16-06-2004 04:18									#31
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations: Deluxe Edition

Updated: added the city economics differences (Civ 3 fixed big X vs. CtP2 economic radius) and specialists. Three screens as well .

	16-06-2004 05:07									#32
	Suffering from ads?

Civ3 quite certianly is, and is aimed at the mainstream market, there is no doubt about it

This IMO results in one of the reasons it is generally such a poor Civ game and game in general (unlike its predocessors) which where NOT mainstream orientated

	16-06-2004 14:20									#33
	Inflate your Upload Space

It is a mainstream variation of a non-mainstream game. I repeat, a game strategic to such a high elements does not appeal to just every player who wants to shoot anything that moves. However, there are obviously enough people who like Civ the way it is, an intellectual game, which made the game absolutely famous - and not only that. Civ 3 was, of course, slightly simplified in order to appear more to the mainstream or the average gamer.

	16-06-2004 14:26									#34
	Support Apolyton or Terrorists Win

I believe Civ3 vanilla version alone sold 2+ million copies. If that's not mainstream, I don't know what is...

	16-06-2004 14:34									#35
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

Yes, but in my definition, games such as quake are much more mainstream.

Though I must say I am glad that a civ title is getting good sales. Civ 3, with all of its shortcomings, is still a very good game. After all, we all want to see the civ genre developing, and good sales are the key for that.

	16-06-2004 15:02									#36
	Inflate your Upload Space

Then you have an odd definition of mainstream. Mainstream means that the average gamer plays the game. For Civ3, that's definitely true. I know quite a few gamers (some very fanatic, some very casual) and each and every one of them at least knows about Civ3 (and they didn't learn about it from me, I can assure you), most of them have played it at some point (if they're not still doing so).

I would go as far as to call Civ more mainstream than Quake, since pretty much everyone played Civ at some point in their life, while Quake is just one of a gazillion shoot-'em-ups out there, not everyone has played every one of those. Especially the younger gamers have not always played the game, having instead stuck to the likes of Unreal Tournament, Soldier of Fortune, Counter Strike, etc.

	16-06-2004 16:51									#37
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations: Deluxe Edition

OK, that's a good perspective. Another thing that interests me is about how many hardcore civers are there among everyone who's played Civ...

	05-07-2004 05:22									#38
	Got spare money?

Updated with new info, spelling corrections.

I need a tip from someone. The second post is now just two characters short of the post limit, had to remove some words to get it to fit. If I do another update, I'll run out of space to post it there - will I have to start a new thread or what ?

	01-08-2004 15:28									#39
	CTP2 vs. Civ 3 Combat Full PM-box? Change here!

quote: Originally posted by Solver Stack Combat: CtP2 feautures a combat model completely different from that in Civ 3. In Civ 3, every unit acts on its own. Imagine a city defended by a spearman (defense value of 2). If it’s fortified in a small town, then it gets the +25% bonus from fortification, and the inherent 10% bonus from defending – thus the bonus is 0.5 + 0.2 = 0.7, and so the Spearman has a defense value of 2.7. Now, you have a stack of 3 Swordsmen and an Archer outside the city. You attack with your archer (attack of 2). It loses to the Spearman, which gains an additional hit point. Now, you attack with one of your Swordsmen (attack of 3). It isn’t lucky, and dies, as the Spearman has one hit point remaining. Then, you attack with another Swordsman, and kill the spearman. So, that one spearman has managed to kill two of your units. Does it make sense that while your archer was attacking the swordsmen stood there and did nothing? Hardly.

Before I start, let me make it clear that I got my start civving with the original Call to Power. So to the extent that I'm prejudiced by what I got used to in my original Civ play, my prejudices would tend to be in favor of the ways Call to Power does things, not against them. And now for my thoughts on how the combat systems of Civ 3 and the Call to Power games compare.

First of all, weight of numbers in Civ 3 is a lot more powerful than you give it credit for. Even when attackers lose, they tend to soften up the enemy for follow-on attackers. Thus, even when the defender has a small advantage in the effective strength of individual units (for example, spearmen fortified on flat terrain attacked by archers), weight of numbers can shift the advantage in overall average losses in the attacker's favor.

In evaluating the cost-effectiveness of the Jaguar Warrior compared with other units in the Apolyton University Mod Jaguar Warrior thread, I hurled hundreds of archers at fortified spearmen. Even though the spearmen had a 35% total defensive bonus against attackers with an equal nominal combat value, the attackers averaged suffering less than three fourths of the losses that the defenders did. Granted, a lot of the attackers will come out of the fighting injured, but they can heal.

So the overall net effect of weight of numbers in Civ 3 is pretty much what it should be (at least from a game perspective): strong but not completely overwhelming. Even with a very strong weight of numbers, the attacker can expect to suffer some losses, but the defender will generally suffer worse losses if all else is anywhere near equal. In terms of game mechanics, the units don't attack at the same time, but in terms of the probable long-term outcome after the victorious units heal, the benefit of weight of numbers is very much there nonetheless.

Also note that the relative unpredictability of Civ 3 combat means that either side can get lucky in any given battle. Every once in a while, the spearman you describe will kill an archer and a swordsman before he dies, but other times, the archer will kill the spearman without the attacker's losing any units at all. Focusing on bad possible outcomes and ignoring good ones paints a seriously skewed picture.

Second, the ability to use weight of numbers in the Call to Power games breaks down very badly when the defender is at or near the limit on how many units can occupy a single tile. You complain about how in Civ 3, two swordsmen and an archer can't all attack at once. But in the CTP games, the same basic situation occurs when an attacker has two or three stacks adjacent to a city and is only allowed to attack with one of them at a time.

