Ways to add even more realism to the military aspect?

[JBryan314]

So, I was thinking about the game today during a training lesson (bad idea I know, but I've heard the lesson before) and was trying to come up with ways to incorporate more tactical decision making into the combat of the game. For instance, if I am on patrol and come under heavy enemy fire, and my squad or fire team isn't able to suppress it and gain fire superiority, then we break contact, fall back and if artillery or naval guns are in range, we can call in fire support against that enemy force. So, in the game, my SEALs get attacked by a large force and lose some guys but still have some surviving units, and are within a certain number of tiles of a battleship or mobile artillery, then it would be cool to have the option to "call in fire support" against that target. Like, the battleship could fire guns against an enemy unit instead of just bombarding a city. I know you can attack units with artillery, but I'm talking about bombarding a certain unit with mobile artillery from a few squares away in the case of your infantry or SEALs getting ambushed by a larger force.

Also, snipers would be an interesting unit to have incorporated into the game.

And planting explosives along an opponent's roadways during wartime (or using a spy to do it during peacetime) would be a nice touch. Any vehicle that uses that road gets damaged or destroyed.

Using a spy to assassinate a high level leader could lead to unrest in the opponent's cities? Or a change in civics? Or a revolution?

Just some thoughts.

 

[strijder20]

Why do you keep talking about Seals? I never used them, they are worthless against Inuits and Russian fur traders anyway. I use marines all the time though.

Legends of Revolution and C2C offer a lot of the things you suggested.

 

[vandermerwe]

All sound ideas and IIRC the OP is actually serving in the military so it's kind of hard to argue. But I'm just not sure if Civ is that sort of game. Sure, war is almost always vital at some stage. But it's not a tactical battlefield simulator and its maps are too small-scale for that sort of thing anyway. I can't remember how big a tile is supposed to be, but with 2 tile moves per year, your mobile artillery within a few tiles of your SEALs isn't realistically within range. If you want to look at this another way, doing what you suggest would seriously diminish the value of mobility in Civ wars, and thus the strategic planning you need to win one. It'd just become a WWI-style slugfest.

Spies in BtS can already incite civic changes or city unrest btw.

One thing I would like to see, though, is something which allowed defeated troops to surrender. Very few real battles end with the total destruction of the enemy; even the most decisive ones tend to involve the defeated side surrendering en masse and/or fleeing in disorder. Troops in a stack, esp. unpromoted ones, would have an increasing chance of surrender as the combat odds worsened against them. Surrendering troops would then 'consume', say, 1 victorious unit for every 4 defeated ones, which would have to escort them to POW camps (which could either be a new building, and/or a fort, barracks or jail which would no longer be available for your own use). Once there, both the POWs and the guards would be out of the game until peace was declared. It'd be a bit more realistic as well as evening up the odds a little: rather than just slaughtering the AI you'd have to make provision for the defeated ones.

This may already be in a mod too but if so I've not seen it.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Though I have to wonder why Battleships can't bombard units.

 

[strijder20]

About that 'surrendering' option, there is an easy way to implement it. If you have already played FFH2, you already know the system of withdrawal on defence (if a units has, say 50% escape chance, then it has a 50% chance of running to a nearby tile on defeat). You could add that double withdrawal chance to every unit. A unit/promotion could also be added which reduces the chance of the enemy running away, so you can easily kill the withdrawed units.
On top of that, a unit with combat odds under 10% could have a 10% - combat odds 'surrender' chance, or something.

 

[Archon_Wing]

One thing I did like about Civ 5 was that a single combat doesn't result in one side always having to die. Forces don't always fight til annihilation, after all. I guess that'd be harder to balance, but escape chances sound interesting too.

 

[JBryan314]

Why do you keep talking about Seals? I never used them, they are worthless against Inuits and Russian fur traders anyway. I use marines all the time though.

Legends of Revolution and C2C offer a lot of the things you suggested.

Inuits and fur Traders? I haven't seen any of them. I get a lot of use out of SEALs during the game for landing on beaches and then running around chasing AI units moving to reinforce cities while an infantry force and tanks take said cities. I normally play as an American civ.

I agree that some of my ideas would probably turn the game into something it really wasn't designed to be. Maybe just a few minor changes, like increasing the range of cruise missiles and the number that can be carried by subs. And allow naval ships to bombard units outside of a city.

 

[s.bernbaum]

Inuits and fur Traders? I haven't seen any of them. I get a lot of use out of SEALs during the game for landing on beaches and then running around chasing AI units moving to reinforce cities while an infantry force and tanks take said cities. I normally play as an American civ.

He was being(?) humorous, referring to pinniped seals when speaking of SEALS.

 

[stoferb]

I'd like to speed up the warfare a little. Give all units movement points, especially the late one's. And there's a thing called active defense, small armies (1 or 2 units) simply shouldn't be able to walk undisturbed into your territory if you have counterunits nearby. Also, auto-patrol existed in SMAC, why didn't they include the option in civ4?

 

[ChanceDanger]

I'd like to speed up the warfare a little. Give all units movement points, especially the late one's.

Probably would break the game in terms of balance (esp. MP), but it would be fun to stage your own Red Dawn and capture every city on a huge earth map with nukes and commando troops in a single turn.

 

[JBryan314]

I wonder if placing anti-ship mines in sea chokepoints would damage the gameplay?\\

 

[JBryan314]

Something I liked about the old Deadlock game was retreat orders. You could order a unit (or units) to attack the enemy or their city, and continue attacking until they either win, or sustain a certain % of damage. So you could conceivably do hit and run ops. If done correctly, it was possible to take one or two units and attack a city over and over and retreat after only a small bit of damage. Eventually the city defenses could be weakened to the point that those same couple of units could take the whole city alone. Or perhaps just hit the city enough times to destroy one particular building and retreat away. They had orders where your units could simply go in and attack a certain building like a power plant or a farm, destroy it and leave. I remember that sending in a unit to destroy a museum and retreat would cause the population to become unhappy to point of rioting and destroying even more buildings themselves. That was always a laugh...

 

[ZeroM]

Naval bombardment would be fun, as would be defensive artillery/counterbattery fire.