Who hates Civ3's combat system?

[Sark6354201]

Let's be honest here, the combat system in Civ3 is too random. It has some great ideas but falls through on just plain common sense. Too many wierd battles happen where units with superior stats loose out to inferior ones.

I'm not complaining about loosing a rifleman to a longbowman (which happens too often) but the core rules of it. Because if the numbers were flawed it would be simple, just change the numbers until you can get acceptable results. But no matter it seems you do, Civ3 just comes up with completely wacky results no matter what.

 

[Roland Johansen]

I disagree. If the stronger units would almost always win, then a small tech lead would mean victory. Spearmen should be able to sometimes beat knights, pikemen should be able to sometimes beat cavalry and cavalry should be able to sometimes beat infantry. If you will allow these results than you will very occaisionally also see a marine losing to a pikeman or a knight winning from a mech infantry.

I think they should change the names and animations of units through the ages, so that a spearman looks differently and has a different name in the modern ages. Maybe it should be called a rebel civilian or something like that. A group of rebel civilians can sometimes beat a tank. You don't think that your tank is really fighting an ancient age spearman of your neighbouring state with whom you've had contact for over 1000 years.

 

[Civrules]

I love it.

Nowhere does it say that you have to win when you think you have to win.

 

[arthurfear]

I think that the attack value numbers should be much farther apart; currently the game does not reflect the advantages technology provides. Iron and horses enabled Pizarro's few hundred troops (along with a little luck) to conquer the Inca's 80,000 strong army.


The power of the knight was so great that it created an entire social order, feudalism, to insure an adequate supply of them. Societies that didn't use horses were mostly destroyed by those that did - ie: Hunnic expansion into Europe.

Without guns, it would have been impossible for Europeans to subdue and rule the majority of the world's population with only small colonial armies.

Europe owes its hegemony to technology, which allowed it to defeat huge nations with only small armies.

So, when I play, I always mod the attack values of all units way higher than their defaults, to better reflect this. But if the designers were to do this for me, I wouldn't complain...

 

[ybbor]

what it gets down to is if you increase realism, you sacrifice gameplay. let's take 2 units complety imbalenced [in reality] the frigate, and the ironclad. iron ships revolutionized warfare, as all shells would bounce off the iron, creating alm,ost no damage to the ship. let's say to reflect this the designers made ironclads 10.9.4 versus the frigates 2.2.6 the second someone gets ironclad, the navy aspect of civ is over, the same would hapopen if other units were balanced

 

[arthurfear]

This isn't really true though - I always mod units like this, and there is much more equilibrium than you would expect. It is much more competitive though, because you have to keep pace technologically. But even if you are backwards, you can survive if you play your cards right. It makes diplomacy much more important - staying on good terms with your more powerful rivals. And, civs on the verge of destruction have been able to fight back once they get new technology, which never happens with the current unit value system.

I recomend the everyone tries staggering the unit values - its more exciting and intense.

 

[microbe]

Quite frankly, I don't know what you are talking about.

I think it's fine as is.

 

[Sark6354201]

C'mon, why on earth does a Beserker have the same attack as an infantry man? Stuff like that drives me crazy.

If your behind... you should loose, not get crazy victories over someone who has played better and deserves a true technological advantage.

 

[Chieftess]

The one thing you can't do in Civ3 is micromanage battles, atleast not down to the individual soldier and generals. You could call a spear vs. infantry win a "heroic defense". Even in real life, a weaker unit can sometimes, or almost defeat a stronger one. Look at the movie "Zulu". The Zulu troops (impis in the civ equivalent) were up against riflemen in a plains fort, and nearly won. Now, if there were more and more impis, the riflemen unit probably would've lost. Probably not the best analogy, but sometimes weaker units will get lucky. Think of it as the more advanced unit underestimating the other unit.

 

[arthurfear]

Good point - Modding shouldn't be overdone, but at the same time, the power of technology is vastly understated in Civ.

