Units not dying - Jumping the gun

[kurtkage]

I have seen countless posts in various threads stating something along the lines of "because units don't die anymore" or "since units don't die from 1 combat" etc.

This is coming from 1 source as far as I can tell (http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/99021-Civilization-V-Offers-New-Strategic-Combat) stating that "Units are no longer destroyed if they lose a battle", and has not been corroborated anywhere else that I can find. It has been taken literally by many people, and has them believing that units not dying from combat is the norm.

I am wondering if the escapist has some misconceptions going on here, whether that be some units have withdrawl chance or confusing it with some ranged combat or something like that and here are my reasons for doubting it.

1) http://pc.ign.com/articles/107/1075587p2.html
Article at IGN describing AI game they watched in which warriors are killed by barbarians in the early game (this also goes against the common knowledge of there being way less units around as the article states the AI built 6 warriors early game to rush a city state)

"Unfortunately, along the way a few of the warriors were lost in an unexpected fight with barbarians"

Does that sound to you that units are no longer destroyed from battle as Escapist states? Especially early game 6 warriors against barbs?

2) http://gdc.gamespot.com/story/6253246/civilization-v-impressions-first-look?page=2
Gamespot article describing a battle in which an American spearmen is killed by their spearmen with some ranged archer support.
"Our ranks consisted mainly of warriors, spearmen, and a few archers, and though our relatively weaker warriors unfortunately started on the front lines ahead of our spearmen, we were able to use Civ V's new switch move order to have the two units swap positions, and then we pit our spearmen against theirs. Those crafty Americans set themselves up behind a river, which gave their units a natural terrain bonus, but we softened up our foes with a volley of arrows from a stack of archers placed atop a nearby hill. By softening up our foes and weakening their remaining health, we effectively reduced their terrain advantage and were able to mop them up with our own spearmen, which were at full strength"

To me this sounds as tho the archer did a ranged attack and spearmen then attacked and killed. It does Not sound like some of the complex ideas I've seen floating around that it was surrounded and attacked multiple times etc to be destroyed.

3) The screenshots we have of archers firing across the lake. In the before picture:
http://www.civfanatics.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=2773&c=36
we see the warrior has 8 "men" showing on the unit (full str appears to be 12 judging by other units around so it looks like this warrior has taken a few hits from archers or was in other combat)
In the after screenshot: http://www.civfanatics.com/gallery/showimage.php?i=2775&c=36

You can see the warrior now has 6 "men" showing on the unit. My point here being that while we do not know percentage of str/hp the men represent, it appears that an archer can do a signifigant amount of dmg in an attack, again leading me to believe that units will not be the super hard to kill things that people are imagining.

Ideas of complex attrition systems and retreating don't add up for me, it's hard to believe that units are almost always going to have a way out, added to that the article stating that a "few" out of 6 warriors died to barbarians really has me doubting this concept and I believe it will be much closer to what we are used to. What do you think?

 

[Chalks]

The way Civ 4 works is that normally, if two units get into a fight only one of them comes out of it alive - even when both units started on 100% health, they just keep slugging it out until one is dead.

As I read it, the "units not dying" thing simply means that units have a chance of getting out of combat alive if they start on high health.

I think we'll find that when two similar strength units have a fight, often they will both survive perhaps with one a bit worse for wear and the weaker one will have a chance to escape in its turn (or perhaps if it was the aggressor, the other unit may be able to counter attack to finish it off).

This will make precious units much easier to keep alive. If you would have lost the unit in Civ 4, in 5 a lot of the time you'll get a chance to retreat at low health to fight another day.

 

[Ahriman]

I agree that it is unlikely to require anything complex, and that many people have been misinterpreting the issue.

Peresonally I think the most likely interpretation is that units have hit points. Positive hit points; keep fighting. Zero hit points = unit dead. So you want to try to keep units alive and withdraw damaged units before they get finished off.

It might take ~3-4 fights on average for units of equivalent tech to get a complete kill. (Eg a unit that does on average 3 damage per combat might have ~9 hp).

So for example you could kill one unsupported enemy by attacking it on average ~3 times with your own unit.

This helps to encourage forming a defensive line, and outflanking behavior. You want to reduce the ability of the enemy to gang up and target your units (to get complete unit kills) while trying to do this as much as possible to your opponent.
Units in a defensive line can only be targeted by 2 (non-bombardment) attacks at a time, so its easier to keep them alive, and retreat the units getting damaged to heal, and bring up reserves to fill the hole.
Whereas a unit on the end of a line can be surrounded and killed.

This sort of logic is why I really hope that ranged fire is kept to a minimum.

 

[kurtkage]

It might take ~3-4 fights on average for units of equivalent tech to get a complete kill.

Ok but how do you reconcile this with the gamespot article? My understanding of it is they swapped position with a warrior so that it would be Spear on Spear instead of attacking with a warrior, they used an archer on a hill to range attack enemy spear, then attacked with spear and killed enemy spear...

That does not sound like anything different than cIV combat other than the ranged portion of it (substitute a bomber for archer and it is identical yea?)

