Why there is at least 1 damage?

OK. There is a right side and a wrong side to this argument. The wrong side.. I firmly believe, is the side that argues that in REAL LIFE their GIANT DEATH ROBOT ect ect... sorry, you have already lost me.

Both sides of the argument have some merit. You can't have invincible units. And you can't have a club bearing warrior doing 10% damage. The solution I believe is a sliding scale of HP where that warrior does 1 damage still. but your GDR has 50 HP so it doesn't matter.

 

Perhaps civ should have had 100% hit points, and damage based on percents. This fits with so many other modifiers throughout the civ series based upon percents.

 

This I can definitely get behind.

I am FOR the minimum damage rule. I think it might be a little bit stupid when it is Stealth Bomber vs. Warrior and all, but in general I am for it (as previously argued).

HOWEVER - I can readily agree that 10% is quite a bit when the spread between eras grows. 10% is good for 1 era, but maybe then 5% for 2, and 1% for 3+. This seems like an effective, simple, and elegant solution. Bump up all HP and damage by x10, across the board, and this seems like a relatively simple compromise.

Any modders out there done something like this yet?

 

I think minimum damage should have a chance, based on the technology of the unit, to happen. Now this chance is 100% always and IMO is unbalanced. Think, instead of 10 warriors, of 5 chinese chu-ko-nus killing a GDR because of their double attack and receiving 0 damage for being ranged units...

 

Actually a Spearman totally could scratch the paint on a tank. Bronze spears in good condition are sharp, yo.

Other than that I totally agree. Maybe a 2-era cap though (Think of Ancient and Classical). Or what about Medieval vs Ancient? Ie: It's more plausible that Hoplites damage a knight than it is that a Knight damages a Jet fighter.

Edit: 3 Era cap seems best:

Renaissance cannon can smash a helicopter window, but not hurt the GDR.
Medieval Knight can smash a cannon/musketman/rifleman or run down WWII infantry (with about as much success as he would have currently in the game lol), but not hurt modern infantry (they're inside an APC).
Ancient era archer can hurt a Horseman, a Swordsman, but he simply cant shoot far enough to damage a cannon or riflemen before they hit him.
WW2 Infantry can destroy a Modern Armor tank if they caught it off guard etc - and even has a very small chance of doing some damage with massed machine guns vs a GDR. Riflemen however have weapons that are too weak to hurt the GDR.

There are only a few awkward bits here such as an ancient era archer vs musketmen in which case they could probably shoot far enough to actually kill some musketmen.
Or Crossbowmen vs tank.

But it's definately better than before.

Perhaps a new category of "armored" or something should be created (but with a different name obviously) and those units are immune to all ancient / classical / medieval attacks by default? Hmm.

 

You are kidding right?

 

That's assuming the spearman got anywhere near the tank. If they did, then I need to fire all my military officers for stupidity.

No. SC4 has an infinite amount more realism than civ5. What is so unrealistic about it? Just ignore the tile = 16m thing (which is not mentioned in the UI anywhere and doesn't affect anything) and the exact numbers for some of those houses, and everything works out.

 

I'd be fine with 1 damage if health was on a scale of 100, but at a 1-10 scale, you're saying that a jet fighter is weakened by 10% for fighting an ancient unit? That is absurd. Whether it's random casualties or wear and tear, 10% is way too much.

 

Discussing about 'Reality' just makes things complicated. Having minimum damage and not having it have both 'realistic' and 'unrealistic' side of its own(Personally, I think not having minimum damage is more realistic but it is not important). It is about fun, not reality.

Does minimum damage rule add flavor to the game and makes it more challenging, or makes it annoying and boring?

It should be the question to answer, in my opinion.

 

As other people have mentioned, combat in Civ V is heavily, heaviliy abstracted, even more so than a lot of people are giving it credit for. Look at how long a "turn" is; tank vs. spearman isn't a few tanks charging a line of ten guys with spears one time. It's a tank division attempting operations against a group of trained individuals generally armed with bronze-age weaponry over the course of months or more. (Granted, the "look at how long a turn is" argument breaks down rapidly all over the place, since it doesn't, for example, take a modern fleet many years to sail around the world no matter how you're abstracting things.)

Let's ignore that for now. Either way, it's primarily a gameplay concern. I'm utterly baffled by the claims that this is an undue tax on being technologically advanced; in Civ V, advanced armies pulverize dramatically larger but more primitive armies, minimum-damage rule or no. The notion that it "invalidates" that sort of style of play is beyond ludicrous to anyone who's been in a situation like that. Sure, a single infantry will eventually get worn down, but I don't think anyone should hold an expectation that they should be able to be successful in combat when they've only built one unit, purely from a gameplay perspective. If anything, the rubber-banding isn't strong enough - it's very difficult for a civilization lagging in tech by a few eras to ever catch up; to argue that focusing on teching up - the cornerstone of basically every dominant strategy on every difficulty level - is invalidated because of the minimum-damage rule requires living in some kind of crazyland; it's just so blatantly untrue. Yes, you can't take over the world with a single infantry or something, but does anyone think that that would be good for the game? A very small modern force will steamroll a much larger force from several eras back. This is a Civilization V game fact.

