Why did civ7 get rid of unit promotions?

[Monene]

I would hope that the point of the game's combat system would be to give the gamer the choice of "WWI meat grinder" tactics (which are also typical of any poorly led military force in the 20th century or the modern Russian military, apparently) or a more sophisticated type of tactics most often associated with 'maneuver warfare'.

Throwing your combat forces in without a plan just to die is not tactics, it's a lack of tactics and it was used because they couldn't find a way to overcome the trench tactics.

 

[vorlon_mi]

I prefer the commanders over unit promotions, except that in the very early game, or throughout the game when you don't have commanders available, I find that I am dissuaded from engaging in combat (if there is no way to benefit from the XP points).

Yes! When a hostile IP sends a single unit over to harass one of my settlements, and I don't have a commander nearby, I feel regret that the experience is "wasted." I wish there were a way to "bank it", or store it.

In my current game, I have a town that I took from Hattie on her frontier during Exploration. She has a burning hatred for me, so I expect her to try to take it back during Modern. I used some of my extra gold at the end of Exploration to buy a commander and parked it there, to soak up the eventual experience. That commander is likely to receive different promotions than my other commanders who are out leading troops, packing and unpacking.

That aspect is a new feature that we didn't have with simple unit promotions. Yes, we had a bit of it with the Civ4 city garrison promotion or Civ6 garrison promotion, but giving a tree to the commander opens that up further.

 

[Skojardu]

I like the idea of units outside of the 'scope' of a commander being able to collect and accumulate XP, then assigning them to a commander once one is in range. Useful for early units (before commander is available) and for units stationed by your city to defend, but don't have a commander nearby.

I think they could snipe a concept out of Total War and have such soldiers gain a "man of the hour" upgrade when they win a stunning victory and you could pay a fee to make them a general, or they get some sort of honorific. (in Total War, an army not controlled by a general could generate its own "man of the hour" general if you fought particularly well)

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Throwing your combat forces in without a plan just to die is not tactics, it's a lack of tactics and it was used because they couldn't find a way to overcome the trench tactics.

If you are fighting a battle, you are using tactics. By definition, Tactics is how you act in combat, even if you are acting in an extremely inefficient, even suicidal fashion.

The problem in 1914 - 1917 wasn't specifically the trench systems, it was the extreme density of firepower on the entire front from the English Channel to the Swiss border: the only way to attack was head-on, because there was no flank anywhere. Every army was very much aware of how much firepower even rifle-armed infantry could produce: they had all had observers in the Franco-Prussian War when infantry assaults were massacred by riflemen, or the Boer War and Russo-Japanese Wars in 1900 and 1905 when 'modern' smokeless powder rifles just made it much worse.

The answer eventually was to devolve leadership from the battalion-regimental level to the platoon-company level, but many armies didn't manage that until late in WWII, and some are having trouble doing it to this day.

Meanwhile, at Civ level, a 'Leader' really represents a General leading ancient armies or more modern Corps, Divisions, or Armies - the people who devise maneuver schemes for those units that I think the game represents by their Flanking bonuses. Keep all that at the in-game Leader level, but represent the better combat capability within the units by separate Factor promotions for them, representing all the things they can do better at the lower levels of battlefield performance.

 

[Monene]

If you are fighting a battle, you are using tactics. By definition, Tactics is how you act in combat, even if you are acting in an extremely inefficient, even suicidal fashion.

True, even if you don't think it's considered tactical, I should have used strategy. I'd say the final solution to the problem of stagnation in war fronts was aviation to directly damage cities, the atomic bomb, and finally, stopping wars between superpowers and instead supporting smaller neighbors to unite them with your zone of influence because the civilian population no longer allows you to wage huge wars easily.

 

[Gorbles]

What is it with folks and chess analogies?

Chess is not a mechnically deep game. It has been effectively solved by leveraging (classic) AI models. It has a high skill ceiling and relies on a tightly managed predictions / the ability to consistently both predict and manage the ongoing possibility space of any remaining moves.

Video games, even relatively simple ones, quickly outstripping the same AI models' abilities to simulate possible outcomes. This is (as an aside) one reason why AI in video games is a tough problem.

Taking veterancies off of units and putting them on centralised commanders isn't dumbing anything down. Army compositions in 4x games don't have to be managed like chess (nor have they ever really been, historically - even trench warfare didn't have a backing analogy, it was mostly just a meat grinder with logistics).