And how about the 6 warriors that a "few" were killed by barbs? Were there 9 barbs out there attacking multiple times? I suppose that is possible and there is noway to tell since the detail is lacking but still...

 

[Rusty Edge]

What Chalks and Ahriman describe are the way things seemed to work the couple of times that I played Panzer General, the game the lead designer often cites when talking about combat in Civ V.

 

[civ_king]

units sometimes wouldn't die in one battle

 

[Schuesseled]

I'm pretty sure that that article said that losing a combat didnt always result in death. So basically sometimes they do, sometimes they dont.

 

[kurtkage]

I'm pretty sure that that article said that losing a combat didnt always result in death. So basically sometimes they do, sometimes they dont.

Verbatim quote from the article says

"Units are no longer destroyed if they lose a battle"

So again my point here is that we have 1 article that makes a statement with no context , then we have 2 other articles that describe actually Watching combat and both of those result in the unit being destroyed.....

See what I mean?

 

[Schuesseled]

Verbatim quote from the article says

"Units are no longer destroyed if they lose a battle"

So again my point here is that we have 1 article that makes a statement with no context , then we have 2 other articles that describe actually Watching combat and both of those result in the unit being destroyed.....

See what I mean?

alright maybe im thinking of another article where it said that, let me try and find it.

not sure if this was the one i was thinking of but:

http://www.gameshark.com/previews/3475/p_10/Sid-Meiers-Civilization-5-PAX-East-Preview-.htm

"and battles are no longer kill or be killed. Both units might come away from a battle weakened but not destroyed"

 

[kurtkage]

That would be great, the more sources the better.

The fact that we have placed this in confirmed features, and that everyone thinks it works like this, is all based off of 1 sentence in 1 article that is Not even describing witnessing combat is strange to me. They don't give any detail nor example of seeing it in practice, where as the articles we have that Do describe witnessing combat all result in units dying. It makes me wonder.

Thanks Schuesseled, that is interesting to see it in another article.

Starting to make me think that it is in with 2 sources, but that it is not as prevalent as some may think based on the death accounts in the other 2 articles. hmmm

 

[Schuesseled]

i think the escapist writer simply missed out the word necessarily.

 

[Schuesseled]

http://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/2010/03/10/gdc10-6-changes-to-civilization-5/

"In addition, combat itself is more realistic. It doesn’t always end with a unit dying."

This was the article i was thinking of, and its another source. ka-ching

It's mostlikely as i said a case of sometime they die, sometimes they don't.

 

[Chalks]

You should try not to parse things too hard. You'll drive yourself mad and end up extrapolating more typos and misquotes than you do hidden meanings.

 

[kurtkage]

Ah, thanks again for that one.

Alright I can get behind it being in. It was all the posts I would read that make arguments based on units never dying that prompted me to post this thread since clearly units can die based on the other articles watching combat.

 

[Schuesseled]

Glad to be of service

 

[kurtkage]

You should try not to parse things too hard. You'll drive yourself mad and end up extrapolating more typos and misquotes than you do hidden meanings.

Yea Chalks I hear you, and my last post I made while you were posting is more the reason I was doing this than trying to drive myself mad. It's more about the arguments ppl use that seem to be based on misconception that units cannot die or that it is very rare.

I don't see how it can be "rare" given the spearmen and warriors example dying.

 

[Chalks]

Haha, well, this forum is basically entirely made up of people over analysing and coming up with needlessly complex explanations and possibilities - myself included.

What else are we going to do without a Civ 5 to play?

 

[Ahriman]

Ok but how do you reconcile this with the gamespot article? My understanding of it is they swapped position with a warrior so that it would be Spear on Spear instead of attacking with a warrior, they used an archer on a hill to range attack enemy spear, then attacked with spear and killed enemy spear...

You're reading too much into it. They gave a plain-speech description of something that happened. In no way can you conclude that one bombard and a single spearman attacking killed a full-health enemy spearman. Its possible, but we can't conclude it.

Were there 9 barbs out there attacking multiple times?

No, but the barbarians didn't have to kill them in a single combat.

Imagine 6 of my warriors vs 4 barbarians. My 6 kill 2 barbs, losing 1/3 health each. End turn. Their remaining 2 barbs kill one of my injured guys. My turn. I attack to finish off their wounded barbs, but get unlucky, and lose a second warrior.

 

[Schuesseled]

You're reading too much into it. They gave a plain-speech description of something that happened. In no way can you conclude that one bombard and a single spearman attacking killed a full-health enemy spearman. Its possible, but we can't conclude it.

the fact that that is exactly what they told us, makes me believe we can conclude that.

 

[Ahriman]

the fact that that is exactly what they told us, makes me believe we can conclude that.

Over-parsing.

"and were able to mop them up with our own spearmen" does not necessarily imply that it took only a single spearman unit one attack to kill off the enemy unit. They might have had 2 spearmen, for example. So 1 bombardment + 2 spearman attacks.

Again, its possible, but we can't conclude it.