technology on a long march

[sumthinelse]

When you are at war in a huge world and the enemy is a long distance away, you must decide whether to send a bunch of troops that far to attack him on his turf. In CIV3, if you do make that long march, your troops may very well become obsolete by the time they get there. If you send archers, they may face knights by the time they march 20 or 30 turns.

I was trying to think of an actual historical war where that happened. When Hitler invaded Russia, at first his armor and airplanes were kicking @ss, but at the end of the march the Russian technology got a lot better, and the Russian tanks turned the tables. The Russian T-34 tank was as good as the German tanks and the Russians made a lot of them. But the German armor did not become obsolete. The Russians just developed an equally effective tank.

When the Allies invaded France, Germany had rockets and jet fighters, but neither made a significant military difference. Chuck Yeager, the famous American pilot, flying a propeller plane, shot down a German jet.

So I can't think of a clear historical example in which the invading force became obsolete because technology advanced faster than the attacking force's advance. Can you?

 

[Cyc]

when apple went after microsoft?

 

[sumthinelse]

Clever. Maybe that will be Sid Meier's next game.

 

[napoleon526]

I've been wracking my brain for the past two days trying to think up an example of this, but alas, I cannot.

There are countless examples of where one side or another lost a war due to outdated technology, but none that I can think of where technology has become obsolete during an attacker's advance. I think the reason for this is that it does not take soldiers hundreds of years to move across continents, even on foot.

I'll keep trying to think up a historical instance of this, and i'll be sure to let you know I find one, sumthinelse.

 

[Cyc]

hey sumthinelse, i've done some thinkin' since my first smart@ss reply. i'm not sure if this fills the prerequisite, but in world war 1, the allies (british) had tanks about three years before the germans. and when the germans did produce tanks, they weren't very good. so if you want to compare...the germans mobile unit was the horse and the allies had the tank aprox. 2 years into the war. is this any help?

 

[sumthinelse]

Let's see. In WW2, Japan did not advance much towards the USA. After a couple of years, the USA developed a "Zero killer," the F6F Wildcat. In addition, there was the atomic bomb and codebreaking that eventually put Japan at a technological disadvantage. But that was not because it took the Japanese forces 2 years to cross the ocean; they just never got around to invading Midway until the codebreaking allowed the USA to ambush them.

 

[sumthinelse]

From Cyc:

>>>hey sumthinelse, i've done some thinkin' since my first smart@ss reply. i'm not sure if this fills the prerequisite, but in world war 1, the allies (british) had tanks about three years before the germans. and when the germans did produce tanks, they weren't very good. so if you want to compare...the germans mobile unit was the horse and the allies had the tank aprox. 2 years into the war. is this any help?
>>>


I see your point. The Germans fell behind in that technology, and the war lasted long enough for them to fall behond.

 

[Lt. 'Killer' M.]

the ridiculous thing is that the lines of communication and resupply are so incredibly long.

I tried making tech advance slower, but then a slow game will end before i get out of Middle Ages while at the same setting I can still sometimes overtake my Archers with newbuilt Knights on huge maps....

Solution: there should be a variable turns number depending on tech rate.

Slow tech rate = more turns
faster tech rate = fewer turns


note: tech rate here means NOT the amount you spend researching but the price in beakers techs cost

 

[Beam]

Space exploration comes closest to this phenomenon, although it is not about attacking and war.

If we would send a spaceship to Alpha Centauri using current technology it would take hunderds of years to get there. In the meantime new tech could be developed to build faster spaceships.

A bit of it is also in Civ I and II where you could either decided to launch early with a minimum of engines or a couple of turns later with max engines. But that is not a space race.

Another similar example is the first single handed non-stop race around the globe, organized in 1967 if I am not mistaken. For that race a starting window of a couple of months was set and the first to be back in England was the winner (simple, isn't it?).

The winner was one of the earliest starters, with a slow boat and participants that started later had faster boats that took time to develop. In theory these faster boats would have easily overtaken the slow boat, in practice it went way different. There was technical malfunction of course, but also mental effects of extended solitude. One participant jumped overboard (they found his boat with a complete log), another decided not to sail back to England but continue his voyage to Tahiti where he stayed for the rest of his life!

I am sure there must be more of these examples!

 

[Lab Monkey]

We're really going over the old problem of civ units moving too few squares. In the earlier stages of the game, 40 years can pass each turn, and yet a warrior will still only have moved 1 square!

I'm going to address this problem by giving all the units extra movement. I'll tell you how this works out.

You may argue that this will remove the exploration factor from the game, but in real life the problem with exploration was not covering the distance but making accurate maps, and with crossing oceans. Solve these issues however you will. Personally I believe that mapmaking comes too early, and that galleys should have a new pre-requisite.

But that's for another thread......