Zone of Control

[Kaxen]

I just had a game of civ 4 where i was trying to stop an invasion by building forts on forested hills in an attempt to make the enemy attack my fort, but instead they just walked past and ignored them forcing me to attack and lose at 60+ odds as usual. This really annoyed me and i quit the game in frustration.

Will civ 5 have a zone of control against enemy units walking near forts or atleast have the forts damage the units as they pass?

 

[V. Soma]

hopes here that forts will be just somewhat useful this fifth time around, eh...

 

[weltraeumer]

I just had a game of civ 4 where i was trying to stop an invasion by building forts on forested hills in an attempt to make the enemy attack my fort, but instead they just walked past and ignored them forcing me to attack and lose at 60+ odds as usual. This really annoyed me and i quit the game in frustration.

Will civ 5 have a zone of control against enemy units walking near forts or atleast have the forts damage the units as they pass?

what did you think? that they´ll happily suicide? hey look guys, theres a heavily armed fort on a forest hill, last who dies wins!

 

[pi-r8]

I'm sorry that the AI was too smart for you. Next time either don't leave holes in your defense, or don't rely on static defense.

 

[weltraeumer]

I´m pretty sure that there will be a zone of control, imagine a tank with say 6 movement points, happily wandering 6 tiles through your crowded front lines just cause there is always one free space to move... guess passing by enemy units will go one tile per turn...
forts I could imagine either gone or upvalued... so that building forts is very costly, even bound to a resource (stone). you shouldn´t be able to plaster your whole borders with forts, but on strategic points... protection against artillery, melee,... you could use it to force the enemy into heavy casualties or into a different route...

 

[Cilpot]

I kinda liked the ZOC feature from Civ I and II. It prevented units from "slipping by" defenses, making it impossible to move from a square next to an enemy unit to another square next to the same unit.

 

[Grimlin]

In CiV you should just put archers in your fort and shoot at the passing enemy... preventing them from "slipping" through holes in your defense makes no sense whatsoever, it is clever playing every human would exploit just aswell.

 

[squadbroken]

Even if an actual ZOC mechanism doesn't exist, chances are the one-unit-per-tile rule will make it much riskier to ignore fortified positions.

 

[Chimera1804]

Rather than making tiles in the "zones of control" impassible it should be made so that you take a significant amount of damage if you do not attack on the same turn as entering that zone of control. I remember in Civ II the AI would always stack units around "border" cities and I'd be hard-pressed to maneuver settlers around because of the stupid zones of control.

 

[mboettcher]

ZOC will make up for the concept of supply lines for once. needed them in civ for a while. Well at least I wanted them. That makes forts useful (like they were in history, extremely useful). The one unit per tile mechanism also makes sense as how can u possibly have a massive number of units in a small fort. Its gonna be itneresting

 

[cephalo]

I don't think you need ZOC's for hexes! It's much easier to block movement with hexes.

 

[tom2050]

Unless only forts have ZoC and forts cannot be built in a contiguous line.

 

[notsonutso]

how far across is the land your protecting 8 hexes? I will just go around with my knights.

 

[Grawss]

One of the most fun games I've had was on a one-city challenge deity game on Highlands, rocky. I stole workers from everyone I met, went to war with the entire world, then built forts at every entrance to my little corner of the world. Slowly but surely they'd send stacks of doom and would lose about fifteen units to every one of mine. In late game I'd have infantry so heavily promoted that they were near impossible to kill. Out of curiosity I turned off quick attack and realized each turn would take over an hour. Bloodiest game ever.

Forts are fun, but so limited in their uses that it just isn't worth it most of the time. Hopefully they act as small cities and, like cities in Civ5, they defend themselves. It's great having a unit sitting on his fort all the time, but I imagine the limit on units will force us out.

Of course, the best fort builders bring alcohol and have high IMAGINATION.

 

[Andrew_Jay]

I just had a game of civ 4 where i was trying to stop an invasion by building forts on forested hills in an attempt to make the enemy attack my fort, but instead they just walked past and ignored them forcing me to attack and lose at 60+ odds as usual. This really annoyed me and i quit the game in frustration.

Will civ 5 have a zone of control against enemy units walking near forts or atleast have the forts damage the units as they pass?

I really missed the ZOC too, but imagine that CiV will fix your problem without actually needing it (some of these have already been mentioned):

- With hexes there are fewer movement options, making it both easier to build a wall of units, and harder for the enemy to slip by.
- With ranged attacks, the enemy will ignore a unit that is harassing them at their peril - they will have to deal with them.
- With 1UPT, defences will work better. Assuming you had even been able to make a solid line of units to block passage, the enemy could focus her units on one single tile and punch through, making your defences pointless. Now, it will be more even-sided.

 

[Ahriman]

1Upt inherently makes a fort more useful, because now every tile matters, and being able to deny the enemy access to a single tile (and have a safe strongpoint to attack from/heal in) will be very useful.

We might actually get a feeling for why castles were a threat; because units could hide in them and run out and attack and return to the fort before the enemy could respond, so you had to go besiege them to prevent that.

Castles were basically Land Aircraft Carriers in some sense; they were designed to project power to the surrounding area.

 

[Sir Og]

I just had a game of civ 4 where i was trying to stop an invasion by building forts on forested hills in an attempt to make the enemy attack my fort, but instead they just walked past and ignored them forcing me to attack and lose at 60+ odds as usual. This really annoyed me and i quit the game in frustration.

Will civ 5 have a zone of control against enemy units walking near forts or atleast have the forts damage the units as they pass?

This is very realistic. The same thing happened to France in WW2. They built a fort but the Germans went around it. The French got frustrated and quit.

 

[Andrew_Jay]

This is very realistic. The same thing happened to France in WW2. They built a fort but the Germans went around it. The French got frustrated and quit.

That's true to a point. But in III and IV, without ZOC, you literally had to make an absolutely continuous line or the enemy would slip through as if there was nothing to stop them. One point where you left a diagonal? Whoops, might as well not have bothered at all.

I think the ZOC if II was a reasonable balance - you didn't have to meticulously put together a line, but if your coverage wasn't complete enough the enemy could drive right through it. You could get by with a unit every three tiles, but if you lost a defender, it left a nice gap for the enemy - just like in 1940.

 

[Deathstar]

I think forts will be significantly more useful if you are able to build units from it. Does it sound unbalanced or do people agree? Because unless you make the great wall of forts, they're useless.

 

[snapple232]

With one unit per tile, I think forts have the potential to be a lot more useful. Imagine building a fort on a hill, and then sticking an archer in it. Now the archer has a range of 3 hexes (from being on a hill) and is no longer vulnerable. Now imagine building a second fort, on a second nearby hill, and sticking another archer in that one. Now you have 2 archers covering 74 tiles (37 tiles in a 3 hex ring), and the enemy either has to attack your forts, or let your archers snipe them freely every turn they're in range.