Rush to tank

[Dave Angel]

I've been a CIV fan for ages, and through out each version, one thing has bugged me, and I am contemplating writing a mod pack to sort it, and wondered if there was one already out there.

My first game of CIV4, a couple of days after the patch that let me play it.. I played on Noble (Yeah I know but it was a new game) and blitzed research, before too long I had flight. Now when I went 'mopping up' the nearby lesser civ I sent in my gunships. Much to my horror, it was shot down by a axe man. HOW???!!!!!!

I remember reading an article before regarding later techs and the combat modifiers, And the reasoning behind this was to prevent a 'rush to tank' scenario.

As I was contimplating what a kind of throw was needed to knock out an full on armour plated helicopter at 500" with a embossed battle axe, i decided that this was just not right.

Does anybody have any suggestions\opionions?

ta

 

[BlackMage]

Ah, the ever present Tank vs Spearmen debate. While I empathize with you - there's nothing more painful than seeing a gunship shot down by a swordsman, the fact is that such anomalies will always exist as long as the battle system remains as it is, and it probably will be so that no unit is so obsolete that it cannot damage its foe, let alone use bonii to it's advantage.

My suggestion to you is to make sure that you are on the winning end of the Combat Odds. Always bombard enemy defenses - if you are attacking in the modern age, you should have Artillery - don't cross rivers to attack and - if your enemy is entrenched that deep - suicide some arty for collateral damage. Don't let your technological superiority make you complacent tactically.

 

[boneys26]

I've been a CIV fan for ages, and through out each version, one thing has bugged me, and I am contemplating writing a mod pack to sort it, and wondered if there was one already out there.

My first game of CIV4, a couple of days after the patch that let me play it.. I played on Noble (Yeah I know but it was a new game) and blitzed research, before too long I had flight. Now when I went 'mopping up' the nearby lesser civ I sent in my gunships. Much to my horror, it was shot down by a axe man. HOW???!!!!!!

I remember reading an article before regarding later techs and the combat modifiers, And the reasoning behind this was to prevent a 'rush to tank' scenario.

As I was contimplating what a kind of throw was needed to knock out an full on armour plated helicopter at 500" with a embossed battle axe, i decided that this was just not right.

Does anybody have any suggestions\opionions?

ta

the only thing i can think of is fly higher next time lol wish I'd seen the look on your face one thing i have noticed is gunships are weak when being attacked unless its armor attacking it

 

[Dagoril]

I'm kind of underwhelmed by tanks in Civ4. I built them a lot in Civ2, but they are noticeably weaker now...I'm preferring Marines in those few games I play that late in the tech tree.

One interesting thing...when I was in the military (long ago hehe), we had a friend who had been doing some signals work prior to our assignment, and who had been spying on the Russians when they were in Afghanistan. He told us they had audio traffic of Afghan horsemen attacking a tank convoy, and it was pretty gruesome apparently...tanks didn't survive. Obviously they didn't destroy the things with swords, they were able to get close with their horse mobility and get at the people inside while avoiding the gun turrets.

Now how a swordsman could take out an air unit I don't get at all hehe...one person with a rocket launcher could do it, but not a sword

 

[kjaye]

I've been a CIV fan for ages, and through out each version, one thing has bugged me, and I am contemplating writing a mod pack to sort it, and wondered if there was one already out there.

My first game of CIV4, a couple of days after the patch that let me play it.. I played on Noble (Yeah I know but it was a new game) and blitzed research, before too long I had flight. Now when I went 'mopping up' the nearby lesser civ I sent in my gunships. Much to my horror, it was shot down by a axe man. HOW???!!!!!!

I remember reading an article before regarding later techs and the combat modifiers, And the reasoning behind this was to prevent a 'rush to tank' scenario.

As I was contimplating what a kind of throw was needed to knock out an full on armour plated helicopter at 500" with a embossed battle axe, i decided that this was just not right.

Does anybody have any suggestions\opionions?

ta

Surely you have seen First Blood with Slyvestor Stallone?

Remember how in that after throwing himself off that cliff and into the trees below he threw stones at the helicopter windscreen and in the commotion the sniper shooting at him fell out and tumbled to his death!

Ok so he didn't destroy the helicopter but with hundreds of swordsman all throwing stones then maybe they could!


Also if you are the Americans, or are allied to the Americans it's entirely likely that the helicopter could be brought down by 'friendly fire' so another possible explantion there

 

[Clownfish]

Imagine that a battle is not actually a couple of helicopters shooting at axemen, fighting back, but a more complex scenario. Perhaps, the choppers have to hunt the axemen among buildings, sometimes even go down on the ground, having soldiers fight the axemen. If axemen beat choppers, it means that, this time, the axemen were extremely cunning and smart, the choppers unlucky and operated by clumsy pilots, crashing into buildings or whatever or decapitaded when forced to land for some reason... Use your imagination!

Remember,l the cunning north vietnamese killied lots of americans high-tech soldiers in the jungle with bamboo boobytraps etc!

 

[puglover]

I have one word for you, Dave. Ewoks

 

[Gaizokubanou]

Come on guys, let's just face that what OP has posted is downright wrong

 

[Dave Angel]

I can understand how a spearman (against overwhelming odds) could guarrilla warfair a tank out of action, but not a high level bomber for example.

Well, (i'm going to check when I get home) I know an axeman is a melee unit, could a 'chopper be an 'airborne' unit?

could you mod a rule so that an airborne unit is immune to melee attacks?

