What can Firaxis learn?

[kaspergm]

I really, really, really would NOT like any sort of tactical battle system. I don't want to spend even more time on combat.

It’s not because I’m 100 % for a separate war map myself - although I am probably leaning towards it - but I don’t really understand this objection based on the following reasoning: I don’t agree you use a lot more time on combat in, say, Humankind than in Civ6 - it’s just that in Humankind this time is managed as several consecutive “rounds” of battle happening within a single turn, whereas in Civ6 these rounds are identical with the overall game turns, so that each game turn you do exactly one combat round. This means in Civ 6 a battle that takes, say, 3 rounds, is spread out over 3 turns, whereas in Humankind, the battle would be executed within one game turn - but the actual combat time is more or less the same, as I see it?

The downside of the civ system is that it makes unit movement a nightmare, and you end up with weird situations like 200 year skirmishes between a warrior and a spearman or hundred year long sieges in cities. This is to some extent not the case in Humankind.

That’s not saying Humankind combat system is perfect, it definitely has some quirks that takes time to get used to, and personally I find the different unit types somewhat confusing, but it does seem to resolve some of the up issues often brought forward with the Civ6 combat and logistics, and I’d still like to try it in a civilization context to see if it plays out better,

 

[criZp]

Civ2 had the “if the top defender dies, the whole stack dies” mechanic which perfectly balanced the doom stack problem

Yeah except that doesn't make any sense from an intuition point of view.

Map shouldn't be that hard - as you said, variable stacking limit, possibly some movement restrictions based on Size of Stack, terrain and technology (state of supply abstracted?).

I think variable stacking won't work well unless it's just a slow increase in capacity, if you have to move units in and out of stacks often it will not be fun.

 

[8housesofelixir]

If just for naval combat - a more well-thought Trade Route system would raise the importance of naval development and naval play massively.

Trade Routes and Trade Deals would better be linked together, instead of somehow teleporting horses between your city and a foreign city that you don't even know the location of.

 

[MrRadar]

If just for naval combat - a more well-thought Trade Route system would raise the importance of naval development and naval play massively.

Trade Routes and Trade Deals would better be linked together, instead of somehow teleporting horses between your city and a foreign city that you don't even know the location of.

I think Civ3&4 had the best implementation so far, both in terms of mechanics and UI: commerce generating automatic trade routes with whomever you have open borders, and you can trade luxuries and strategics in the diplomacy screen (where it is immediately clear what luxury trade is relevant, unlike in VI), provided there's a road and/or sea route connection between the trading parties. Simple and logical.

But in Civ V they probably thought this was too sophisticated however, and abstracted the trade of luxuries to teleportation and introduced clicking&scrolling intensive individual trade routes, with the clicking&scrolling UI element progressing (regressing?) from mildly to rather quite a bit annoying along its route Civ V -> BE-> Civ VI.

I like so much more the way HK handles trade, as mechanics and its UI implementation, in comparison to VI, however even in HK sometimes it would be good to have a button 'Buy all'

 

[criZp]

I think a good trade system might be something like this (inspired by anno 1800):

-To trade, two civs must have an uninterrupted road/harbor-connection between the capitals. They must also have a trade agreement.
-Each civ sets an export limit. Any item with quantity above their export limit is available for purchase by other civs.
-Each civ sets an import limit and a wealth limit. If any item is at a quantity below the import limit, and your wealth is above the wealth limit, you automatically purchase the item from available civilizations.
-You might set different import/export limits on select items to override the global limit, should you so wish.
-Each item has a fixed price.
-With each other civ you have a trade relation modifier that determine who you prefer to trade with.

So basically you just determine how big item/wealth buffers you want to keep, then you get a trade connection and trade agreement with some other players, and the system takes care of all the rest. Also, longer distance and harder terrain between the capitals should make the trade less efficient in some way. Maybe each import made should have a cost associated with it, that scales with trade amount and distance.

 

[Aristos]

I think variable stacking won't work well unless it's just a slow increase in capacity, if you have to move units in and out of stacks often it will not be fun.

A soft cap with penalties above the cap works well. That is the mechanism in brilliant Realism Invictus for Civ 4. As long as they teach the AI how to use it (big IF when it comes to Firaxis).

