http://www.firaxis.com/ubb/Forum8/HTML/000013.html

The summary has now been updated again.

Two suggestions:

1. Expand the current number system to allow greater refinement of the different strenghts. Right now the max conventional attack is a cruise missle at 18 (I think?). If it were 48 and a warrior were still 1, the units could have more subtle differences.

The SMAC idea of the main defender taking the damage, but not neccisarily having killing off all the units in a square. A bonus is given for having ranged, mobile and infantry units in the same square. (maybe +50% for each other type present)

Eiter shis or have small stacks (4 max units), these are the only units that can all be on the front at the same time. Other units can be in the square, they cant fight and they don't get destroyed.

Many people forget that squares are ~100km across. archers CANNOT fire into the next square, let alone more than a couple football fields.

To me a unit represents an aproximate division with a focus on one specific aspect of combat, but with some other types. and includes all the support equipment and personnel neccesary.

A legion represents that, while an archer unit would be similiar but have many more archers propotionally than a legion, but would still have some footmen and mounted scouts.

a artillary brigade has some infantry for self defense, but too few to actually launch an assult.

When a unit is destroyed it means that the infrastructure of the unit is so damaged and the unit rendered innefective, that the reaining soldiers are re-assigned or disbanded (or sent to the mental hospitals)

special units like spies are too small to be bombarded.

structures have hit points based on their era (~10 ancient, 30 modern...). Damaged structures are repaired at 20% per turn, and cost double maintenance while doing so. THe building's effectiveness is reduced proportionally. (20% damaged SDI stops 80% of nuclear weapons). Population points are counted as structures for bombardment damage and targeting. damage reduces food in the staorage proportionally to % damage done.

The idea of having a seperat offense and defense rating is sort of silly, once units are engaged in combat they have a mixture of localized offense and defense occuring throught the batlle.
Instead we could have (land / sea / air / ranged), were each of these values is used in combat against that domain, and ranged is for long range and bombard agains units of the same domain. Attacking other domains is always considerd ranged, or bombard combat.

ANCIENT UNITS
for me civ II represents them well, an anceint units can only be fought by so many other people at a time, so the conventional one on one battles (modifed by the preence of dfferent troop types, to represent more flexialbe tactics) work well. Leave as is.

BOMBARDS
bombards are a key idea for the rest of the eras.
attacker: unit initialting the combat
target: unit or structure that takes the damage
defender: unit who's defense rating is used to damage the attacker (mostly for air attacks), often but not always the target, especially when air units attack structures.
Active defender: ranged units that can launch a counter bombard, somtimes pre-emptivly, depending on the situation.

in a bombard round two things happen.
The attacker has attack rating % chance of doing fp damage to the target
The defender has defense rating % chance of doing fp damage to the defender
The bombard procedes for hp of the attacker rounds. (badly damaged units do not have the firepower available to mount a heavy attack)

AIR COMBAT
due to the extreeme speed, yet huge dependance of air craft on fixed bases, they cannot be acuratly represented under the current model

All aircraft bombard. Air craft do not tend to get into one unit shall die situations as easily as ground or naval forces, there is a strong chance of both sides being damaged to some degree, but still efective as a unit.

air craft can only be moved by deployment (see my economics thread post) they can be deployed to owned and allied cities, air-bases and carriers. In the case of nuclear weapons and cruise missiles, to subs and cruisers instead of carriers.

Air units have four options for each turn; to attack, to go into active defend mode (sentry), go inactive (fortify) and to redeploy.

Redeploy is done by sending them back to the deploy list to be re-deployed the next turn.

ATTACK
The movment of the air unit gives its attack range. When it attacks it bombards the target.
figters and bombers can just choose to bomb units or structures. one of these is then picked at random. Stealth fighters/ bombers can choose induvidual targets. The unit with the best agains air defense rating always defends

Modifiers to air attacks
city walls / fortress: no effect on air combat
SAM: +100% defense
Airport / airbase: +50% defense for defending aircraft
hills, forest, river...: -25% attack
mountains: -50% attack
ships in port: +50% attack
normal moral modifiers apply
For air combat, a unit in the forest does not have an easier time hitting the planes, but the planes have a harder time hitting them.
Ancient units: -100% defense.
renaissance units, helicopters: -50% defense
modern units, bombers: normal
SAM, AGIES, (stealth) fighter: +100% defense

Ranges
figter: 6
stealth fighter: 8
helicopter: 6
bomber: 12
stealth bomber: 16
cruise missile unit: 8
nuclear weapon: 16

Assumes ~100-200 km per square

Recon plane: range 32, when used does not attack, and rarely draws active defense, acts as a vision range of 6 at that point unitl the beggining of your next turn.

airplanes have a vision and active defense range of 0.5x their attack range

ACTIVE DEFENSE only can be used if the plane did not deploy or move in the preceeding turn
for fighters: When an enemy plane targets somthing of yours or an allies in the defense range, they get a pre-emtive air attack on the attacker. It functions as if the active defender had initiated the bombard. If the attacker survives, it bombards the target normally. a unit can only active defend once per turn, and only one unit can defend agains each attacker. Stealth bombers have a 50% chance of the active defense failing to notice them. Figters on carriers active defend agains naval units as well as air units.
For bombers: Enemy naval and ground units are targeted, when they enter range. can be set to only target certain unit types if available, like carriers and transports or settlers.
helicopters: are the only air unit that can attack submarines, target like bombers, but target subs preferentailly. They have a % chance of detecting submarines in vision range.