Even if you want to argue that there should be a limit to how many units can physically occupy a given area at once, the CTP system is still highly unrealistic. What ought to happen in a three-stacks-against-one assault is that as units in the attacking stack die, units from adjacent stacks can move in to take their place. Thus, fresh footsoldiers could keep moving up to the front lines, preventing bombardment units from having to fight in the front row until all the front-line fighters from all three attacking stacks are dead. But instead, with comparable technology and healthy full-sized stacks, the CTP system ends up with the defenders killing the front-line attacking units, which in turn forces bombardment units from the attacker's rear rank to come forward and face enemy units that have them hopelessly outclassed.

So once the stack size limit is reached, we're back to the situation you complain about in Civ 3 of an attacker's not being able to get the advantage he should from weight of numbers. Worse, my impression is that in the Call to Power games (and admittedly this comes far more from CTP1 than from CTP2 since I have little experience with CTP2), if two militaries are evenly matched, a force attacking a city will almost inevitably be defeated because of the bonuses the defender gets. And if the first attack force is wiped out, the very best that the attacker can hope for is to suffer no losses in the follow-up attack, in which case the attacker does no better than break even in the value of units killed and lost.

I'm not sure how CTP2's ability to call a retreat in the middle of a battle would affect that picture because it's been too long since I played CTP2 and I never played it much to begin with. If the timing makes it practical, a player might be able to have the first attack force or two do some damage and then retreat before they start losing units and then launch the real, final assault. But in straight-up combat, I'm pretty sure that once the maximum stack size is reached, weight of numbers actually gives an attacker significantly less advantage in CTP2 than in Civ 3.

Third, keep in mind that in Civ games, unlike in the real world, injured units can heal without its costing anything but time. If you lose half the strength of each of two units, you don't have to build the equivalent of a unit to make good the losses.

In Civ 3's combat model, that advantage and the fact that units attack only one at a time more or less offset each other. The end result is that in any but the most unbalanced situations, even a side with a significant numerical advantage will generally suffer real, meaningful, permanent losses. The game mechanics may not look quite right from a realism perspective, but the end result fits pretty nicely.

The question is, is that also true in CTP2, or are there situations where an attacker can use a combination of technological and numerical superiority to attack with zero risk of suffering damage that can't be healed? I'm not sure, but I'm inclined to suspect the latter.

Fourth, while Civ 3 does not give the defender an advantage for having more units than the attacker, that is probably a good thing in terms of keeping the AIs competitive. Unless the AI could be made just as good as human players at maximizing concentration of force, AIs will be a lot more likely than humans to attack enemy forces that outnumber them. So while a case could be made that Civ 3 would be more realistic if defensive forces that outnumbered their attackers had an extra advantage, not providing such an advantage probably makes for a better game. (On the other hand, it would be nice if the Civ 3 AI had been programmed to use concentration of force a bit better.)

And finally, consider the impact of the different combat models on the need for artillery in taking well-defended cities. In Civ 3, there are times when it is fully practical to engage in blitzkreig-style offensives without artillery support, especially against technologicaly inferior opponents. That makes for an interesting choice of whether to try to fight quickly without bringing along artillery and slow-moving defensive units or more slowly with them. That choice was even more interesting prior to the Conquests expansion pack because artillery was so likely to destroy buildings you very likely wanted to keep instead of killing units.

In contrast, in the original Call to Power, I almost never tried to capture a city that I expected to be well defended without bombarding it heavily first. The cost in lost units was simply too high. That resulted in less flexibility in playing style. And my impression is that CTP2 shares that trait.

In conclusion, I think the stack combat system in CTP2 looks great on paper. The idea of mixed forces with different units serving different roles sounds very good in theory.

But in practice, I think the system is absolutely lousy when the defender is at or near the limit on the number of units per tile. With equal technology, attackers need a numerical advantage to overcome the bonuses defenders in a city get, and the CTP2 rules don't allow the attacker to have a direct numerical advantage against a 12-unit defensive force.

In contrast, even though Civ 3 does not implement stack combat as such, it does allow an attacker to gain a considerable advantage from a superior weight of numbers no matter how large a force the defender has on a particular tile. So where it really counts, I think Civ 3 does a better job of reliably giving whichever side brings a larger force to the party an advantage.

If I'm missing something, please tell me. I never frequented the CTP and CTP2 forums back when I was playing those games, so there may be important combat strategies that I never picked up on. But from my own experience, in spite of having been exposed to the CTP approach to combat first, I like the Civ 3 combat system better.

	01-08-2004 15:59									#40
	Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

By the way, there is one other troublesome quirk to a CTP/CTP2 style stack combat system. In theory, it ought to be possible for two forces to attack a target simultaneously from different directions and have much the same impact as if they were a single force (since the defenders would have to divide to meet the two attacks). There is even a name for that kind of attack in the real world: a pincer movement.

But with the CTP approach, the two halves of the pincer movement would have to attack separately, each at an enormous disadvantage against the enemy's superior numbers. Thus, attacking in a pincer movement instead of with a unified force creates a huge disadvantage with the CTP approach. In contast, in Civ 3, a pincer attack with units converging from multiple directions is just as effective as a unified attack with all the attackers coming from the same direction.

	02-08-2004 19:59									#41
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization III: Complete

quote: Originally posted by nbarclay In contast, in Civ 3, a pincer attack with units converging from multiple directions is just as effective as a unified attack with all the attackers coming from the same direction.

Several things that need to be clarified...
First off, both games do not run simultaneous combat, so neither game can ever truly simulate combat as it actually happens. Each system makes the player resolve combat in a turn-based format. Send a unit in civ3, send a stack in CTP2. Repeat process...

Secondly, the use of a pincer maneuver implies that there should be a bonus for using that maneuver. Coming at an enemy from multiple directions should cause confusion and fear (and you imply that in your statement).