Horseback riding, for example, was an incredible leap forward, and those who didn't catch up were mostly wiped out. Jared Diamond, in Guns, Germs and Steel calls riders the "Sherman tanks of the ancient era." Same goes for iron. These discoveries were revolutionary.

But in Civ, horseman are nothing more than fast archers, and Swordsman only the smallest bit better. Knights should have much higher attack values - around 10 or 12, and should be way more expensive than they are. And so on. Usually I give knights 12 attack, horsemen 7, cavalry 18, tanks 28 etc. And of course, the correspending defensive units I make much better too.

 

[microbe]

Originally posted by arthurfear
Good point - Modding shouldn't be overdone, but at the same time, the power of technology is vastly understated in Civ.

Remember one word: Balance.

You are free to mod the way you like, but do test it real. It's easy to talk, but it's a tremendous bit of work to make a balanced mod.

By the way I find this is off-topic. I think "combat system" is the game *engine*, not the *stats*.

 

[KaNick]

Originally posted by arthurfear
I think that the attack value numbers should be much farther apart; currently the game does not reflect the advantages technology provides. Iron and horses enabled Pizarro's few hundred troops (along with a little luck) to conquer the Inca's 80,000 strong army.


The power of the knight was so great that it created an entire social order, feudalism, to insure an adequate supply of them. Societies that didn't use horses were mostly destroyed by those that did - ie: Hunnic expansion into Europe.

Without guns, it would have been impossible for Europeans to subdue and rule the majority of the world's population with only small colonial armies.

Europe owes its hegemony to technology, which allowed it to defeat huge nations with only small armies.

So, when I play, I always mod the attack values of all units way higher than their defaults, to better reflect this. But if the designers were to do this for me, I wouldn't complain...

That's all good and well but it doesn't spell game balance.

 

[arthurfear]

Sure it can - don't say it doesn't until you've tried it.

 

[Sark6354201]

Originally posted by Chieftess
The one thing you can't do in Civ3 is micromanage battles, atleast not down to the individual soldier and generals. You could call a spear vs. infantry win a "heroic defense". Even in real life, a weaker unit can sometimes, or almost defeat a stronger one. Look at the movie "Zulu". The Zulu troops (impis in the civ equivalent) were up against riflemen in a plains fort, and nearly won. Now, if there were more and more impis, the riflemen unit probably would've lost. Probably not the best analogy, but sometimes weaker units will get lucky. Think of it as the more advanced unit underestimating the other unit.

The problem I have with this is, Civ is supposed to be an Epic level game. Just how does a unit in civ relate to the real world. I'm willing to guess around a division. I don't care what you say, but a division of riflemen will never loose out to Longbows.

Just look at the Ethiopians and Italians. The Italians had an extremely poorly led military but easily defeated the the Ethiopians because of their technological advantages.

The other problem I have is that, sometimes things like that are just plain impossible. I can't stand loosing modern tanks to regular tanks when in the real world an M1 Abram would never loose to a T-55 or T-72 etc.

You can prattle about balance until your red in the face, but Civ is about technology and on the battlefield you aren't properly rewarded for having that advantage.

 

[Evie]

Oh, right. Because losing one battle out of fifty means you are not properly rewarded.

BS. A proper reward doesn't mean a full guarantee a victory, and to believe otherwise is just plain ridiculous.

Game balance ahead of realism. Game balance means giving a fighting chance even if you aren't on top of the tech tree, not giving whoever happens to have the slightest tech lead an insurmountable military lead.

And look again at Isandhlwana - well-armed British troops got butchered by Zulu spear-wielding warriors, so your Ethiopia point is entirely moot - it's ONE example, and there are examples going the other way. One example demonstrating that the better-armed troops mean is meaningless ; however one example of the badly-armed troops winning is all that's needed to prove the important thing : it's possible.

And Isandhlwana is just such an example. Yeah, the Zulu eventually lost that war, but a unit vs unit fight is a battle, not the whole war.

