Zone of Control - Should It Be Back?

[dnewhous]

If you don't want them to pass you, kill them when it's your turn. If you're not strong enough to kill them, why would you be able to block them?

Because the A.I. is evil and always sends enemy units on two sides.

I suppose you could say "well, double your garrison"

That's too expensive to be practical.

I forgot to stipulate - not only will you have barbarians approaching you from multiple sides for a single unit but you will get them on multiple fronts simultaneously.

If you build phalanxes and pikemen the A.I. will figure it out and stop sending mounted units.

The fun really ends when you start facing barbarian swordsmen.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

War already VASTLY favors the defender. ZoC skews the balance further in favor of the defender and alters game balance.

Civ is defensive enough already. Unless unit movement is globally re-worked, ZoC is a no-no.

 

[dnewhous]

War already VASTLY favors the defender.

This was true until they buffed up the importance of special resource tiles - something else that didn't exist in Civ II. A great game design idea, if it weren't for the fact that it is too hard to defend them.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

This was true until they buffed up the importance of special resource tiles - something else that didn't exist in Civ II. A great game design idea, if it weren't for the fact that it is too hard to defend them.

What civ IV are you playing? Collateral initiative on defense > all. Say you have 2 stacks of 20 units: an assortment of catapults, swords, axes, and spears. Both sides have the same stack.

Whoever sets foot into enemy territory gets bogged down movement. They can't use roads, and must hug defensive terrain (probably hills since forests are chopped for this reason partially). Even on a hill, their units get redlined by enemy catapults and then completely murdered. What survives the first turn will be cleaned up on turn 2 as there is minimal healing in enemy territory and once again, they're slow.

But sure, if one side is a crappy player who underbuilds his military and gets pillaged to hell, the specials will go down. But ZoC won't save such a player. It will further imbalance a close contest though, as now you can force the attackers to forfeit ANY kind of help he might find in enemy territory, and any advantage he might have gained from using a mass of mounted units etc.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Have to agree with TMIT.

Add to TMIT's list that the defender is the only one who can enjoy the use of forts (including complete flanking immunity from enemy mounted units), realistically get to full 25% fortification bonus on high defense terrain, proximity to freshly produced units (it's easier to replenish the specific units you need the most, quickly) etc.

Without changing other game mechanics, ZoC would ruin civ 4.

 

[kochman]

I say no. Zone of control still exists, its just in the squares you occupy.
Given the size of tiles, it seems silly sometimes to have a zone of control. One archer in a hill fort is not going to restrict 10 axeman from walking by!

 

[Badtz Maru]

Have ZOC, but don't have it stop movement.

Instead, when you move from one hostile square to another, the unit controlling the source square and the unit controlling the destination square is "attacked" by your unit in it's current location for a single round of combat.

Each rank of First Strike a side has grants +20% to the units power in this fight.

Withdraw chance gives you a chance to avoid this combat round when moving.

This only happens when you move from one ZOC'd square to another.

Each unit gets 1 ZOC attack per round. After your ZOC attack has been used up, units can move by you freely.

The hard part with this is teaching the AI about it, naturally.

I like this. Moving through ZOC should inflict automatic attacks from the units you are moving by. Extra first strikes should be added, this will make Drill far more useful - horsemen may choose to run past some spearmen and take their hits, but Drill III archers would tear them up and it would be better to charge them.

 

[Willem]

This isn't good enough because you can't build a fort and a mine/farm/whatever on the same square, and the one place in the game where you really need a zone of control is on your valuable resource squares.

And by zone of control I mean that no enemy or neutral unit may go from one square adjacent to your unit to another square adjacent to your unit. They may only retreat or attack.

It's simple for me: I will not spend another penny on Civilization until this issue is resolved to my satisfaction.

You do realize that you're responded to a post that was made about 2 years ago?

 

[Willem]

ZoC skews the balance further in favor of the defender and alters game balance.

That would depend on the ZoC method being used. Everyone keeps going on about the Civ 1 & 2 model, but I think they had it right in Civ 3. I'm surprised that system didn't make it into the game frankly, and somewhat disappointed.

 

[dnewhous]

That would depend on the ZoC method being used. Everyone keeps going on about the Civ 1 & 2 model, but I think they had it right in Civ 3. I'm surprised that system didn't make it into the game frankly, and somewhat disappointed.

I never played Civ III because the overall criticism from Civ II fans was horrendous. Perhaps you are right. Could you explain how it works to an ignoramous like me?

 

[Willem]

I never played Civ III because the overall criticism from Civ II fans was horrendous. Perhaps you are right. Could you explain how it works to an ignoramous like me?

It was very simple. If an enemy unit was trying to pass one of yours, there was a chance for your unit to get in a free attack and do some damage. So movement was still unrestricted, but there was a penalty for passing too close to an enemy. And each unit only got 1 free attack per turn so it wasn't at all overpowered nor did it alter game balance in any way. It just made it a little bit harder to conquer someone. Forts were useful too. Sometimes I used to have a line of them around my borders, spaced every 2 tiles so an enemy unit was forced to go between them. With a couple of units in each Fort, it could end up with a fair amount of damage trying to pass. Or it might get lucky and make it through relatively unscathed.

