Which combat system would you prefer for the next Civ?

[Supamarioana]

Hello guys.

I already opened this poll in the forums of other Civ incarnations. Please don't vote two times.

There has been a lot of discussion about the 1UPT system of Civ5. To be honest: I just played the demo. And although I think that Civ4:BTS is near-perfect, its combat system could be better. So I'll just explain to you some battle systems by example of the turn-based-strategy games they are used in and ask: Which one would you like to see in the next Civ?

Please read before voting:

1. Birth of the federation:
People are less likely to know this game so I'll explain it in more detail. It's a star trek sci-fi game but that doesn't matter. What counts here is its combat system:
You attack and defend with stacks. In battle, the game changes to a turn-based tactical combat screen. For each turn, you can tell each unit (or a whole group) in your stack, what it should do: Evade, attack, withdraw, bombard,... and of course which unit it should attack, if any. This sounds complicated at first, but it's really very easy to do and opens up many tactical possibilities.
After pressing "end turn", every predefined action is carried out for attacking and defending units alike in "real-time" until the next combat turn begins or one side is eliminated (or has escaped).
Optionally with auto-resolve for players that are not interested in combat of that detail.

2. Call to Power:
It's also stack vs. stack in a special turn-based combat mode. But in comparison to botf the player has no influence once the battle started. The outcome is computed depending, amongst other things, on the characteristics of the units (bombardment, melee, flanking,...)

3. Civ5:
1 unit per tile. Therefore it's always one-on-one during combat.

4. Civ4:
Stacks are allowed, but combat is still one-on-one at a time. The defending stack chooses it's best unit.

5. Total War:
I never played it, but some people seem to like this one. It combines turn-based strategy and resource management with real-time tactical control of battles.

6. other:
Feel free to tell us about any other system that you would prefer. Please bear in mind that the discussion should not focus on details like stack cap or AI-limitations or graphics and so on. It's about which system you'd like in general. So when you favor the CTP-option with a stack limit of 4, you should still vote for the CTP-option.

Personally, I prefer the botf system:
It's more detailed as you can choose actions for each unit depending on its abilities and it's more fun to have entire armys or fleets fighting each other, which is also more realistic. People might think that this special combat screen might lead to a game which even more concentrates on warfare, but the opposite is the case: A clash of 2 big stacks is decided very fast in one short but dense big battle instead of 20 little ones. In Civ4, a battle of two stacks consisting of 10 units each takes much longer. In Civ5 even more so. Additionally, armies spanning whole continents are rather unrealistic in my opinion.

Thank you very much for reading.

 

[Shoes]

I selected total war, though i believe that it would make civ into a monster game for any pc configuration. I like the RTS aproach of battle in total war, but it would take months to finish a Civ game though. I wouldnt mind on the other hand many people would.

EDIT: Is The 1st option something like Heroes of Might and Magic?

 

[enKage]

just imagine civ with total war battles played in warmonger style on marathon :] 1 game per year

I vote for civ4

what about Imperialism2 model or even as simple as conquest of the new world?

 

[Shoes]

OMG I WANNA TRY THAT!!! xD

EDIT: I HATE WHEN PEOPLE VOTE BUT DONT SAY WHY THEY THINK SO!!!

 

[Defianc4]

Total War wouldn't work, because the entire core game would need to be rebuilt into an imitation of the total war games in order to balance everything.

I would prefer them using a HoMM style battles. If that doesn't work, tweaking the civ4 combat system would be ok with me.

 

[Robo-Star]

Multiple units per tile, but cumulative penalties for each unit...oh, and units are actual population points, not built...and some form of supply lines, too...

Yeah, I've never been any good at warfare.
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[Shoes]

Maintance=cost of running supply lines, Civ Revolution did the 1 pop=1 soldier thing, and as I said before its just my silly wish since I know its next to impossible to do Total War in Civ.

 

[Ataxerxes]

I tend to like the CivIV combat mode. 1 UPT could be great in other games, but I like my Civ and it doesn't work for Civ. I'm not too familiar with the other games, so my opinion should be taken with a grain of salt. I hate the CivV combat mode. The CivIV combat mode is relatively quick and tactics of combat are only a minor part of Civ.