A more advanced force will win against a more primitive force. The question is, from a gameplay perspective, how much of a speedbump should a more primitive force be? That is, what should the cost (primarily in unit-turns, since modern forces lose relatively few units - zero, outside of extreme circumstances - against armies that would be doing zero damage to them without the min-damage rule) be? That's not a question with one right answer, and the answer fits into a complex system, since the rewards (puppet cities, loot, etc.) and the other costs (diplo hits, etc) form such a complex system together. Maybe someone can confidently say "the game is better because it takes a civilization with an army of size X and composition Y 20 turns to wipe out a civilization of size A with an army of size B of composition C instead of the 17 turns it would have taken if they didn't have to rest their units because of the min-damage rule". Maybe someone can confidently say that that makes the game worse. It certainly makes combat somewhat more interesting (an improvement over "not remotely interesting at all") in cases where one army really is large but so inferior technologically that they'd do zero damage most of the time.

 

Solution: play on a higher difficulty so you are not able to out-tech the AI by 2 eras. The 1 min damage rule works as long as there is only one era separating the combatants

 

What other solutions do you have?
1) More than 10 hit-points on advanced units. The problem is damage formulae becomes too complicated. It's hard to do rough estimates during an actual fight quickly right now, despite how critically important it is for 1upt.
2) Zero damage: I argue it's unrealistic that a single unit, or even a couple, can crush an empire. Imagine sending 5 bombers, 200 tanks and 1000 marines into China (400BC) during the warring states, and try to conquer that place. You are faced with spears, chariots and archers. What could possibly go wrong...
3) Small chance of dealing 1 damage. Civ4 was random, everyone whinged about spear-tank, and rightly-so. There is already a (0-3) stochastic element, we don't need more.

 

I like the one damage. I think it is more realistic (at least as realistic as GDRs). The point about jet fighters and archers looks simple on the face of it, but even in real life, fighter jets spend more time on the ground than they do in the air. Any number of things can go wrong during a mission. Look at the helicopter that crashed in Pakistan. Vents get clogged, circuits can short, any number of things can happen. It happened in a real war too, look at the Korean war. American soldiers were far more advanced than their oponents. Heck, the machine gun's barrels were overheating and melting. Belt feeders were getting jammed. There is a real life example of a technologically superior force losing "hit points". Human wave tactics can be very effective.

As for the guy who lost his 2HP GDR - look at it like the crew of the GDR had been running for weeks straight with no rest or downtime. 2HP left, it must have been in a lot of combat without a break. Did the crew have a chance to lube the joints, repair any dings in the armor, fix frayed wires? Maybe a piece of armor plating was missing, that's what those eight HP were.

TL;DR Combat takes a toll. It is only natural that damage occurs as a result.

 

But the combat between the archer and jet occurs IN THE AIR, or did the archer get magic teleporation and time travel abilities? Either way, you've got super-archers.

On the Korea example - that is not an example of RL minimum damage. That's an example of the RNG deciding that you're unit won't do any (or minimal) damage in this round.

 

No, the animation occurs in the air not the combat. You are willing to accept Giant Death Robots, horse animations as tall as buildings, yet an animation showing an archer unit getting attacked by a jet plane and affecting the jet's ability to fight - that's where you draw the line?

Also, I think Korea is an example of RL minimum damage. They didn't lose many US soldiers comparatively but the US troops ability to fight was damaged and lowered and that is more what the HP represent. The unit's ability to fight, not it's "health".

 

It has nothing to do with the animation. Plane attacks tile. Archer on tile damages plane. There is no other reasonable way to represent what happened other than the archer damaged the plain while it flew over the tile!

And please don't confuse stuff that is purely cosmetic with stuff that impacts gameplay. Gameplay would be no different if the horse model was proportional to buildings, though you'd never be able to see it if it were.

On Giant Death Robots: they're a future unit. Go read the pedia entry on assault mechs (which are essentially Giant Death Robots under a different name; I think they even have the same model) in the Next War scenario for civ4 and educate yourself on the military industrial complex before saying they're unrealistic. Perhaps a bit over the top, but I'm sure we'll see something similar in RL in the future. The air force already demands gold plated cup holders that will function while a jet plane is upside down. IMO Giant Death Robots are a more logical investment than the crazy stuff we're already spending money on.

HPs represent health. A unit's ability to fight is represented by the random number generator.

 

If you have a spearman go up against a tank, you should have played on a higher difficulty IMO. (or much much lower haha)

 

Ok. GDR is completely unrealistic. Any country that would sink a large amount of money into developing something like that would be laughed at. However, that is beside the point. You seem locked into your mindset and that's ok. I don't play the game with you. However I do disagree with your point about 1 damage being stupid. I don't think it is.

/All done now.

 

A plane (squadron) that dies to an archer just spent 10 years (or more) doing nothing but attacking the archer, refueling/rearming, and then turning around to do it again. No repairs or maintenance, just hit, refuel, and turn around. This is assuming, at least, that an airstrike doesn't represent a single engagement but rather a prolonged commitment. It seems reasonable that that would take a toll, which 1 minimum damage represents regardless of unit. And if you stop every 4-5 years and do a little maintenance and bring in some fresh pilots and planes, they'll be back at 10 HP.

Sounds fine to me, from a realism and gameplay perspective.

 

That would be a good change: make 1 min damage rule between units separated by 1 era and always when attacking cities. If they are separated by 2 or more eras, introduce a probability of making 1 min damage.

With 1 min damage, just imagine a narrow choke point guarded by a citadel and 4 chu-no-kus. No one unit could trespass it regardless its era.