Which Civilization is the least dumbed-down?

[JarlFrank]

For all its flaws, GenderNonspecificPersonkind(tm) actually proposes an interesting middle ground here by stacking units into groups of 4-8, then having the battle play out on a designated field. It's far from perfect, but allows stacks to cooperate through reinforcements, and deployment of larger stacks an be limited by landscape, line of sight can be a factor, and battles can be fought over more than one turn.

Didn't Call to Power do something similar too?

8 unit stacks that would engage as stacks rather than one on one.

Something like auto-resolved Total War battles or Paradox style battles where it's stack vs stack is much better than the classic Civ 4 doomstack system.

That can take army composition into consideration and you can have formations and shit even without making it too complex.

You can choose a position in the formation for your unit, and it will attack forwards and encounter whatever enemy unit is in front of it. Ranged units can attack from back rows, melee only front. And bam you got a workable combat system.

 

[spectre]

And bam you got a workable combat system.

Yeah, I vaguely recall this system from CtP, though for the life of me, I can't remember what exactly was wrong with that game because it did have a bunch of nice ideas.
I vaguely remember playing a few games, then dismiss it as shit, like a half-baked knock-off, then just forgot about it.
What I seem to recall is they overdid it with agents and special actions, so the AIs would pester you with shit like spies and bureaucrats all the time, even if you were supposed to be friendly,
but that was just one of the game's many failings.

I think it came out at about the same time as Alpha Centauri, so that would explain why it was so easy to forget.
Also might prove that the combat system isn't what makes or breaks Civ.

 

[Inconceivable]

Well, there is "Civilization: Beyond Earth". Much maligned. Not really SMAC2. More like "Civ V: Futuristic Version". I think it's a good game.

Looks good, great ost. The rest is nowhere near SMAC, unfortunately.

I think Beyond Earth has some interesting ideas, and some things can be considered improvements over AC. From a scientific perspective, the AC psychofungus is the more "alien" alien, and the more interesting and inspired adversary. But from a design perspective, the BE aliens are more varied and creative, and more interesting to fight against. I like the concept of affinities and how they affect the units and your culture as you go. Satellites are also cool, if a bit underdeveloped. And I like the unique twist on diplomacy, how specific treaties between factions have tangible effects on the game. Overall, I think BE should be appreciated more for daring to try out new ideas. Of course, new ideas is not necessarily what most hardcore fans want, which is usually just more of the same, but bigger and better.

To be honest, I think these days I'd rather replay BE than AC. I love AC and probably played 500 games back in the day, but it has not aged very well. I'm not usually one to care much about visuals, but the visual representation of units in AC just sucks so bad. Especially the cart-pushing infantry and the aircraft that creep along the ground with giant lasers attached to the nose. And the ships. Really, the only unit I ever liked the look of were the hovertanks.

And BE units and visuals are B-E-A-U-T-I-F-U-L

 

[Perkel]

Retards arguing doomstacks are great. On codex. Why did you decline so much ? What mistakes have you made in life to go this way ?

No it is not that AI builds doomstacks. It is about everyone including players building doomstacks because doomstacks are literally better than any other sort of tactic. Just pile up units and forget about tactics.

 

[Inconceivable]

Retards arguing doomstacks are great. On codex. Why did you decline so much ? What mistakes have you made in life to go this way ?

No it is not that AI builds doomstacks. It is about everyone including players building doomstacks because doomstacks are literally better than any other sort of tactic. Just pile up units and forget about tactics.

Civ IV has the mechanic that all other units in the stack take collateral damage when attacked. I thought this was a neat improvement that discouraged the stack o' doom and made you more carefully consider unit placement and spreading units.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

smac does, not civ.

 

[Inconceivable]

smac does, not civ.

Yes Civ IV, but not all units have this ability.
https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Collateral_damage_(Civ4)

 

[flyingjohn]

Siege suicide is one of the easiest tactics to deal with a annoying enemy stack.