 

[Robo-Star]

Maintance=cost of running supply lines...

Oh yeah, I forgot about that.
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...Civ Revolution did the 1 pop=1 soldier thing...

Do you have a source for that? It didn't do it on the DS version, at least.

 

[TheMulattoMaker]

A little history:

I've played I, II, and IV. Civ1 was so long ago I can't even remember what the combat system was like. Civ2, with its "better keep your stacks in your fortress or they're all gonna die" system, drove me crazy. Loved that game, don't get me wrong, I woulda married Civ2 and had kids with it. Just hated the combat system. Never played Civ3 so I don't know what its combat was like.

I play BTS (if that even needs to be said) and don't think there is anything terribly wrong with unlimited stacks- it's realistic enough for a broad-scope game like Civ. It could be better, but I'll get to that in a minute. Civ5... well... I was so very extremely eagerly with much anticipation and delight awaiting Civ5. (Is that enough adjectives?) Didn't have the money to spare when it first hit the stores. After reading the dismay of the vast majority here, I'm kinda glad I couldn't get the game. So anything I say about Civ5 is as an outsider who hasn't even played the demo. But even before it came out, I was making my own opinions.

"Hex grid? Sweet! It's about time!"
"City-states? Sounds cool..."
"...one unit in a tile? That's the most you can have? Uh... wut?"

Once again, have not played the game. So this might just be me parroting all the Civ5 hate, but I can't think of any universe in which 1upt in a Civ game could be fun, or even make sense. In a limited tactical game, sure. You can't really pack twenty tank regiments and fifty infantry brigades in, say, one square kilometer. So if you're playing a tactical combat game about D-Day, where each tile might be that small, sure. 1upt is realistic. But if the entire Normandy coastline is represented by a grand total of two tiles? I understand sometimes realism must be sacrificed for gameplay, but can you imagine Eisenhower sending his two airborne divisions to France, with the understanding that they would have to kill the defenders and move east to Paris all by themselves (or die trying), because there was no room on the beach to bring up the main landing force? Civ is a strategic game where a lot of real estate is represented by one little grassland square. A thousand-square-kilometer tile can contain and support a much larger army than a one-square-kilometer tile can. Civ is much more than a wargame, so there's a lot more things to consider than how much space an army takes up, but pretending that your one infantry division is completely filling up an area the size of Denmark seems idiotic to me.

Anywho, I voted BOTF based on the OP's description. I've wanted a similar sytem for years. Out of all the Civ games I'm familiar with, Civ4 has by far the most realistic system. But I think it could easily be better. A (somewhat) simple tactical combat screen where the attacking and defending stacks appear in terrain similar to the tile where the battle is taking place. Example:

A cat-sword-spear stack is attacking a hills tile defended by an archer and an axe. First the attacker gives his units their orders. The cat (on one hilltop) throws its rocks over the axe to try to hit the archer, the spearmen digs in a little to protect the cat, and the swords rush toward the other hill. Defender's turn: The archers (on the other hilltop) shoot at the swords (or maybe the cat, it's up to the armchair general) and the axes rush to fight the oncoming swords. Rinse and repeat until somebody runs away or dies. Plus (this was mentioned in another thread very recently) if I understand Ranged Attacks, you basically have archers hitting an enemy two hundred miles away. That's... uh... KrAzY, and this system would fix that.

And like the OP said, this would be optional. To someone like me this would be a very fun way to resolve combat, but for some strange reason not everyone in the world thinks the same way I do. If the tactical screen was too annoying, or too difficult, or lags the computer too much, just turn it off and keep the Civ4 system. Like I said, I don't see anything wrong with Civ4's combat, I just think it could be better. And (another thing) this has been mentioned, but maybe a more realistic way to limit stacks would be, "how much can this land support?" rather than "how much space are these guys taking up?" For instance, in the "armies marching on their stomachs" eras, a grassland tile could support more foot soldiers and horses than a tundra could. Not a pre-set limit like 3upt or 5upt or 20upt for any tile, just "how abused has this land been in the last x turns?" Maybe the ravaging armies could take a per-turn health hit, or something. And of course all this could vary based on map size and game speed.

