Please Fix The Combat

[Torment]

This has to be the worst combat system i have ever seen

I know some people say it works fine for them and everything, but i'm on my fourth game now and everytime i go to war it seems lke technology doesn't matter. The one damn english spearman took out 4 swordman 3 musketman and 2 knights in one turn. The worst part is that the last 3 attacks he was down to one red bar. Another case in point, the fleet i used to get my troops there, 2 galleons, a frigate and 2 caravels. ALL SUNK by the brave little english galley who didn't even take a scratch.

this seems to be a MAJOR problem and hopefully you'll fix this.

now i have to go deal with an elite english spearman

[The Unknown]

It's just bad luck..

[Setsuna]

Bad luck is being the only person to ever lose a Tank to a Musketman.

In this case it's just another day of Civ III. Where archers have magic powers (To shoot down cruise missles) and Spearman can draw on their inner ki to defeat Modern Armor.

Geez, didn't you read the manual?

[hexagonian]

A question...

Has anyone noticed in their combats with the AI that they have been able to win battles against supposedly superior forces?

[shammy]

not just bad luck, its a rule

i just lost eight modern tanks to cossacks, knights and ancient units like hoplites, spearmen etc. i lost three of them while they were attacking me, and i lost 5 more when i attacked them.

i lost battleship to iron clads, galleons and submarines to caravels

and of course.. i lost multiple mechanized infantry when taking a city with musketmen in it

this is my third game now and so far there have been over one hundred occasions on the combat system that have caused my blood to boil.. this is just like having civ1 combat system

this is extremely frustrating, if i have supreme tech on the battlefield,. why cant i be supreme..

[dr. blackclove]

Yeah, there are some oddities. I am playing at chieftan level and losing tanks and mech inf to spearmen and knights pretty regularly. I am definitely having CTP flashbacks.

In a way it makes some sense, because usually I'm losing them while garrisoning enormous cities with a couple of tanks... I guess you could assume that by modern times some of those "ancients" are really people with firearms mixed in with the less advanced stuff, guerillas, huge masses of peasants, etc. At least thats how I try to justify it to myself when my tanks are killed by spear chuckers.

Overall though it's pretty irritating.

[Zizka]

I feel your pain. Nothing like having 3 Elite Legions lose to a warrior. Look caesar and his crack troops just got routed by asterix!!

:P

Z

[FrantzX]

Am I the only who hasn't seen this? I just finished killing the English and Indians. I was in the modern age and they were both in Industrial. With a force of 25 armor, 12 bombers and battleships, I lost 2 armor and a battleship in capturing 20 20 cities. The defenders were mostly riflemen and infantry. I have found that using artilery makes conquest SO much easier.

[Jason Beaudoin]

Maybe we should tweek the combat numbers a little with the editor?

[hexagonian]

The sad thing is that this will probably not be patched in by Firaxis, as this will mean a complete overhaul of the combat system. Say what you will about the combat system of CTP1, but at least Activision reworked it to give balanced results in CTP2. And to think that Firaxis regressed on this issue...as soon as they said that they were removing FP, the warning light went off in my head, because this was exactly what Activision did in CTP1. I thought that the HP system would take care of this, but it appears that elite status is extemely powerful, almost to the point of unbalancing.

Guess it is up to the fans to rework the system - oh wait, the editor is a piece of crap!!!

I'm still a fence sitter on this game - and the more I read about these combat results, the less enthused I am about civ3.

My question still stands though - Is a player managing to get these skewed combat results in his favor from time to time - i.e. being able to kill 2 AI galleons, a frigate and a caravel with a galley? (and were you attacking the galley, or did it attack you, because that will make a difference, based on the numbers?)

Though in looking at the charts, frigates and galleons are not that powerful in relation to galleys... Still, a ship with an attack/defend of 1 should not be able to take out 4 ships with stronger numbers - and this is seeming to be more the norm rather thaan an occasional occurance.

[Yog-Sothoth]

Originally posted by hexagonian
My question still stands though - Is a player managing to get these skewed combat results in his favor from time to time - i.e. being able to kill 2 AI galleons, a frigate and a caravel with a galley?

Nope, never happened to me at least. Seems like the AI has been given some sort of advantage in combat.

[zapperio]

The combat is fair.

According to Soren, the AI does not receive any combat bonuses on any level. This has been my experience also, in 4 games on regent, that your forces do very badly if they are by themselves in enemy territory AND the AI forces are crappy by themselves in your territory. If however, you use tactics and group defenders with attackers and mix elites into the bunch, then that group will by more effective and a lot tougher, even in enemy territory.

Just like real life! fancy that.