We've got to try and stop rationalising subjective preference as some kind of objective principle. If you don't like it, that's reason enough.

(this should not be taken as a criticism of chess in any way, shape or form)

 

[SupremacyKing2]

Army compositions in 4x games don't have to be managed like chess

Agreed. The irony is that is what 1upt does. 1upt is really all about making civ combat like chess with single pieces on each square that move certain ways, attack other pieces in certain ways, and where position matters. Like chess.

 

[Gorbles]

Agreed. The irony is that is what 1upt does. 1upt is really all about making civ combat like chess with single pieces on each square that move certain ways, attack other pieces in certain ways, and where position matters. Like chess.

It makes it more like chess, but hexes (nevermind octo-directional movement in the old squares) explode the possibility space more than you could imagine. This is before we even get to the movement afforded to different units (and how roads interact, etc).

Like, I don't disagree with you, but it's kinda superficially similar.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

It makes it more like chess, but hexes (nevermind octo-directional movement in the old squares) explode the possibility space more than you could imagine. This is before we even get to the movement afforded to different units (and how roads interact, etc).

Like, I don't disagree with you, but it's kinda superficially similar.

I am not saying it is exactly like chess obviously. But compared to the previous stacks of doom, 1upt does make combat more like chess, as you said. I think that was the whole idea behind 1upt, to make combat more "tactical", ie more chess-like.

 

[Gorbles]

I am not saying it is exactly like chess obviously. But compared to the previous stacks of doom, 1upt does make combat more like chess, as you said. I think that was the whole idea behind 1upt, to make combat more "tactical", ie more chess-like.

I agree, and I'm by no means a chess grandmaster (or even competent by modern standards), but I have played a lot of it. I play with my son recreationally, too. I know chess (and I'm 1,000% sure I'm not alone on CFC). It doesn't make a chess analogy workable just because 1UPT / limited-UPT is more akin to chess. Kinda like how Go was solved (for a limited board size) over 20 years ago. The sizes of maps we have in Civ (even in the later entries) dwarf anything a board game can realistically handle. And that's just a single factor.

You can say, with 100% accuracy, and I agree, that 1UPT made Civ play out more like chess compared to older entries. But it doesn't make me agree with the previous chess analogies used, imo chiefly because they come from a place of trying to put down a shift in mechanical complexity.

Shifting veterancy from all units to (specifically trained) Commanders is a numeric downgrade. But that doesn't mean it's actually a simplification. And even if it is, not all simplifications are negative (but the phrasing used thoughout the past page was). It's a topic that is very interesting, but requires nuance, not predetermined conclusions.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

True, even if you don't think it's considered tactical, I should have used strategy. I'd say the final solution to the problem of stagnation in war fronts was aviation to directly damage cities, the atomic bomb, and finally, stopping wars between superpowers and instead supporting smaller neighbors to unite them with your zone of influence because the civilian population no longer allows you to wage huge wars easily.

To keep it in the bounds of Civ VII versus historical 'reality', the tactical solution was extreme concentration of extreme combat power: a panzer division regularly attacked on a 2 - 3 km front with up to 300 aircraft in tactical (front line) support. Normally they'd be facing 2 - 3 battalions on that front with 4 - 10 antitank guns against up to 200 - 300 tanks. Little wonder the fronts in WWII were less 'stagnant' than in WWI.

Problem is, 1UPT doesn't allow that kind of concentration in the game, so it has to be modeled some other way. Increasing the combat factors of individual units and/or adding bonuses from the Leader and adding preceding air attacks that can damage or destroy the defender are all ways, simply dividing up the coordinated tactical operation into discreet steps all in one turn.

Other (board) games have used separate tank-antitank factors to indicate the extreme disperity that used to exist (before antitank missiles and man-carried top-attack weaponry) between ordinary unarmored infantry and tanks. In this, a unit that was mostly armor could simply run over a unit without masses of specialized antitank weapons and keep right on moving - simulating the 'blitz' type of overrun from movement. In a game at Civ's scale I don't think we need separate different types of combat factors in each unit, but an expansion of the Overrun mechanic in the game already, especially in the Modern Age with armor and air power, could add some interesting tactical flavor to the game.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

I agree, and I'm by no means a chess grandmaster (or even competent by modern standards), but I have played a lot of it. I play with my son recreationally, too. I know chess (and I'm 1,000% sure I'm not alone on CFC).