You get no actual numerical bonus by attacking from multiple directions in civ3. All of the bonuses are on the defensive side, due to terrain and river defense. And in most civ3 combat situations, there is no benefit gained by splitting up your forces because you are better off maintaining them in infinitely-large stacks - you can cover your attackers with a huge number of defenders better in a large stack. (and with a weakened ZOC rule in place, this makes maintaining large stacks even more desirable because you cannot stop attackers from simply going around you) So the true nature of pincer maneuvers is not portrayed in civ3 at all.

On the surface, the same can be said for CTP2. There is no inherent advantage for attacking from multiple directions in CTP2. The same type of terrain bonuses are in place that are in civ3. Both games do not accurately portray pincer maneuvers on the strategic level.

But in CTP2, at least have the simulation of using a pincer manuever on a strategic level more often than in civ3, because you cannot simply pile infinite units into a stack in CTP2 like you can in civ3. The very nature of a cap means you have to split forces.

And CTP2 does portray pincer maneuvers on a tactical level with the use of flanking bonuses when you do actually engage in combat.

civ3 does not at all, because there is no such thing as flanking in the civ3 combat system.

	02-08-2004 21:44									#42
	Re: CTP2 vs. Civ 3 Combat Browse Apolyton AD-FREE

quote: Originally posted by nbarclay First of all, weight of numbers in Civ 3 is a lot more powerful than you give it credit for. Even when attackers lose, they tend to soften up the enemy for follow-on attackers. Thus, even when the defender has a small advantage in the effective strength of individual units (for example, spearmen fortified on flat terrain attacked by archers), weight of numbers can shift the advantage in overall average losses in the attacker's favor.

No disagreement there...In fact I have said that numerical superiority is generally what you strive for in civ3, even over tech superiority. The game is slanted to favor numbers over tech.

When civ3 was first released 3 years ago, I recall a player posting here saying that he stayed in a lowtech mode (he did not research or trade for any techs) and winning the game with spearmen and sheer numbers - even over modern units.

quote: Originally posted by nbarclay Also note that the relative unpredictability of Civ 3 combat means that either side can get lucky in any given battle. Every once in a while, the spearman you describe will kill an archer and a swordsman before he dies, but other times, the archer will kill the spearman without the attacker's losing any units at all. Focusing on bad possible outcomes and ignoring good ones paints a seriously skewed picture.

I do not have a real problem accepting that a spearman can beat a tank in civ3, or any game for that matter, at least from a gameplay standpoint. It doesn't happen all that often. But civ3 could have used FP/Armor and a greater range of HP to better simulate combat differences between units of different ages.
The funny thing is that this argument was thrown at CTP1 when the same type of results were happening. So CTP2 fixed it.

quote: Originally posted by nbarclay You complain about how in Civ 3, two swordsmen and an archer can't all attack at once. But in the CTP games, the same basic situation occurs when an attacker has two or three stacks adjacent to a city and is only allowed to attack with one of them at a time.

Both games cannot fully create a realistic combat model.
However, CTP takes a step in the right direction to better simulate a more accurate combat model with the use of stacked combat. It is never going to be perfectly implimented as long as there is no ability to simultaneously send every unit you want to into combat with a single push of a button.

quote: Originally posted by nbarclay But instead, with comparable technology and healthy full-sized stacks, the CTP system ends up with the defenders killing the front-line attacking units, which in turn forces bombardment units from the attacker's rear rank to come forward and face enemy units that have them hopelessly outclassed.

Which gives a player a dilemma - should he have fewer ranged units in a stack in order to allow his stack to take more of a pounding on the front line, by allowing replenishment of wounded frontliners with fresh frontliners, or sacrifice frontliners with more ranged units to have the ability to inflict greater damange in the early part of the battle which may potentially allow you to get rid of your opponent's frontliners faster.

quote: Originally posted by nbarclay Worse, my impression is that in the Call to Power games (and admittedly this comes far more from CTP1 than from CTP2 since I have little experience with CTP2), if two militaries are evenly matched, a force attacking a city will almost inevitably be defeated because of the bonuses the defender gets.

This is exactly the case in civ3. Modifiers greatly favor defense, meaning if you want to attack, you generally have to bring more units to the party...as well as be prepared to lose many of them. And in my civ3 gameplay, that occurs as much as it occurs in CTP2.

quote: Originally posted by nbarclay And finally, consider the impact of the different combat models on the need for artillery in taking well-defended cities. In Civ 3, there are times when it is fully practical to engage in blitzkreig-style offensives without artillery support, especially against technologicaly inferior opponents. That makes for an interesting choice of whether to try to fight quickly without bringing along artillery and slow-moving defensive units or more slowly with them. That choice was even more interesting prior to the Conquests expansion pack because artillery was so likely to destroy buildings you very likely wanted to keep instead of killing units.

Again, this is exactly the case in CTP2 - you face the choice with pros and cons on either side. Arty will destroy buildings, and kill population, so a long, slow, bombardment will gut a city in CTP2. Plus if a CTP2 defending city has arty, there is a counterbombard trigger (easily modded in) that will autofire against your own arty.

quote: Originally posted by nbarclay In contrast, in the original Call to Power, I almost never tried to capture a city that I expected to be well defended without bombarding it heavily first. The cost in lost units was simply too high. That resulted in less flexibility in playing style.

Bombardment is a solid tactic...
I find I use bombardment as heavily in civ3 as you do in CTP, so this is a player style issue, not a game design issue.

quote: Originally posted by nbarclay But in practice, I think the system is absolutely lousy when the defender is at or near the limit on the number of units per tile. With equal technology, attackers need a numerical advantage to overcome the bonuses defenders in a city get, and the CTP2 rules don't allow the attacker to have a direct numerical advantage against a 12-unit defensive force.

This is the first time I have heard of a complaint regarding the unit cap from the attacking side of the equation, and I'm not convinced that these are really flaws in the CTP setup.

A cap is not an issue with the attacker. A cap works in the favor of the attacker.