 

[spectre]

That only proves the point - if the game's most common tactic requires to use idiotic counter-tactics with no basis in actual history, then something's fucky.
And regardless of any built-in countermeasures, doomstacks still become the default method of maneuvering because it's ultimately safer for the whole army to be this big matryoshka of units,
with the best defender always stepping up and delaying the utter destruction of your damaged units.

You could argue that the general principle makes sense - bombardment as a solution to massed units; it would work if Civ4 siege engines had actual ranged bombardment mechanics going on (instead it only reduces city defense bonus).
There were mods that did this, but iirc it was a bitch to make the AI actually use it as intended. Best results were achieved by giving artillery a hich withdraw chance, but this opened another can of worms - what's the point of cavalry?

 

[JarlFrank]

And regardless of any built-in countermeasures, doomstacks still become the default method of maneuvering because it's ultimately safer for the whole army to be this big matryoshka of units,
with the best defender always stepping up and delaying the utter destruction of your damaged units.

That, coupled with the fact that most units fight to the death, also means attacking is always more costly than defending, even if you outnumber and outclass the enemy. Attacking with cavalry? Their spearmen will defend, even if it's a stack of 20 archers and 1 spearman, killing your cavalry. There's no way to outmaneuver a doomstack: the most appropriate unit in the stack will defend, securing victory for the defender unless the attacker's unit is more powerful than ALL the defender's units. As long as there is one unit in the stack that can beat the attacker, even if all others are at 0.1 health, the defender wins.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

do you still live in the 1 hp per unit world of 1994? a unit can't defend forever, it's going to suffer damage and sooner or later it'll fall.
i thought we were talking about civ4, the latest proper civ, are we not?

 

[flyingjohn]

And regardless of any built-in countermeasures, doomstacks still become the default method of maneuvering because it's ultimately safer for the whole army to be this big matryoshka of units,
with the best defender always stepping up and delaying the utter destruction of your damaged units.

That, coupled with the fact that most units fight to the death, also means attacking is always more costly than defending, even if you outnumber and outclass the enemy. Attacking with cavalry? Their spearmen will defend, even if it's a stack of 20 archers and 1 spearman, killing your cavalry. There's no way to outmaneuver a doomstack: the most appropriate unit in the stack will defend, securing victory for the defender unless the attacker's unit is more powerful than ALL the defender's units. As long as there is one unit in the stack that can beat the attacker, even if all others are at 0.1 health, the defender wins.

And how exactly does 1upt fix this?
There is a carpet of archers and spear men in front of them and you have horses,what do you do?
Nothing.
You use archers to kill the spear men the same way you use cats to kills the spear man with collateral.

Also that one spear man is going to die from the second/third knight attack.
Let's look at the stats.
Pike is 6 strength vs 10 strength knight.
Knight attacks and pike gets double strength to 12,knight dies.
Pike is damaged and his strength drops to 4.
Either the second or third strike will kill him.
Units loose strength if they are damaged.
I am not going into terrain because the ai is a complete moron when it comes to terrain.
Or,you actually include a couple of anti melee units like axes or maces to fuck up the stack.

 

[spectre]

And how exactly does 1upt fix this?
There is a carpet of archers and spear men in front of them and you have horses,what do you do?

Just horses? I withdraw. That's what you do against phalanx without an open flank.

More seriously, with 1UPT, at least I have the possibility to focus on one spearman (n.b. suicide cavalry charges aren't the problem, suicide trebuchet charges are).
This allows me to disrupt the formation and open up a flank for the horsemen to exploit; you know, something you'd reasonably expect do against a spear wall.
Granted, 1UPT the way it's handled in Civ 5 and 6 doesn't always fix this, but the system in GenderNonspecificPersonkind(tm) actually goes a long way towards that.
While this particular implementation comes with its own share of problems (there's way too many ridges and the AI district spam turns pretty much every fight into a siege,
so you very rarely have what feels like a proper field battle, then there's the typical AI incompetence) but it is still much better than doomstacks.

Or,you actually include a couple of anti melee units like axes or maces to fuck up the stack.

