Civilization V Offers New Strategic Combat
- Thread starter Greg Tito
- Start date
No stacks? Does this mean that Civ won't take 25 hours to play one game, and that I won't have to cross my fingers when attacking a spearman-stuffed city with my Modern Armour, knowing that I'll lose eventually thanks to the law of averages?
Hmmm, no stacks at all seems to be a little drastic, frankly I'd have preferred if they just limited stack size and make the armies in the stack provide each other bonuses when attacking together. The thing that worries me is one resource equals one unit, smaller civilizations will stand no chance at all even with superior tech, and the game will come down to settler spam to put cities right next to those resources. Aw well, I'm sure it'll get balanced somehow.
BTW, Best Civ was Alpha Centauri
BTW, Best Civ was Alpha Centauri
Y'know, I actually LIKE Civ IV the way it is. I'm definitely not psyched about the lack of stacks, as that was something that made sense. Unless they completely redo the entire unit strength and combat system, the combat will be downright crap.
@JusticarPhaeton: You're not using enough Siege. That's why you're losing Modern Armor to Spearmen.
I can deal with the hexes, but frankly I like the grid based system. It's familiar, but more importantly, it WORKS. They didnt need to redo the entire system, just fix the AI. I can guarantee that this is going to be an issue for Civ V, as the decline in AI potency has always been in decay since Civ 3.
@JusticarPhaeton: You're not using enough Siege. That's why you're losing Modern Armor to Spearmen.
I can deal with the hexes, but frankly I like the grid based system. It's familiar, but more importantly, it WORKS. They didnt need to redo the entire system, just fix the AI. I can guarantee that this is going to be an issue for Civ V, as the decline in AI potency has always been in decay since Civ 3.
Sounds (and looks, oh good looks) amazingly cool, but I could spend all night fanboy-ing out over it without substance, so I'll instead address some issues that jump out at me, that might (note: MIGHT - like the rest of you, I have yet to see any of this in action) be not as awesome.
In order to avoid a senseless shitstorm I'm gonna move the end-of-post disclaimer up to the front:
But despite all this, the game does look awesome, and no doubt it will be tested and tweaked to as close to perfection as a game can be. And we'll just have to see about the actual effects of all that I've mentioned here, so basically, this entire post is theoretical.
And one more thing: Units not dying after combat? GLEE! I love it. I've been waiting for this for so long.
Right. Now on to the issues.
First off: no stacks. Bear in mind that I've never played any Civ multiplayer, so the only mega-stacks-of-doom in my games are my own (or buildups of workers or outdated units or aircraft or etc. in a city). It's certainly very interesting, and I'm sure it'll work wonders with terrain and positioning and such, but banning stacks outright? Wouldn't this make combat more tactical than strategic? In the older Civ games, a unit on its own could be taken to represent a brigade or a division, with a stack or a close group of units being an army, preferably with a combined-arms aspect or simply a fuckton of cheap cannon-fodder. Now, a single unit would represent that army. You'd lose a lot of versatility, and combat would be a LOT more one-on-one, which admittedly sounds good but which also means that any gathering of more than two or three units - which is pretty much mandatory; say one core combat unit, spearman or other anti-cavalry defender, cavalry/armour corps, and that's without catapults/artillery, archers, specialised units, etc. - will spread out over a huge front, and any serious war will take up a massive amount of space, space that you might not actually have - turning what is, in theory, an epic fight between superpowers into a giant traffic jam where only about a quarter of the units involved are actually fighting. This kinda puts the kibosh on human-wave tactics, even when they'd be legitimate and not just "look at me spam 3 of the best unit in the game every turn!" matches. And let's not forget the implications for naval combat. Any kind of serious navy will take up a space the size of the North Sea, and a full-scale naval engagement - even one battle - will require roughly the Atlantic Ocean to work. I hope that this field remains open to modification. I know I'd want to play - perhaps even make - a mod that implements this to a somewhat limited degree (say, max stack of 2 in a forest or hill, 3-4 in a plain). Nonetheless, it's a fascinating concept and I can't wait to try it out.
