Bonyduck Campersang
Not staring into the distance
- Joined
- Dec 11, 2022
- Messages
- 5,118
I got my first start in 4X games through Civ5. For many years it was the only turn-based strategy game that I played, until I got Civ6. Then Civ6 was the only other turn-based strategy game that I played.
Both games feature the infamous 1-unit-per-tile system. For a long time I thought that was the only way to implement combat, until I played other games, when I realised just how time-consuming and awkward the 1UPT system. Don't get me wrong, I love the adrenaline rush from the chess-like combat style, especially when you have to shuffle your units and plot the best route to get the maximum advantage, but late-game 1UPT is horrendous, and besides the time taken by 1UPT battles is unsuitable for a game of Civ's timespan. It also introduces absurdities like an Archer shooting over the English Channel—and while there are plenty of similar absurdities in the game like a Shrine taking 500 in-game years to construct, preferably the less absurdities the better.
Civ7 it seems has taken steps to cut down on the more annoying aspects of 1UPT, which is very welcome. But—admittedly I have not played the game yet, but I have seen videos—it is still 1UPT at its core, and I think combat can be and should be improved.
I have only played a handful of 4X games up til now, but I am going to run through them to compare. Of course, this being a discussion thread, I want to read what veteran gamers think of the best way to implement combat.
In Humankind and Endless Legend, multiple units can merge into a single army. These armies behave just like 1UPT units when it comes to traversing the map or engaging enemies. The difference is in the combat itself: both armies unpack themselves into their individual units and do battle in an extended but restricted region around the combat tile. Later in the game, nearby armies can act as reinforcements, piling their own units into the melee. I found this very fun in the early game, but as the number of units per army and the number of armies increases in the late game, it became tiresome, and thought Humankind has an auto-resolve mode, the AI sucks at picking the right choice, and it's a flip of the coin whether your army will win against a similarly-sized army even if you have superior troops and terrain.
In Civilization IV, which I have not been able to play a lot of due to myriad reasons, among them its teeny-weeny UI on larger screens, there can be multiple units on a single tile. I wish I could make a fairer comparison, but I will make do with vague impressions. An unlimited number of units can occupy a single tile, though they incur some sort of penalty over a certain limit. This leads to the infamous 'doomstack', a stack of an obscenely high number of units that can roll over anything in its path. While there are ways to combat this, I don't like how an entire horde can just stroll into your borders (though admittedly this is mostly due to coming from a 1UPT background). In Civ5 I could station units to create choke points to check massively large armies, but in Civ4 that strategy would be useless. I also don't like how it feels that unique unit abilities get sort of lost in the mix, especially in larger armies.
Millennia is an odd little entry into the 4X genre. It introduces a novel array of mechanics and systems which make it much more than just another Civ-like. Millennia's novelties can get old and overwhelming very fast, but there's no denying it valiantly tried to do something different. Its combat system is rather similar to the Amplitude games, armies made up of multiple units. However, there is no unpacking here: combat is depicted on a (hilariously outdated) combat screen, each unit on either side taking multiple turns to stab the other. The player can take no decisions during this phase, he can only watch on helplessly, hoping for the best. I found Millennia's system fun when it came to shuffling units between armies to get the best possible composition against a vastly superior enemy's incoming troops. There is no reinforcement concept (at least, I didn't encounter it, I never got past the mid-game), so you can relax knowing that the enemy can't throw more than a certain number of units at you at a time, even if he has more soldiers, so you focus on the composition. Millennia still leaves a lot to be desired; I wish I knew how the game decides who attacks first, or why my archers didn't finish off the weakened knight in the first row and instead attacked the enemy's back lines, or how the enemy pikeman can just march through my front row to get at my archers. But Millennia solved one problem for me: it never felt overwhelming (though other areas of the game absolutely did).
Millennia is important to me because I like it mostly stripped down combat to a single essential aspect: composition. Amplitude's games have it too, but there are still too many variables like terrain and routing which need careful attention from the human player and cannot be entrusted to the AI. In Millennia the human's major concern is with fitting out armies with the best possible composition to counter the enemy.