I can understand why players may have an issue with a cap on tile occupation due to defensive limitations - because an attacker can bring into an attack a near-infinite amount of units on a turn (not a single battle, but a single turn with multiple battles) He simply throws a stack at a time into combat until he wears down the defending stack.

I have mixed feelings about the cap. On the one hand, having a cap forces a player to play smarter, because it places a limit on what he can do. But it also works against the AI because a smart player can usually and effectively deploy against it, because it is a limit.

No cap means no limits on defense and offense...

Want to hold a city???? Great, I'll just fill it to the brim with near-unlimited units. No need to play a field game, because all of your defenses are inside your cities (which almost always offer the greatest defensive bonuses with city-size modifiers and walls). Historically, cities were places that you didn't want to get attacked, so you usually met on the field well before the enemy was in range of your cities and a cap simulates this reality much better in gameplay. Furthermore, why even set up outside your cities in civ3 with an almost non-existant ZOC rule??? The only other place is to set up Forts on strategic/lux goods and at choke points if you haven't already set up a city there.

And it's too easy to simply stack 'o Doom in civ3 because of the cap. This works for the defense especially when Rails come into play. Want instant defense??? Zip your stacks anywhere in you empire instantaneously.

No thinking required AT ALL!!!

With all things taken into account, I'd take a cap over no cap, because it offers the best gameplay.

But I could actually live with an unlimited cap if civ would allow a stacked combat-style resolution for battles.

I've said it before...civ3 is not a bad game, and it does many things well. CTP2, even modded, is not perfect. But the CTP combat setup creates more involved and interesting gameplay than the civ3 model.

	03-08-2004 02:56									#43
	Increase the size of your Attachments

Player1 patches!

Well player1 has made a patch for ptw and C3C comes with a read me file as well. Rebalanced many of the units fire power so the battles should be won with who every has the highest tech.

But still the feeling of defending a empire is felt most in CtP2. Its not just about a city or a group of units . Its a national management of many elements. I have yet to find a game that gives so much detail and allows ease of play

	03-08-2004 08:56									#44
	Increase the size of your Attachments

I wasn't trying to say that there were, or should be, special bonuses for using a pincer maneuver instead of attacking with one large stack. Rather, I was pointing out that in the CTP games, players are penalized for mounting a converging attack with two smaller stacks striking from different directions instead of concentrating their units into one large stack before attacking.

In Civ 3, there is no concept of units attacking together as a group (except in the case of armies, which function more or less as a single unit and cannot be subdivided once they are formed). Since units that attack starting from the same location attack one at a time, having units that attack starting from different locations attack one at a time does not create any disadvantage. The results of a turn of combat are exactly the same whether the attackers all come from the same direction or whether they converge from two or three different directions.

Thus, in Civ 3, strategic pincer movements are completely practical. Forces can start off split up to attack multiple targets and then have their survivors converge on another target from different directions without placing themselves at a disadvantage (except perhaps in that the smaller forces may be more vulnerable to counterattack). Similarly, if a player has two cities on opposite sides of an enemy city, he can draw half his attackers from positions stationed inside each city and have them attack from opposite directions instead of needing to join the two forces together before attacking.

Granted, Civ 3 does not accurately portray any special confusion that a strategic pincer movement might (or might not) cause. But it does accurately portray the fact that "simultaneous" attacks by units converging from different directions can be just as effective as "simultaneous" attacks where all the attackers start from a single place. You just have to keep in mind that in Civ 3, the only concept of attacks’ being “simultaneous” is their occurring the same turn.

In contrast, the CTP games only partially implement the concept of units attacking simultaneously. Their implementation works fine as long as the attackers all come in from the same direction and can be joined into a single army short of the target, but their implementation is very seriously flawed when, for some reason, it makes more sense for the simultaneous attacks to come from different directions.

That can throw a monkey wrench into the works in cases where a converging attack from multiple directions is what makes the most sense. Either the attacker has to send in the smaller forces one at a time, risking defeat in detail because the entire defending force can focus on each attack force separately, or the attacker has to waste time putting the two forces together before he can attack, thereby giving the enemy more time to prepare for the attack.

Thus, where Civ 3 makes pincer attacks a perfectly viable option on a strategic level if that is what makes sense in a particular situation, the CTP games do not. The CTP rules essentially require players to take whatever extra time might be required to organize their units into a single assault force before they attack.

quote: But in CTP2, at least have the simulation of using a pincer manuever on a strategic level more often than in civ3 because you cannot simply pile infinite units into a stack in CTP2 like you can in civ3.

That simulation may possibly have some merit if the enemy wants to come out and launch a preemptive counterattack against one of the attacking forces on its way to its target before it gets a chance to converge with the other attacking force. But when two or more prongs of a pincer launch their attack, the alleged "simulation" is a travesty. In a real pincer, the defense would have to be split between the two attacks, so each offensive force would only have to face about half the defenders. In contrast, in the CTP "simulation," the entire defensive force can potentially be used against both prongs of the pincer (albeit having taken some damage by the time it faces the second prong). That is a very, very serious flaw in the simulation, a flaw that makes the simulation worse than useless in my opinion.

Further, I do not view forcing the attacker to split the attack force into multiple prongs as particularly realistic. In a real war, there might be a limit to how many troops it is practical to involve on each side at any one instant, but additional units can come forward to replace casualties during the fighting. To make that work in a Civ game, you would have to allow (for example) a 24-unit stack of which only twelve units can be involved in combat at any given time. But setting things up so bombardment-oriented units have to move to the front lines when there are plenty of infantry-type units prepared to attack the same turn makes little sense to me.

quote: And CTP2 does portray pincer maneuvers on a tactical level with the use of flanking bonuses.

Sort of. The problem is, the definition of "the tactical level" is itself highly artificial, since in some situations, "the tactical level" only encompasses half or a third of the overall attacking force. Thus, flanking units can get to attack the flank of a stack that's flank really ought to be considered guarded by an adjacent stack.