Second, ranged fire. Archers firing two hexes away. Now we had units that did this in Civ III, and mods for it in Civ IV, so it works, but if Archers can fire two hexes away, wouldn't that give them about the same range as a tactical cruise missile? Or is the combat done differently, on a smaller hex grid than the strategic map? Because if an ancient-era archer using a creaky bow can shoot clean over a city and the hills beyond it to hit an enemy, I'd like to see what "modern"-era (because in its own time, every era is the "modern" era - one day even this era will have a name. My money's on "The /b/tard Era") howitzers can do. Maybe they can shoot all the way across a smaller ocean. No, but seriously. I'm all for ranged attacks, but if Archers can shoot two hexes already, what about artillery? They simply can't be limited to a bow-shot's distance or it'll just seem ridiculous, but you can't increase their range all that much either or they'll become the equivalent of a conventional intermediate-range ballistic missile. What would be interesting is if this means that hexes are smaller than tiles in older games, so for instance a large city would span multiple hexes. Of course, I sincerely doubt that's the case, but that'd make for some interesting games. Or at least an interesting mod.
Thirdly. Only one iron unit per iron resource? Well, like others have said before me, chances are that this means that the presence of resources is increased. But if it doesn't, this could have some serious implications. Yeah, it'd fight the mega-stacks-of-doom, but at what cost? You wouldn't be able to build up a serious army, or you'd be forced to branch out to other, perhaps less useful units to fill out your ranks (whereas swordsmen are traditionally a general-purpose unit, spearmen, for instance, are mainly useful against cavalry - but what if the enemy doesn't have horses?). And if you choose not to, your units will all be useful, but they'd be spread extremely thin, and if you're fighting on a land front of any kind of size, you're gonna be bypassed left and right by units that would basically serve as little other than experience generators for your forces (again, spearmen come to mind), but which can now begin a campaign of happily ravaging your countryside. I was going somewhere with this..... Oh yes, I do sincerely hope this means that resources are more plentiful, because otherwise, you might even have trouble maintaining garrisons for all your cities if you expand fast enough. There are upsides to this though, but since this paragraph is long enough already, I'm going to leave those be and move on to the next issue.
Fourth. The leaders. I see a lot of over-the-top phrases here, but reading between the lines, Napoleon's battlefield and Gandhi's cliff seem to be little more than the backgrounds of what used to be the leaderheads, which are apparently now an entire scene. I do think that this overblown announcement means that we'll get to see more than just the head and shoulders (and sometimes hands and wrists) of the leaders (as evidenced by that portrait of Dick Van Dyke in a foul mood - seriously, that is the most un-Bismarck-like Bismarck I've ever seen), but I don't really see a lot more there. You can only pimp the diplomacy menu so much until it becomes needless clutter and a waste of time and space.
Fifth. No more religions? Why? It worked pretty well IMO in Civ IV, gave you a way of improving your happiness, and it offered plenty of openings for modding. Also, the diplomatic aspect worked well - spread your chosen religion around, and you get more influence; conversely, some rulers (*cough*Isabella) will be quick to brand you a heretic and you'll soon have Conquistadores at your borders. And (especially with modding) tensions within your civ could also run high, as foreign religions spread to your lands. And one of my favourite diversions was playing with just one city and researching every single religion first before expanding, thus allowing my capital to be the holy city for all the religions of the world. Fun times. (Also lots of Great Prophets.)
Sixth. Still doesn't look like there's true 3D terrain. Pity.
That said, the city states do sound awesome, and I still stand by my claim that this is a purely theoretical post, and I have every confidence in the abilities of the design team to deliver an excellent game.
For the end-of-post disclaimer, see beginning of post.
OK. I started writing this when the last reply was #14. Let's see how many (dozens of) times I've been ninja'd.
In order to avoid a senseless shitstorm I'm gonna move the end-of-post disclaimer up to the front:
But despite all this, the game does look awesome, and no doubt it will be tested and tweaked to as close to perfection as a game can be. And we'll just have to see about the actual effects of all that I've mentioned here, so basically, this entire post is theoretical.
And one more thing: Units not dying after combat? GLEE! I love it. I've been waiting for this for so long.
Right. Now on to the issues.
