Who hates Civ3's combat system?

[yoshi]

You make a good point judgement. I've found that there's just too much unit micromanagement in CIV as well as other TBS and FPS games.

I've always been in favor of more automation. For instance, giving military units the 'Automate' order just as you would Workers. This means that the AI takes over and uses the units as it sees fit. It would be nice to have variations on that order just as you do with Workers; for instance, 'Automate - This City Only' would force the AI to use the unit only in the area of the closest city. Or even better, 'AUtomate - Standby' means that the unit stays put until an enemy attacks in which case the unit automatically moves to the source of the attack without you having t tell it.

Another interesting application is to have unit automatically retreat BEFORE being attacked; if an enemy superior enemy unit comes into view, the unit makes a run for it (this seems appropriate considering a lot of people who play CIV also play Total War).

Originally posted by gen.dragolen
I've tested my own mods where I gave units a pop cost too, and the AI managed just fine.

That makes sense since you played on a high difficulty level --the AI is much more effective at boosting its population at that level; enought o make up for the additional loss of population.

 

[Commander Bello]

I've tested the pop consuming feature in a PTW mod as well. It worker rather good .
Especially since there are three thresholds inherent to the game:
a) the mood threshold
b) the city threshold
c) the metropolis threshold

a) At Emperor level, the threshold is between 3 and 5 citizens. It depends on access to food and luxuries, of course. But in the initial government of Despotism and with no food bonus tiles, a given town faces a threshold of 3 citizens.
b) Size 6+
c) Size 12+

Now, if you have pop-consuming units, you really have to have a look onto those thresholds. No longer you have the chance to have that town/city/metro which spawns unit after unit. In fact, that kind of doing becomes very counter-productive.
Why paying gold for the aqueduct and the cathedral, when the new unit would make the town drop below size 6? The same question arises for the metro, of course.
So, the number of units a given community may produce in a row is automatically limited by economic facts.

Of course, I had the warriors being the equivalent to a small gang of men. So, this unit didn't consume pop. Otherwise you would almost have no chance to do your exploration in a sufficient manner. Scouts weren't pop-consuming, either.

My experience was that the AI dealt with this pretty good.

About the increase of numbers in the unit stats: this is something I am currently testing. But, as far as I see it in the moment, this is working as well, since the current engine is able to deal with it. It may require some redefinition whether a unit is defensive, offensive or both.

The funny thing is that those principles are well understood by the game engine. The pure fact that they didn't make it to the game gives me the impression that the testing wasn't done very good.

 

[yoshi]

The arguement for military units costing population is well worth considering for the vanilla game. I think the reason why this has not been the case is due firstly to Firaxis not wanting to deviate from the original concept too much and secondly that players like building LOTS of units in as little time as possible, which becomes difficult if you add the population factor. Personally, I like the idea.

BTW Bello, if Warriors cost no population it becomes an exploit one civ is more advanced and can no longer build Warriors (i.e. civ that can build Warriors can then build masses of them and overwhelm the more advanced enemy units by sheer numbers.

About the doubling of unit stats eahc age: won't that give the first civ to discover the units' prerequisite too much of an advantage for such a short tech jump?

Thing is, I'm really not that into in this kind of debate because you can simply edit these unit properties using the very user-friendly (hence anyone can do this) Editor to your preference.

Either way, this doesn't really solve problems like the odd combat results. That's why I'm more interested in talking about stuff that isn't (but should be) in the game or that is hard-coded (i.e. can't by changed using the Editor).

 

[Isca]

Apologies if this has been covered already. Back on page one, someone mentioned their 'fix' for increasing combat values.

They said they made horsemen 7, knights 12, cavalry 18 and tanks 28.

I've been working on a mod, and there is a fatal flaw that is easy to get into when 'spreading the numbers'.

Assuming the combat engine works on ratios, then what has the above mod changed?

Horsemen 2-->7
Knight 4-->12
Cavalry 6-->18
Tank 16-->28

What this person has done is improved horsemen, made tanks worse, and left knights and cavalry unaltered. Horseman are improved 350%. Knights and Cav 300%. Tanks around 150%.

This sort of mod actually exacerbates the problem of horsemen killing tanks.

In the basic game a tank's attack is 16 times greater than a horseman's defense. A tank's defense is 4 times greater than a horseman's attack.