The basic concept of having units attack as a group with different units playing different roles is a good one. But the implementation in CTP2 has some serious flaws.

	03-08-2004 14:34									#45
	Re: Re: CTP2 vs. Civ 3 Combat Support Apolyton, pre-order Civilization IV

quote: Originally posted by hexagonian No disagreement there...In fact I have said that numerical superiority is generally what you strive for in civ3, even over tech superiority. The game is slanted to favor numbers over tech. When civ3 was first released 3 years ago, I recall a player posting here saying that he stayed in a lowtech mode (he did not research or trade for any techs) and winning the game with spearmen and sheer numbers - even over modern units.

On what difficulty level? Yes, large enough numbers can overcome technological inferiority, especially in offensive combat where weight of numbers has a greater impact. And I generally view that as a good thing: it makes invading an isolated, backward island civ a lot more of a challenge than it would be otherwise, especially on the higher difficulty levels.

I did some experimenting with Zachriel's stack combat calculator, and I figured out two things. On one hand, once offensive units reach a certain level of obsolescence, being more obsolete doesn't seem to make a lot of difference in cost-effectiveness. But on the other hand, technological parity, or especially a technological advantage, can offer a very considerable benefit. Consider the situation of trying to attack five riflemen fortified in a size 7-12 city.

A force of 60 archers (cost 1200 shields) can do the job with something very close to a guarantee of success (winning 99.92% of 10,000 tries in my test). But an average of 27 of the archers die in the attempt, so killing 350 shields' worth of riflemen costs 540 shields. The attacker loses more than one and a half times the production in units that the defender does.

The same 1200 shields could buy a force of 15 cavalry. The cavalry force would only have about a 75% chance of victory (74.81% in my test run). But the cavalry force would average losing only four units while averaging killing 4.5 enemy units, destroying about 315 shields' worth of enemy units for a loss of about 320 shields. So the attack is essentially a break-even proposition in shield value. Further, with a little bit stronger weight of numbers, success could be virtually guaranteed - with few enough losses that the losses can be replaced quickly and the attack can keep going.

Or if the attacker has a really big tech lead, he might use the same shields to build a force of 12 tanks. If the tanks are used in such a way that their blitz ability (the ability to attack twice in the same turn) does not come into play, they have a very remote chance of failing to take the city, winning only 99.87% of the battles in the test I ran. But the average loss is only about nine tenths of a unit, or 90 shields, in exchange for killing 350 shields' worth of enemy forces. If the tanks start next to the city and can thus use their blitz ability, success is essentially a statistical certainty and average losses remain at about nine tenths of a tank.

Also note the impact on upkeep costs if a civ uses massive numbers of obsolete units. A thousand shields invested in ten tanks require only ten units' upkeep costs or free upkeep capacity. The same shields as archers would require upkeep for fifty units. Maintaining a huge, obsolete military is a lot more expensive than maintaining an equally powerful smaller, more modern one.

So while with a big enough production advantage, it would be possible to win the game with nothing but archers for offense and spearmen for defense, it very definitely pays to have technological parity or preferably a technological lead when launching an attack. It can also make a lot of sense to focus on building the economy during periods when defenders are relatively strong compared with attackers (especially the period between infantry and tanks) and do your fighting during periods of history when attackers are relatively strong.

In conclusion, I strongly disagree with your claim that Civ 3 is "slanted to favor numbers over tech." What the game really does is treat both numbers and technology as important, with neither automatically trumping the other.

	03-08-2004 22:25									#46
	Inflate your Upload Space

Point taken...

You make good points on this regarding the pincer manuvering - since you cannot run your assaults simltaneously, CTP does require that you need to spend time assembling your stacks before attacking. You are right that a player can potentially be penalized if he attacks from two different tiles with smaller stacks, because he is better off merging his forces into a single stack before mounting his attack. You do not send two 6-stacks individually against a 12-stack - you merge them into a 12-stack and then attack. I wouldn't call it a serious flaw though (maybe a flaw, but not a serious flaw) -- all that is lost is a turn or two in order to get them merged and into position.

You still will have the concept of pincer movement (though not necessarily pincer attack) on the strategic level, and the concept of pincer attacks is handled on the tactical level with a bonus, which I maintain, is one of the main historical benefits of using pincer maneuvers, and is something that I still assert, is sadly absent in any form in civ3. Tactical pincers in CTP2 may be highly artificial as you say, but the fact is that in these types of games, combat has already been abstracted to a great degree.

I still maintain that due to civ3's game design, it is almost always better to maintain your civ3 army in uber stacks rather than a series of small stacks, (even if you lose a turn or two to get them that way), so the concept of pincer manuevers doesn't happen all that much in my games of civ3. I generally merge forces before I get to my target as a matter of habit and radiate outward as situations warrant and then retreat back into the safety of the uberstack. Rare is the time that I cannot merge forces. Because of game design, this funnels a player into a particular playstyle too - the same type of funneling effect you say CTP2 does with its own game mechanics.

(As a sidenote, the game, Age of Wonders, does move combat further in the right direction - it has a form of stacked combat, and it allows the forces in adjacent tiles to take part in a single battle, so it is possible to code in a system that would allow for a better representation of pincer manuvers and implimentation of bonuses if pincer manuevers are used - although those bonuses aren't in place in AoW)

In a nutshell, the reason why there are these problems is because the emphasis of each system is different. Again, I'm taking the overall implementation of all the elements as they are presented in both civ3 and CTP, and I think that as a whole, CTP has a better and more engaging setup over civ3.

I look at combat in CTP in this way...there is more emphasis on the composition of your forces and how they work as a cohesive force in CTP than in civ3. Yes, civ3 does place importance on force composition, but it is more important in CTP.

It's a step up - maybe not a big step, but a step, nevertheless.

