Why there is at least 1 damage?

[swmaniac]

It's not really a penalty. As someone mentioned, if you have even just a 1 era technological advantage, those 1 hp dings aren't going to stop you unless you're playing increadibly cheap or simply can't war.

But I think overpowering unit kills defender with no damage is highly unbalanced.

In fact, I appreciate the fact that bombing missions forces bombers to take damage. Other iterations of Civ did not have this penalty, only that your planes could be shot down outright if there was sufficient Anti-air in the stack.

It made for really really overpowering airpower bombardment under human control and certainly is a situation similar to how ships can kill infinite number of embarked units right now.

Granted it is still possible to have your superstack of bombers parked in the city achieve something similar, but taking damage has tended to slow this down.

When the debate is reality vs. elegant simple solutions to game design, game design should always win.

No... no it shouldn't. It's just a glaring "What?" moment and prime snark bait.

If your units are horribly outteched by the other side it makes perfect sense for you to be losing, badly. This is why antiaircraft weapons exist - you have to make them or make units with that capacity or accept the fact that you're going to get Death From Above. This is why research is important.

And once again. Supplies makes no sense.

If it's fuel, then why doesn't the tank loose health for being outside of friendly territory, or on the other side of the planet? Why is it that the tank apperently only uses its engine in battle?

That's true but the tanks would have to spend fuel and ammunition, reducing their combat effectiveness by a small increment, say about one points worth!

If it's ammo, why do enemy ranged attacks do a minimum of 1 damage? An archer should not even be able to scratch a tank; the tank doesn't seem to be shooting back.

In addition, usually vehicles (like bombers, for instance) don't explode when they run out of ammo. Health is not the same thing as supplies. Supplies would be an interesting independant addition, it shouldn't be the same as the health bar.

It's an arbitrary penalty that should be removed, and was probably due to a rounding error (damage calc rounds up even infinitessimal decimals to 1) in the first place..

 

[deanej]

That's true but the tanks would have to spend fuel and ammunition, reducing their combat effectiveness by a small increment, say about one points worth!

So if you use up a small amount of ammo it makes you fight 10% less effectively? Yeah right. Also, units get resupplied often. Do you really think that the units the US send in a D-Day went all the way to Berlin on their own, never resupplied?

 

[jdog5000]

So if you use up a small amount of ammo it makes you fight 10% less effectively? Yeah right. Also, units get resupplied often. Do you really think that the units the US send in a D-Day went all the way to Berlin on their own, never resupplied?

If you want a game where you're constantly having to worry about finding food and ammunition for your troops, you should really look elsewhere. Civ doesn't get into that kind of detail, it's grand level strategy and empire building! You're the top ruler, not some mid-level paper pusher who's job it is to fill out procurement paperwork all day.

Certain things are abstracted so that it's fun as a game and is realistic enough to have meaning. If you need more realism to have fun, then there are other games.

This is a silly discussion. Did you really prefer when archers sometimes did 0 damage to cities (in December version)? And frankly, if you're seeing GDR versus warriors in your game, then there's something much bigger that's wrong then the minimum damage level.

 

[deanej]

I'm not saying we need to have more micromanagement of supplies. I'm saying why represent it at all?

 

[Txurce]

I'm not saying we need to have more micromanagement of supplies. I'm saying why represent it at all?

Because that's how they did it. And now it's done, clearly only a select few have an issue with it, and it's highly unlikely that it will ever change in Civ 5.

 

[Camikaze]

This discussion seems to have focused on the realism aspect of it, when the explanation is probably to be found by looking at gameplay reasons. There needn't be a realistic explanation for everything in the game, however nice it would be to have one. I would imagine that there is mandatory damage so you get some sort of limitation on high end militaries just rolling through undeveloped ones. I'm not entirely sure why that's seen as necessary, but that's probably the reason.

 

[guczy]

I think we threw out realism the window and let Jack the Ripper have his way with it behind a 7-11 when they let us shoot arrows over the English Channel

 

[joyous_gard]

automatic -1 damage is weak sauce. Only serves to slow up obviously won end games. Otherwise -1 damage would make sense.. Mech versus Rifle gets a -1 or -3, fine... the guy with rifle might have a chance in hell to come back... Mech versus Pike is obviously serious military tech advantage and automatic -1 is just delay of inevitable with no useful purpose.

