Thoughts on in-battle unit micro with commanders?

[kaspergm]

This reminds me only one: More accuracy not means more fun.

I actually kind of agree with you here. While I think Boris is spot on in terms of accuracy, the purpose of the commander seemed to be to fix movement micromanagement issues. Having units use movement points or not allowing them to attack same turn they deploy/gather would seem to fix a lot of the abuses yet still leave the system open for streamlining army movement.

 

[stealth_nsk]

The fact that units can gain extra movement points by loading/unloading with commanders feels cheesy and opens the door for exploitive min/maxing strategies which I dislike. I think best solution would be to have loading/unloading take the same movement cost as moving into/out of the tile would normally cost, and limit commanders movement to that of lowest movement unit.

Commanders shouldn't be able to load units while in enemy zone of control. I don't think this behavior is intended, and it results in a lot of fiddly micromanagement that a) kind of defeats the micromanagement-reduction purpose of the Commander, and b) gives the player a huge advantage over the AI that we don't need.

I don't like micromanagement coming from those maneuvers, but I don't think they are that overpowered. You'll still lose if AI brings significantly more troops, especially with difficulty bonuses. And high-level AI is supposed to have both more units and bigger bonuses.

But if this system would somehow be restricted, I'll be happy.

EDIT: Just to clarify: I'm not concerned about thing being overpowered yet, I'm only concerned with the amount of micromanagement.

 

[Vitruvian Guar]

But the system revealed so far looks like it encourages micromanagement of units and a built-in massive Human Player advantage.

Two things that people did not like about previous Civs.

Just pointing out that there are ways to make the system both a more accurate portrayal of the battles and more fun - and probably faster to get through the battles for those that get tired of the battle animations - which will be all of us after a few thousand or hundred hours' play.

It is still notably less micromanagement than with 1 unit per commander, which is just like having no commanders at all and, therefore, having to move every unit individually.

 

[Josephias]

It is still notably less micromanagement than with 1 unit per commander, which is just like having no commanders at all and, therefore, having to move every unit individually.

Well, maybe not such a strict rule, but having the commander being able to perform “logistics” (that means, packing/unpacking) only in one unit that is engaged with the enemy (in enemy ZOC) per turn might be a way to keep some strategic management without it turning in exploitative micro.

 

[Vitruvian Guar]

Well, maybe not such a strict rule, but having the commander being able to perform “logistics” (that means, packing/unpacking) only in one unit that is engaged with the enemy (in enemy ZOC) per turn might be a way to keep some strategic management without it turning in exploitative micro.

Exactly. There are all kind of solutions like that, I'm not sure which is the optimal one, but it's definitely not general 1upc in antiquity.

 

[Rojonia]

The most basic change in tactical combat (that is, On the Battlefield) since pre-history has been the inccrease in Span of Control. That is, in Antiquity the commander of the group coud influence directly only those people within the sound of his own voice.

Later, he got subordinates that he could tell what he wanted down and (hopefully) they would take a bunch of people and do it. But still, in most armies in most cultures for most of history the Army Commander, either the monarch or his direct representative, could only directly influence a very small percentage of the troops on the battlefield.

In some cultures and military systems, in fact, he didn't even try. The Greek Hoplite array made no real use of commanders: the strategos simply fought in the ranks with perhaps a fancier plume on his helmet, if that. It was only when 'professionalism' began to creep into the ranks after the Peloponnesian War that we start reading about Army Commanders in Greece actually having some effect on what happened. Alexander at Gaugamela, in his climactic battle against the Persian Empire, commanded the Hetairoi, or Companion Cavalry - 2000 men out of a force of nearly 40,000. He had told everybody what he wanted them to do, as any commander could before the battle, But during the battle, he simply timed the charge of his Strike Force, the heavy lance-armed cavalry, and otherwise hoped that at least the majority of other people performed as desired.

All of which means that an in-game Army Commander should be severely limited in what he can do for most of the game.

This, in fact, would be another place to slide in some real differences among the Ages:

Antiquity: The Army Commander can 'give Command' or move One Unit only while in enemy ZOC. And he picks that unit when the battle starts, and can only change if the unit is destroyed. And if it isn't in the game already, being with a unit that gets destroyed should produce a substantial risk that the Army Commander goes down with the unit.

Exploration Age. The Army Commander starts with the Antiquity limitations, but some Promotions in the Leadership line allow him to Command more than one unit or provide bonuses to either one unit, or several units, or the entire Army.

Modern Age. The Army Commander can dance about the battlefield as you like: with wire and especially radio communications and powered transportation his reach stretches to all parts of the battlefield - until, of course, he talks too long on the radio and gets targeted by enemy artillery, missiles, UAVs, special forces et al.

Is there any way to distingish between the army commander and a military unit on the same hex but not in an army? They seem to merge into a single icon that always calls forth the military unit when you click and never the commander. What if I want to move the commander alone without the unit. How do I get ahold of it? It is also frustrating that you cannot see what units are hidden on the tile.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Is there any way to distingish between the army commander and a military unit on the same hex but not in an army? They seem to merge into a single icon that always calls forth the military unit when you click and never the commander. What if I want to move the commander alone without the unit. How do I get ahold of it? It is also frustrating that you cannot see what units are hidden on the tile.