You made the statement that in civ3, there is no concept of units attacking together as a group. This to me, is taking a totally unrealistic approach to combat. It brings up the old argument that leaders simply send one-dimensional (in civ3, attacker-type, ranged-type, defender-type) units into battle one at a time to line up against another unit. They fight, resolve combat and then the process repeats again.

You have the same process in CTP, but with a huge difference - a difference that actually goes toward realism. Maybe not perfectly, but in an engaging manner.

In CTP, you may have 12 units in a stack, but that stack is considered a single entity. It works as a single unit with a set of sub-units adding various benefits like range, flanking, defense and offense. By themselves, the sub-units are not powerful, but combined, they support one another and are stronger as a whole. And this reflects what happens in battle - a variety of different unit types engaged simultaneously in combat.

So the focus in CTP is in creating single units, and then assembling them into a series of cohesive armies rather than merely spewing out units a la civ3. The power and character of your military is in these entities, not in a infinitely-sized, blob-like mass of single units piled up on a tile. And it is the ability to have 'infinite' units that ends up killing it for me. (I think of the strategic level of thinking involved in a game like 'Risk' and 'Axis and Allies' (which allows infinitely-sized armies on territories) as opposed to the strategic level of thinking involved in the old Avalon Hill hex-grid games, that had tile occupation limitations. The AH games were much deeper in gameplay because of that too...)

Sure, you are still sending that 'army entity' one at a time into combat, but you are facing off against another 'army entity'. It's not unit vs unit, but army vs army with a combined arms flair. And the stakes are higher - in civ3 you can call off an attack if you lose a unit or two. Simply stop attacking...there really isn't a sense of risk, especially if you are the attacker.

In CTP, once you commit to battle, it's winner take all. You can lose 12 units in one shot. (Yeah, I know CTP2 has the retreat option, but I play as it was originally in CTP1 - no retreats)

And historically, battles were winner take all - especially the further back in time you go. Generals took the field, deployed forces and in the matter of a few hours, saw their entire army either crumble or crush their foes.

As for the tech superiority issue, I brought that up as a reported issue when civ3 came out. I cannot recall the level of the game, as that was almost 3 years ago, and this issue may have been fixed (although since Firaxis has not altered FP, HP in any patches, I somewhat doubt it). I was taking your term 'weight of numbers' to mean numerical superiority and drawing a parallel to the reported incident, which if true, could be considered a problem. I still maintain that there should be Firepower and/or Armor settings in civ3, as well as greater variance in HP...

Last edited by hexagonian on 04-08-2004 at 00:58

	04-08-2004 01:13									#47
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There has been some discussion here as if a pincer movement actually has some effect in either Civ3 or CTP2. In reality it has no effect in either. The purpose of a pincer movement (in addition to the already mentioned effect on the morale of the defender) is to force the enemy to split his firepower in two directions while each half of the pincer is concentrating it's firepower on a single target.

As for the stacking limits, armies throughout most of history have had to forage to stay in the field. I feel that the 12 unit cap simulates this well.

Regarding someone's comment that all you have to do in Civ3 is put a Stack-O-Doom in a city to defend it, I'll disagree there, too. Pillaging is both easy and fun, and I'd be happy to bring a bunch of single units up to starve your city out while my stack that is slightly smaller than your's threatens your city to keep your stack-o-doom inside.

	04-08-2004 01:42									#48
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quote: Originally posted by Big Dave Regarding someone's comment that all you have to do in Civ3 is put a Stack-O-Doom in a city to defend it, I'll disagree there, too. Pillaging is both easy and fun, and I'd be happy to bring a bunch of single units up to starve your city out while my stack that is slightly smaller than your's threatens your city to keep your stack-o-doom inside.

I think we can all safely say that multiplayer is an entirely different animal than SP. My comments were geared toward the AI as it is in SP...

	04-08-2004 03:26									#49
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What about diplomacy?

I find that in Civ3( have PTW) I find it very hard to get any of the AI factions to trust me. No matter how many gifts I give soon or latter they will start to work together against me. Now with CtP2 I like that you have to build trust and respect first before they will give anything but once you show good faith they stay on good trems with you. For now im testing out changes use the editor in Civ3. Removing shuned goverments and lowering aggresivness by a point.

	04-08-2004 19:08									#50
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quote: Originally posted by hexagonian And it is the ability to have 'infinite' units that ends up killing it for me.

I do want to clarify this statement because I actually find the first half of civ3 to be as engaging as CTP.

This issue is not a problem in the Ancient and most of the Medieval age in civ3 because total military forces are still small, and your empire is usually in the process of being linked up with roads. You cannot simply maintain a large stack that will meet every one of your needs, so you end up needing to split your forces. In this regard, your force deployment is very similar to what is occuring in CTP - your unit stacks are not that large and are usually spread out to cover your empire during peacetime. If attacked, you have to use valuable time to gather forces to meet the threat. At this stage of the game, civ3's design works pretty well.

But once you have established yourself and start linking with rails, then the only strategy is uberstacking.

	06-08-2004 21:56									#51
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While I agree that railroads in Civ 3 dramatically reduce the amount of strategy involved, I rarely end up relying on uberstack defenses. When practical, I'd rather damage the invaders with artillery and then finish them off with whatever my best offensive units available are before they can reach my city (or possibly take a notion to pillage).

Nor do I usually pack my entire offensive military into a single large force when I attack. Ideally, I want enough forces that I can pursue multiple targets at once. Yes, with the Conquests expansion pack, I often have mega-stacks of artillery with a few escorts. But my goal is to split my forces in a way that will let me take multiple targets whenever I can do so without more losses than I'm inclined to accept.

	06-08-2004 22:21									#52
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quote: Originally posted by Big Dave There has been some discussion here as if a pincer movement actually has some effect in either Civ3 or CTP2. In reality it has no effect in either. The purpose of a pincer movement (in addition to the already mentioned effect on the morale of the defender) is to force the enemy to split his firepower in two directions while each half of the pincer is concentrating it's firepower on a single target.