Those are the things to look at -- relationships, nut numbers.

 

[Isca]

*NOT numbers

 

[Commander Bello]

@ Isca:

You are right about the ratios and that is the reason why it is so time-consuming to balance new combat stats.
In principle you have to check each possible combination. It doesn't help very much to balance horseman and tank, if both have completely different ratios with a rifleman afterwards.
But, the idea of having certain multipliers for the different eras could be of help.
What is the best ancient age standard defender? Spearman and swordman. Let's assume, the combat stats have been multiplied by 10 to allow for later fine tuning. In that case both would have a defense D=20.
The best attacker of the medieval ages would be the cavalry with A=60, then. Now, if you'd give the medieval ages an additional multiplier of 5, this would result in A=90. Appropriately, the medieval infantry would have A=60. The same principle would provide the tank with an attack of 270.
With an A/D ratio of 270/20 it should be highly unlikely that the tank looses versus the spearman, especially if the hitpoints would have been raised as well.

Of course, some people now might argue that the first civ to enter a new era will have an advantage. This is correct.
On the other hand, all experience shows that a civ entering a new era will not be able to upgrade all units as once, due to lack of money. Furthermore, the "best" units are not available with the first tech of the new era.

I admit, that this additional multiplier of 5 for new era units could be too much. But it could be too less, as well. Even that has to be balanced and therefore, some more thoughts are necessary.

 

[Cedrick]

All these posts are interesting and I agree that to keep it simple the designers picked small numbers rather than larger ones. They also had in mind by doing so that a player behind in tech would not be overwhelmed by an advanced AI. This concept was fine with the first game but starts to drop off with each version afterward since there is now a large body of experienced players out there. However, that said, making the numbers larger so balancing would become easier should not be too much of a problem programming-wise.
The other idea I noted was logistics and that can be put into the game easily since all the aircraft already have it. Namely, each unit can go only a certain distance from a friendly city (either your own or an ally). This would stop the AI from constantly violating your territory other than the border zones. It would make a RP highly valuable and something the AI would seek from you often and which you can deny to maintain your borders. As you go up in tech, again like aircraft, your supply base can also be forts and outposts. I would make explorers and scouts exempt or with a very long range in comparison to the military units.
Note this would also stop the long treks of settlers since they would have no escorts after a certain distance. Taking a worker aboard ship to build outposts on a coast would mimick the need for recoaling stations that prompted the British Empire expansion.
Seafaring nations would have the longer ranged navy while the Expansionist would have the scout.
Destroy a vital fort/outpost and all the units now outside their range would have to automaticaly retreat to they were back in range. So a small mobile army could offset a much larger force depended on a long supply train.
In another thread there was much concern over the use of paratroopers. With this you now have a very good mission to use them on and a reason to keep a few around.
Just a few ideas which would still keep the game simple and not require a lot of programming.

 

[yoshi]

I too was thinking along those lines Cedrik. Although even something as seemingly simple as giving a range border to cities in order to limit unit movement is pretty complex given the comparativley small changes made in the two Civ3 XPs. First, there's the CPU factor: the program now has to check each city for border modifiers (e.g. Granery increases range) and check each unit's status within the border, and a whole bunch of other things that it doesn't have to do with air units because the go on missions and don't remain outside their base when the turn ends. The other thing is that the AI has to be editied so that it understands how to use borders (e.g. knowing to not send unit towards and enemy that is out fo range --even if it can't go beyond the border, at present, you'll probably just get a whole bunch of AI units accumulating at the border).

I have a MUCH simpler solution (that is not to my taste but it's so simple that it could actually make it into a patch):

Add a health modifier to terrain and add a unit flag that overrides the effect if checked.

It's a good idea because it can be applied to the vanilla game as well as meet the needs of this thread.

In the vanilla game, certain harsh terrain can be given set to damage (I would personally like to see Mountains do damage so that you don't have units able to defend those squares forever). Special units like Guerillas can be given the flag thus allowing them to literally 'take to the hills' at no cost to health.

The reason why the applicability to the vanilla game is important is because of the cost/benefit factor: the only way something will be added in is if ALL players will benefit to some degree, not just scenario designers. In other words, people who just play the vanilla game must get something out of it in order to justify its inclusion into the game --not to mention that it has to be simple enough to include without costing too much (too much being anything that takes more than a couple of weeks at most to add the new feature into the program).

