Okay a long list of replies coming up.
Doompigeon (and others):
That's a bug found. The warlords version is not adding up points for battles.
upstart:
I've got a few questions after trying the mod out(warlords ver.) for the first time that I didn't see answered in the few pages I looked:
1...Are we able to 'turn off' the stack attack with the menu option(revert to 1 vs 1) and leave the MAD and ranged bombardment on?
2...I have seen a enemy unit heal itself while it is phillaging(sp?) a road and while attacking my units. Is this supposed to happen? I thought the only way units heal(in vanilla at least) was not doing anything at all?
3...Why are there units that are still alive at 0.0 power? Shouldn't they have been defeated in the previous attack?
4...In one attack I had a group of 2 warriors(full health) vs. AI's 1 warrior(almost dead) and 1 archer(full health)...I lost and AI took no damage whatsoever. Does this mean that if I have no ranged units in my stack, the archer will take out melee units every single time?
Anyways hope you can clear that up for me...thanks for all the work on the mod!
1. No, you can't turn off just stack attack (unless you turn off the option in CvDefines.h and recompile the code).
2. Was there another unit with Heal II in the same plot that could heal that unit?
3. 0.0 is a rounding thing. It just means the unit has health between 0.5 and 0.0.
4. Archers covered by melee units are a powerful thing. It's the one free shot that can really hurt you. I've seen an archer take out half a warrior's strength. Then the defending warrior just needs a lucky shot (not that rare) to take out the rest of the attacking warrior's health. It's all about the lines.
Anjin Sushi:
Does this mean that if 3 swordsman attacks a longbowman, the battle could easily not be won? Since only one of the swordsmen really attacks the longbowman, and then the battle ends. If this is the case, can the swordsmen that havent moved , attack again , since they werent in a battle?
Another comment. Is it realistic that defending ranged units (archers) aims for the opponents archers. Wouldn't the attackers ranged unit normally stay out opf range, so the defending archers would aim for the charging melee units?
Otherwise great work, even though I have some problem making it work. It seems my large stacks, which normally would win without problems get defeated to small defending city stacks. But maybe I just need to change my stacks content when I get the hang of the new system.
1. Yes, it is quite possible for the attackers to not win. In that example, the longbow will defend with its free shot, then one sword will attack via melee attack till one unit is dead. If that unit happens to be the sword then the other two can't attack. But they retain their move points and can do further actions (such as re-attacking the longbow).
2. Maybe realistic, maybe not. I've chosen it that way. It was a matter of balance. If the defending ranged units just concentrated on the attacking melee units I found the attacker nearly always lost. Not exactly fair "in a game".
Fun over-rode reality.
3. Hehehe. With the new stack method, city stacks are harder to take out. Remember the basics: siege, siege, siege. This is where field bombard shines. It's ability to knock out city defenses AND unit health.
Quetz:
I would love to give this a whirl but the comments about small stacks crushing big ones are kinda scaring me. (see Anjin Sushi's posts above)
It's all about stack quality, not stack quantity now. In an effort to stamp out SOD's I've enhanced ranged attacking. Basically if you have a stack of 15 swords, and attack a smaller well-balanced combined arms stack, the stack of swords will loose most of the time. In every war in history, it's not the number of troops you have, but how you use your troop combinations together to support each other. Like there are certain unit types to use against other unit types (eg: spear vs horse) there are stack combos to use against other stack combos. I ain't gunna say what they are, it's half the fun of finding out.
Boneys will tell you, attacking cities requires a completely different stack combo to field combat.
strategyonly:
OK played my first game of Warlords with your mod and got a stall right away, plus i noticed that the barbarians go after the weakess unit in a town to fight??
Was playing as the Americans am sending files to help.
Thanks for the files. BTW, barbs were changed quite a lot in Warlords. That's not the mod doing that.
sweetpete:
Great mod! one question though,
How does combat odds work with this mod?
Do you get your combat odds for succesfully defeating one stack with another?
The combat odds calculator is screwed in this mod. I still don't know how I'm going to fix it.
How do you use fighters when attacking with a stack?
I mean, fighters can only base in cities, how do you include them in an attacking stack in the field?
Maybe someone can give me some general information on how stack attack works in this mod. I've read the first post but there are some stuff i stilll dont understand. But i will try my first game this this mod now and perhaps i'll understand it some more then.
Fighters need to be on carriers, or an attack initiated from a city with fighters based in it. Fighters do not move like normal units, so you can't just stack them with land units. If there are fighters in the city or on a carrier they are automatically used. Do try to select them in your land stack.
It's best to play a game and watch the results.