FORTIFIED air units only defend if they are in the tager square. A carrier attacked by a sub will automatically scarmble helicopters to pre-emptivly strike (% chance before, % chance simultaneously in this case). They do not have to have movment left to defend agains a direct attack, only a distant one.

A good staratagy for bombing is to send in adavanced fighters (target terrain improvments even) to use up the defenders counter attacks, and damage them, then to bring in the bombers. This simulates escorting the bombers with long range fighters.

SAM units activly defend in a 1 square radius. AGIES cruisers have a range of 2 or 3

When air units attack terrain improvments they have a % chance of hitting based on the type of air craft (50% fighters, 90% stealth bombers...)

Helicpters can be used to attack with a marine unit. The helicpter bombards, then the marine attacks in the target square unit it clears all the defenders or dies trying - like an amphibous attack.

NAVAL COMBAT

ships have 2x movment rate (to speed things up)
all modern ships have the bombard ability and can active defend to counter act the increased movement. They can damage units that bombard them within their range. Can only damage subs if they attack or you have helicopters

Carriers group. (2 carrier, amphibous ship/transport, air defense cruiser and pair of destroyers)
bases 4 (stealth) fighters, 2 helicopters, and 2 marines. The marines can be helicopter deployed. Has bombard range of 1, and can spot subarines, (helos and destroyer) deployes two units/turn

Battalship (4 battalships, 1 cruiser, 2 destroyer, transport)
carries 1 marine, bombard 1 square, can deploy 1 every other turn

Cruiser (6 crusiers, 2 destroyers, transport) carries 1 marine, 2 missile units, bombards 2 squares(missiles). can deploy one per turn

Destroyer (8 destroyers, 2 cruisers) no transport ability, bombard 1 square, very fast, spots subs

AGIES crusier (6 AGIES crusiers, 2 destroyers, amphiboues ship) bombard 3 squares(inherent missiles), spots subs, 1 helo unit, 1 marine, 3 missile units can deploy one unit / turn

Submarine (8 submarines) bombard 2 squares (missiles), 4 missile units. deploys 1 / turn

Cruise missile units represent a much more intense bombardment than the regular bombard of a crusier/sub.
Transport (8 transports / amphiboues ships, cruiser, 2 destroyers) no attack, can carry up to 2 helicopter units, and a total of 8 units.

LAND COMBAT

Only changes involve cannon, artillery, howitzer, and an itorduced unit, the V2,
cannon, artillery, howitzers, can only bombard and cannot take cities. cannon and artillery need to be stacked with a normal unit to prevent an imidiate counter attack by the defenders. only the V2 unit has more than 1 square of range, with a range of 2 or 3 depending on play balance
SAM - active defends angains air attacks, even with no movement remaining.

Questions, comments or suggestions?
Please tell me what you think
jhuebsch@engmail.uwaterloo.ca
-Ember

i really like your ideas and they are good. but could you explain what defense is, does it mean the ability to take damage and survive? if it is then i really like your ideas with ground to ground and sea to sea. i do have one suggestion though.

1. add a paramater called rate of fire into the equation. this is how many shots a unit could fire each round. this would have two effects.
a. it would make some guys better at killing heavily armored targets and others better at killing lightly armored targets.
b. some units while outdated wouldn't be totally obsolete. kind of like a long bow unit that could fire fire than a early matchlock musket.

i am also totally in favor of stacked combat

this is a topic that i thought deserved a post to itself. i think that stealth fighters and bombers should be treated differently when they attack. because a stealth bomber is one of the most powerful weapons in our arsenal but it only flies at 540 mph, a german Me-262 from WWII was faster (550 mph IIRC) here's what i'm proposing.

when a stealth fighter or bomber attacks, their is no counter attack, it is a one way attack...air units on alert can't scramble and intercept a stealth bomber or fighter. you can't see them coming and they attack you and then they slip away. i also think that submarines should get a bonus like this except not as powerful. maybe one free attack like in Axis and Allies or something along those lines. guerilla and commando units could get a free suprise attack like this too. all of these units could fall under a special suprise attack rule.

here are some preliminary ideas.

