What Civ IV was Missing: Flanking

[pi-r8]

There will be flanking of a sorts in this game without unit facing taken into account. Just play PG and you'll see.

yeah, this. With only 1 UPT, the only way you can take advantage of superior numbers is to flank the enemy. That's pretty much the reason it's used in real life too, to concentrate greater numbers against the enemy. You can also use it to sneak past frontline units and attack support units like artillery. But adding this "facing" system is just hugely artificial and annoying. Are the soldiers too stupid to turn around when an enemy unit comes up behind them?

 

[Shurdus]

But adding this "facing" system is just hugely artificial and annoying. Are the soldiers too stupid to turn around when an enemy unit comes up behind them?

O_o: Quickly Tom! Look behind you, cavalry is charging from our rear! Turn around!
o_O: Shhh, Everett! You are going to have us all courtmarshalled! We were told to face this way in order to see if there is any one coming!

 

[lemmy101]

A simpler system would be to provide some units, such as cavalry, with a flanking bonus, and detect when they attack whether the defending unit has friendly units to their left and right, and if not, then the flanking bonus applies. If they do, it doesn't. On top of this some units could have flank defence bonus or penalties, making them good counters to, or weak against, cavalry. This would give intensive to protect your flanks as well as attacking exposed flanks, with no unnecessary micromanagement.

 

[Disgustipated]

That's technically true, Chongli, but in BtS they also introduced Flank Attacks to counter bombardment units (Catapults, Cannon, Trebuchet etc). Mounted Units could conduct Flanking attacks which could cause the equivalent of collateral damage to any siege units in a stack.

Aussie.

was just going to mention this. Funny how people forget this. It's a pretty minor thing, and it seemed silly my cavalry could get it, but my tanks couldn't.

Some kind of flanking should be in the game, I'm just not a fan of facing.

 

[Chalks]

The premise is not to sneak up on regiments, but to outmaneuver them and attack them where they are weak. If I attack one regiment's rear, then it will be because I outmaneuvered it or its commander wasn't paying attention. Although it has been confirmed that units can hide and heal in forests making for the actual possibility of ambushes.

I don't see how a unit would not re-organise itself to repel an attack from any direction, since each turn represents an entire year of time, minimum.

In order for a unit to have a meaningful "rear" at which to aim your attack, the regiment would have to be facing in the same direction with a commander that wasn't paying attention for 12 whole months.

Combat manoeuvres like this just don't make sense on this scale. Sure, during a battle, in the small scale, there may be flanking moves made by cavalry units, but this is taken account of by flanking bonuses since you don't have control of the combat on that granular a scale. In short, you're not moving troops around on a battlefield, you're moving battlefields around on a planet.

 

[largedarryl]

One of the reasons flanking was not in previous Civ's was because of abstraction. The macro level empire management found in all Civ games was meant to add this layer of abstraction to all the micro level details. Flanking is a micro level combat detail that is not part of the civ experience and would not add anything enjoyable to the experience.

 

[Akkon888]

I played Pirates! before. It was a game by Sid Meier also. The newer one utilized the flanking the OP describes. In Pirates!, a 2x strength boost is given to the attacker when attacking from a non-front direction (because the layout is like Civ4, there are 3 front directions and 5 non-front directions. Personally, I found the flanking system in Pirates! to work very well with the rest of the battle - people could hide in forests and use impressive guerilla warfare.

In the hex system, I can see there being 3 general non-rear directions, and 3 general rear directions (If you have trouble picturing this, trace a protractor 360 degrees and mark every 60 degrees and the radius). I approve the flanking idea because it worked well in Pirates!

 

[Earthling]

Nope, a poor idea that would be a waste of time, no need to introduce which way units are "facing." Unit types and promotions already do/can do this anyway.