Quetz:
suggestion: Missiles shouldnt be able to transfer/do recon. They should have to be loaded in towns onto ships or launched from a silo improvement (from RogerBacon's Flying mod)
Missiles can't do recon missions. As for the rebase mission I kept that one there. I didn't want to add the micro-management of having to carry the missile in another unit though. I want to keep MM down, not add to it.
Fosse:
I have downloaded the mod for Warlords and gotten into a small war just to see how it plays out.
I am very excited about getting to know this mod. Like everyone else, I have questions though.
If an attacker attacks a group of defenders on a tile, will those defenders behave as a stacked army if they have not been grouped by the player/AI? For example, if my units are all sent to a rally point, and fortified when they arrive, will they count as a stack if attacked at some point? Does being in a city effect this?
For the player no they must be stacked. For the AI yes as they don't stack as much as they should.
After some attacks, some of my stack will not have used any of their movement points. Reading through these forums, it seems that this could be a result of that unit not having had a melee "buddy" to fight against on the opposing line. Is this correct?
Not entirely. They haven't found a counter-battery or melee opponent.
How do unit specific promotions play out in combat? Do the units get randomly shuffled in combat, and you just have to hope that your Shock, Combat III axeman winds up fighting an enemy sword instead of an enemy Shock Horse Archer? Not understanding this, I am tempted to go with nothing but Combat and City Raider promotions.
The shuffle is in stack order. So when a stack is selected (showing the list of units above the control panel) the spread of units is from the centre out working left to right on the list of units.
How does the Barrage promotion work, with collateral damage having been removed as we know it?
Collatoral damage is still used in field bombardment.
Am I correct in understanding that unless you bring units from different "lines" into an army stack there is no benefit in combat to grouping units? What I mean by that is, if there are two armies of nothing but axemen, the final result won't really be different if they fight one by one or as a group, will it? Throwing a couple of archers into one side will make a difference though, because archers occupy a different "line." Am I understanding this?
That's correct. As mentioned above, a melee only stack will have a lot harder time than a combined stack will.
Will ranged units "step up" to the front lines? I had a two archer stack make neat work of an enemy axeman, so I assume one of them was "frontline" and one was "ranged."
They don't "step up" as you say, but if there is no melee cover for the archer it will perform a full combat. Your example would have worked as such:
- Archer 1 performs free shot at axe damaging the axe.
- Archer 2 performs full combat with axe (but taking into account first strikes probably had a free shot at the axe first).
In the same archer/axeman battle I just mentioned, one of my archers died but I didn't see a combat log event telling me so.
Interesting, should have occured.
And lastly, what are the odds we could one day get a "stacked Combat" tab on the event log? What I would like to see is a list of how the matchups happened without all the clutter of individual combat rounds and damages. One stacked combat can make the regular combat log very difficult to interpret. I picture something that details the four lines for each side, then describes the damage done to each side in each phase of combat.
Could be possible one day, but with my current list of commitments will be a way off yet.
Trojon sheep:
I'll look into the multiplayer thing to see if I can get it to keep sync. I don't know how successful that will be though.
upstart:
Based on everybody's input it seems like my own preliminary suspicions were correct: basically ranged units become uber and melee get nerfed in usefullness, especially in attacking. I really hope that some kind soul from firaxis can help in the effort to take care of the graphics engine limitation, or at least suggest a work-around...
Until this happens maybe can you Dale or someone else please compile and release a stripped-down version of the mod without the true stacked combat? Because even just the ranged bombardment section of the mod is a godsend, all by itself. I Love the additions to the core gameplay but the game just doesn't seem to be balanced with the stacked combat in its current form.
It's not exactly like this. Some full combats will occur in a ranged/bombard only stack. If one of those units does not have covering units in front of it then it will be a full combat. Otherwise it gets the free shot. Also, I do not believe this makes them uber. It just highlights that a balanced combined arms stack should always have an easier time in fighting than a melee only stack. This is how real war works too.
Think of it like this. If I have only infantry and charge an artillery position then those units are going to rip my attack to shreds. However, if I have less infantry and support them with tanks (flankers) and my own artillery then my artillery will tie up the defending artillery whilst my tanks outflank them giving my infantry the breathing space they need to charge. In the first example my infantry will die or be severly damaged. In the second example the defending artillery will be devastated.
This is how the mod works. Basically, it's an entirely new way of thinking about combat in Civ4. As any of the beta testers will atest to, you cannot use the old methods in this mod. They will not work. Especially when attacking a combined stack in a city. That's why you need to siege the city first to eliminate the defense bonus and damage the defending units, then you assault the city.
Dale