 

[jayeffaar]

Have any of you ever seen a chess player complaining that his Knight was killed by a Bishop? "How could a Bishop kill an armored guy sitting on a horse? That makes no sense!"

You just have to get past the idea that it's an actual axeman attacking a helicopter and look at it as what it is: two units with attached probability values fighting it out through a random number generator. All results make sense given the rules of the game.

Of course, if you must fanwank it, chances are the gunship was already damaged before the fatal fight with the axeman. It could have suffered a catastrophic system failure as it tried to fire off a sidewinder or the pilot might have passed out after losing too much blood and crashed into the side of a nearby mountain...

 

[acidsatyr]

then why can't sword attack a ship?

 

[jayeffaar]

Why can a bishop only move diagonally in chess?

Fanwank: standing on top of a cliff with a sword, it's kind of hard to attack a passing ship, even if it's anchored off-shore. A gunship, on the other hand, has to land in between turns for the pilot's pee or cigarette break.

 

[jimbob27]

Battle of mogadishu.

Most of the somali's were armed with pointy sticks, yet they took out some helicopters. There certainly wern't any anti-air "units" defending mogadishu. A few of the somali's had rpg's, but translating the situation into civ terms, the city would have been defended by a mix of riflemen and melee units.

There's a reason this still exists!! --->

 

[jimbob27]

Why can a bishop only move diagonally in chess?

Fanwank: standing on top of a cliff with a sword, it's kind of hard to attack a passing ship, even if it's anchored off-shore. A gunship, on the other hand, has to land in between turns for the pilot's pee or cigarette break.

Well... the japanese sword men managed to defeat kublai kahn's invasion fleet pretty well. The samurai fought them off every time they tried to land, so the invasion fleet just sat around in their boats for weeks, not really knowing what to do. Eventually a typhoon came along and sunk all the boats.

Seeing as the game doesn't have any mechanics for natural disasters... if this situation was translated into civ.... the swordsmen would have to get the credit for killing them all.

 

[Brancaleone]

But swordmen have strengh 6, horsemen have str 5, and they were doing amphibious attacks, -25% to str IIRC. So, a bunch of japanese garrisoned on a forested hill could easly dispatch a large number of horse archers

Ive read a website once about cossacks, and it had several pictures of them attacking the nazi tanks! Off course, it was cold like hell (-50°C or something), and they attacked during a storm; the german tanks fuel was frozen, and their hand guns were not adapted for cold environment, so the spear wielding cossacks did destroyed (once) a few panzers.

There must be dozens of examples of low tech units defeating modern soldiers. Like, the zulu against british musketmen; japanese samurai and Tom Cruise against machineguns ; in the Paraguay war (or whatever you call it), the brazilian navy (composed of wooden ships) defeated the paraguay modern navy; in the second world war there was a unit of british biplanes who sinked several ships.

In the right situation, a Battering Ram can defeat a stealth bomber; im actually glad civ IV allow this kind of heroic acts

 

[chef pablo]

Dave I happen to agree with you but there is no reason to think that a nation defending it self from a technologicly advanced nation couldnt acquire weaponry on the balck market to defend itself.

with that in mind here is my suggestion, promotions should be the "black market"go a head and make things like armor and gunships all powerfull on the battlefield using a basic 1/0 equeasion armor can not be defended against unless there is a anti armor promotion or the appropriate unit to defend with.Add to this a rule that is any nation defending itself from a technolicly advanced nation has access to those promotions neccesary to defend itself wither they have the technology or not.this should solve the problem.

 

[jimbob27]

Or you could just use your imagination, and assume that those particular axemen found a few rpgs lying around.

 

[Armorydave]

Sometimes helicopters and planes crash on missions before they even reach their target. In that case it matters little whether they were intending to bomb a group of spearman or SAM infantry. There is inherent risk involved in flying combat missions regardless of the target. The infintesimal chance of failure that exists if the units are both at full strength accounts for losses due to non-combat circumstances. If you are attacking with a seriously damaged helicopter it is entirely likely it could crash just trying to get it off the ground (which is why the chance that a swordsman could "take out" a helicopter increases radically as the helicopter takes damage). The swordsman didn't have to do anything to win the battle the dumb bastards tried to fly a heavily damaged helicopter and it crashed.

 

[chef pablo]

yeah you could but it costs some very interesting stratagy that i want to see,having black and white results adds depth to deciding what to attack with and to defend with.this is mostly what frustrates me about the current system.The subject at hand was to find an answer to having units being destroyed by an obviosely underclassed unit,while keeping stratagy in mind.

When the Tank came onto the battlefield late in the first world war,it reigned supream.This is what ide like to see.If it needs to be worked around than so be it.

 

[naterator]

Most of the somali's were armed with pointy sticks, yet they took out some helicopters. There certainly wern't any anti-air "units" defending mogadishu. A few of the somali's had rpg's, but translating the situation into civ terms, the city would have been defended by a mix of riflemen and melee units.

well to be fair, the ones who shot down the helicopters had the rpg's, not the sticks. and while not a traditional "unit", there was a whole lot of RPG's, and masses of assault rifles. the ones throwing rocks had some pretty serious cover fire. your kublai kahn reference, however, is dead on. in fact, i believe that at night, the samurai would sneak onto mongol boats and kill them as they slept. so there's some swordsmen attacking boats. of course, they just delayed them until the typhoon, but it did the trick.