unless detected you cannot engage a suprise attack unit. while undetected a suprise attack unit may attack you at will.

stealth bombers and fighters: have a tiny chance of ever being detected

submarines: cannot be detected except by destroyers, other submarines or antisub aircraft, can get off a suprise first shot and then have a good chance of slipping off undetected if they want

commandos: get a free suprise attack, then attack like normal

guerrillas: get a free suprise attack, then have a good chance of slipping off undetected (hit and run tactics)

tell me what you think of that

The following will soon be integrated into the Combat sub-list. For now they are listed here:

1. Clarification: Unit strengths will be much higher (as mentioned in the current summary).

2. Elaboration: How stacked combat works. Currently, my units model allows multiple units to combine to yield "mixed" units (z.B. archers and pikemen in one unit.) "Mixed" units are called armies. At the next update I will elaborate on how this will work.

3. Slight modification:Damage from air bombardment is inversly proportional with size of unit; unless that unit fires back (in which case it wouldn't be that hard to locate the handful of SAM launchers).

4. Clarification:All units in a square (except ones without a chance of doing damage) defend. An army (a group of units) can attack that square. Some units do not have a chance of doing damage (z.B. a legion, no matter what the Random Number Generator returns can not hurt a tank.)

(Ember I will read the rest of your post, when I don't have my own Ideas that I would rather not forget and am not half asleep. In other words next update.)

5. Added Concept: Rate of Fire. This would be a number between .25 and 2, which would determine how often a unit fires. .25 would mean that it takes .25 rounds to fire, 2 would mean it takes 2 rounds to fire. This would be used in ranged combat only. (Melee attack based on number of attacks*damage of each/round.)

6. Added Concept: Stealth. Certain units would have stealth. Guerillas, subs, stealth fighters would have this. This allows them to ignore ZOCs. Stealth will be expresed as a percent. This is the chance that they will attack first, regardless of the range of the defender. The guerillas would have something like 50%. For each round of combat that would go down 25%. (Thus a guerilla has a 1 in 4 chance that they might attack two rounds before being fired on). Terrain will offer modifiers to this. In a jungle units may have +50%. This may replace the line of sight concept. Stealth fighters will start with 100%, but and remain that way (air combat is 1 round only (you can attack repeatedly)). Remember: each round of air combat is one movement point. Subs will start with a 95% stealth, but for each round lose 30%.

7. Slight modification: To damage a sub the unit must have the right equipment. A trireme doesn't stand a chance, unescorted battleships don't stand much of one either.

Units start at a range that is farther than the longest range available.
Each round they can move MP steps closer to the other side.
If a unit can hit the enemy they will not advance.
If the enemy is being hit, and none of your units are, all units remain in position until this changes.
Units below a certain threashold strength will attempt to retreat ( if they move beyond max enemy range, they have retreated)
Range in steps (oviously needs to be play balaced)
1 ancient normal
2 renaisance normal
3 ancient ranged
4
5 early modern normal
6 renaisance ranged
7
8 late modern nomral
9 early modern ranged
10
11 late modern ranged
12
13
14 over tile edge bombard

When units engage they split their attacks between all units within their range (more injured units, less kills if fighting a large stack)

I feel that repairs should cost modey/resources, so injured units still has an economic impact.

Ranged vs. Ranged combat: Even when this happens, sometimes you might want to close or lengthen the distance anyway. For instance, cavalry (in the late Industrial Age) might have a weak ranged attack, but its melee attack is much stronger. They would start firing once they got in range (and they would have been fired at for awhile when they did that), but they would keep getting closer until they could do melee combat. Same with many other units: Tanks might have the same exact melee/ranged combat values, but their ranged defender may have a lower value. So they'll close there too, so they can overrun them.

Minor points: I'd give Musketeers a higher melee value than 2, and archers with a disadvantage in the forest? Yeah, we all know that Robin Hood got trampled in the forest by Prince John's melee combat knights... um... wait a minute. Perhaps I should rephrase: units with the guerilla ability don't just get a bonus in the correct terrain, they don't face LOS penalties. And guerilla combat should have a very short number of rounds, resulting in a high probablity both units survive- the guerillas jump in, savage the larger force, and run off before the main force can come close enough to really put it's force to bear.

You add certain logical statemnts to the rules of combat to deal with all these siutations.
Basically - If i can hit them and they can't hit me, stay back.
- if i can do more damage by being close close in.

We could use the same kind of scale and just give each unit a number on it.

Musketters would have a worse land than range, that would actually make pikemen usefull, but they wouldn't be push-overs.

"Certain units would have stealth. Guerillas, subs, stealth fighters would have this. This allows them to ignore ZOCs."

Also the Isolation Factor (Summary) should be varied by discoveries of Flight and Teleportation (if it is included).

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Humaloidi
Not-so-special dude who isn't an administrator...

