One thing I hate about most 4x games I have played is ground combat is mostly just an after thought, or not even featured. I know there was ground combat in 1 and 2, but it was pretty basic to say the least. For me a space empire type game Is crying out for better ground combat, im not talking about making it really complicated, but at least make it worth while, have proper ground units, instead of just throwing numbers at every planet, and watching it go up and down till you win. Lol I have no idea how you would do this, but I get annoyed most space empire games if not all of them seem to skim this part.
Would love to see proper ground units being deployed, heavy inf, assault troops, tanks or what ever the future version would be, heavy weapons, air units etc. For me this would be an instant buy, I for one am getting a bit bored with just space combat, no matter how pretty it all looks.......am I the only one ?, did I miss anything all ready mentioned ?, is there going to be anything like this ??
Why not go the Fallen Enchantress route for ground combat? It's tactical and interresting
I think you could do something really neat with having your ground units moving about on the planet map. I think star drive dose something like that.
I agree with the OP. Ground combat needs to be better fleshed out. The problem is how do you make ground combat deep and realistic without making it a heavy time sink on the rest of the game? Perhaps something like Crusader Kings II where armies siege key cities over a period of months?
Well part of the problem is justifying it at all in a Space conquest game. Since realistically ships in orbit could just bombard any ground resistance into ash one they have uncontested control of the space around the planet. The only reason to send in ground troops would be to subdue the population, and secure key facilities without destroying them. Though in theory you could also just destroy their food production, and wait for them to surrender while you blockade the planet.
But yes to me this is what is missing from most Space 4X games. It is one reason why I still love to play Star Wars Empire at War. The game doesn't have much depth but at least it does have that mix of Galactic Conquest, Space Combat, and Ground Combat. The Ground Combat was not particularly well done in that game though. If Stardock is looking for inspiration for how to do Ground Combat IMO the two best games to copy would be either Total War series or Company of Heroes. Probably Company of Heroes since it's better suited to modern/futuristic combat that would involve vehicles. The gameplay should probably focus on commanding small armies to seize key objectives. Some mission ideas:
Shut down Ground to Air defenses or Shields.
Capture Mining/Production facilities before they are purposely destroyed by natives.
Seize control of Military Base or Senate without damaging it.
Raid enemy Research/Espionage centers before they delete all information.
Also they could perhaps even have some ship boarding missions to allow you to capture the largest capital ships or space stations like this.
The only problem I see with adding real ground combat would be the number of planets you already have to take. There're a lot of planets in Gal Civs. Though if it was an option from the menu when you have to choose an invasion strategy, I would be okay with it.
There's also the "planetary shields powerful enough to deflect any bombardment" route for justifying ground combat (or, at least, planetary shields powerful enough to make such bombardment take a long time). Such shields could be local (e.g. protects things in the base to city size range), theater (regions, parts of continents, or continents), or full planet depending on the amount the planet owner was willing to spend on the defenses.
Of course, that then begs the question of why exactly my shields are capable of deflecting the big naval guns and yet unable to prevent landing craft from passing through.
Then there's also the "well, you CAN do it, but most of the other people in the galaxy frown on this sort of thing" route, or the "it's a violation of the Spaceneva Conventions, and if you do it you're a war criminal" route.
If they do include some form of ground combat in the game, however, I hope it's not really any more than giving general priority orders - e.g. 'take this area, then move that way', rather than anything too detailed. Or, alternatively, have the player able to command the forces involved in a couple of key battles for the planet, like the taking of a major city or an important landing zone.
The more I think about ground combat the more I think that a lot of abstraction is not a bad thing. While I would love to have a deep game of ground combat, I just don't see it as possible without bogging down the entire game. I think the best way to handle ground invasions would be to adapt the system from Crusader Kings 2: that is, let the player land troops and have the actual battle for the whole planet abstracted out over a period of turns. In other words, instead of the game-y instant battle resolutions of GalCiv 2, I would like all forces suffer attrition over a period of turns, with the side that loses morale first losing. The player will be able to influence the battles over the long term by bringing in more troops, or by appointing a skilled general, or by using bombardment weapons from orbiting ships, but the actual battle will play out over many turns with the player only influencing the ultimate outcome by supporting his troops from afar with indirect means. This should keep battles from bogging down with minutia while also keeping them epic.