 

[kochman]

Ah, the principle of the Maginot Line...

 

[Willem]

Ah, the principle of the Maginot Line...

It worked in Civ 3 at least.

 

[ICNP]

They need to give attackers, particularly the 2-movement units, some means to bypass these. For example, a level 2 promotion to negate ZOC? I can't imagine Ghenghis Khan would stop his Keshiks right outside somebody's forts to be the shooting practice target. Also some sort of maintainence cost is needed to keep a fort or everybody will spam hundreds of them at their border.

I have a reason not to spam them: improvements. Why don't people build forts now? Because they provide no economic boost.

Yeah I wouldn't let units have a zone of control (although that would be a cool promotion) but for forts it would be a great way of holding frontier land. One time I was invading a guy and he put two units on a Forted Hill. I walked right past them since my attack odds were like 2%. And so they stood their until they lost half their country and then got bumped out by cultural borders.

Forts should provide Commerce from Trade routes too. But that's another topic.

 

[dnewhous]

It was very simple. If an enemy unit was trying to pass one of yours, there was a chance for your unit to get in a free attack and do some damage. So movement was still unrestricted, but there was a penalty for passing too close to an enemy. And each unit only got 1 free attack per turn so it wasn't at all overpowered nor did it alter game balance in any way. It just made it a little bit harder to conquer someone. Forts were useful too. Sometimes I used to have a line of them around my borders, spaced every 2 tiles so an enemy unit was forced to go between them. With a couple of units in each Fort, it could end up with a fair amount of damage trying to pass. Or it might get lucky and make it through relatively unscathed.

I have an idea:

zone of control movement restriction is enforced against infantry only.

If any ground unit moves from one tile adjacent to an enemy with a ranged attack to another tile adjacent to that same unit, the enemy always gets a free shot.

Every ranged unit gets a free shot at every enemy stack that is adjacent to it at the end of its turn.

This would put some teeth into the advantage of using mounted units on offense - something that I never thought was as present in Civ as it ought to be.

Note: whenever I played Civ IV I always use the mod that extended city radius to 3 tiles. That probably skews my perception of the problem of a lack of a zone of control quite a bit.

 

[cardgame]

Ah, the principle of the Maginot Line...

I loved Maginot Line building in Civ3!

As France one time, I spent the whole game in on-off war with Rome, my only land neighbor. The forts and ZoCs allowed me to keep those barbarian Romans away from my colonies and cities quite easily until i could build up enough military to conquer them one last time.

 

[TheLazyHase]

Forts should provide Commerce from Trade routes too. But that's another topic.

Commerce, I dunno. But troop, and consequently fort and other military camp, should definitely have some economic impact. FOr the longest time, having troop massed in a city were a bane for the city ; now city actually want to have garrison, not to feel secure, but for the economic benefits of having so many people hanging around.

 

[Willem]

zone of control movement restriction is enforced against infantry only.

That really wouldn't be necessary. A Mounted unit with it's extra moves might be able to move out of range of an enemy unit within one turn, an Infantry might take a couple and end up getting attacked an extra time.

If any ground unit moves from one tile adjacent to an enemy with a ranged attack to another tile adjacent to that same unit, the enemy always gets a free shot.

Having a guarenteed free shot would be too overpowered, enemy units would always suffer damage when trying to get past an enemy. It should be just like if you had Drill 1 in the game, only a probablity of an attack so there'd still be the possiblity of a unit getting by unscathed and able to attack the nearest city.

Every ranged unit gets a free shot at every enemy stack that is adjacent to it at the end of its turn.

Again, that would be too powerful. The AI doesn't like attacking cities with wounded units so doing it that way would effectively put an end to any assault against the player. With a guarenteed free shot, quite a few of the attackers would be wounded before the siege and the AI would take them out of commission.

 

[TheLazyHase]

Again, that would be too powerful. The AI doesn't like attacking cities with wounded units so doing it that way would effectively put an end to any assault against the player. With a guarenteed free shot, quite a few of the attackers would be wounded before the siege and the AI would take them out of commission.

It may not be too powerful, but that's true that archer and crossbow should not have ZoC. Cavalry maybe, but the flanking promotion work well to emulate the attrition power of cavalry. What infuriate me is the sea domination, because having galleon walking side by side to my frigate without being attacked is really unrealistic, and happen often the turn of DoW.

 

[Willem]

It may not be too powerful, but that's true that archer and crossbow should not have ZoC.

Realistically every unit should have a chance at a ZoC attack. If you consider that at the end of the game a turn takes 1 year and a tile might represent 100 square miles, that gives plenty of time for any unit to approach the enemy, take a potshot, then retreat to a safe distance. In the early game it's even more probable with a turn lasting 40-50 years. But it should only be a probablity of an attack, not a guarentee.