"Tourists are terrorists with cameras. Terrorists are tourists with guns."
-Anon

Questions or Comments? humaloidi@yahoo.com

I think this would allow for true "guerilla-warfare" combat.

Hit-and-run attacks/defenses would work like so:

Before attacking, one could by either holding down a hotkey or selecting an option, attack an opponent to a certain extent. Rather than a do-or-die battle, the attacker could fight an enemy until they are damaged down to, say, 50%. The attacker would then retreat backwards one square. The guerrilla unit would then become invisible (blend into the woodwork).

In a defense, guerilla units (this could also include other units that aren't Partisan, Guerillas. Special guerilla mode, maybe?), the unit would hold off the attacker until it hits critical damage, about 20%life remaining, at which point it would retreat directly away from the attacker one square and blend in. If defending in a city, though, it would be a scorched earth thing: the guerilla unit would destroy all improvements, wonders, and clear out anything stored in the city (food, etc.) before fleeing.

However, this method of fighting would not be a default method.

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Q Cubed
Renaissance Q • Q-of-all-trades
Thread Discussion Facilitator for Wonders

This is my first post here, and I'd just like to deposit the contents of my brain regarding certain issues of Civ3 into this forum. I came up with a couple of concepts relating to concealment and terrain accessability.

CONCEALMENT

Terrain such as jungles, forests, mountains, etc. should have natural concealment features. Armies have been using dense terrain to their advantage for hundreds of years. The effect of concealment in Civ3 could create some exciting situations. Armies making stealth approaches to enemy cities and launching attacks from the foliage. Units moving through dense terrain and inadvertently initiating combat with an enemy it did not see. There are many possibilities to exploit here.

This should not just extend to units. Concealed airbases and defensive fortifications (e.g., bunkers) are quite commonplace in the real world. Perhaps add Camouflage to the research tree to enable units to make use of their surroundings.

Such terrain features would also make air strikes almost completely ineffectual. Even if the unit was locatable, the natural cover provided by dense terrain would make it very difficult to damage or destroy.

INACCESSABILITY

Foot soldiers lack importance after the development of armour and mechanised infantry. This is wrong, as there is still much emphasis on infantry in modern war doctrine. Making severe terrain (e.g., mountains) off-limits to vehicles would greatly correct the balance. The construction of roads would allow vehicles passage through such terrain, but with considerable combat penalties. A rule similar to Civ2's attacking-ships-in-harbour would be an appropriate to simulate the reduced mobility of the armoured vehicle in areas such as forest, jungle, swamp, mountain, etc.

Foot soldiers, however, would be able to traverse all terrain (except ocean squares, of course), suffer no combat penalties and enjoy the defensive bonuses of the particularly severe terrain.

I'd appreciate any feeback on these ideas. Even angry feeback if I may have inadvertantly pinched your ideas, anything will do.

Also, am I the only one who thinks that command ships/aircraft/generals is redundant with stacked units? A stacked unit should AUTOMATICLY have better attack/defence numbers because when you stack the group together it is like putting them under a single leader.

[This message has been edited by CormacMacArt (edited 07-07-1999).]

I was replying to Princeps's post.

Are you telling me that they both involve the same amount of tactical thinking?

I think Shogun will be a better example of implementing tactical combat into a strategy game. However I still hold firm to the idea of using the Gettysburg engine, the best real-time unit-oriented tactical combat for pre-modern ground warfare, for limited tactical combat. Though I suppose it would be better suited for a game dealing with a certain time period than an all-encompassing game.

-Princeps

-No, the computer did not suck. Failing to hold a fully garissoned Royal Castle against 900 men is sucking. Only inflicting 40 casulaties in the process is really, really, sucking.

So what IS the main aspect of the game?

"This is why I gave up LOTR, because I got sick of fighting every battle"

Maybe I forgot to say, but there can be an option for you to fight the battles. If you don't want to, you let the computer resolve it normally! That easy!

"(and there are far more battles in Civ3 than in LOTR.)"
There are? Is this from...experience?? hehe Tell me more about Civ3!

Cheers,
Princeps

1. Hit-and-Run (Different from Q Cube's)
2. Attack-and-Hold-Position

The traditional Civ attack model where a unit attacks and returns to its starting square would be the Hit-and-Run. This could actually be combined with Q Cubed's suggestion.

The Attack-and-Hold-Position would have the attacker attack, win and remain in the defender's square. If there are multiple defenders, the attacker must defeat all of them.

I really like the idea of having two options for attacking. Here is another possiblity. Someone suggested above that certain units be able to retreat, which is a good idea. Adding to that, should Civ III allow a unit to retreat if some or all of the following conditions are met: 1) the attacker is on his last turn, 2) attacker is slower than the defender, 3) the defender isn't totally smashed right away 4) the defender is on certain terrain (plains, grass or road) and 5) not in a city.