I agree with Rooks. The idea of complex ground combat definitely sounds fun, but in a 4x space-conquest game it would be too much of a time-drain if you had to fight every battle tactically.
I also agree that the last two games lacked a satisfying ground combat system.
I would not suggest the same type of combat as total war - this would really mess with the schedules, however, the ability to put in mobile infantry or heavy armoured marines would be nice.
Additionally, this would introduce things like troop/marine transport, which are vulnerable during ship to ship battles, but if we want the option to capture enemy ships/tech/space stations/commerce etc, then these ships come into play.
I would really like to see what Stardock can come up with in this department
If ground combat options are on the table I think I'd go for something like:* add a bit more depth (perhaps some variety in ground force types which includes some soft/hard counters), yet* keep the actual combat fairly abstract, and* it can take more than one turn to resolve (and most likely would unless one side had a tremendous advantage) - few (if any) wars on Earth have been over in a week, let alone a war on a planetary scale.The last point in particular would open up some nice gameplay: you would not lose a colony to invasion in the one turn, so you could try to get fleets and reinforcements to your invaded planet, in turn the invader could do likewise or opt to withdraw (perhaps even deploying mass drivers to bomb the planet until departing).
It would be nice to add more complexity to this but how with out stretching out the game horribly...
*Add multiple turns to invasion(by doing this makes it harder to conquer a planet but, easier to defend this to me just stretches it out with no real advantage.)
*Add many ground units that you can deploy and battle (nice but stretches out too badly, look at the total war series if you fight every battle it takes forever)
This is what I say...
What this does is gives one extra depth without adding huge amount of time to invasion... see below...
attack with.. (all automated no actual movement of troops or fighting in live battle)
defend with..
based on those numbers one may fair better or worse, but you would control more than just a soldering bonus one way or another. For instance infantry would be very weak against air ships, but air ships would be near impossible to wipe out all infantry w/o mass distruction.
This might work, but then again it still would be a matter of numbers, blind decisions and counter decisions would be great.
Brad has already stated they have come up with some kind of enhanced tactical battle for GalCiv III, but I cannot see it being an integral part of the interactive game affecting overall outcomes. It'll be some kind of optional enhanced tactical box with added smoke and mirrors - whether its out in open space, Planet atmosphere, ground based - or all the above as the saying goes.
There is zero chance of a tactical level battle having a mainstream affect on the game. On the largest map there are potentially hundreds of planets, and I wouldn't mind betting that will get even more under 64bit. There is no way is the game getting bogged down with mandatory tactical planet based battles (of whatever nature) with that many planets, its just not happening.
Some kind of enhanced tactical box would be welcomed I suspect, the existing tactical box has been - understandably - somewhat limited shall we say. However, full blown tactical battles are not happening, its just not practical within the GalCiv Strategic Framework. Aficionados of "JoeTheOne" diving out of hyperspace to zap the bad guys in his hyper-manoeuvrable fighter and added crosshairs will not happen in GalCiv - its the nature of the beast, its a Strategy Game, not a tactical shoot-em-up with added glitz.
Space combat needs an overhaul first and foremost. Ground combat is secondary.
If ground combat is to be implemented then I hope they do something similar to crusader kings 2. Turn-based or RTS based ground combat would be too time consuming considering how many planets there are in a typical galciv game.
My main gripe with fallen enchantress is how combat is handled, so no. Old games such as Age of Wonders 2 did something similar and infinitely better.
I agree with this OP also, thank you Zydor for pointing out the truth, we don't have time to be overseeing every single planet invasion of such dept., However I think brad has some surprise for us, not that it will take too much time.
