[TIP] Turn Quick Combat off

[Lord Yanaek]

Quick Combat should always be disabled in Single Player. It's my point of view and others might disagree of course. I often see games with Quick Combat enabled, whether DC, the new Immortal Challenges, Game of the Month. Not a big deal as i can disable it. Why do i even post this in Strategy & Tips, simply because with quick combat enabled you can't even see what's hitting you, and this can be an issue.

Imagine the following : you are busy building your empire, you have a couple warriors posted as sentries out of your borders but since you are busy with your workers and build queues, you don't move the map all around each turn to look at other players units (seriously, who does this each turn? maybe some of the best deity players do, i don't). Then, an AI DoWs you and you get a message that your warrior died ... uh, but what sort of attacking force did the AI have???
Later on, your ship is sunken by an enemy bomber, sure there is a Carrier around, but where did this bomber come from, east, south ???
Well, with quick combat off, you would already have the answers to those questions.

I personally only keep quick combat on as long as i only fight occasional barbarians, and then it doesn't make for much quicker turns. I wish there was an option to allow faster combat animations, but there isn't and i think the information you can get from seeing combat outweighs the increase in turns length. CiV isn't fast paced RTS anyway. Just wanted to share. Knowledge is power, a famous general once said "Know yourself and know your enemy and fear not a thousand battles", well, with quick combat i feel like i'm fighting with blindfold and i don't know my enemy.

 

[Grendeldef]

While I disagree with keeping the combat animation as it really takes too much time for me this brings up one of my biggest complaints about the game - WTH is my combat log? It doesn't have to be long; a turn long log would help immensely but something around 5-10 turns would be even better.
This is not as big of a problem as it was before (most of) the invisible units were patched but still annoying. As Bob pointed out it'd be really nice to know what hit my units any given time.

 

[Ninakoru]

hile I disagree with keeping the combat animation as it really takes too much time for me this brings up one of my biggest complaints about the game - WTH is my combat log? It doesn't have to be long; a turn long log would help immensely but something around 5-10 turns would be even better.
This is not as big of a problem as it was before (most of) the invisible units were patched but still annoying. As Bob pointed out it'd be really nice to know what hit my units any given time.

Yeah, I like to see animations but it takes some time. I usually turn it off if i have to do a lot of combat management (like razing a medieval city with horse archers and logistics ^^) , or when i use planes, and specially when the computer takes its turn and I'm at war with it.

There should be more options like:

- Faster animation for aircraft (there's a mod already but would be a good core option).

- Fast for everything but enemy to player action.

- An intermediate option with centers the camera and show the attacks in order, but without an animation.

- A better combat log feature.

 

[The Pilgrim]

While I disagree with keeping the combat animation as it really takes too much time for me this brings up one of my biggest complaints about the game - WTH is my combat log? It doesn't have to be long; a turn long log would help immensely but something around 5-10 turns would be even better.
This is not as big of a problem as it was before (most of) the invisible units were patched but still annoying. As Bob pointed out it'd be really nice to know what hit my units any given time.

Yup.

 

[Fire0rb]

I just try to imagine what time if would consume when going for a split domination with 2 large armies ... like 20mins for a turn just fighting animation?
I mean we all agree that we surely need a decent combat log but until then i will need to guess what killed my unit

Another funny WTH death of a unit are charging knights which retreat in the shadows after the attack

 

[Vintage Port]

Another funny WTH death of a unit are charging knights which retreat in the shadows after the attack

Super frustrating no doubt.

My last domination game I was mopping up Askia and just had to finish my assault on his capital. I thought I had cleared most/all of his army and moved all my troops in to range. When out of nowhere he had 3-4 Mand Cavs pummeling my 2-range Gatlings.

I was taking a beating and had no idea where they were coming from as they would hit and retreat back behind the city. It was hard to tell exactly how many Cavs he had and which units were being attacked by the city/ranged units and which were being attacked by Cavs.

 

[Catan_Settler]

BETTER TIP: Pay attention to the notifications that come up at the start of your turn, they will tell you you are being attacked.

Turning quick combat off adds literally HOURS to the runtime of a domination game. Not worth it. If you're at war, pay attention to your troops/cities/notifications. Really simple.

 

[Lord Yanaek]

I just try to imagine what time if would consume when going for a split domination with 2 large armies ... like 20mins for a turn just fighting animation?

You get a point, Domination games would take much longer without quick combat. I rarely play domination and tend to maintain a small army of experienced units, along with some "disposable" cheap units (or free from CS allies) to take the first hits. This means i want to know what the enemy has, even if my "buffer" units die quickly, as i don't want to risk loosing my veterans to some ninja knight or anything similar.