I play a lot of chess. My grandfather taught me when I was about 12. I would consider myself moderately good. I am rated around 1500. I play mostly online on chess.com.

It doesn't make a chess analogy workable just because 1UPT / limited-UPT is more akin to chess. Kinda like how Go was solved (for a limited board size) over 20 years ago. The sizes of maps we have in Civ (even in the later entries) dwarf anything a board game can realistically handle. And that's just a single factor.

You can say, with 100% accuracy, and I agree, that 1UPT made Civ play out more like chess compared to older entries. But it doesn't make me agree with the previous chess analogies used, imo chiefly because they come from a place of trying to put down a shift in mechanical complexity.

Shifting veterancy from all units to (specifically trained) Commanders is a numeric downgrade. But that doesn't mean it's actually a simplification. And even if it is, not all simplifications are negative (but the phrasing used thoughout the past page was). It's a topic that is very interesting, but requires nuance, not predetermined conclusions.

Agree.

 

[Monene]

In a game at Civ's scale I don't think we need separate different types of combat factors in each unit, but an expansion of the Overrun mechanic in the game already, especially in the Modern Age with armor and air power, could add some interesting tactical flavor to the game.

I don't think its scale justifies giving up a more complicated combat system that favors strategy over unit production and cost.

 

[Krikkit1]

I would hope that the point of the game's combat system would be to give the gamer the choice of "WWI meat grinder" tactics (which are also typical of any poorly led military force in the 20th century or the modern Russian military, apparently) or a more sophisticated type of tactics most often associated with 'maneuver warfare'.

I think by separating the types of promotions: single units getting more combat strength, Leaders getting bonuses to Flanking or even for combining unit types, we could have both. After all, Maneuver Warfare is also generally associated with better command and control and coordination of forces, the province of Leaders, whereas Assault tactics (the Meat Grinder) requires only Brute Force.

Note, however, that this distinction will also require revamping many of the bonuses from Civics or Techs in the game now, which apply combat strength bonuses only to Leaders.

Having done that, though, the gamer could have the choice of building a military with expensive, powerful units and adept/promoted Leaders or a more 'general' force of expendable units that may have to grind out a victory, but are far more easily replaced.

I think that can be done through Policies... Give units a Combat boost but more expensive or cheaper with combat penalty. (would probably have to be maintenance rather than production) to avoid just switching. (or have some "keyword" that carries over can gives them +1-3? CS but plus maintenance cost)

 

[reddishrecue]

I play a lot of chess. My grandfather taught me when I was about 12. I would consider myself moderately good. I am rated around 1500. I play mostly online on chess.com.



Agree.

Thats actually awesome. Im also a chess player and I invite a friend of my who likes me to invite him and play chess with him via chess app.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I think that can be done through Policies... Give units a Combat boost but more expensive or cheaper with combat penalty. (would probably have to be maintenance rather than production) to avoid just switching. (or have some "keyword" that carries over can gives them +1-3? CS but plus maintenance cost)

Given that in almost all actual instances, getting an 'elite' (bonused) military meant expending serious resources and/or making some serious changes to your society, attaching the in-game system to Policies in which the policies giving you bonuses for the military keep you from advancing any other agenda, at least temporarily, that would be very workable.

Increased maintenance costs are also a good mechanic, reflecting both the on-going training to maintain the 'elite' status and just keeping the units in existence to train even in peacetime - something that was not that normal before the Modern Era for the vast majority of states.

 

[Kurtbob]

I like the new system and prefer it over unit promotions, especially the unit promotions in Civ6, which always seems awkward to me compared to Civ 4 and 5. Though I must say it is frustrating in the early game waiting to discover discipline before I go on my usual IP hunt since I don't want to loose out on XP.

In a game at Civ's scale I don't think we need separate different types of combat factors in each unit, but an expansion of the Overrun mechanic in the game already, especially in the Modern Age with armor and air power, could add some interesting tactical flavor to the game.

