Thoughts on civ7 combat and commanders

[SupremacyKing2]

Overall, I like the addition of commanders but I feel like they only marginally solve the problems of 1upt.

In the Antiquity Age when you don't have a lot of units, commanders are great. And I think they work the way the devs were hoping they would: you carry a bunch of units in your commander, unpack when you are near the enemy, the two armies face each other and fight a battle. You get the benefits of tactical combat and the commander saves you a lot of clicks when moving units, you avoid carpet of doom, you have a sense of an army, plus they have good promotions to improve your units in combat. But once you get into the Exploration Age and especially in the Modern Age, the issue is that the number of units quickly outpaces the number of commanders. This mean that you end up moving a lot of units manually anyway since all your commanders are full. And with more units, you still end up with carpet of doom. This is especially an issue with leaders who give you free units since you automatically get more units over time. In my current game in the Modern Age, I am still having some serious carpet of doom issues with units blocking each other's paths. My commanders don't really help since I have so many units. Yeah, you can do the game of packing and unpacking units to shuttle them around but that becomes a lot of micro.

I wonder if the devs were hoping players would keep units to only what fit in their commanders to avoid carpet of doom. But I think the problem with that is that it is still advantageous to have more units even if they don't fit in the commander.

 

[CliffCo]

I am at 10/7 with my settlements in my current game as Rizal, 2 given me in peace deals and one captured after Augusta squeezed in a town on a small piece of land next to my capital. I have 3 commanders with 4 units in each plus 6 other units, I usually try to have at least 4 commanders at the end of antiquity but it won’t happen this time.
By the end of the exploration age I usually have 6 or 7 commanders all packed plus 9 other units, I tend to buy a couple of commanders with gold and create the rest in my highest production cities. I haven’t gone for a military victory yet so I don’t need a huge army but I like to be prepared if someone attacks me.
What bugs me is having them shuffled around at the end of an era and I’m hoping it gets fixed in next weeks update.

 

[user746383]

I like commanders and think they are an improvement, but they still seem to require a lot of unnecessary clicks in my opinion. You can’t really use unpack all because they put your units out randomly.

I think they should increase carrying capacity without requiring special unlocks, make buttons to unpack per unit class, or maybe just let us build battalions like in Ara and not require a special separate unit to facilitate the same thing.

 

[CliffCo]

I like commanders and think they are an improvement, but they still seem to require a lot of unnecessary clicks in my opinion. You can’t really use unpack all because they put your units out randomly.

I think they should increase carrying capacity without requiring special unlocks, make buttons to unpack per unit class, or maybe just let us build battalions like in Ara and not require a special separate unit to facilitate the same thing.

With army units you can carry a civilian unit in one of the locked slots.

 

[user746383]

That’s true but what’s the connection?

 

[SupremacyKing2]

I am at 10/7 with my settlements in my current game as Rizal, 2 given me in peace deals and one captured after Augusta squeezed in a town on a small piece of land next to my capital. I have 3 commanders with 4 units in each plus 6 other units, I usually try to have at least 4 commanders at the end of antiquity but it won’t happen this time.
By the end of the exploration age I usually have 6 or 7 commanders all packed plus 9 other units, I tend to buy a couple of commanders with gold and create the rest in my highest production cities. I haven’t gone for a military victory yet so I don’t need a huge army but I like to be prepared if someone attacks me.
What bugs me is having them shuffled around at the end of an era and I’m hoping it gets fixed in next weeks update.

Interesting. I think I only had 2 commanders and like 20 units. It did not make a difference, probably because the AI is so bad at combat. Even my units without a commander nearby, still steamrolled the AI.

 

[vorlon_mi]

With the commander model, I now find myself worrying about "wasting" experience. A random atttack here or there, a hostile IP that attacks my town, with no commander around to soak up the experience seems to feel like a waste. I try to build enough commanders so that I get benefits from every combat. It's a different mindshift.

I'm also able to preserve some redlined units using commanders that I would have lost in Civ3 or Civ4. I like the mechanic overall.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

With the commander model, I now find myself worrying about "wasting" experience. A random atttack here or there, a hostile IP that attacks my town, with no commander around to soak up the experience seems to feel like a waste. I try to build enough commanders so that I get benefits from every combat. It's a different mindshift. I'm also able to preserve some redlined units using commanders that I would have lost in Civ3 or Civ4. I like the mechanic overall.