First off: no stacks. Bear in mind that I've never played any Civ multiplayer, so the only mega-stacks-of-doom in my games are my own (or buildups of workers or outdated units or aircraft or etc. in a city). It's certainly very interesting, and I'm sure it'll work wonders with terrain and positioning and such, but banning stacks outright? Wouldn't this make combat more tactical than strategic? In the older Civ games, a unit on its own could be taken to represent a brigade or a division, with a stack or a close group of units being an army, preferably with a combined-arms aspect or simply a fuckton of cheap cannon-fodder. Now, a single unit would represent that army. You'd lose a lot of versatility, and combat would be a LOT more one-on-one, which admittedly sounds good but which also means that any gathering of more than two or three units - which is pretty much mandatory; say one core combat unit, spearman or other anti-cavalry defender, cavalry/armour corps, and that's without catapults/artillery, archers, specialised units, etc. - will spread out over a huge front, and any serious war will take up a massive amount of space, space that you might not actually have - turning what is, in theory, an epic fight between superpowers into a giant traffic jam where only about a quarter of the units involved are actually fighting. This kinda puts the kibosh on human-wave tactics, even when they'd be legitimate and not just "look at me spam 3 of the best unit in the game every turn!" matches. And let's not forget the implications for naval combat. Any kind of serious navy will take up a space the size of the North Sea, and a full-scale naval engagement - even one battle - will require roughly the Atlantic Ocean to work. I hope that this field remains open to modification. I know I'd want to play - perhaps even make - a mod that implements this to a somewhat limited degree (say, max stack of 2 in a forest or hill, 3-4 in a plain). Nonetheless, it's a fascinating concept and I can't wait to try it out.
Second, ranged fire. Archers firing two hexes away. Now we had units that did this in Civ III, and mods for it in Civ IV, so it works, but if Archers can fire two hexes away, wouldn't that give them about the same range as a tactical cruise missile? Or is the combat done differently, on a smaller hex grid than the strategic map? Because if an ancient-era archer using a creaky bow can shoot clean over a city and the hills beyond it to hit an enemy, I'd like to see what "modern"-era (because in its own time, every era is the "modern" era - one day even this era will have a name. My money's on "The /b/tard Era") howitzers can do. Maybe they can shoot all the way across a smaller ocean. No, but seriously. I'm all for ranged attacks, but if Archers can shoot two hexes already, what about artillery? They simply can't be limited to a bow-shot's distance or it'll just seem ridiculous, but you can't increase their range all that much either or they'll become the equivalent of a conventional intermediate-range ballistic missile. What would be interesting is if this means that hexes are smaller than tiles in older games, so for instance a large city would span multiple hexes. Of course, I sincerely doubt that's the case, but that'd make for some interesting games. Or at least an interesting mod.
Thirdly. Only one iron unit per iron resource? Well, like others have said before me, chances are that this means that the presence of resources is increased. But if it doesn't, this could have some serious implications. Yeah, it'd fight the mega-stacks-of-doom, but at what cost? You wouldn't be able to build up a serious army, or you'd be forced to branch out to other, perhaps less useful units to fill out your ranks (whereas swordsmen are traditionally a general-purpose unit, spearmen, for instance, are mainly useful against cavalry - but what if the enemy doesn't have horses?). And if you choose not to, your units will all be useful, but they'd be spread extremely thin, and if you're fighting on a land front of any kind of size, you're gonna be bypassed left and right by units that would basically serve as little other than experience generators for your forces (again, spearmen come to mind), but which can now begin a campaign of happily ravaging your countryside. I was going somewhere with this..... Oh yes, I do sincerely hope this means that resources are more plentiful, because otherwise, you might even have trouble maintaining garrisons for all your cities if you expand fast enough. There are upsides to this though, but since this paragraph is long enough already, I'm going to leave those be and move on to the next issue.
Fourth. The leaders. I see a lot of over-the-top phrases here, but reading between the lines, Napoleon's battlefield and Gandhi's cliff seem to be little more than the backgrounds of what used to be the leaderheads, which are apparently now an entire scene. I do think that this overblown announcement means that we'll get to see more than just the head and shoulders (and sometimes hands and wrists) of the leaders (as evidenced by that portrait of Dick Van Dyke in a foul mood - seriously, that is the most un-Bismarck-like Bismarck I've ever seen), but I don't really see a lot more there. You can only pimp the diplomacy menu so much until it becomes needless clutter and a waste of time and space.
Fifth. No more religions? Why? It worked pretty well IMO in Civ IV, gave you a way of improving your happiness, and it offered plenty of openings for modding. Also, the diplomatic aspect worked well - spread your chosen religion around, and you get more influence; conversely, some rulers (*cough*Isabella) will be quick to brand you a heretic and you'll soon have Conquistadores at your borders. And (especially with modding) tensions within your civ could also run high, as foreign religions spread to your lands. And one of my favourite diversions was playing with just one city and researching every single religion first before expanding, thus allowing my capital to be the holy city for all the religions of the world. Fun times. (Also lots of Great Prophets.)
Sixth. Still doesn't look like there's true 3D terrain. Pity.
That said, the city states do sound awesome, and I still stand by my claim that this is a purely theoretical post, and I have every confidence in the abilities of the design team to deliver an excellent game.
