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

Forum Overview :: Gamerasutra

by laudablepuss 05/15/2005, 3:43pm PDT

Universal Plan B wrote:

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.

No, it was MM and FABs that seemed to dislike it. But RPS is fundamentally pretty close to how things really work, I think. Of course it's an oversimplification. But anti-tank weapons are good against, you guessed it, tanks. A thousand years ago, Leo the Wise suggested countering turkish horse archers with foot archers who can shoot out their horses. Apparently turks sucked at hand-to-hand fighting. Faced with tough cavalry? Try using elephants to scare the shit out of the horses. Got scary elephants? Try using pikemen to poke them from a distance and enrage them into stomping indiscriminately and then fleeing the battlefield. Faced with well-drilled pikeman formations? Rain arrows down on them. On the other hand: faced with elephants? Don't wade in with a fucking sword. Faced with nasty cavalry? Don't let them charge you or you're toast.

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.

That's just an example. In fact, when a player has tanks and his opponent is still shooting arrows, the game's usually about over anyway. The armor stat is a good idea, and Axis and Allies uses something simillar to prevent Russian conscripts from pinging a King Tiger to death.

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?

I was playing on "normal" difficulty, which was tough enough to beat me like a drum the first two times. The third time I caught on and ran over the computer opponents like Germans on French roads. The AI supposedly is really smart in EEII and doesn't just get ridiculous handicaps to make it tough. I'll find out this week if that's really true, I guess.