Don't get me wrong, I like commanders. I just think it might be better if the game had a cap on total units because the game still let's you spam too many units imo. But maybe that is the point: to let players choose between quantity or quality. You can have a large army with few commanders and waste experience but rely on numbers to overwhelm your opponent or have a smaller and more powerful army thanks to highly promoted commanders. As I think about it, I am probably still having a civ6 mentality when it comes to combat and not fully using the new commanders mechanic as I should.

And to be fair, I think the spam army approach only really works so well because the AI is bad at combat. I imagine that a competent human player would position their units in defensive positions, using fortifications and walls and commanders with defensive bonuses to make their cities near impossible to conquer. You would just be sacrificing a lot of units to give them free experience.

You make a good point about wasting experience. In my next game, I will try to have fewer military units and make sure they always have a commander nearby to soak up experience points.

 

[Suicidekills]

You make a good point about wasting experience. In my next game, I will try to have fewer military units and make sure they always have a commander nearby to soak up experience points.

Yes, definitely this. I like your point about quality vs quantity although I believe quality is the superior option. The bonuses your commanders can provide can make your units at least 2 times better in most cases. I've had a couple of total domination victories and I found myself feeling like I have too many units. Besides the fact that a turn took forever to finish if I moved every single unit, most of the time it just seemed like extreme overkill. Additionally, in these games, if I had units roam outside of the commander radius, the difference in strength was noticeable and significant. I recommend trying Trung Trac for the full Commander experience.

 

[King Flevance]

I think a big problem with Civ 7 combat is the unit progression. Each age, your unit values go up but your actual strength bonus for upgrading goes down. If we just look at the "upgraded" basic infantry units:

Antiquity
20 > 25(+25%) > 30(+20%)
Exploration
35 > 40(+14.29%) > 45(+12.5%)
Modern
50 > 55(+10%) > 60(+9.09%)

Tier 1 vs tier 3 in Antiquity has a 50% strength disparity. But in modern this falls off to only a 20% disparity between Tier 1 and Tier 3. So each age, strength becomes more about number of troops than power with units encouraging you to play with a carpet of doom. Cavalry just sits at the top of each tier and upgrading to 5 strength over. I feel like Exploration should have larger jumps and modern even larger jumps. This would cut down on the need for more units if each unit is stronger noticably so. If Tier 2 Exploration units had a strength of 45 that would be an immediate +28.6% boost. (Stronger than the boost in Antiquity.) Then jump to 60 (+22.22%) giving Exploration age unit a disparity of 42.89%. Even though that disparity is smaller than in Antiquity, it still poses more of a threat when someone upgrades their units.

Additionally, I would like to see Commanders have promotions that favor battlefield terrains early in the promotion tree. Perhaps even remove the tree that improves city yields and replace it with terrain bonuses instead as the city yields tree is weird that you would upgrade a Commander with this to keep them OUT of combat to utilize the city boosting promotions but you have to be in combat to gain those promotions. I have wanted to try this strategy with commanders but haven't been able to because I have needed my commanders on the front lines, not tucked in cities, and to do well with a commander, I need combat promotions not city yield promotions. It works counter to itself, it seems - thus is just a wasted promotion path. Leave the city stuff to great people, not commanders, IMO. However, you could keep them as they are but sprinkle a terrain bonus early into each tree to encourage specialization or hybrid specialization.

 

[Suicidekills]

I think a big problem with Civ 7 combat is the unit progression. Each age, your unit values go up but your actual strength bonus for upgrading goes down. If we just look at the "upgraded" basic infantry units:

Antiquity
20 > 25(+25%) > 30(+20%)
Exploration
35 > 40(+14.29%) > 45(+12.5%)
Modern
50 > 55(+10%) > 60(+9.09%)

Tier 1 vs tier 3 in Antiquity has a 50% strength disparity. But in modern this falls off to only a 20% disparity between Tier 1 and Tier 3. So each age, strength becomes more about number of troops than power with units encouraging you to play with a carpet of doom. Cavalry just sits at the top of each tier and upgrading to 5 strength over. I feel like Exploration should have larger jumps and modern even larger jumps. This would cut down on the need for more units if each unit is stronger noticably so. If Tier 2 Exploration units had a strength of 45 that would be an immediate +28.6% boost. (Stronger than the boost in Antiquity.) Then jump to 60 (+22.22%) giving Exploration age unit a disparity of 42.89%. Even though that disparity is smaller than in Antiquity, it still poses more of a threat when someone upgrades their units.

Your assessment doesn't take Commanders into consideration. The strength disparity of the units is balanced out by the experience of your Commanders throughout the Ages.