THIS

A thought: Units do not gain xp points towards promotions but do earn xp points towards two things:

1. Gaining xp towards 'veterancy' and 'elite' statuses, similar to Civ 3. Bonuses to combat, health, etc. are obvious unit modifiers here, but I think roping in Boris's idea of expanding Overrun could really make this idea shine. Give single units the ability to Overrun. When a player's unit's combat strength is X% higher than an adjacent enemy unit's combat strength, the player's unit can Overrun the enemy unit. Like Civ 3, your units would be either Conscripts, Regulars, Veterans or Elite. Veterancy can be earned through combat or having military buildings in a settlement when a unit is produced. Each higher level of veterancy a unit has increases that unit's overrun modifiers, which help that unit overrun adjacent units and make it more difficult to be overrun by enemy units. Example: An elite unit with low health but a high overrun modifier could prevent full health enemy conscripts and regulars from overrunning their hex. This makes total sense to me. But should veterancy 'reset' at the beginning of each age?

2. Gaining points towards receiving a commander based on the unit type (land, naval or air) in a similar manner as filling the great general bucket mechanism in Civ4 and 5. Perhaps the more veteran a unit is, the more points they earn towards filling the bucket. This would not replace the ability to build/buy commanders, but be an alternative path to creating them. But should the bucket reset to "0" at the beginning of a new age?

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

A thought: Units do not gain xp points towards promotions but do earn xp points towards two things:

1. Gaining xp towards 'veterancy' and 'elite' statuses, similar to Civ 3. Bonuses to combat, health, etc. are obvious unit modifiers here, but I think roping in Boris's idea of expanding Overrun could really make this idea shine. Give single units the ability to Overrun. When a player's unit's combat strength is X% higher than an adjacent enemy unit's combat strength, the player's unit can Overrun the enemy unit. Like Civ 3, your units would be either Conscripts, Regulars, Veterans or Elite. Veterancy can be earned through combat or having military buildings in a settlement when a unit is produced. Each higher level of veterancy a unit has increases that unit's overrun modifiers, which help that unit overrun adjacent units and make it more difficult to be overrun by enemy units. Example: An elite unit with low health but a high overrun modifier could prevent full health enemy conscripts and regulars from overrunning their hex. This makes total sense to me. But should veterancy 'reset' at the beginning of each age?

2. Gaining points towards receiving a commander based on the unit type (land, naval or air) in a similar manner as filling the great general bucket mechanism in Civ4 and 5. Perhaps the more veteran a unit is, the more points they earn towards filling the bucket. This would not replace the ability to build/buy commanders, but be an alternative path to creating them. But should the bucket reset to "0" at the beginning of a new age?

Full confession: I was part of a group that wrote a set of miniatures WWII rules years ago that grappled with the 'veterancy' problem. We ended up with a set of 5 levels: Green, Conscript, Experienced, Veteran, Elite. BUT we were trying to show the variations at the tactical level (the 'maneuver units' were mostly company-sized) and had a bunch of other factors like maneuver and combat tables, visibility and 'spotting' rules, and other features that also modified how well units could perform.

So I am very familiar with both the gaming aspects and the historical aspects of veterancy in combat performance.

The problem is, I just do not think we need that much detail in a game that encompasses not the tactical battles taking place in a few hours by a few hundred men, but in a minimum of 1 year by X thousands of men.

In fact, I think we can throttle it down to the most basic aspect of Veterancy in all armies: Amateur versus Professional. That is, is the unit made up of men who are only there as long as the fighting lasts and then expect to go home and do something useful, like getting the crops in, or are they men who profession is battle and preparing for battle. A combination of training (and the resources put into training facilities) and leadership can make Amateurs very proficient - but they still expect to go home as soon as possible. Professionals stay around, and keep learning and getting better, but they also do not usually earn a living and so have to be maintained, fed and paid all the time.

Basically, Amateurs are Cheap but may not be that good, Professionals are Expensive to maintain but are generally better at all of it.

In fact, Professionals are so expensive to maintain with the primitive tax systems of Antiquity and 'Exploration' (pre-modern) states that they were relatively rare - a small portion of most armies, like the King's Bodyguard or Aristocratic Warriors. The bulk of all armies before the game's Modern Age are Amateurs - called up only when needed and frequently expected to maintain themselves until they are sent home. They were also frequently expected to bring their own weapons and equipment, so they were also cheap to Produce - except that, since they were also the working force of the civ, keeping them in arms too long collapsed your economy, unlike the Professionals, who had no other major economic function.