I've rarely seen a pincer movement as a doctrinal term but and envelopement is like you describe. And whats frustrating in both is that simple tactical/operational concepts are hard to replicate. For example in an a single envelopement one force "holds" or pins down units while a flanking unit attacks the side where the enemy has least amount of fire power or defenses. A double envelopement, or pincer as you called it, not only splits firepower, but also can lead to an encirclement where the enemy is basically undersiege.
These and many other options would be great to add and also is what makes small armies win over larger one by maneuver and/or supporting firepower. Unfrtunately in both gives more units tends to be the winner...

	10-08-2004 04:10									#53
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quote: Originally posted by hexagonian I think we can all safely say that multiplayer is an entirely different animal than SP. My comments were geared toward the AI as it is in SP...

DoH! Of course it is. Sorry for making you state the obvious.

	01-10-2004 20:01									#54
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Just to pick up a couple of points.

quote: Specialists such as Laborers or Mercants also have prerequisites - Factories and Banks respectively, while Scientists need Universities.

You don't need any specific buildings in cities to use specialists in CtP2, just the advance.

quote: In CtP2, technology doesn’t define whether you can go to war or not. It’s numbers and tactics that do. Technology helps a lot, but you can’t win a war purely on technological edge if you’re outnumbered by one to ten. ... In CtP2, conquest is harder because of stacked combat, the need to place tile improvements strategically, using the unconventional units, etc.

I would say in comparison to civ3 combat, the opposite is true. In CtP2 if you reach an important military advance, say Cavalry Tactics, before a close enemy it gives you a huge advantage because of the speed and all round ability of some units, in this case Cavalry, your enemy will have say Fascists, which have slightly better stats, but they only have 2 movement to Cavalry 4. You can move all over their civ twice as fast, using their roads and you know they wont have every city defended heavily, if any, even if you dont take and hold any cities, youve done significant damage selling buildings, disbanding small cities and pillaging.

Movement in CtP2 combat is incredibly important, because you can only defend each city with 12 units maximum and its far too costly to defend every city with 12 units all the time (not to mention keep those units up to date), it becomes more important to keep a mobile defence, and obviously thats where the fastest units win in both offence and defence. With technology comes not only more powerful units, but faster units.

This would be fine if defensive/slow units were balanced much stronger than fast units, but it happens that in CtP2 the strongest units are fast, all-rounders and flankers.

	02-10-2004 01:02									#55
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quote: You don't need any specific buildings in cities to use specialists in CtP2, just the advance.

Righto, that was CtP1 then that required a building too .

Conquest is harder in CtP2, I believe, because of the whole reinforcement thing and PW. You need to get reinforcements, as if you win a battle with your 12 stack, and lose 9 units, the remaining 3 stack isn't much useful. In a Civ3 system, 3 units have as much ability to take cities as 12 units. PW is limited, so you also don't have roads in each tile as in Civ3, so you got to think about how to get them where you need to.

The tech thing is even more so true in Civ3. In CtP2, if you get Cavalry Tactics first, yes, you have an advantage. You'll still need to think about how to properly use it, as the enemy can steal beat you without Cavalry, but with better planning. In Civ3, though, you get Military Tradition and then it's a no-brainer. You start pumping out only cavalry, exclusively. Since they attack cities one by one and have superior stats (and there are no complex factors to consider), you can just blitz through enemy land. Almost every time I played Civ3, I won the game exactly then, by just producing dozens of cavalry at my maximal capacity and blitzing.

	02-10-2004 09:38									#56
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quote: Conquest is harder in CtP2, I believe, because of the whole reinforcement thing and PW. You need to get reinforcements, as if you win a battle with your 12 stack, and lose 9 units, the remaining 3 stack isn't much useful. In a Civ3 system, 3 units have as much ability to take cities as 12 units. PW is limited, so you also don't have roads in each tile as in Civ3, so you got to think about how to get them where you need to.

Yeah I agree for conquest aiming to occupy and keep cities logistics is more important in CtP2 no doubt, because of the difficulty of city defence you need a constant stream of backup.

But the kind of conquest I was referring to, and the kind of conquest thats most effective in CtP2 IMO, is pillaging and disbanding.

Because of the city limit its not very disirable to take and keep cities for yourself, because you're ideally at the city limit for your government before you attack someone (at peak resources), that means each city you take causes you more unhappiness.

This kind of hit and run conquest doesnt require any reinforcements either, because your goal is not to take and capture, its to take and destroy in one big attack.

quote: The tech thing is even more so true in Civ3. In CtP2, if you get Cavalry Tactics first, yes, you have an advantage. You'll still need to think about how to properly use it, as the enemy can steal beat you without Cavalry, but with better planning. In Civ3, though, you get Military Tradition and then it's a no-brainer. You start pumping out only cavalry, exclusively. Since they attack cities one by one and have superior stats (and there are no complex factors to consider), you can just blitz through enemy land. Almost every time I played Civ3, I won the game exactly then, by just producing dozens of cavalry at my maximal capacity and blitzing.

This may be true for both games then, I didn't play civ3 that far.

In the example of Cavalry vs Fascists, I would still take Cavalry for defence or offence than Fascists because of their speed, as you mentioned in your example of Cavalry in civ3, speed always wins when units are similarly balanced.

But thats just one example in CtP2.

A better example is researching Tank Warfare first. In this case Tanks are 2 moves faster than Cavalry (4 more than Fascist, M.Gunner, Artillery) which means you have more options and require less important decisions about movement, they also have more armour than any previous unit.

Theres also examples with Knights or Stealth Fighters or Fusion Tanks.

Not that I want to defend civ3 in any way, but I think CtP2 has the same faults in this case.

	02-10-2004 15:44									#57
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quote: Because of the city limit its not very disirable to take and keep cities for yourself, because you're ideally at the city limit for your government before you attack someone (at peak resources), that means each city you take causes you more unhappiness.