Zap

[Grumbold]

Originally posted by Torment
The one damn english spearman took out 4 swordman 3 musketman and 2 knights in one turn. The worst part is that the last 3 attacks he was down to one red bar. Another case in point, the fleet i used to get my troops there, 2 galleons, a frigate and 2 caravels. ALL SUNK by the brave little english galley who didn't even take a scratch.

Since units can only attack once per turn I have to doubt your observations. Second you also have to bear in mind that Elite uits stand a much better chance than Regulars or Conscripts. Those HP really count even if your attack or defence stats are weaker. Third, adding up all the defensive bonuses can really get to high numbers if they are in forts or cities. The solution is to bomb the enemy down to 1 hp before even thinking of making a ground assault.

They made a design decision not to allow modern units to be invulnerable because of the resource system. If you as the player had no Oil access, would you want the game to be completely unwinnable? I thought not.

[Leonidas]

After playing 70+ hours on Regent level on many different types of maps, I have experienced skewed combat results on many occasions. Not once, in all these games did I see the AI affected in this way.

Example: An army of 15 attack strength (three elite swordsmen) was utterly destroyed by a pikeman (4.5 defense strength - he was on a hill). The sad part was, that pikeman was still in the green!

A veteran Ironclad destroyed by a Galleon.

I could go on.

It seems that whenever the AI is faced with a need to hold a position; or if you momentarily have an edge, it suddenly develops "Superhuman" abilities.

It is very obvious that the combat system has not been playtested as it should - any surprise since the game was rushed?

The combat between units in Civ 3 plays more like battles in Command and Conquer games or in Sudden Strike, then in a strategy game that spans human history. . .

The combat system as it now stands is a big step backward - and this from a company that has a history of designing this type of game. . .

[Barnacle Bill]

Originally posted by Grumbold



They made a design decision not to allow modern units to be invulnerable because of the resource system. If you as the player had no Oil access, would you want the game to be completely unwinnable? I thought not.

This was, IMO, a bad decision. A better choice would have been to give the player an unpleasant but usable work-around for lacking a strategic resource, like making units that require it cost 3 times as much if you don't have it or something. In real life, if you have a shortage of oil there are work-arounds - no major power in a war that I ever heard of had absolutely none. For example, in WWII the Germans made synthetic petroleum from coal, and I read that in WWI German colonial forces in Africa cooked up some sort of usable motor fuel from plant sources (ethanol?). The US developed synthetic rubber in WWII. In WWI the Germans made a class of coal-burning battleships because they had an oil shortage. In WWII the Germans also had a late-war jet fighter design that was created especially to not use strategic metals (HE162, if I recall correctly). All those alternatives are more expensive, but possible, and easily abstracted to higher unit costs if you don't have the good stuff

However, in real life guys with spears don't beat tanks - ever, and guys with muzzleloading muskets don't either. Keep in mind that on the scale of Civ3 a ground unit is not one person/vehicle, it is more like a division. If Napoleon's Grand Army with which he invaded Russia, over 400,000 men as I recall (let's call it 40 musketman units) attacked a German Panzer division, what do you think would happen? The British lost 100,000 men on the first day of the Somme offensive charging German machineguns, and they had modern rifles & artillery support while the Germans had no tech advantage. Now imagine that instead of Napoleon's army it is the Persian army with which Xerxes invaded Greece going up against that Panzer division?

IMO, there should be three combat "periods": ancient/medieval (i.e. pre-gunpowder), early gunpowder, and modern. Every unit would be assigned to one of these periods. All the sailing ships (everything after galleys), ironclads, cavalry, cannon, musketmen/musketeers and riflemen would be in period "early gunpowder". Everything earlier would be in "ancient/medieval", everything later would be in "modern". Ancient/medieval units would be able to fight with Early Gunpowder units, handicapped only by their relative attack/defense factors. Same for Early Gunpowder units vs Modern ones. Ancient/Medieval units should just die without causing any damage if attacking or defending against modern units, though. If a player gets himself into that sort of predicament, he aught to lose

[Saber_Cherry]

A better choice would have been to give the player an unpleasant but usable work-around for lacking a strategic resource, like making units that require it cost 3 times as much if you don't have it or something.

I completely agree with this... being forced to make cavalry in modern times because you don't have oil is crazy... lots of modern countries don't have oil, not to mention rubber trees...

Ancient/Medieval units should just die without causing any damage if attacking or defending against modern units, though.

I disagree with this, though. The problem (and thus solution) is extremely simple. Civ1 was unbalanced because units had 1 hitpoint. Civ2 was more balanced because units had 10 hitpoints (they also had firepower, etc, which were kind of silly). Civ 3 is unbalanced because, for some logic that is above mere gamers, the designers made the executive decision to give units 3 hitpoints. I'm all for executive desicions, just not ones that take something that is fixed, and break it, for no logical reason except maybe to partially solve their broken resource system.