For the end-of-post disclaimer, see beginning of post.
OK. I started writing this when the last reply was #14. Let's see how many (dozens of) times I've been ninja'd.
What are you talking about? Civ2 was good because of the wonder movies and the advisors, certainly not because of the AI. The AI in Civ2 as in Civ1 was practically just waiting for you to come conquer his cities - building lots of units only to have them wander pointlessly back and forth. In Civ3 for the first time the AI would actually build a massive force to purposefully attack you with. It's only since Civ3 that the AI seems to have a vague idea of how to handle it's units.The_root_of_all_evil said:
Civ 5 sounds awesome tastic.
But, um, Sid, I have...one minor little tiny itty bitty question.
WHERE
THE
FUCK
IS
ALPHA
CENTAURI
TWO?!
But, um, Sid, I have...one minor little tiny itty bitty question.
WHERE
THE
FUCK
IS
ALPHA
CENTAURI
TWO?!
I have to say, I'm rather disappointed by the news of no religions - I also liked that aspect of the IV. I'm also on the same page with wishing that rather than eliminate stacks all together, they'd simply limit it to 2 or 3 units per square.
Everything else I've heard about the game, however, I've liked.
Everything else I've heard about the game, however, I've liked.
This is certainly looking promising. I've always found the "unit stacks of doom" to be a terrible deterrent to the game (in short, it always had me cranking the difficulty level down a few notches). Shame that they aren't keeping the religions, though, I've always liked tinkering with those.
Still, it'll be interesting to see Civ V.
Still, it'll be interesting to see Civ V.
After years of playing Civ 1 and then years of playing Civ IV I didn't think they could improve anything else, but this does look very promising. I'll miss religions, religion + wonder spamming was a hilariously effective tactic, but I don't think I will miss SoDs very much. I always hated the fact that units could stack in the early games, and while having them not all die at once is useful (and lets you build well-balanced armies on one square), it was still a bit silly. Having Montezuma turn up on your border with a stack of 30 Jaguars was a nightmare, even if you have powerful units you can never attack them enough times in one turn to stop them pillaging everything. No more stacks sounds fine to me, although the perfectionist in me is wondering what size the hexes are going to represent if you can only fit one army unit in it...
Hexes will be strange to get used to, as someone who has played Civ with squares for almost 20 years and not played any hex-based games at all. I imagine more than one battle will be lost because I will forget how units move and end up with half my armies one hex out of range.
Also, I concur - Alpha Centauri 2 would be AMAZING! As long as they kept and improved the diplomacy and design workshop features, custom-building units was great fun.
Hexes will be strange to get used to, as someone who has played Civ with squares for almost 20 years and not played any hex-based games at all. I imagine more than one battle will be lost because I will forget how units move and end up with half my armies one hex out of range.
Also, I concur - Alpha Centauri 2 would be AMAZING! As long as they kept and improved the diplomacy and design workshop features, custom-building units was great fun.
I wasn't really excited for Civ 5... until now! Sounds like a major shake up. And this new hex grid system sounds like it'll improve the graphics as well as the gameplay. Awesome! And I was hoping not to have to buy any more games for the next few months, heh
I concur on both counts. This, to me, seems to be the single biggest evolution of the Civ game out of any of them to date.Xodion said:
As for the combat system comments, Civ:Call to Power had a slightly better system where you grouped units together and they fought semi-tactically.
But this combat system their talking about sounds truly awesome! We can have artillery blasting away miles behind the line whilst infantry units duel for control of the trenchs...
*drools slightly in nerdy strategy fan ways*
And yeah, I wish they'd make AC2! Or at least released AC for digital download.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheComputerIsACheatingBastardTiamat666 said:
Civ2 still played by the rules. Civ 3 did a Kaiba.
I gotta agree witha alot of people here: taking religon out of the game is a bit of a mistake. There was nothing wrong with it and made the game more interesting. As for the limit on resource dependent units, unless resources are plentiful (which I'm hoping they aren't as having them somewhat scarce always made it an interesting race to grab the important stuff) that is going to be a serious flaw. I am really excited about the city-states though. I loved the independent cities in Rhyes and Fall as they were small cities that unlike barbarians weren't immediately hostile (didn't stop me from annexing them into my empire though...). I also hope they keep all the interesting stuff they had in Warlords and BtS without making you but several expansions.
All in all though, no matter what the problems I'll still buy it.
All in all though, no matter what the problems I'll still buy it.