Kay, I guess I finally ran out of stuff to say about this. It's all Shoes' fault, he told me to explain my vote. I know a lot (all?) of this has already been said on this forum, but that's my 2.

 

[deanej]

Whatever decision Firaxis makes, I'm sure it will be heralded as the best decision ever made and people will claim to have been wanting it to happen for years, like happened with hexes and 1upt. Both had little support prior to being signature features in civ5. Then suddenly everyone loves them and hates the old system.

 

[Iranon]

Haven't played BotF, but that sounds like a good choice for a game of this scope.

I'd love real-time tactical battles embedded into Civ gameplay but that's a slippery slope... the sort of deranged people who'd try making a game like that without dumbing down all the components to a loathsome degree would then also want the option to take control of an individual unit or individual soldier. And maybe an individual labourer outside combat. Chances are we'd end up with something impressive but unplayable.

 

[theskibum]

I have played all the games in the poll and I would still vote for Civ4.

BotF was a really fun game (though it suffered from major slowdown late game at he strategic level). The combat system in that was fun, but as I understand the way it was implemented, the tactical maneuvers you ordered your ships to do only had a quasi effect on the outcome of a battle. It was possible to employ what would be superior tactics and still lose if you were even a little bit outnumbered. I could see using it as a leap off point for a more tactical battle approach, but the thing I think I would miss is counter units.

I love Civ4's implementation of units that inherently counter others (axe beates melee, spear beat horse, archer defend cities, etc). There are some RTS's that get this formula right (AoE 3 did a good job), but I have not seen it in any other TBS I have played.

CTP was basically the Civ3 combat system, minus ranged bombardment and with limited stack size...not my cup of tea.

Civ5's system is a joke for every reason TheMulattoMaker touched on. The only thing I think that game got right was hexes.

I could see taking Civ4's system and adding some features, something like penalties for stacks over a certain size, whether in maintenance or strength or something to reflect difficult logistics for large armies in a small area. I would also love to see some improvement in air combat, but not really sure how that would be implemented.

 

[Peregrine]

The following is a post of some weeks ago, edited slightly in consideration of this new context.

Composing my army/SoD isn't simply an exercise in quantity. Firstly, I have to consider what type of troops my enemy is using. If cavalry is predominant in my opponent's arsenal, then spearmen/pikemen are necessary, in numbers, for stack defense. How large does the stack need to be? It depends on how large my opponent's army is. Is his army turtled up in a border city? Then I might want to hit it first, making the rest of the conquest quicker and easier. If that's the case, then it might be advisable to include a larger siege component. Is speed essential? Then my army should be primarily mounted. I don't find this kind of problem-solving boring at all.

Not an overstatement to say that intelligence is required to increase the probability of success.

Unrealistic? Not at all. Prior to the Napoleonic era, I can think of only two exceptions to this rule--a nation/empire's military might was marshalled into one large force, and operated accordingly. Whether we are talking about Frederick the Great or Assurbanipal, an army was the operative element in military activity. The two exceptions were the Mongol toumans and the Roman legions. The Mongols invaded Kwarism and the Sung state with 3 armies on both occasions. The Romans divided their legions into small armies very often, however, when the Romans fought a prolonged war, they combined many legions into a large army. Trajan used 10 legions when he invaded Dacia. Marcus Aurelius used 8 to fight the Marcomannic War.

In military theory, Concentration of Force is a well-known concept, and the army/SoD exemplifies it well.

Exaggeration? Historically, there have been VERY large armies created, even in the pre-modern periods. Darius' force at Arbela was immense, yet Alexander defeated this giant army with a skilled deployment of a combined arms force--see the first paragraph above. Or read a translation of Arrian. Penguin copies are inexpensive.