(Note: I like resources! I think the idea is cool! But right now EVERY COUNTRY IN THE WORLD USES COAL, IRON, ALUMINUM, AND RUBBER. Almost no countries have local sources of all these...)

[Stuie]

Originally posted by FrantzX
Am I the only who hasn't seen this? I just finished killing the English and Indians. I was in the modern age and they were both in Industrial. With a force of 25 armor, 12 bombers and battleships, I lost 2 armor and a battleship in capturing 20 20 cities. The defenders were mostly riflemen and infantry. I have found that using artilery makes conquest SO much easier.

This has been my experience as well. If you prepare for combat and then execute your attacks properly and with forethought, you will not experience the problems people are complaining about.

Seems like a lot of people are ignoring any sort of tactical thinking (attacking with musketmen??? Why? They are a defensive unit.... same goes for mech infantry....) and just throwing units hap-hazzardly at the enemy. You deserve to lose if that's what you're doing. The combat system rewards planning and use of combined arms. If punishes blind assualts.

[AHO]

Let me throw another monkeywrench into this discussion. After many, many, many...many...good lord how much do i play this thing!...hours of play, it is my observation that results in general, not just in combat, are based on other EVENTS in the game rather than on probabilities alone. For example, in combat early in a game, I was attacking a spearman escorting a settler as well as an enemy city during the same turn. No matter how many times I tried, if I killed the spearman and captured the settler during that turn, I could not defeat the city, defended by a spearman, even though I was attacking with a knight. However, if I saved-tried it-failed-reloaded at the same spot- then chose NOT to kill the spearman and capture the settler during that turn, my knight mopped the floor with spearman in the city, as he should have done all along.
I've also noticed this when entering huts/villages to gain random stuff. It's not random at all. I was entering a village with one unit and attacking an enemy with a different unit in the same turn in completely different areas of the map. I lost the battle but gained a valuable science advancement from the hut, supposedly two random, unrelated events. However, if I saved the game and tried this again, this time choosing not to attack because I was going to lose the battle no matter how many times I saved and tried again (which I think is weird because it's supposed to work on percentages and probabilities which should give you slightly different results each time you attack, however, he lost EVERY stinking time and the defender lost the EXACT same number of hit points EVERY time...but I digress) and JUST entered the hut that turn, saving the unit I was apparently predestined to lose in the battle, but when I entered the hut THIS time, I found barbarians. If I saved-tried it-relaoded-tried again this pattern held true EVERY time. If I lost a battle, the hut on the other side of the world gave me an advance (the same advance every time) but if I didn't fight the losing battle and saved the unit, the hut on the other side of the world gave me barbarians (every time).
What gives?

[Zizka]

In general the resource / luxuries system isn't bad at all the only problem I see is that the presence of oil is bit low given the relatively high number of modern units that need it to be built (which is a bit silly as you don't need oil to build a tank just to drive it .. but you can lose the oil and run all your tanks ..)

Its far too easy to get behind the 8-bal in late game if there's only 2 oil patches in the world and the 2 civ's that hold them are using it up.

My potentail fixes suggestion (one of)
1) Random resources fine. But make it possible to "dig" or explore (via workers) to perhaps find a resource that lasts only 20 turns. Yes in the modern world only few countries have VAST oil resources but most have had some exploitable deposits.
2) City upgrade in modern era "Synthethic Fuel Depot" small wonder basically allows a civ to gain access to one oil source. (Say needs 5 labs to build- research)
3) Make later oil based units not require oil (sorta like rifleman no longer needing saltpeter)

I personally kinda like #2

MY .02

[skink]

Example: An army of 15 attack strength (three elite swordsmen) was utterly destroyed by a pikeman (4.5 defense strength - he was on a hill). The sad part was, that pikeman was still in the green!

I think you're misinterpreting some of the numbers here. Your army had 15 hit points, but an attack factor of only 3. Each member of the army attacks alone until out of hit points. So an attack of 3 vs. defense of 4.5 could conceivably result in a complete loss three times in a row, destroying your army.

[Saber_Cherry]

I suspect that the random number seed is stored in the save file, so all "random" numbers will be the same no matter how many times you reload. The only way to affect outcomes is to vary the order that you use random numbers. So, if fighting the battle is the first action, then the next action (goody hut) will use the next random number... and since that number is bad, you should wait until the next turn to take the hut - all the computer moves inbetween will re-seed your random number.