Which works as long as you have more axemen then they have spearmen. If you have axemen and horsemen in the mix, Under Civ4 rules, as long as even one spearman is alive
and they have better combat odds than archers, they will defend against horsemen. What it leads to is yet another doomstack vs. doomstack scenario, so I guess thanks for proving the original point.

 

[JarlFrank]

Or,you actually include a couple of anti melee units like axes or maces to fuck up the stack.

Which works as long as you have more axemen then they have spearmen. If you have axemen and horsemen in the mix, Under Civ4 rules, as long as even one spearman is alive
and they have better combat odds than archers, they will defend against horsemen. What it leads to is yet another doomstack vs. doomstack scenario, so I guess thanks for proving the original point.

Exactly. Your average doomstack is never just one single unit type but several, and the defender is always automatically the best counter unit against the attacker.

 

[Inconceivable]

smac does, not civ.

Yes Civ IV, but not all units have this ability.
https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Collateral_damage_(Civ4)

Just gotta love that RPG Codex crowd that claims something is not true, you refute them with facts, and then they tag you retadred.

Might want to think very carefully if you got the arrow of retardation pointing the correct way...

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

- x uses this universal system
- no, only y does
- but x has this specific single isolated case which acts in a barely somewhat similar way and you're all retarded if you don't kneel to my almighty knowledge!

fuck off. really.

 

[Galdred]

And how exactly does 1upt fix this?
There is a carpet of archers and spear men in front of them and you have horses,what do you do?
Nothing.
You use archers to kill the spear men the same way you use cats to kills the spear man with collateral.

Also that one spear man is going to die from the second/third knight attack.
Let's look at the stats.
Pike is 6 strength vs 10 strength knight.
Knight attacks and pike gets double strength to 12,knight dies.
Pike is damaged and his strength drops to 4.
Either the second or third strike will kill him.
Units loose strength if they are damaged.
I am not going into terrain because the ai is a complete moron when it comes to terrain.
Or,you actually include a couple of anti melee units like axes or maces to fuck up the stack.

The issue is that there are too many units relative to the overall range of an unit (and how open the map is) resulting in traffic jam et all. But the issue was not present in Wesnoth or Panzer General, so it is obviously a matter of implementation/balance/map rather than 1UPT.

Doom stacks didn't work too well in Civ 1: Killing the strongest defender would make all the units piled with him die too.

And bam you got a workable combat system.

Yeah, I vaguely recall this system from CtP, though for the life of me, I can't remember what exactly was wrong with that game because it did have a bunch of nice ideas.
I vaguely remember playing a few games, then dismiss it as shit, like a half-baked knock-off, then just forgot about it.
What I seem to recall is they overdid it with agents and special actions, so the AIs would pester you with shit like spies and bureaucrats all the time, even if you were supposed to be friendly,
but that was just one of the game's many failings.

I think it came out at about the same time as Alpha Centauri, so that would explain why it was so easy to forget.
Also might prove that the combat system isn't what makes or breaks Civ.

Call to Power had the Civ 6 religious war iissue:
You had carpets of "tele-evangelists", "corporate lawyers", markets or I don't know which other retarded meme-grade special unit to deal with. It is baffling that they felt adding this in Civ 6 was a good idea when it was the very reason Call To Power didn't work.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

from call to power i remember only one thing: i conquered the world with spies and a single cavalry unit. it was possible to incite a revolt with the spy in a city, which would kill all the garrison and make it a brand new civ. only thing i had to do was to declare war and walk into the undefended city.
the game had lots of exploitable issues.

or was it call to power 2?

 

[spectre]

The issue is that there are too many units relative to the overall range of an unit (and how open the map is) resulting in traffic jam et all. But the issue was not present in Wesnoth or Panzer General, so it is obviously a matter of implementation/balance/map rather than 1UPT.

For what it's worth, I didn't see any traffic jams in Old World, and units can travel ridiculously far in this game as you spend extra orders to give them a bit of nudge.
Not a bad implementation of 1UPT, but personally, I'm not a fan of units zipping all over the place like this, so ideally I'd prefer some sort of middle ground.