In a scenario, you could simply set all terrain to reduce health, thus all units that spend too much time outside a city, Fortress, Airbase or Colony will gradually lose health at the rate you specify. This isn't anywhere near as good as a range border but it does the job; if a unit goes to far, it is destroyed. (Perhaps a hard-coded rule could prevent units from being detroyed by terrain within friendly borders.) Hence, you have a very basic logistics system at little cost (apparently).

The AI will use this properly without much, if any, altering of the program IMO: the moment a unit loses too much health, the AI will send it back to base to regain its health. The only thing is getting the AI to not send units beyond the point where they can't get back without being destroyed.

Personally, I would change the vanilla game so that all terrain causes damage, thus preventing units from crossing the map int he early stages of the game. With this new field I would be able to do that no sweat.

As the program checks all terrain for defence bonuses and any units, cities, improvements present, it now also checks for the health modifier and alters the units health accodingly. It also checks for unit stats so one more flag isn't going to kill the game or anything.

Visually, it translates into this:

1. Add a 'Damage' field in the 'Terrain' scenario properties page of the Editor. The value you set determines the amount of health lost by the unit(s).

2. Add an 'Ignore Terrain Damage' unit flag in the 'Units' scenario properties page of the Editor. If checked, the selected unit ignores the health modifier (if any).

The only thing I'm not clear on is what the mechanics are for reducing unit health. Since the only other aspect of the game that does this is Volcanoes --they do not actually affect health but rather delelte the item completely-- it's hard to judge what it would take to implement this.

(Note that this is not my idea; it has been thought of before. I just put it into terms compatible with Civ3's mechanics.)


I would really appreciate any comments on this.

 

[Commander Bello]

I guess, you already pointed out the main problem:
how to subtract health from a unit?

If you would do it by 1 hp / tile, all units would have a penetration depth into enemy territory of just 5 tiles (at least the 1 mp units).
Obviously, you could make it subtract 1 hp per turn. By that, fast units would have more penetration capability.
Nevertheless, it would mean a severe disadvantage for any attacker, since after 2 turns he just would be like a sitting duck. Raising the amount of hitpoints wouldn't help, since all units would have more hitpoints, so the ratios would stay almost the same.
If you would make the units loose hps / x turns, the game would have to keep track on the moves already done. This would make the calculation, at which point a unit has to retreat, more complicated.

To be honest, I think that this is just like the "small integers" problem. It looks easy at first glance and everybody understands it at once - but it opens a can of worms in the long run.

 

[Cedrick]

Actually I never mentioned losing HP only that the unit had to automatically retreat back into supply. If you can set a health flag then you could set a supply flag instead. A radius around each supply source would have the flag on for a particular civ. When a unit goes onto a tile that the flag is off, the unit goes to the nearest tile that the flag is on.
The game already does something like this to draw the borders so why not for units?
The only problem I see, which you pointed out, is getting the AI to understand so you do not see units moving back and forth at the boundary of the supply line. The programming I do not think can be that hard. It was done with MOO.

 

[yoshi]

The game already does something like this to draw the borders so why not for units?

There are a few reasons. The first is that the mechanism doesn't already exist --but then, neither does the loss of health. There is no mechanism in place for stopping units that I know of except for the Impassble terrain flag.
The second reason is that this doesn't really have any applications to the vanilla game --not enough people want range limitations for land/sea units...unfortunately.

If you would do it by 1 hp / tile, all units would have a penetration depth into enemy territory of just 5 tiles (at least the 1 mp units).

I was referring to health not hit points (i.e. each hit point is divided into levels of health; green, yellow, red). I have yet to understand how the different levels are divided but this is probably what the value would be based on; just like a unit's attack value takes of a defender's health before HPs --HP determines how many rounds of combat the unit can withstand before being destroyed (that's Civ2's system but the engine is the same). The loss of health on terrain is essentially the equivilant of being bombarded only there is no attacker present.

Keep in mind I'm only proposing this system because it seems to have a better chance at making it into the game someday, not because it's the best system by any means. I'd just prefer to have this than no range limitation at all.

 

[Dr. Broom]

It is flawed but not horribly, what I mean is that is ******** that modern armor can lose to a pikeman but the chance of that is only about 1% or maybe it was .1% whatever it was it was pathetically small so I don't worry too much about it.