All that said, the idea of limitations is good. Terrain and habitation seem to be the primary limiting factors in pre-modern warfare. The Roman legions had no real logistic apparatus, allowing the soldiers to either forage or purchase their grain from local people--but there had to BE local people with grain to sell. Look at any map of Imperial Rome at its height and then apply this idea. The border stopped where food supplies stopped. Germania being the only exception. Terrain absolutely should be a limiting factor. Taking a large stack across an expanse of desert tiles IS certainly unrealistic. The solution would be to assign a support factor to specific types of tiles, augmented by habitation levels. Heavily populated grasslands/floodplains/plains should be able to support high military concentrations, whereas empy deserts should NOT be able to do so, with unit attrition, either hit points, or outright unit elimination, being the result of an attempt to cross such. Following out this idea, techs called "Plunder" and "Depots" in the early modern era (1500-1800) would allow armies some flexibility in terms of support, the former negative, impacting populations and economies, with the latter positive, with no adverse effects, but more limits. After 1800, industrial techs (Steam power, Assembly line, etc. and possibly a "Logistics" tech) would allow greater flexibility still.

I understand the rancor regarding stacks, but see further refinement of the idea as a solution, not elimination in favor of a wholly inadequate and inapplicable tactical system in its place. MO.

All that said, there is another element that I see missing from these polarized discussions; the middle ground. These discussions, more especially the theoretical discussions regarding possible fixes to the current state of CiV combat, seem to be a typical false dilemma fallacy--EITHER SoD, OR 1upt. In most of my late game wars, I do not use SoD at all, but instead build a very large military and invade on a broad front. Units do often coalesce around enemy cities when they turtle up, concentrating prior to the assault, but often move in 2 unit stacks, often with inf/art as a combined unit. Used carefully this approach can and DOES work, and it avoids the peril of a single cat appearing and hitting the army/SoD thereby doing lots of damage to lots of units. Identifying WHERE the enemy stack is located and disposing adequate force to counter it is necessary as well, but using the Broad Front strategy has proven very effective. Late game wars, including continental domination campaigns can progress with extraordinary speed. (I play habitually on Prince, huge continental maps, marathon speed)

(Added text follows)

The implementation of a rational logistics system would both limit stacking and be historically accurate. Additionally, a mercenary system should be implemented as well. I am for either a resolve to a tactical battle screen (ala Master of Magic, Centurion, and Titan), or simply leave the stacks, limited by a well-reasoned system of supply. I've written these ideas in other threads, so hesitate to mention much more here, but there is substantial historical information that can provide a good solution to the perceived shortcomings of Civ combat models.

 

[plasmacannon]

I voted "Birth of the federation".
I played that game for years. It was basically a Star Trek version of Masters of Orion 2 (another game I played, for at least a decade).
In BotF, the smaller empires you encountered also contributed a unique building that you could build, if you befriended them, and the joined your empire. That was cool, because, there were some that were hostile to most, until they met an aggressive empire (aka. the Klingons).

 

[Robo-Star]

Whatever decision Firaxis makes, I'm sure it will be heralded as the best decision ever made and people will claim to have been wanting it to happen for years, like happened with hexes and 1upt. Both had little support prior to being signature features in civ5. Then suddenly everyone loves them and hates the old system.

Eh, quite a few people had been lobbying for hexes. 1upt, though, that was kind of out-of-left-field.
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[TheWilltoAct]

tldr

Civ4 has very clumsy combat, I don't like how the defender always go first or that siege is all that matters in taking a city/ destroying a stack. Still I've played 4 more than the others on that list so that's my choice.

 

[TheMulattoMaker]

tldr

Sorry, I'm verbose.

One thing I forgot to mention is that my idea probably wouldn't work for crap if you were attacking a city defended by 20 units with a SoD of 40. That'd be one heckuva tactical screen, maybe it would have to consolidate them somehow.

 

[nfw]

Some improvements that can be made to the Civ4 combat system:

1. designated defender, like SMAC. Yes I want my cheap infantry to defend, not CR3 tanks, why is that such a difficult concept?

2. planes able to sink ships.

3. True artillery bombardment, and coastal bombardment from ships.

 

[TheWilltoAct]

TheMulattoMaker- I was in a skimming mood and probably not your target audience.

...I'm impatient

Some improvements that can be made to the Civ4 combat system:

1. designated defender, like SMAC. Yes I want my cheap infantry to defend, not CR3 tanks, why is that such a difficult concept?

A capable modder actually made this a reality, the goal being to preserve highly experienced units. When selecting a defender, units that are not highly promoted have a higher priority. It's called Lead From Behind.