I also agree with this OP. Space combat seems to be the main focus of the game considering that 90% of the time you are in space, and you must make space combat fun.
I agree with RooksBailey, it should be the way like in Paradox games. I like the most combat system in Hearts of iron serie.
I see ground combat to be heavily tied in with troop transports, planet building, colonization and military tech mechanics.
Expanding on mechanics listed above will enable developers to expand ground combat into something more meaningful but not necessarily more time consuming.
A better ground combat system in galciv3 should not be something like battles in HoMM3 but should be more like 1 turn with 1 soldier vs 1 alien in Xcom enemy unknown.
You are attacking a small outskirt colony world with a shield generator, or grain stock, or power grid or whatever for example.
Lets say no matter how many drop ships or troops you have you can ether choose to split them in 2 legions for a flank maneuver or trap move or keep them in one mega force, each having its ups and downs.
Then lets say drop ships carry all the equipment soldiers have access to depending on your tech, so you choose heavy assault, fast attack or covert op and again they all have their highs and lows.
So you know its a small colony with one very important structure so you choose the optimal setup to tackle this particular battle. You know if you disable the shield generator for example defenders gona loose morale under fear of orbital bombardment and fold fast, so they have concentrated defense in that one area. So you choose -> Megaforce -> Heavy Assauult -> and drop location, the rest is automated.
This is something i just cooked up in my head in like 5 min, but the idea is you get more options when carrying out planet battles depending on what kind of world it is and what is your tech.Unlike galciv 2 where if you had stronger tech and stonger troops you are almost guarantied a victory, this system should provide the game play with situations where player does not always have favorable conditions and based on the situation must make the best of it with 2-3 choices and the rest should be carried out automatically because that's all she wrote if we are trying to keep it tight and on schedule within the frame of 4x strategical game. Multiple layers of rock, paper, scissors ,lizard, Spock are implied.
There was a 4x game that had ground combat called" Imperium Galactica " way back in 1997. I think it was the first of the 4x games ? and this game is vary similar to it , maybe some of the people in Stardock use to play it ?, I know I did .
The only way it would work for this game if it was limited to medium map or smaller, or the player and maybe the computer would be so over well-med by the micro management that no one would play it. But if they did have that option for small maps I would play it I'm sure it would be vary popular for multiplayer .
It seems that many people don't realize that your tec research for ships weapons and armor carries over to your ground troops, they should add some thing to show that.
The time it takes to conquer a planet should vary depending on the
size of the plant
population
tec level
troop training level
and a random factor , like your opening bombardment terrifies them so badly they surrender, or it makes them so mad that you suffer 2x casualties, or 2x the time to conquer the planet .
Over all any kind of real ground combat just is not practical for this game, but they should at lest bring back the stick men and tanks to watch.
I don't care if I can't control my ground-forces, I'll play another game for that type of combat.
What I would like to see is that you have to actually build invading forces; tanks etc.
Once you're building interstellar fleets, tanks and ground troops become rounding errors on the production costs.
I don't see a need to build actual ground troops unless actual defenses are being built to counter them. If we end up with some kind of automated or loosely directed ground combat where actual forces fight actual defenses, fine. Building them for some abstraction though? Not interested.
Modeling an actual economy with base inputs would be fantastic, but even then it's the kind of thing you want automated. Something you can adjust, but largely takes care of itself provided you take care of your resource availability.