Anyway, quick combat can sure help make turns faster, but i would really suggest to players who are still not comfortable enough with tactical combat on higher difficulties to disable it when they don't really need it. It's still possible to re-enable it when you are pushing an attack with plenty of troops now that it's no longer a fixed option. When defending with few units against high difficulty AI, you really don't want to suffer more losses than absolutely necessary. I don't want to justify my Deity failures because of QC, but i lost one game because of unexpected losses that could have been avoided (and, i must admit, because i rage quited this game ).

Modding could probably help, but only as far as mods are allowed. This means no GotM, no HoF, and no Challenges if the mod is not saved game compatible. I'll still have a look at the CivUP code, i think they did achieve some faster animations.

BETTER TIP: Pay attention to the notifications that come up at the start of your turn, they will tell you you are being attacked.

Notifications are only worth to know what unit killed you, not where it was coming from. Also only the last ones are visible.
As i said, i rarely play domination and often keep a small army. I need all the knowledge i can get to fight against the large armies of a Deity, or even Immortal AI.

 

[Vintage Port]

BETTER TIP: Pay attention to the notifications that come up at the start of your turn, they will tell you you are being attacked.

Turning quick combat off adds literally HOURS to the runtime of a domination game. Not worth it. If you're at war, pay attention to your troops/cities/notifications. Really simple.

The notifications are pretty terrible, especially if the list is 10 long (like someone mentioned above - if you are fighting wars on 2 fronts - which I find very common at the higher levels) the notifications are ridiculously long.

They need to implement a war/combat log.

 

[Draco84]

I would like to see Fog of War cleared when for the entire turn instead of instantly reset after every action.

If your warrior got killed, just look where he was and you will see what killed him as if you had been watching him the whole time.

I'd also like a popup for when a unit is injured to pop up like the one for promotions or killed so I can click through quickly to see if he needs to run or do something.

 

[Light Cleric]

Yeah, it's really annoying. I made a suggestion thread quite a while back but obviously nothing ever came of it. It's really ridiculous that I have to take screenshots to see the damage log in the late game, but it can be super annoying to read stuff like this in ~2 seconds and figure out which unit attacked from where:

First one has minor spoilers for DC #17 if anyone's playing that

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

An actual log seems like just a basic thing that should have been around from the beginning.

 

[sufficiency]

It would be better if the combat log can be read again if needed, instead of disappearing after two seconds.

 

[Polisurgist]

I keep QC turned off, and when I need to speed combat along, I switch to gridded view.

 

[Vintage Port]

Yeah, it's really annoying. I made a suggestion thread quite a while back but obviously nothing ever came of it. It's really ridiculous that I have to take screenshots to see the damage log in the late game, but it can be super annoying to read stuff like this in ~2 seconds and figure out which unit attacked from where:

First one has minor spoilers for DC #17 if anyone's playing that

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

An actual log seems like just a basic thing that should have been around from the beginning.

I agree and those are great examples. Sometimes you can get 10+ notifications fighting multiple fronts and one can't just "pay attention".

There needs to be logs one can go back and reference.

 

[Unresolved]

A combat log is a much needed feature. But I can usually get enough info from the quick notifications while watching my main battlefront. I would never turn off Quick Combat though because the higher the difficulty, the more units the AI has. Turning off QC would drastically increase turn times.

 

[Deau]

While I disagree with keeping the combat animation as it really takes too much time for me this brings up one of my biggest complaints about the game - WTH is my combat log? It doesn't have to be long; a turn long log would help immensely but something around 5-10 turns would be even better.
This is not as big of a problem as it was before (most of) the invisible units were patched but still annoying. As Bob pointed out it'd be really nice to know what hit my units any given time.

Seconded! Hell I don't even care for 5-10 turns. I just want to see what happened this last turn...

I've lost units to bomber or artillery spam before I could even see the units while playing on defense and wondering why the eff having to stare at the top of my screen during the next turn wait. Because of this, I have to agree with the OP. I can't play without combat animation on due to the lack of another way to see combat results.

 

[whyidie]

Depends on the level. Not being a domination player I'm similar to OP, every unit matters and every bit of intelligence I gain is important. If I'm playing above King I'll turn animations on when I'm at war.

In addition to the already mentioned mounted units disappearing into the fog of war, you also miss out on planes located on carriers. With animations on you get a sense of where the carrier is located and try to hunt it down.

 

[Lord Yanaek]

For what it's worth, modding the speed might be easier than i though. Looks like movement is controlled by a single, easy to understand, SQL table while combat is controlled by another one, less easy to understand.
Might also be possible to add a log with some Lua. Will have to look at this too.

 

[klamath632]

I think this is a "tip" that most can safely disregard.