The easy way to show this in-game is that each state, based on its Government and Civics, has a certain number and type of Amateur units it can raise upon declaration of war. They cost no maintenance, but after X turns keeping them as units it will start to degrade your Production, Gold, Culture and Science totals, representing the strain on the economy from keeping too many men from their legitimate Work. Most importantly, because they go home when the war is over (disband) they get no promotions of any kind.

Professionals are the units you build with Production and maintain with Gold (and maybe Influence if we want to get really nasty). They are always there, and can get promotions as high as whatever level as we want to show in-game. But they cost Gold to keep around every single turn, and you the government in Antiquity and pre-Modern Ages simply cannot get your hands on that much Gold from your economy - they are going to become seriously burdensome if you try to have a large, professional standing army.

As a note, the large professional standing armies of Antiquity - late Republican and Imperial Rome and Phillip and Alexander's Macedonians - both existed because Rome maintained 500,000 men with a taxable population of up to 50,000,000 and Phillip extravagantly exploited silver mines to pay his troops and Alexander basicially looted the entire Persian Empire - and before he started definitively winning, almost had to send troops home for lack of ability to pay them: it was a very close-run thing before Issus. Note that Alexander's Successors, even with much better organized states, could not afford as large an army of professionals, and wound up with phalanxes of largely amateur peasants which the Roman professionals chopped to bits.

Civ has never really showed the differences in how armies have been raised and maintained throughout history, and it has the potential to make a much more interesting game than the simple build a unit, keep it forever system we've been stuck with.

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

This actually SHOULD permits converged unit upgrading paths. something Civ 6 is sorely lacking.
Well basically unit movements should now be done as an organized, coherent field army / fleet, AND combat should be directly initiated by army itself (and leave tactical command to field commanders. and promotions should affect army/ fleet tactics as a whole.

For example. a fleet has three upgrade trees
A. Fast Attack
B. Line of Battle
C. Torpedo

Promoting B emphasizes on the use of Line of Battle, which Heavy warship is benefited, while smaller, lighter warships that use fast strike earns none..

 

[jozef57]

I get why commanders get promotions. It is important for commanders to be able to buff units in combat. And commander promotions allow players to specialize their commanders. But I don't think unit promotions and commander promotions are necessarily mutually exclusive. You could have both. So why did civ7 get rid of unit promotions?

I can see a few possible reasons:
1) Maybe the devs were worried that unit promotions woud overshadow commander promotions. Players might rely on unit promotions to buff their units and ignore commanders altogether. By replacing unit promotions with commander promotions, it forces players to use commanders to buff their units.
2) Another possible reason could be that unit promotions and commander promotions might have been redundant, ie both give units +3 combat. There is no point in having two promotions that do the same thing.
3) Another reason could be that commanders get xp from units winning in combat which is how units used to get promotions. So mechanically, it might be awkward if both commander promotions and unit promotions come from the same xp. Although this could be solved by letting players choose how to to spend the xp points, on the commander or on the unit. This could be an interesting choice.

Having said that, I miss unit promotions. Without unit promotions, all units are the same. And by having promotions only in the commander, it means units are only better when they are near a commander. It feels odd that a unit that wins a big battle gets no benefit from that, instead the benefit always goes to the commander. In real life, units that win battles do gain experience that make them better too. An infantry regiment made up of hardened veterans will fight better than an infantry regiment made of green troops. That is a difference that is inherent experience of the soldiers in the unit, independent from any commander present. And training matters. A unit of soldiers with just basic training will fight differently than a unit of elite special forces soldiers. That difference is separate from any commander. We lose this by only having commander promotions.

Personally, I loved the unit promotions in civ4 because they allowed you to really specialize units. You could make a ranged unit ideal for city defense, or a unit ideal at fighting in forest or jungle, or a melee unit ideal for attacking a city, or another unit ideal at healing the stack etc... I feel like those types of promotions would not clash with commander promotions. Yeah, you might need to rebalance the promotions to make sure that unit promotions and commander promotions don't become OP when combined together, but I think you could have both. Having both promotions would allow players to specialize units as well as specializing an army of units.

i rather the hate the comander system i used to promote units for special tasks which was better in 5 than 6 but this commander stuff is for me useless.. and i hate it.. but i saw someone else liking it so... different people different opnions