 

[Bactrian]

It’s not because I’m 100 % for a separate war map myself - although I am probably leaning towards it - but I don’t really understand this objection based on the following reasoning: I don’t agree you use a lot more time on combat in, say, Humankind than in Civ6 - it’s just that in Humankind this time is managed as several consecutive “rounds” of battle happening within a single turn, whereas in Civ6 these rounds are identical with the overall game turns, so that each game turn you do exactly one combat round. This means in Civ 6 a battle that takes, say, 3 rounds, is spread out over 3 turns, whereas in Humankind, the battle would be executed within one game turn - but the actual combat time is more or less the same, as I see it?

The downside of the civ system is that it makes unit movement a nightmare, and you end up with weird situations like 200 year skirmishes between a warrior and a spearman or hundred year long sieges in cities. This is to some extent not the case in Humankind.

That’s not saying Humankind combat system is perfect, it definitely has some quirks that takes time to get used to, and personally I find the different unit types somewhat confusing, but it does seem to resolve some of the up issues often brought forward with the Civ6 combat and logistics, and I’d still like to try it in a civilization context to see if it plays out better,

I dislike Humankind's tactical battle system enough that I only auto-resolve combats, sub-optimal results be damned.

I agree that while the "top unit defends, all units die" system is quite fast and decisive it does often feel quite bad (and unintuitive). An alternative for stack vs. stack combat, however, is to have the system auto-resolve the combat, exactly the way I play Humankind. I quite like playing that way and I recommend everyone try it out at least once.

 

[vorlon_mi]

Civ2 had the “if the top defender dies, the whole stack dies” mechanic which perfectly balanced the doom stack problem

That's an interesting point. Allow unlimited stacking -- to solve the path finding and avoid the "sliding tile puzzle" mechanic -- but add a risk to leaving the units stacked in contact with the enemy. Stack can easily move close to engagement, but are then directed into the battle one at a time by the player.

Civ3 and Civ4, in a clear and intentional break from Civ2, allowed the best defender in the stack to defend. Each enemy unit engaging the stack would kill only one unit in the stack. Yes, Civ4 also has/had collateral damage where other units would *injured* but not killed. To take down a stack in Civ3 or Civ4, the human (or AI) would need to send multiple units against it.

 

[civac]

You had collateral damage in Civ3 too. It worked a bit differently (and more realistically) than in Civ4. It's interesting people bring up the the Civ2 mechanic. (Btw, Smac had a variant where defeating the top defender would damage the stack by 30%, so you needed to win 4 progressively easier battles against it to wipe it out.) It works fine as a game mechanic but I'm not sure it would be satisfying on an immersion basis.

 

[criZp]

That's an interesting point. Allow unlimited stacking -- to solve the path finding and avoid the "sliding tile puzzle" mechanic -- but add a risk to leaving the units stacked in contact with the enemy. Stack can easily move close to engagement, but are then directed into the battle one at a time by the player.

The HoI4 solution can do this too, just without the whole "everyone dies because reasons". In short, no limit on moving/stacking, but a limit on number of attacks that can be made (max one attack from a given tile into another given tile per turn)

 

[aieeegrunt]

That's an interesting point. Allow unlimited stacking -- to solve the path finding and avoid the "sliding tile puzzle" mechanic -- but add a risk to leaving the units stacked in contact with the enemy. Stack can easily move close to engagement, but are then directed into the battle one at a time by the player.

Civ3 and Civ4, in a clear and intentional break from Civ2, allowed the best defender in the stack to defend. Each enemy unit engaging the stack would kill only one unit in the stack. Yes, Civ4 also has/had collateral damage where other units would *injured* but not killed. To take down a stack in Civ3 or Civ4, the human (or AI) would need to send multiple units against it.

Civ Revolutions 2 had a twist on this where if the attacking unit had certain promotions or there was a big difference in combat strength a unit could attack the stack multiple times. This prevented cheesy gamey strats like flooding a city with cheap crappy units that a superior opponent literally could not kill fast enough.

A basic stacking limit system based on terrain and technology really should not be tough to either implement or code an AI for. It would prevent a lot of nonsense like marching massive armies through deserts or tundras.

One thing I’d like to suggest is some sort of Baggage Train unit that increases stacking but is defenceless and moves a lot slower than military units. For most of human history military strategy revolved around them