As for whoever said knights should be far stronger because they created a whole system yada yada yada - knights are strong enough as is, even too strong IMHO. They were a dominant military force in Europe alone (and pretty much nowhere else) for perhaps a handful of centuries between the spread of the stirrup until the later middle ages where Crossbows, Longbows and Pikes (to name but three weapons) began to spell their end, an end which was sealed with the rise of the firearms.

 

[Gingerbread Man]

Originally posted by Sark6354201
I don't care what you say, but a division of riflemen will never loose out to Longbows.

One big ACTUALLY longbowmen were actually used many years into the invention and the use of the rifle. Why? A comparison:

An excellent rifleman (think Napoleonic era) could make maybe 3 shots per minute. Shots could go a long distance, but to actually hit anything or hurt it was nigh on impossible. Things had to be still, and nice and close.

An excellent longbowman could make over 10 shots per minute, and some managed more. They were much lighter, and the accuracy wasn't all that bad (One legendary Japanese archer hit a target the size of a saucer, 120metres away, 8000 times in 24hrs).

In fact, a group of longbowmen winning against riflemen is both difficult, yet very possible.

Which brings me to why people seem to whinge about the combat engine so much. People complain when their tank loses to a spearman, like their entire army was just destroyed. Seriously, if the loss of one tank hurts your assault so badly, how can you call yourself a great general?. Quite simply, Prior Preparation Prevents P*** Poor Performance. The loss of one or three attack units to unlikely circumstances ruining your game, clearly shows that you haven't planned for unforseen situations.

 

[toh6wy]

Well put, Gingerbread Man.

 

[Longasc]

Gingerbread Man put it bluntly!

But I still hate those streaks.

You can call it the Hand of Fate, but sometimes whole Armies or a lot of units die on one little underpowered bastard. A nice gag would be if Civ converts this unit to RAMBO in modern times.

 

[Park Ranger]

I think the CIV3 combat system does have some flaws, but not so much in the A/D values and the HP system. More important problems are with the way the AI handles strategy. AI has come a long way, but still needs work in keeping it's defenders and attackers together, using bombardment and armies, etc.

The RNG and quirky combat results do an excellent job, IMHO, of balancing gameplay and realism. For example mounted units in CIV3 already are extremely powerful...when used well. Note C3C beefed up some of the foot units (like archers, marines, TOW, etc.) to provide alternatives to the power of horse-based units.

I think it was about a year ago there was a thred called "Tired of the Horseman Stomp" where many posters complained that the mounted units were so much more powerful there was really little reason to build other units.

As the system stands now, well, if I have a tech lead and the resources to implement new techs AI will be hard-pressed to stop me. I'd be VERY cautious about going up against superior units...if AI has muskets, say, then I won't send my Knights against them without the backup of trebuchets, preferably cannon. I'd be reluctant to accept any changes in the system which would exacerbate technological advantages, which are hard enough to overcome (from a gameplay perspective) as they are now.

 

[delfino]

The problem is not exactly the combat system is the way in which it was implemented and the fact that the Computer knows the outcome previously. I once made a test by giving 5 extra hitpoints to units according to their era. This resulted in longbowmen having 9 to 10 hitpoints depending on their status but also the Computer choosing the defender on my cities to be longbowmen rather then the spearmen. I guess that in the combat system of Civ3 the hitpoints are crucial in deterrement of the units attack or defence values. According to logics a warrior, attacking at 1 strength should not be able to defeat a fortified spearman defending at 1,5; sometimes more. However the hitpoints make sure that this "scandalous" result is possible, specially because the computer knows the outcome beforehand. Whom amongst us has not often wandered why the Computer chooses to combat a theoretically harder battle when there is a easier one to choose from? It is because it knows that the chances of winning the harder battle are bigger. Anyhow, many things have been said about the combat system and we can praise or criticize all that we want but it is there and it is there to stay.
Thanks and take care.