Tactical bonus Thingie

[Princeps]

Well... One thing that don't like about civ III is the Keep-your-thumbs-up-and-hope-that-your-unit-wins... battle thing.

Player should have more power over the outcome of the battle.
There should be tactical categories (or something). For example a 100 swordsmen in reality can easily kill a 500 pikemen. Becouse a pike can almoust be three meters long, and you can really have a problem killing a swordsman with a 3 meter long stick, Thats why pikemen are not really only defensive troops. Pike and spear were mainly used against mounted units like horsemen and knights. Thats why i'm suggesting a basic tactical unit types for civ three:

In each era you would have to advance its own tactics like classic tactics, medieval tactics, Indiustrial tactics, Blitzkrieg and Modern tactics.

Tactical advantage over another would be represented by a offensive or defensive bonus. for example if horseman is attacking against spearman it would look something like this: Horseman 2-1-2 Spearmans bonus: 1-5-1 , so spearman will have exellent advantage over horseman.

Categories:

Offensive bonus:

Axe (bonus over Armoured and Spear)
Armoured ( Bonus over Ranged and Sword)
Sword ( Bonus over Axe, spear and ranged)
spear ( Bonus over Mounted, elephant and chariot)
ranged ( None )
Mounted ( Bonus over Axe, Sword, chariot, ranged and legion)
Elephant ( Bonus over Axe, Sword, mounted and phalanx)
Gunpowder ( Bonus over armoured, Mounted, legion, phalanx, spear, sword)
Chariot ( Bonus over axe and sword)
Phalanx (Bonus over mounted, chariot, sword, spear and axe)
Legion (Bonus over sword, Spear, Phalanx, chariot, Mounted and axe)
Berserk (Bonus over all if attacking from a ship, otherwise it same as axe)

Defensive bonus:

Axe (bonus over Armoured and Spear)
Armoured ( Bonus over sword and ranged)
Sword ( Bonus over Axe, spear and ranged)
spear ( Bonus over Mounted, elephant and chariot)
ranged ( Bonus over all if in Hills or mountain ground)
Mounted ( Bonus over sword and axe)
Elephant ( Bonus over spear, sword and axe)
Gunpowder ( Bonus over spear,sword,axe,mounted,elephant,chariot)
Chariot ( Bonus over sword and axe)
Phalanx (Bonus over sword, axe, ranged, mounted)
Legion (Bonus over spear and ranged)
Berserk (Same as axe)

(-These were only medieval and ancient tactical bonuses-)

One unit can be in two bonus categories. For example Knight would be armoured and mounted.

Roman Legion should have many offensive bonuses but only two defensive bonuses, to represent that legions were not very good in defending.

Gunpowder would make meny units obsolete.

I hope to see someshort of tactic bonus system thing in civ 4.

 

[Princeps]

Camel (Bonus over mounted... horses hated camels smell )

 

[sealman]

I do not think this type of combat system will be in CIV 4. IIRC, Soren has already stated as much.

 

[CurtSibling]

I cannot abide the contrived RTS combat system.

Who says a gang of archers cannot whip out blades and slaughter some close-ranged warriors?

This has happened in real warfare many times...!

 

[Theoden]

Because the motto will be "simplify" I don't think that this idea will come into civ4.
I like this idea however, it just needs some balancing. It would be good if you actually had to use combined arms to ensure a victory, and if a small balanced and well played army could beat the big army consisting of a poor combinatin of units

 

[Princeps]

I cannot abide the contrived RTS combat system.

Who says a gang of archers cannot whip out blades and slaughter some close-ranged warriors?

This has happened in real warfare many times...!

Well archers were not used in close range battles. Archer were used to bombard enemy lines... Yes lightly armed archers have meny times been able to kill heavy infantry or cavalry, but archer units were not usuly used in close combat. Neither they had the morale or/and training of doing so. Good general always tried to keep mobile troops like horsemen or light infantry to kill enemy archers if archers didin't have eny close combat defensive units nearby, so that the archers could not skirmish. This is why archers are not good in attacking. But they should have a bombard ability.

There were some elite warriors that used both bows and swords like the persian hashin (if remeber the name correctly).

 

[CurtSibling]

I think I had a slight idea about what archers do in warfare - Do you think I am from another planet?

Also, do you think that in every battle, archers found themselves completely isolated from an enemy,
who had the obvious orders and intention to eliminate the archer's deadly shots from the field?

Of course not!

This debate should not have even came to pass -
My initial statement was obvious in point!

 

[Loppan Torkel]

I do not think this type of combat system will be in CIV 4. IIRC, Soren has already stated as much.

Weren't they bringing back the "spearmen bonus vs horsemen"-features from the earlier civ(s)? I thought I read it just some days ago - Certain troops would be better against certain enemies, or have I dreamt it??

 

[rhialto]

I don't think the OP knows anything about how pikemen fought against swordsmen. Sure, in a 1 on 1 fight, the swordsman will win by dodging around and closing to inide the pike's danger zone. But in a 100:100 fight, the pikes can use formation tactics to make a barrier the sword guys can't safely penetrate.

And yes, a common tactic against early pikes was to lop off the blade by hacking at the staff. That's why later pikes had armoured staves.

 

[Princeps]

I don't think the OP knows anything about how pikemen fought against swordsmen. Sure, in a 1 on 1 fight, the swordsman will win by dodging around and closing to inide the pike's danger zone. But in a 100:100 fight, the pikes can use formation tactics to make a barrier the sword guys can't safely penetrate.