Looking at Millennia's basic concept, I can see it being improved on in the following ways:
P.S. I really need to try Civ4 again
Both games feature the infamous 1-unit-per-tile system. For a long time I thought that was the only way to implement combat, until I played other games, when I realised just how time-consuming and awkward the 1UPT system. Don't get me wrong, I love the adrenaline rush from the chess-like combat style, especially when you have to shuffle your units and plot the best route to get the maximum advantage, but late-game 1UPT is horrendous, and besides the time taken by 1UPT battles is unsuitable for a game of Civ's timespan. It also introduces absurdities like an Archer shooting over the English Channel—and while there are plenty of similar absurdities in the game like a Shrine taking 500 in-game years to construct, preferably the less absurdities the better.
Civ7 it seems has taken steps to cut down on the more annoying aspects of 1UPT, which is very welcome. But—admittedly I have not played the game yet, but I have seen videos—it is still 1UPT at its core, and I think combat can be and should be improved.
I have only played a handful of 4X games up til now, but I am going to run through them to compare. Of course, this being a discussion thread, I want to read what veteran gamers think of the best way to implement combat.
In Humankind and Endless Legend, multiple units can merge into a single army. These armies behave just like 1UPT units when it comes to traversing the map or engaging enemies. The difference is in the combat itself: both armies unpack themselves into their individual units and do battle in an extended but restricted region around the combat tile. Later in the game, nearby armies can act as reinforcements, piling their own units into the melee. I found this very fun in the early game, but as the number of units per army and the number of armies increases in the late game, it became tiresome, and thought Humankind has an auto-resolve mode, the AI sucks at picking the right choice, and it's a flip of the coin whether your army will win against a similarly-sized army even if you have superior troops and terrain.
In Civilization IV, which I have not been able to play a lot of due to myriad reasons, among them its teeny-weeny UI on larger screens, there can be multiple units on a single tile. I wish I could make a fairer comparison, but I will make do with vague impressions. An unlimited number of units can occupy a single tile, though they incur some sort of penalty over a certain limit. This leads to the infamous 'doomstack', a stack of an obscenely high number of units that can roll over anything in its path. While there are ways to combat this, I don't like how an entire horde can just stroll into your borders (though admittedly this is mostly due to coming from a 1UPT background). In Civ5 I could station units to create choke points to check massively large armies, but in Civ4 that strategy would be useless. I also don't like how it feels that unique unit abilities get sort of lost in the mix, especially in larger armies.
Millennia is an odd little entry into the 4X genre. It introduces a novel array of mechanics and systems which make it much more than just another Civ-like. Millennia's novelties can get old and overwhelming very fast, but there's no denying it valiantly tried to do something different. Its combat system is rather similar to the Amplitude games, armies made up of multiple units. However, there is no unpacking here: combat is depicted on a (hilariously outdated) combat screen, each unit on either side taking multiple turns to stab the other. The player can take no decisions during this phase, he can only watch on helplessly, hoping for the best. I found Millennia's system fun when it came to shuffling units between armies to get the best possible composition against a vastly superior enemy's incoming troops. There is no reinforcement concept (at least, I didn't encounter it, I never got past the mid-game), so you can relax knowing that the enemy can't throw more than a certain number of units at you at a time, even if he has more soldiers, so you focus on the composition. Millennia still leaves a lot to be desired; I wish I knew how the game decides who attacks first, or why my archers didn't finish off the weakened knight in the first row and instead attacked the enemy's back lines, or how the enemy pikeman can just march through my front row to get at my archers. But Millennia solved one problem for me: it never felt overwhelming (though other areas of the game absolutely did).
Millennia is important to me because I like it mostly stripped down combat to a single essential aspect: composition. Amplitude's games have it too, but there are still too many variables like terrain and routing which need careful attention from the human player and cannot be entrusted to the AI. In Millennia the human's major concern is with fitting out armies with the best possible composition to counter the enemy.
Looking at Millennia's basic concept, I can see it being improved on in the following ways:
- fixed rules such as the attacker/defender goes first
- ranged units can attack anywhere from the back row, melee units can only engage front-row-to-front-row
- infantry can only attack the unit directly opposite them, cavalry can attack anywhere in the front row
- human commands/goals that your AI commander can follow: eliminate all enemy archers, focus cavalry and ranged units on this specific unit, deal damage all across the board instead of focusing on a single unit etc.
P.S. I really need to try Civ4 again
