Assuming you're fighting an enemy with a force of equal technology level, the enemy will also have Modern Armor and Cavalry. Modern Armor has an attack of 24 and defense of 16. Cavalry is 6 and 3. That gives Modern Armor a 67% shot at killing another one that is defending, and Cavalry an 80% chance at killing another Cav.
If you're EVER able to conduct an effective encirclement with those kinds of figures and keep your army alive, I'd like to see it...
I'll send you a screenshot sometime. It's happened more times than I can remember. What you're discounting here is the power of overwhelming force. 50 units can *easily* encircle and trap 10 units. It can't be a one-to-one battle, either in the real world or in the game. You need a good 4 to 1, or 5 to 1 advantage. And one thing you've forgotten: Armies. A Cavalry army can quite easily defend against a few attacking Cavalry. It also gets an extra move. Having 5 or 6 Cavalry armies is not outside the realm of possibility at all (not to mention you can use infantry or something to block the first squares). So it is not at all impossible; it is just a question of correct planning and use of all the elements of the game, as well as a bit of luck. Same thing with the Normandy example. I land 11 Armies of infantry (4 inf ea) in Normandy, and use some paratroopers in addition to slow down the opposition, 40 tanks is NOT going to cut it. Even if it does, my second wave of reinforcements is going to land succesfully in a country with, for all practical purposes, no military at all, a looming Soviet threat, and a third front in Italy. 11 Armies is far from being impossible for 2 powerful civs in the late Industrial era to muster.
It's not adding complexity, it's trying to restore balance. Do you really think limiting the number of tiles units can move instead of having infinite movement adds an unbearable amount of detail to the game?
Limiting the number of tiles units can move deals with the problem of the Normandy inaccuracies (to some degrees - 10 tiles is probably still too much on most maps though) but it doesn't cope with encirclement very well, since already,
all units with more than 1 move point could escape a city using just roads. And what is the point of trapping a bunch of defensive units in a city? None. The only way I can see solving the encirclement problem, is to limit the *number* of units a civ can move by rail. That way he could rescue his forces through a single tile still, but, not all of them and he would be forced to give up the possibility of bringing in any reinforcements anywhere by rail that turn. It also copes well with the Normandy scenario, since the German response to the invasion would of necessity be a limited one.
And I already said prior to this that if you and others really think that moving around a bunch of units is such a pain and hard to do, find a way to address that with armies and stacks and such - there's no need to add something like infinite RR movement to attempt to cover it up. No bandaids, only fixes.
First up, army stacks *are* a bandaid. We already have stack movement. Second, infinite rail is not an addition to the game - rail has been infinite in the game ever since the beginning, and it is probably the most popular strategy game of all time.
Why do you think most people - warmongers especially - cite the Ancient and Medieval Eras as their favorite over Industrial and Modern Age?
You're resting your argument here on the unfounded assumption that the popularity of these areas is due to a single feature they lack, when in fact, they lack alot of features. High unit count, for one. Lots of cities and overall micromanagement, for two. The plain fact is that a turn in the later part of the game takes a long time, with alot of waiting and pointless clicking, and it probably more than sufficiently accounts for the disinterest in these eras. Retarding unit movement to a comparitive crawl isn't going to help that at all.
Even if you say that there's not as many units to have to deal with earlier, I again argue that there are better ways to deal with that than alter something which completely affects the dynamics of war. Improve the automated Worker AI, come up with a new system to manage units, add in a type of army system ala CTP, ANYTHING. There are numerous ways to deal with this problem within the confines of the problem's borders. If the problem is unit management, then make it so that units are easier to manage - don't do something which changes how the rest of the game is played.
But these *are* all changes to how the game is played. The game is not played that way now. The game as it is now, as it has been throughout its highly popular history, has infinite rail movement. Keeping it isn't a change. To change it, it has to be a system that will be proven to be equally popular as the game is now. I'm saying that the complete elimination of all infinite rail movement is going to make unit management harder. Infinite rail makes large amounts of units easier to handle, and it doesn't "change how the rest of the game is played" because that's how it's always been played. I can abide some limitations to the rail system, limiting its total capacity for instance, or a movement cost which still allows some measure of rapid long-distance transit, 20 squares or something. 10 tiles is ridiculous - cavalry can ride on a road that fast almost.
As I've said before, there are both gameplay and historical reasons to eliminate infinite movement. My primary concern is gameplay, but there are also historical issues to address as well. I've already talked about how the game shouldn't require infinite movement to allow the organization of a lot of units, and what other issues do you think would make the game so much more complex as to make it unplayable for normal gamers? Infinite RR movement makes it so that every war is a war of attrition, a slug-fest determined by who has the largest army
It seems to be a popular formula, actually. But I agree there could be some changes made. What I'm essentially saying though, is that you'll NEVER be able to model Normandy or Stalingrad perfectly in Civ, not even close. It's hard enough to do in a game specifically dedicated to modern war, let alone Civ, which is dedicated to alot of other things. I don't see anything concrete you've suggested to manage alot of units - stack movement (we have that already since PTW), worker automation (have it already and even with all workers fortified and doing nothing, a modern turn is still alot of management), etc. I only see a proposal to make it harder to manage alot of units, without any real ideas about how to compensate and make it easier that we don't already have. I've seen very very few proposals that will signifigantly reduce the workload of the game, the only one that comes to mind is the idea of getting rid of worker units. And I don't think that will reduce management all that much.
People play Civ to engage their brain and try to out-general and out-think their opponents, be they AI or human. They do not play Civ in order to see who gets the best land which allows them to build up the biggest army and then win because of that. As much as you say "abstract!" there is quite a bit of strategic thinking that goes on in major wars on entire fronts. It is certainly much more than "whoever has the biggest army wins," even with the largest campaigns.
Are you saying people play Civ now, and they do so with "quite a bit of strategic thinking" and it is "certainly much more than whoever has the biggest army wins, even with the largest campaigns" ???
Because they're doing it with infinite rail right now.
Anything else is just a supposition as to how it would be played without it, since nobody has.
Plus, I don't see how sending all your units by goto to the front and slowly waiting for them to arrive is fundamentally going to change anything. It will still be 'who has the biggest army wins', you're only adding a waiting game to the process. There isn't any additional strategy involved - you send them off, and wait for them to arrive. You're still faced with the same old problem, biggest army wins. Again I can think of a rail solution to this - limiting total rail capacity per turn - that would require you to use your movement strategically, carefully, and selectively. To make choices and sacrifices, rather than just issuing a pile of gotos to the same general location, round after round. To me, its just a proposition that adds complexity, and an assumption that somebody else can or will make the game simpler to make room for the new idea ... well, you can't count on that, and there are lots of competing ideas that add layers of complexity and tedium, what should we make room for? I think new ideas should be self-sufficient in terms of adding complexity, that is, a zero sum balance or as close to it as possible, rather than counting on other elements becoming simpler to make room. Maybe they will actually be more complex and if every area of the game decides to add a little complexity and tedium to implement new features, more accuracy, or more balance, the game is overall going to be *alot* more complex. If you're going to change rail for the sake of improving gameplay and balance, it will have to be in a way that addresses those problems without signifigantly creating other ones.