You can't see the units easily, but if you click on the tile you get a spread display of all the units under the commander - but not any separate units there. If you repeatedly click on the units in the tile it will show each individually if they are not in an army, but this is both time consuming and, at least for me, annoying. I have found that it is, in fact, impossible to tell if everything in a tile is part of the same army and does not include a separate unit hidden there except by moving the commander, which takes any army out of the tile and leaves the lone unit behind. IF you thought that was part of the army, then you have to re-attach it. All far more d**n effort than it should be.

 

[PatrickTheProgrammer]

I'm hoping you can use the reinforce with a commander based at home and take wounded units off the map to warp home, and then cycle a new/ healed one back to the front with the front line comanders.

This is one of the rare instances where the requirements for Reinforcement are listed explicitly in the Civilopedia.
Reinforcement of the Unit to the Commander:
- The Unit must be in the Player's territory
- The Unit must have full movement points
- The Unit must be undamaged
- The Unit must be 6 or more tiles from the Commander
- The destination Commander must not be full
- (some stuff about how water affects the process)

So your home-brewed M.A.S.H. commander seems to be outlawed by 4 of the rules above.

 

[CivKirk64]

This is one of the rare instances where the requirements for Reinforcement are listed explicitly in the Civilopedia.
Reinforcement of the Unit to the Commander:
- The Unit must be in the Player's territory
- The Unit must have full movement points
- The Unit must be undamaged
- The Unit must be 6 or more tiles from the Commander
- The destination Commander must not be full
- (some stuff about how water affects the process)

So your home-brewed M.A.S.H. commander seems to be outlawed by 4 of the rules above.

Yep, I found this out in practice.
Maybe They can update commanders down the line, it would be a cool feature to add as an upgrade.
I haven't checked yet, are there any upgrades that promote quicker healing or healing while moving?

Those are my 2 ideas, Commander must be on a home district, unit must be injured, it will take the normal amount of turns to commute, plus the number of turns to heal, then it appears back home ready to head back.

 

[wesplaysciv]

Has anyone figured out some of the detailed XP rules for commanders? There seems to be some inconsistency...

1. Sometimes when a melee attack kills the unit, and the attacker enters outside the 1 hex radius after the battle, no XP is registered.
2. Doesn't look like the command radius commendation (super promotion) increases the XP range. Like many things, not clear if intended or a bug.
3. Can't tell why sometimes with land units the XP earned is very little (1-3XP vs 4-6XP normally)
4. Sometimes disbanding settlements earns XP outside of the 1 hex range?
5. It looks like there is a similar dynamic to Civ 6 where you earn a lot less XP from independent city states after the first promotion

There also seems to be a bug with the second wind where it didn't show up as a button until the age transition.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

This is one of the rare instances where the requirements for Reinforcement are listed explicitly in the Civilopedia.
Reinforcement of the Unit to the Commander:
- The Unit must be in the Player's territory
- The Unit must have full movement points
- The Unit must be undamaged
- The Unit must be 6 or more tiles from the Commander
- The destination Commander must not be full
- (some stuff about how water affects the process)

So your home-brewed M.A.S.H. commander seems to be outlawed by 4 of the rules above.

The bit in bold isn't actually true, you can use the 5th and 6th slots for reinforcement even if they are locked!!

 

[Mudkip1001]

I'm just going to say,

I really like this "microcontrol", I hope Firaxis doesn't add another level of complexity or stipulation to commanders, they are kinda hard enough to explain to newbies how to use given the reinforcement mechanic is kinda vague without looking it up.. But the ability to be able to utilize them against human players will be more fun as they are now, It definitely can turn the tide of battles, it makes me think of historical examples of forced marches, or generals' last-minute redeployments, or retreats.

if you add a you cant deploy "if a unit is by you" rule, its just going to make commanders kinda useless as they will die more often, and you cant escort them ala civ 6's link mechanic, adding more painful and unintuitive micro-managing... (and if the AI has to deal with this rule, it will forever relegate the commander to a glorified AI scout unit)

 

[CivKirk64]

Oh I did just think how cool it would be to just march a big group unpacked to the front line and time it just right to arrive and "unpack" 4-6 more units reinforced units from various starting points. Surprise its actually 10 guys you gotta deal with.

 

[Mudkip1001]

Oh I did just think how cool it would be to just march a big group unpacked to the front line and time it just right to arrive and "unpack" 4-6 more units reinforced units from various starting points. Surprise its actually 10 guys you gotta deal with.

In Humankind, you could stack units and it would tell you on the unit tag what and how many units were packed in a stack, I'm still on the fence about whether something like that should be included with commanders, cause honestly when the AI actually did decide to pack up units, it totally surprised me. I was always shocked when you kill one of the hundreds of the AI commanders and it throws a bunch of unused units on your backline making me have to reconsider my strategy...

I think you can visually tell if you actually look at the unit model and see it which makes me have to pay attention before attacking unguarded commanders willy-nilly.