can't attack the enemy from afar when archers can but i guess i will have to live with it.

Trust me you can't look at it from a real world perspective, otherwise it is infuriating.

Modern tanks can fire their cannons accurately over 1 mile, whereas the best archers cannot shoot over 300 yards. However, tanks are mostly used for direct assaults, so from a gameplay perspective they function as a "melee" or close combat unit like swordsmen and spearmen, while artillery take over the ranged role that archers had.

 

[Windsor]

*******

 

[PeterWimsey]

The scale changes as you go up through the ages. It's not that rifleman can't shoot as far as archers... it's that, technically speaking, the scale has shifted such that the distance within a hex has grown.

Otherwise as you go up through the ages, unit ranges would get larger and larger and it could be a balancing nightmare.

+1

If you wanted to accurately keep track of ranges, you would have to have something like: Archers/Musketmen: Range 1; Riflemen/Longbowmen: Range 2; Machineguns/Cannon: Range 3; Tanks/Arty: Range 4; Modern Tanks: Range 5; Mod. Arty: Range 8...etc.

But this would be completely unworkable given the scale of the game - you'd be firing tanks over cities and across half of your empire.

So essentially there is a kind of abstraction - when you move, the game has one scale, and when you resolve battles, the game uses the same hexes, but basically a different, *relative* scale.

 

[MountainTiger]

I would've preferred a somewhat different approach. Give archers a bombard ability, range 1, and let them move after a ranged attack. This would be closer to my understanding of their real world use (primarily as skirmishers or to induce an advance before retreating behind friendly infantry) and still make them vulnerable in open terrain. After gunpowder, give all units a bombard, with most units having range 1 still but not moving after their attack. This would be somewhat like the age of sail ships seem to be, a weaker attack that exposes the unit to less response, with direct attacks being more powerful but riskier. This approach would both avoid the inter-era problem of range two archers and make gunpowder combat accord more closely to its actual practice, in which armies often engage in stand-off confrontations when neither side can afford a direct attack. As part of this, gunpowder infantry would probably require a hefty defense bonus to make directly charging a line of full strength riflemen a bad idea.

 

[Lyoncet]

Trust me you can't look at it from a real world perspective, otherwise it is infuriating.

Actually, it's probably better to look at it from a real-world perspective, but slightly more nuanced than "rifles shoot farther than bows so rifles should be able to bombard."

So your spears and your enemy's spears clash. You have archers behind them lobbing arrows overhead and (hopefully) hitting mostly your opponents. So Civ V represents that pretty well.

Now, you have a bunch of marines clashing with enemy marines. Are you going to have a tank or another platoon behind them lobbing bullets over their heads? No? Then why would they be able to do that in-game when you have indirect fire units such as rocket artillery to fill that role? (However, I can see perhaps coding it so that if units clash on low ground and you have an adjacent hill, it could make sense to allow the hill-based units to do indirect fire. But that's a minor point and would require pretty much recoding the bombardment system.)

The Civ V model makes perfect sense, but you have to think about the strategy involved, not just the projectile travel distance.

 

[Brawndo]

Actually, it's probably better to look at it from a real-world perspective, but slightly more nuanced than "rifles shoot farther than bows so rifles should be able to bombard."

So your spears and your enemy's spears clash. You have archers behind them lobbing arrows overhead and (hopefully) hitting mostly your opponents. So Civ V represents that pretty well.

Now, you have a bunch of marines clashing with enemy marines. Are you going to have a tank or another platoon behind them lobbing bullets over their heads? No? Then why would they be able to do that in-game when you have indirect fire units such as rocket artillery to fill that role? (However, I can see perhaps coding it so that if units clash on low ground and you have an adjacent hill, it could make sense to allow the hill-based units to do indirect fire. But that's a minor point and would require pretty much recoding the bombardment system.)

The Civ V model makes perfect sense, but you have to think about the strategy involved, not just the projectile travel distance.

Well if you wanna bring the real world into this:

Artillery can be used for direct fire. Example: Dien Bien Phu, where the Viet Minh used 105mm artillery to blast French legionnaires within visual range. Also, IRL a division of marines would be equipped with far more than just rifles, but also mortars, ATGMs, automatic grenade launchers, etc, all of which can be used as indirect fire and have ranges over 1000 meters.

So it's just best to look at combat in Civ5 from an abstract viewpoint. Spearmen, Swordsmen, Riflemen, Tanks, and the like are the close combat units of their respective eras, while Archers and Artillery are the support units.

 

[AriochIV]

Archery and siege weapons are also capable of direct fire; when attacked directly, they fight with their regular combat strength, which is usually much lower than their ranged strength value.

 

[Lyoncet]

Well if you wanna bring the real world into this:

Isn't that what this entire thread is about?

Also, IRL a division of marines would be equipped with far more than just rifles, but also mortars, ATGMs, automatic grenade launchers, etc, all of which can be used as indirect fire and have ranges over 1000 meters.

Yes, but for the sake of simpler gameplay, those units are separate from your front-line troops and not attached. It would be a lot more tedious and a lot more confusing if modern-era infantry were broken down into having both bombardment and direct fire, used separately from one another.

I mean, think of how crazy it would be to control (realistically) an actual Legion or Phalanx on Civilization's scale. That's something that's tough to do well even on a small scale, let alone a millennium-spanning game.

 

[PeterWimsey]

Well if you wanna bring the real world into this:

Also, IRL a division of marines would be equipped with far more than just rifles, but also mortars, ATGMs, automatic grenade launchers, etc, all of which can be used as indirect fire and have ranges over 1000 meters.

I would assume that the indirect fire weapons you mentioned would be included in the firepower of the unit, as they would be used for close support, even if fired indirectly. Remember that actual heavy artillery (of the type presumably represented by artillery in game) has a range of 30 km.