I think something simple that would take multiple turns with an invasion type screen similar to gc2
turn one you do the invasion
1) soldiers destroys 50% population 50% buildings occupation time reduce 0% , population is likely to fight back (IED's Guerrilla warfare)
2) mass drivers destroys 50% population 70% buildings occupation time reduced 50%, shock and awe the population is demoralized as their infrastructure is destroyed it will take time to get this planet working again
3) information war destroys 30% population 40% buildings occupation time reduced 70%, propaganda demonize the government and make the people see you as their savior some will resist and be "quelled" by the people you turn government buildings get destroyed by riots
4) poison gas destroys 100% population 0 % buildings occupation time reduced 100% , useless meat sacks only good for slaves.... oops population is destroyed but buildings remain untouched we need to repopulate this planet likely to take some time
turn 2-10 is occupation where you get to take several other choices (1 per turn)
* during occupation both planet population and soldier count is reduced per turn by a percentage of the population of the planet (this means the planets population will decrease by a percentage each turn and shouldn't reach 0 but the soldiers count will decrease by a percentage of population and could reach 0 if this happens the occupation fails)
o1) fortify your position bonus to defense if counter invasion lowers loss of soldiers due to rebellion
o2) control structure (food water power) make the people dependent on you for basic survival reduces occupation time but lose soldiers due to rebellion
03) propaganda control the news make the people like you reduces occupation time and loss of soldiers
the defenders would have a different set of options based on what was used as well
d1) incite rebellion 30% loss of planets population 10% loss of enemy soldiers
d2) supply weapons decreases loss of population increases loss of enemy soldiers
d3) supply food/water increases duration of occupation
d4) counter propaganda increases occupation and increases loss of population / loss of enemy soldiers
d1 only available of government structures remain intact, d2,d3 only available if no blockade (bribe/stealth my allow with blockade) d4 only available if defender still controls news
I really don't expect to be ground combat to be that indepth in the base game. There's just too many more important things to build (including the more important fleet combat). What I would like to see is something like this:
Some of the other ideas about different attack methods are pretty good too, like androshalforc's .
As the forum ate my post (it WOULD be the one time I forgot to copy-paste it for just such an occurance), I will be more abbreivated.
Something like Moo3 would be probably the best option. Have different units that contribute factors to the various statistics your ground force (so that ground force composition becomes an interesting series of choices, rather than just "my best unit currently available"). And then have the option to select various tactical options and then let the engine resolve it abstractly, rather than abstract it just as much as an RTs ot TB-skirmish mode.
By tactical options, I mean things like choosing a tactic (which would be a series of rock-paper-scissors sort of affair - that worked with only three attacking and defending options in Gamws Workshops' now-defunct tabletop Mighty Empires, and you could afford to be more expansive), how much collateral damage you wanted to inflict, how aggressive your force were (i.e. how mcuh damage they wee prepared to accept verses deal out) and so on.
Something GalCiv's maps would enable, that M003 didn't is you could effectively fight over the planet map using the improvement slots as nodes. Real warfare is only even fought essentially over strategic points and the transport networks connecting them anyway, so it's even realistic. (And the rational is, given that you can subjugate a population from orbit with a starship, you need your ground forces to take all the strategic targets to actually control the population properly and thus keep them in line.)
One of the tactical options, therfore, might be to pick your initial invading location improvement slot, and assign a target list (or priority) of where your ground forces go next. This would serve two purposes - giving a way to visually show your progress of captured are on the planet (even if you take the whole planet it one go) in an interesting way, and also giving you some choices - and if you're not trying to use ground combat as a skirmish map, choices become the important bit that maks it more than just "click button, hope you get lucky" which characterised GalCivII's rather poor ground combat engine.
another thought that might add a new mechanic to planets is a military / civilian population slider this could be set per planet and would show how much of that planets population is in the military
a higher military % of population would mean less crime and more planetary defenses
a lower military % of population would mean higher manufacturing / research
the adjustments made by the slider would not be able to change instantly as it takes time to train new troops (so you cant see a troop transport that will reach your planet next turn and magically have 100% military population)
but i could set the desired level and then a set % of population would switch over per tern until that desired level is reached
Factors that would effect the set % of population would be
number of current military on planet - more current troops on planet meaning i can train more troops simultaneously
military techs researched
training facilities
incentives offered to the population for joining the military ($$, citizenship. etc)
troop transport ships and any military vessel would take population away from the military population and trade/constructors/colony ships would take away from the civilian population in general these amounts would be insignificant but it means i wont be able to launch 100 troop transport ships from the same planet in 1 turn unless i have a high military population
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