Caltrops - Gamerasutra - Re: ^ needless to say, not me.

Forum Overview :: Gamerasutra

by Universal Plan B 05/15/2005, 2:52pm PDT

laudablepuss wrote:

I don't see what difference this makes. Artillery is very good at killing people, but unsupported artillery with its slow refire rate will still lose to other units. It's true in real life and in EEII.

Depends what period of history you're taking about. Today this is true because we have fast maneuverable armor, which can get to and destroy artillery before taking huge losses. During the peak of artillery, WW1, this was not necessarily true. Artillery plus machine guns (which were like a very small artillery piece at the time) could hold off large numbers of men, almost unsupported. That's why WW1 sucked so badly, the artillery forced a stalemate all around because it offered a superior defense than any attacking force. But there hadn't been a real european land war since the invention of breech load artillery, so the commanders had not figured that out and did not change their tactics. They just called dozens of mass attacks that killed thousands of people a day. It wasn't until 1918 that the Germans came up with infiltration tactics.

I don't know why people don't like RPS systems.

I never said anything about not liking the R-P-S system. It works very well for games. A hell of a lot better than some ladder system where there is a single best unit, and all your efforts go to researching and producing that unit. Bla.

I just said that it was historically off... In most wars there was one "unit" that was superior and did most of the real work. Examples include musket/rifle infantry from the invention of the flintlock (1650) through the napoleonic wars, artillery in WW1, and the bomber airplane in WW2 - present. The successful generals were the ones who shaped their army and their strategy around the most powerful unit. I can think of only two periods that had something like balance, those being around 1500 just after the invention of firearms (provided a counter to heavy cavalry, but not powerful vs infantry) and the crimean - civil war period (maximum development of the muzzle load artillery and calvary still useful). And even then it wasn't anything like R-P-S.

In real life, arrows can't kill tanks and clubs can't knock down buildings. To the extent that RTS games bother me it seems to be because of how each unit has hitpoints and each weapon can do damage. So eventually arrows will break a tank under that system. Seems dumb to me.

Some games, such as the Civ series, have an armor stat on the units. If the armor is higher than the attack value, it can't do any damage at all. It wouldn't work very well in multi-age RTSs like EE or AoE, since the first player to advance an age would automatically win.

laudablepuss wrote:

Just got done with my first few games. So far they've all ended before reaching epoch 5. Or rather, hunting and killing computer opponents takes until epcoh 8 or 9 but I never upgrade my army after a certain point since mine is the only army in the field, essentially. Looking around at one point, I noticed that I was supposed to start mining Iron and Salt Peter or something. :(

Is the AI really bad, or are you just playing on easier difficulty right now?