 

[Athropos]

I dont know if it was already mentionned, but Medieval: Total war's combat system is much more superior than civ 3. You guys should try it out.

 

[Lord Ed McManus]

the land units are fine, but what pisses me off are naval units

I solved this by doubling all the values of the iron ships...

wooden shaps have no business on the seas with iron based ships....

 

[Commander Bello]

I think about naval units you're absolutely right.

In that area, nearly nothing really fits. In principle, the curragh already means a viable thread to all ships prior to the ironclad, at least when being on defense. The dromon is a real killer and is able to hunt and kill privateers and frigates...

The coast fortress (name?) is nothing but a waste of shields in the standard game.

And, at least on huge maps, the movement rates either can make you laugh or cry.

Of course, all of that may easily be changed with the editor. Thanks a lot that then the results are no longer stored

 

[gen.dragolen]

Cmdr. Bello,

I've found that adjusting naval units to balance out the technolgies works pretty well.

Making Frigates have the same attack and bombardment values as a cannon is a reasonable approximation. Shore batteries were more powerful since you could put bigger guns in place, but ships would have 80-120 guns on 3-4 decks.

It makes seeing even a couple of frigates off your coast something to fear.


D.

 

[Sark6354201]

It might get annoying considering the number of frigates the AI tends to build.

 

[DWRALL]

HI I'M NEW IN THIS, BUT I NOTTED THAT YOU SAID, (SORRY BY MY ENGLISH IF I HAVE MISTAKES).
I "F" TO LOSE ONE OR MORE MODERS ARMOR AGAINST SIMPLES TANKS, BUT I START TO SEE THE BONUS OF DEFENSIVE POINTS. THIS BONUS IMPROVES THE POINTS OF THE UNITS, BY THE REASON OF THEIR MAP POSITION OR STRUCTAL POSITIONS.

REALLY I HAVE ONE QUESTION: HOW I USE THE "METRO" DEFENSIVE BONUS POINTS? , BECAUSE GIVE YOU 100% OF EXTRA-PROTECTION , AND IS STRUCTURAL , IS SOMETHING LIKE BE IN A MOUNTAIN GAINTING FOR ATTACK
SEE THE CIVILOPEDIA

 

[scl004]

I agree completely about the naval units. Once I start playing around with the editor I will definitely bump up everything from Ironclad up.

Also, to go way back to the first page of this thread, I would like Civ4 to incorporate more of an army-focused system. One thing Civilization: A Call to Power 2 did right was to allow you to move your units and ATTACK as one army. When battle started you could see your front line troops (infantry), then the ranged attackers (tanks, bowmen) followed by the artillery. It was a decent system that actually incorporated all types of units into an attack at once, unlike Civ 3.

I've been reading a lot of 20th century war history recently, and this seems more realistic, with individual divisions (units) working together to create a coordinated attack.

ScL

 

[Commander Bello]

Originally posted by scl004
I agree completely about the naval units. Once I start playing around with the editor I will definitely bump up everything from Ironclad up.

Also, to go way back to the first page of this thread, I would like Civ4 to incorporate more of an army-focused system. One thing Civilization: A Call to Power 2 did right was to allow you to move your units and ATTACK as one army. When battle started you could see your front line troops (infantry), then the ranged attackers (tanks, bowmen) followed by the artillery. It was a decent system that actually incorporated all types of units into an attack at once, unlike Civ 3.

I've been reading a lot of 20th century war history recently, and this seems more realistic, with individual divisions (units) working together to create a coordinated attack.

ScL

I agree with you - the CTP combat system was much better than the current one. Especially the chance to withdraw from the battle, when you learned the the Gods of Dice were favouring the opponent.

@DWRALL:

REALLY I HAVE ONE QUESTION: HOW I USE THE "METRO" DEFENSIVE BONUS POINTS?

You don't make use of the metro defensive bonus - it is just offered to any unit being placed in a metro and being under attack.
A city (up to size 6) offers no additional defensive bonus (if there is no wall in place), a town (up to size 12) gives an additional defensive bonus of 50% (but if there is a wall, this wall will have no effect anymore) and the metro gives an additional defensive bonus of 100% (again, the wall will make no difference anymore)