Personally, though, I will only play on "Ironman" mode, with no save/load. I say "will" because even though I have the game, through a supreme force of will I will NOT play it until it has been patched. If this doesn't occur within 30 days (21 now, I guess) month I'll have to return it... I only own it because I had it pre-ordered due to my previous trust in Firaxis.

[Pembleton]

EDIT: This post has been clarfied later in this thread.

[Saber_Cherry]

2) City upgrade in modern era "Synthethic Fuel Depot" small wonder basically allows a civ to gain access to one oil source. (Say needs 5 labs to build- research)

Hmmm... I like that idea, kind of... I still prefer making a resource lack triple the price of units... but the small wonder would work too. I mean, that's kinda what the Germans had to do in WW2, developing synthetic petroleum, and what the Americans did, developing synthetic rubber. Nowadays, nobody even thinks about natural rubber (except in condoms. Ironically, modern rubber is made of oil, just like synthetic silk (rayon, developed in WW2), nylon, plastics, roads (asphalt), lubricants, printed circuit boards, high explosives (carbon-containing ones), rocket fuel (nitromethane, etc), and so forth. If the US supply of oil was cut off, and we decided not to nuke the Middle East and take it anyway, we would probably just develop ways to synthesize all these things from corn oil, ethanol, wood, or coal. Which would be kind of like a small wonder liberating us from oil dependance.

[zapperio]

One problem with TBS I've played is that you can save before battle and reload, if you don't like the outcome, until the dice come up all sixes, so to speak.

I suspect that in Civ3 every civ, unit, or unit type has a collection of random numbers that are rolled at the beginning of your turn and those numbers are used to resolve combat. It makes sense and is not hard to implement and it deals effectively with the re-load cheat.

Zap

[Pembleton]

Originally posted by Saber_Cherry
If the US supply of oil was cut off, and we decided not to nuke the Middle East and take it anyway, we would probably just develop ways to synthesize all these things from corn oil, ethanol, wood, or coal. Which would be kind of like a small wonder liberating us from oil dependance.

Uh oh, this is getting way off topic but we *are* going to run out of oil in about 30 years or less. And we *will* come up with alternative energy sources.

We can do it now. We have the GNP that would allow us to invest in this research and do it within 5-10 years. But not as long as Bush and his buddies get their money from oil. They'll wait the 20-30 years to profit from this before they start investing more money in alternative energy sources.

[zapperio]

Originally posted by Pembleton


Actually, according to Soren, the human has been given a slight *advantage* in combat because of too many complaints that it was unfair although the combat has always been balanced.

Actually, according to what I understand from the transcript, he said that testers complained and he found it amusing that when he tweaked the humans they thought it was fair. That does not negate his previous comment:

"I am glad you brought this up. The AI get NO combat bonuses of any kind at any difficulty level. I understand that many people have a hard time believe this but let me give an anecdote..."
Soren Johnson

Zap

[Saber_Cherry]

Uh oh, this is getting way off topic

True. Ok, let's save the fact that resource system is good but flawed for another thread. My conclusion is this:

Firaxis, what the hell were you thinking by moving hitpoints down to 3??? Set them back at 10!

Then the randomness will be fixed... and if you want modern units to be more powerful, just edit their stats - but they shouldn't lose to ancient peons anymore anyway.

[Pembleton]

Originally posted by zapperio
Actually, according to what I understand from the transcript, he said that testers complained and he found it amusing that when he tweaked the humans they thought it was fair. That does not negate his previous comment:

Thanks for pointing this out, because I actually had doubts about what I said but I decided to go ahead and post it anway because I really find it amusing that unless the human wins 90% of its battles, it isn't "fair".

[zapperio]

Originally posted by Pembleton


I really find it amusing that unless the human wins 90% of its battles, it isn't "fair".

True

In my experience, 4 games on regent, I've seen no head-scratching results from battles. I found that if I sauntered into enemy territory with a single unit or unit type I got slaughtered pretty easily. And when the enemy AI lost its way into my territory I could return the favor.

On the other hand, when I put defensive and offensive units, with artillery and elite unit support into a stack, then that stack became an effective war machine.

Kind of like real life.

Zap

[RichM]

I used to think the same things as most of you, but after playing more and more, I realized that I just had too many preconceptions from civ2. One thing about this game is that quantity matters just as much as quality. I was holding the notion that my veteran, fortified, in a hill city pikemen should be able to hold off any number of archers, but this is not the case in civ3. Any unit can be overwhelmed by the weakest units if the numbers are enough to wear them down. I think I like it that way. In civ2 they wanted to have less randomness than civ1. In civ3 it's back to more randomness again but now you can compensate by stacking many, many units together. Also, the units are much cheaper to support than in previous civs.