Additionally, I would like to see Commanders have promotions that favor battlefield terrains early in the promotion tree. Perhaps even remove the tree that improves city yields and replace it with terrain bonuses instead as the city yields tree is weird that you would upgrade a Commander with this to keep them OUT of combat to utilize the city boosting promotions but you have to be in combat to gain those promotions. I have wanted to try this strategy with commanders but haven't been able to because I have needed my commanders on the front lines, not tucked in cities, and to do well with a commander, I need combat promotions not city yield promotions. It works counter to itself, it seems - thus is just a wasted promotion path. Leave the city stuff to great people, not commanders, IMO. However, you could keep them as they are but sprinkle a terrain bonus early into each tree to encourage specialization or hybrid specialization.

I like the Commander promotion trees for the most part. Promotions that favor the battlefield terrains I think would work better as a unique unit/ability. Also, In a way, the Maneuvering tree accomplishes this. I don't like the idea of removing the Leadership tree, as it does provide a use for your commanders during times of peace.

 

[Gorbles]

Tier 1 vs tier 3 in Antiquity has a 50% strength disparity. But in modern this falls off to only a 20% disparity between Tier 1 and Tier 3.

Does that actually translate into a difference in projected outcome?

e.g. is the relative strength important, or the static numerical increase? If they're only measuring the difference of +10, the scaling is the same.

 

[King Flevance]

Your assessment doesn't take Commanders into consideration. The strength disparity of the units is balanced out by the experience of your Commanders throughout the Ages.


I like the Commander promotion trees for the most part. Promotions that favor the battlefield terrains I think would work better as a unique unit/ability. Also, In a way, the Maneuvering tree accomplishes this. I don't like the idea of removing the Leadership tree, as it does provide a use for your commanders during times of peace.

It does take commanders into consideration. Commanders only give you a +2 and a +3 to strength stacked at most all game. Those branches don't upgrade with the ages. So that +2 grants +6-10% bonus in the Ancient age and only offers your units a 3-4% boost in the Modern Age. Most of these "boosts" are more logistical in nature more than mathematical and the mathematical ones don't add hardly anything in the modern age due to the scaling. Which is probably why the AI programming sucks so bad at warfare as utilizing your commander means not moving your units like an incompetent. The strength disparity is largely unaffected by Commander promotions as it hardly touches them and doesn't add a % modifier but just a flat +2 or +3, which is much smaller of an effect as the game progresses.

As for the Leadership tree, I would prefer it that they sprinkle that across all 4 trees and have each tree offer you specializations in times of war and times of peace. Rather than "this is my peace time general" and "this is my wartime general", I would prefer "this general is good at bolstering his radius in war and generating culture in a city in times of peace" and "this general is good at vegetated warfare in war and helps a city's production in times of peace" or something of that nature.

Does that actually translate into a difference in projected outcome?

e.g. is the relative strength important, or the static numerical increase? If they're only measuring the difference of +10, the scaling is the same.

It effects your odds of success on an RNG. If it gave you a % chance to win, or more likely in Civ 7 a % to damage modification this would go up drastically by increasing the scale. Tier 2 units should be troubling if you are the guy with only Tier 1 units. The benefit is that if you are the guy with Tier 2 units, superior firepower means you can field less troops to be effective (What superior tech has ALWAYS meant in Civ and other strategy games.) discouraging carpet of doom gameplay. You do hold an edge as is, yes but the edge is not worth the investment IMO. You are better off making sure you invest gold or production into having more units, rather than science into better units. (you will get there eventually) The invention of gunpowder is just a slight edge over longbow in this system figuratively speaking. There is no revolutionary weapon on the battlefield outside of figuring out how to make siege weapons over and over again. (reinventing the wheel every age)

Civ 7's structure is pretty much guaranteed to not have tier 1 ever actually go up against tier 3 so how each tier relates to it predecessor and to its successor matters a lot and defines combat. But it is important to view the spread to get a good overview.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I see the problems with Commanders - which I agree is a step in the right direction in the Civ Combat Conundrum - as follows:

1. The commanders' Span of Control - the number of units they can handle - remains fixed from start of game to finish, except for one commander promotion (+2 units). This is one of the few things Humankind got right, folks, increasing the number of units in an 'army/fleet' as the game progressed. In Civ VII it would be even easier to implement since the Ages are so exclusive: Commanders could normally control 4 units in Antiquity, 6 in Exploration, 8 in Modern, with commander's influence extending 1 tile in Antiquity, 2 in Exploration, up to 3 in Modern - exact numbers subject to change based on What Works Best in playtesting.