And yes, a common tactic against early pikes was to lop off the blade by hacking at the staff. That's why later pikes had armoured staves.

Yes if someone would be stupid enough to sent swordsmen to charge in a disorderly formation or in a flank. There were meny ways of swordsmen getting thru pikemens flank. One of them is the ''arrow'' formation were swordsmen charge in a triangle, in such fomation swordsmen could push line like bullet trhu skin. Once they gotten thru swordsmen could attack pikemen from behind and thats when pikemens flank fall in to disorder and other units like horsemen can attack these lines. Usualy this fomation were used by cavalry, but horse would not charge against line of pikes.

 

[rhialto]

Let's just say that pikemen also had tactics for dealing with those tactics.

 

[Princeps]

Yes they had... but it took very well trained pikemen army to deal whit such attack like the swiss pikemen. Becouse such attack had a terrible effect upon the morale of the pikemen.

 

[one_man_assault]

O man you guys are thinking to realistically...If I didn’t play Rome: Total war as much I would be lost but I see what your talking about in a sense… but if we allowed your rule to occur then their would be specialized land units that would make the game exponentially more complicated and make the pike men irrelevant (why use the weakness of a pike men when u can ALWAYS go around it) in real life Pike men wouldn’t be alone...but In Civ its one on one so the pike men would be alone with no infantry or cavalry...so in a sense it would mess everything up....thoughtful intuition though...Im not shooting your idea down by no meens

I agree about having some type of benifet like +1 attack for blah blah to attack blah blah


but I dont agree that land units from the same era should be able to run the other through like that (historical Pikemen vs. Swordsman encounters)

 

[Jon Shafer]

Weren't they bringing back the "spearmen bonus vs horsemen"-features from the earlier civ(s)? I thought I read it just some days ago - Certain troops would be better against certain enemies, or have I dreamt it??

That's correct, it was mentioned.

 

[searcheagle]

can they import some parts of tactics into civ? sure! Would I before it: YES!

Would I still be for it turn the game into only tactics? No.

I would be for it was:
1. certain types of units against other types
2. certain terrains against others
3. if it there was prescripted tactics that were created:
a. cautious: likely to survive, less like to destroy other unit
b. moderate: inbetween chance of all
c. all out: high chance of victory, but less likely to survive

something like that

 

[Spatula]

I for one would like to see an attack bonus when your are attacking lower ground (hill->plains, mountain->hill), because it just make sense really. Many have fallen foul of troops on higher ground, but I don't see why that should olny be represented in defense.

 

[Princeps]

I for one would like to see an attack bonus when your are attacking lower ground (hill->plains, mountain->hill), because it just make sense really. Many have fallen foul of troops on higher ground, but I don't see why that should olny be represented in defense.

When in battlefield you have to consider three things: The morale of your warriors, tactics that your going to use and that your troops don't get too tired... Now an high defensive positions helped all three of these: When enemy had to march uphill they got more tired, on top of a hill your troops were more confident and higher ground gave you both offensive and defensive advantage.. But only when you were defending!. one square was something like 100 kilometers... even if you begin your attack from a mountain hills are not always uphill they can go down suddenly or up... and the enemy can see your troops coming down so they can find an higer ground. Blaah Blaah.... oh.. love talking about battlefields and tactics...

 

[Spatula]

Being able to see where the enemy that you're attacking doesn't boost morale? And it can't help tactics such as using the speed of your cavalry to sweep away the enemy? And I don't know about you, but running downhill makes me less tired than running on the flat.

The whole undulating land thing isn't relevant because in Civ land is either flat, a hill, or a mountain. In Civ you're either higher up or not - there are no undulations on the tile, only mountain tile-hill tile-mountain tile bits (in which case, why are you giving up high ground?). Undulations and their effects have no relevance in Civ.

It is a tad ridiculous to think that attacking from a height is no better than attacking on a flat.

 

[Princeps]

Its not about being able to see your enemies forces! Its about higher position gives your troops a sence of advatage.

And, even the smallest high ground advatage can be lethal to the attacker.

When you are defending you don't need to get to the enemy, you just need to find a good defending location...

It is much better defensive location than a flat land, One reason is that even a swordsman can have chance against cavarly if they are on a higher position.
You can't denay that you would rather be on higher than lower ground!

Archers can be postioned much better in line... like one line higher and other line of archers lower, so that they can fire all a the same time without hitting
other line in the front.

Cavalry can charge much more faster downhill, Imagen a 100 horses running downhill you can't denay thats not scary! for the attacker whos on lower altidute.

So what i'm saying is that defender should gain bonus from hills and mountains. Not the attacker thats attacking to lower grounds.

 

[rhialto]

Having a bonus for attacking from mountain/hill into hill/flats doesn't make sense.

On a small scale where each tile might represents a discrete hill, yes. But a hill doesn't represent an area that is uniformly at a higher altitude. It doesn't even necessarily represent an area that is at a higher altitude at all. What it really indicates is an area that has a large amount of altitude variation within the tile. So a hill tile would typically be higher on average than a flatland tile, but bits may well be lower.

Secondly, that height advantage only applies when the troops are shooting at each other. On the 10-80 mile scale of civ tiles, no one can seriously claim that your cavalry is literally charging from the hills into the plains - it's just too far! Equally, archers can't shoot that far (world record is a little over a thousand yards on level ground).

Aside: The hill thing doesn't actually make any real difference for archers anyway. Good military archery practice was to loose the arrows at a high angle, not straight forwards. Having your friends in the rank in front wasn't a real issue. If the enemy was close enough to justify firing straight forwards, it was time to break out the swords anyway.