 

[Blitz66]

Can we just think of it as an abstracted cost of combat and be done with it?

If you already out tech the other side so much, why does 1 damage really irk you that bad?

 

[swmaniac]

This discussion seems to have focused on the realism aspect of it, when the explanation is probably to be found by looking at gameplay reasons. There needn't be a realistic explanation for everything in the game, however nice it would be to have one. I would imagine that there is mandatory damage so you get some sort of limitation on high end militaries just rolling through undeveloped ones. I'm not entirely sure why that's seen as necessary, but that's probably the reason.

I don't think it was intentional on the part of the developers. What I think is happening is that during battle calculation, when damage is calculated decimals are rounded up rather than to the nearest number; in calculation it's impossible to generate a flat 0.

 

[illserveu]

The most annoying about this is my 2HP GDR killed by 1 Medieval city + 1 Ancient Acher. How can this happen in real life? Out of fuel?

 

[Txurce]

The most annoying about this is my 2HP GDR killed by 1 Medieval city + 1 Ancient Acher. How can this happen in real life? Out of fuel?

You're absolutely right. That would never happen in real life.

 

[swmaniac]

You're absolutely right. That would never happen in real life.

I would be willing to settle if it were only YOUR attacks that did a min. of 1 damage, that could be handwaved to be supplies.

It should not take fuel for the ENEMY to attack you; if you can unit spam it breaks the game for small armies.

 

[Txurce]

I would be willing to settle if it were only YOUR attacks that did a min. of 1 damage, that could be handwaved to be supplies.

It should not take fuel for the ENEMY to attack you; if you can unit spam it breaks the game for small armies.

The reply that you quoted was tongue-in-cheek.

 

[Camikaze]

I don't think it was intentional on the part of the developers. What I think is happening is that during battle calculation, when damage is calculated decimals are rounded up rather than to the nearest number; in calculation it's impossible to generate a flat 0.

It doesn't really seem like something that wouldn't have been fixed in the first patch if it was unintentional, because it would've been a rather obvious mistake with a presumably easy solution.

 

[Sabrenity]

Well, 2000BC spears wear jet-propelled spears with diamond points. I think they should actually increase damage to modern units 8\

 

[Bibor]

All units (including aircraft) do "at least 1 damage" while attacking.
All non-ranged units receive "at least 1 damage" while attacking.
In an extreme example, 10 chariot archers can kill a GDR. In a more realistic scenario, two infantry and an artillery attack will deal at least 3 damage to a defending modern armor.

This rule was implemented to prevent a small "high tech" army completely overwhelming a more numerous but technologically backwards one. The only units that are excluded from this rule are ones that can have relatively weak defense (artillery, archers) or cannot heal in the open (ships).

Imagine these two scenarios:
- 7 Modern Armor with Blitz and receives 0 damage on attack.
- 7 Stealth bombers that receive 0 damage on attack.

 

[illserveu]

There's no different then. If you can get Modern Armor while your enemies still struggling with Horseman, 10 of them still die, just 1HP damage slow down the process, and it's annoying. It's still lucky that your 1HP high-tech unit still survives melee attack (but just 1 Acher, it's the end!).

So, how do you explain about 1HP units survive in melee combat? Why don't they die because of out of fuel, or low morale, or any possible reason you can give?

 

[Mods]

There's no different then. If you can get Modern Armor while your enemies still struggling with Horseman, 10 of them still die, just 1HP damage slow down the process, and it's annoying. It's still lucky that your 1HP high-tech unit still survives melee attack (but just 1 Acher, it's the end!).

So, how do you explain about 1HP units survive in melee combat? Why don't they die because of out of fuel, or low morale, or any possible reason you can give?

Maybe off topic, but even a warrior with 1 hp can take a city with 200 defence guarded by a full hp giant death robot and 10 stealth bombers as long as the city has 1 hp as well
This should be corrected

 

[aatami]

Maybe off topic, but even a warrior with 1 hp can take a city with 200 defence guarded by a full hp giant death robot and 10 stealth bombers as long as the city has 1 hp as well
This should be corrected

Can it? I've always thought that cities "always strike first" (in WHFB terms).