Good point. I find the city limit to be absolutely the worst feauture of CtP2, and I always play with it increased. That's mainly because the default limits from vanilla/mods are awful when playing on bigger maps, and my preference lies with big maps and some 12 civilizations. I have the limits set so that they allow for good expansion, and will not be a problem every time.

quote: This kind of hit and run conquest doesnt require any reinforcements either, because your goal is not to take and capture, its to take and destroy in one big attack.

Still requires reinforcements or correct planning. Every time you attack, you lose some units in your stack. So your one 12-stack won't take and destroy all that you want. You need to either resupply that stack correctly or to send enough units initially.

quote: In the example of Cavalry vs Fascists, I would still take Cavalry for defence or offence than Fascists because of their speed, as you mentioned in your example of Cavalry in civ3, speed always wins when units are similarly balanced.

Civ3 Cavalry aren't unbalanced because of speed alone, it's because of the unit stats and the way combat works. You get Cavalry, attack of 6. Other civs will defend with either Musketmen, defense of 4, or Pikemen, defense of 3. Cavalry will also retreat instead of dying much of the time. Due to their superior stats, you can take almost any city, except for big cities in hills, easily. Another imbalance is that roads give no movement bonus in enemy territory. So if you take an enemy city, a number of tiles around becomes your territory, and the enemy can't move units in there quickly.

quote: A better example is researching Tank Warfare first. In this case Tanks are 2 moves faster than Cavalry (4 more than Fascist, M.Gunner, Artillery) which means you have more options and require less important decisions about movement, they also have more armour than any previous unit.

Yeah, the Tanks are frigging damn powerful in CtP2. Historically, the early tanks weren't that superor to cavalry, while CtP2 Tanks are in fact more like modern Tanks. The power of Tanks in CtP2 comes from the fact they're great all-around, which means that you need to pay less attention to stack composition. Stacks of 12-Tanks work fine, whereas stacks of 12-Cavalry are suboptimal.

But my point stands that any military operation in CtP2 requires far more planning and is more complex than in Civ3.

	02-10-2004 17:57									#58
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quote: Good point. I find the city limit to be absolutely the worst feauture of CtP2, and I always play with it increased. That's mainly because the default limits from vanilla/mods are awful when playing on bigger maps, and my preference lies with big maps and some 12 civilizations. I have the limits set so that they allow for good expansion, and will not be a problem every time.

Yeah city limit should definitely be made scalable to map size at least. But generally they don't really make sense realistically and they don't prevent ICS, the only positive I can think of is that they reduce micromanagement once you reach the city limit you don't have to concern yourself with that anymore, but thats a lame positive.

quote: Still requires reinforcements or correct planning. Every time you attack, you lose some units in your stack. So your one 12-stack won't take and destroy all that you want. You need to either resupply that stack correctly or to send enough units initially.

My opinion on this comes totally from multiplayer experience so it's bound to be foreign to someone mostly used to single player, no offence. In a MP game most humans defend each city with the cheapest units (to keep support costs down - very important long term) only needed for martial law but always have a few stacks of modern quick units for mobile defence. If you can surprise them and get inside their borders all you have left to do is kill 1 or 2 weak units in each city and once they counter with the mobile stacks so you move in more (in the same attack not as reinforcements), all the while starving and disbanding the cities you easily took while they scramble in defence.

In SP it's different. The AI plays for the short term, it defends every city heavily and with modern units (taking huge support costs), so the best way to bring down the AI with minimal losses on your side is a seige of each city and pillaging (if you don't intend to keep it), this kind of tactic defintely requires some reinforcements against a strong AI in say Cradle mod.

So it's two opinions looking from different sides I suppose, although I'm forced to say that MP is a melting pot that eventually brings out the most effective strategy in any game.

quote: Yeah, the Tanks are frigging damn powerful in CtP2. Historically, the early tanks weren't that superor to cavalry, while CtP2 Tanks are in fact more like modern Tanks. The power of Tanks in CtP2 comes from the fact they're great all-around, which means that you need to pay less attention to stack composition. Stacks of 12-Tanks work fine, whereas stacks of 12-Cavalry are suboptimal.

I think 12 Cavalry is just a lethal in its own age mainly because of flanking. It's not just that the Tank and Cavalry can deal in attack, defence and ranged, but each time a front line unit dies another comes from the back and the front row keeps flanking, which is the most lethal part. It's so easily fixed though by either lowering Cavalry/Tanks ranged/defence ability or taking away flanking(which i wouldn't like though), although Tanks should remain powerful, just not in the sense thats the only unit you need in the modern age. Cavalry should definitely be made more of a luxury unit though, it would make it so much more interesting fighting a kind of slow trench war with Fascists/M.Gunners and Artillery.

quote: But my point stands that any military operation in CtP2 requires far more planning and is more complex than in Civ3.

It still stands because of having to form stacks (one of the reasons CtP2 AI is much harder to get right) and public works planning as you said. But not for the reasons you mention - that a slight technological lead doesn't win you the game in CtP2 because it really does, or that one unit doesn't rule the roost in CtP2 because some definitely do.

	02-10-2004 18:11									#59
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quote: [..] So it's two opinions looking from different sides I suppose, although I'm forced to say that MP is a melting pot that eventually brings out the most effective strategy in any game.

Right you are, I guess. I am used to SP by far, and am speaking exactly from that perspective, believing that SP is the most popular aspect of the game.

As for balance of units, we basically can say that this problem we are talking about is related to how it's impossible to defend cities with small stacks against large stacks. Which can possibly be fixed by changing defensive combat.

	02-10-2004 18:40									#60
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It's not just about MP tactics and SP tactics here though. The AI needs improving we all know that, would you say an improvement would be to make the AI more like a human in MP? Or do you prefer the AI to play in a more standard way and increase bonuses (for example) to compensate?