2. Providing Command Bonuses to both speed of movement and Combat. The game actually makes some pretty good attempts at this, with bonuses coming from Civics and Techs, Commander Promotions, and a host of individual Civ, Leader and Unit attributes. There are only a couple of things that I would add:

Flanking Bonuses. These should really only apply to units moving fast enough or starting in a position to outflank the opponent. Therefore, I would suggest these only apply to Cavalry/Mounted units OR Unique infantry units (Zulu Impis if they are ever included, for example). This would have to be part of a general re-figuring of infantry/ranged/cavalry attributes, though, because cavalry already are grossly imbalanced compared to the other two.

Speed. Some commanders in history were notorious for the speed with which they could move their forces: Alexander regularly used heavy cavalry as a pursuit force, and caught opponents who didn't realize how fast he could move; Stonewall Jackson's "foot cavalry" - infantry that could out-maneuver enemy cavalry; Pliev's Cavalry-Mechanized Group, in which his horse cavalry outran mechanized and armored forces (1944). IF we are going to reform the Commander Promotions, I would add some more in regard to speed of movement. Remembering that such could also be included as Social Policies, Techs, Mementos, or Unique (Civ or Leader) bonuses to take advantage of the flexibility of the Civ VII system.

 

[Bactrian]

I don't like 1UPT (prefer stacks) and was excited for commanders. I hoped that the new system would help overcome the tedium that I associate with moving individual units.

Unfortunately, in my opinion, it didn't work, and in fact made things worse. While commanders do help solve the problem of moving armies across long distances, they make combat more of the kind of micro-fest that I dislike (and which unduly advantages the player). I am very, very tired of 1UPT's sliding puzzle game, and commanders don't fix it.

We're seeing games like Ara and Millennia move toward small stacks and auto-resolved combat. If SoD are off the table, then I hope the next Civ moves to this kind of model.

edit: grammar

 

[Sostratus]

I think a big problem with Civ 7 combat is the unit progression. Each age, your unit values go up but your actual strength bonus for upgrading goes down. If we just look at the "upgraded" basic infantry units:

I’m almost certain it uses the same system as civ6, where the difference between combat strength matters - not the ratio. 5 strength is a 1.25x modifier in civ6.

In Civ VII it would be even easier to implement since the Ages are so exclusive:

Yeah, I really want this. It’s such a pain to get the +2 capacity promotion on commanders too.

Overall I think Civ7 needs to dig deeper into the economic cost of fielding armies, and especially tracking a soft “unit cap” that has been in several past civ games. There are many ways to calculate it - population, for example - and plenty of levers for militaristic civs to increase it. Social policy, a civ bonus (suppose Mongols could sustain an extra unit for every pasture they have or something) and so forth.

The reason I think this is because your standing army right now largely is a function of accumulated production and gold, and should be something where you really have to sacrifice to field a big army oriented for war and conquest. (Fielding cavalry, siege units, etc.)

 

[Suicidekills]

Commanders only give you a +2 and a +3 to strength stacked at most all game.

This is incorrect. The Order Commendation alone provides a +5 Combat Strength. If your unit is in a fortified District, the Bastion Tree is complete, and you chose Order as your commendation, your land unit will receive +12 combat strength defending. On the attacking end with the same commendation and the Assault Tree completed, your cavalry/siege unit at full HP can attack with +13 combat strength. And combat strength isn't the only benefit a Commander can provide. The Initiative promotion is crucial to warring.

As for the Leadership tree, I would prefer it that they sprinkle that across all 4 trees and have each tree offer you specializations in times of war and times of peace. Rather than "this is my peace time general" and "this is my wartime general", I would prefer "this general is good at bolstering his radius in war and generating culture in a city in times of peace" and "this general is good at vegetated warfare in war and helps a city's production in times of peace" or something of that nature.

That's an interesting take. I like the way each tree specializes in one aspect. I do think some of your suggestions could be used for a unique commander maybe they would have a unique promotion tree.

 

[Gorbles]

We're seeing games like Ara and Millennia move toward small stacks and auto-resolved combat. If SoD are off the table, then I hope the next Civ moves to this kind of model.

Too much like Total War for me.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy those games. But as those games.

 

[Bactrian]

Too much like Total War for me.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy those games. But as those games.

This honestly confuses me. Total War is all about the tactical combat. The strategic layer is basically to give overarching structure and narrative to a series of tactical battles. And I say that as someone who has enjoyed the series and how it's structured.

 

[user746383]

Ara and Millenia don’t have Total War style combat as far as I understand it. It’s closer to AoW I guess but you have no tactical control.