Call to Power had the Civ 6 religious war iissue:
You had carpets of "tele-evangelists", "corporate lawyers", markets or I don't know which other retarded meme-grade special unit to deal with.
It is baffling that they felt adding this in Civ 6 was a good idea when it was the very reason Call To Power didn't work.

Awfully generous of you to assume Civ 6 designers were even aware CtP was a thing. Not to mention learning from its mistakes.
Yeah, playing CtP I now recall thinking what in the flying fuck was happening when I saw my cities engulfed with literal tornadoes of paper sheets.
I also vaguely recall there was some sort "eco-terrorist" unit which would just leeroy jenkins and destroy a city outright, without declaring war or any such nonsense.

from call to power i remember only one thing: i conquered the world with spies and a single cavalry unit. it was possible to incite a revolt with the spy in a city, which would kill all the garrison and make it a brand new civ. only thing i had to do was to declare war and walk into the undefended city.

Yeah, I remember this one as well. I don't think I ever played CtP2, so it must have been number 1.

 

[Inconceivable]

- x uses this universal system

I said Civ IV has collateral damage, not that it uses it as a "universal system".

- no, only y does

You said Civ doesn't have this feature, which is wrong since Civ IV has it.

- but x has this specific single isolated case which acts in a barely somewhat similar way and you're all retarded if you don't kneel to my almighty knowledge!

It's hardly a single isolated case if several units and all siege units have this ability.

fuck off. really.

You fuck off, you clusterfucking space-monkey ballsucking fucktard.

 

[ValeVelKal]

I think what I wish to units worked like generals in Civ4, only one by tile - eg you can group them by 2 at the beginning then more and more and more. It avoids having to manage too many units at the same time, force you to have tactics as you still cannot front load everything in one stack, and creates some interesting choices as to stack composition (all tanks ? Tanks & mechanized mix ?)

Add to that that only one unit in each stack fight (the most appropriate) but the other bring bonus in combat and you really have plenty of choices in how to build your stack

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

realism invictus has "supply": a tile can support only x number of units, more than that and all of them get penalties, but every unit gives a bonus to the whole stack (melee add strength, archers first strike...) so that having a mixed stack is often preferable.
i should replay it to check if a stack of 200 archers can instakill anything despite low supply.

 

[BING XI LAO]

I now see what people mean about civ4's combat being rudimentary, though there's still plenty going on at the strategic level and the simplistic fighting doesn't get in the way of the rest of the game.
In a multiplayer game I'm in at present, Axemen totally dominate early wars, but you still want to have a few spearmen and chariots, and later on horse archers are also useful. Then there's a shift into catapult plus elephants, before getting into mediaeval troops.
It's simplistic to say that best combat odds defends stack = you don't get good offensive unit matchups. If someone doesn't make many spearmen then you can make a bunch of chariots or horsemen, bring them in suddenly because they move fast, and they will only have to lose a few battles vs spearmen before getting into the good fights.

A doomstack can still find itself not strong enough to storm a walled hill city, and then questions come into play such as raiding improvements (requires splitting up a bit), getting reinforcements (again an armed force which is initially split off), and maybe getting injured by enemy suicide artillery, though I think those are only really used prior to an actual mass battle, not to delay via injury while reinforcing cities.

 

[BING XI LAO]

What I'd like to see for civ4 combat is more retreat chance (to soften the impact of do-or-die RNG) and maybe more collateral damage too (though I haven't played a multiplayer war involving catapults yet).

 

[ValeVelKal]

realism invictus has "supply": a tile can support only x number of units, more than that and all of them get penalties, but every unit gives a bonus to the whole stack (melee add strength, archers first strike...) so that having a mixed stack is often preferable.
i should replay it to check if a stack of 200 archers can instakill anything despite low supply.

Ah that's a good idea. Agressor : Ancient Rome (basically civ that only covers Ancient Era) does the same and it works very well.