(P)REVIEWS - Civilization IV Preview by Solver
“They that take the sword...
... shall enjoy the fight greatly". Combat in CivIV is, simply put, much more fun that in its predecessors. CivIV does not use a stack combat model such as the one found in Call to Power. So, could the old Civ combat model be revamped to be fun? The answer is yes, and a strong yes at that.
The first change of importance is that units no longer have attack/defense points, but rather a single strength rating. There have been concerns that this would oversimplify the game and make combat too straightforward. The result is exactly the opposite. This is because the strength rating is, in fact, only serves as the basis of a unit's actual strength during combat. A number of factors will influence the strength of both the attacker and the defender. The factors are promotions, terrain, unit special abilities (such as Axeman's bonus vs. melee units) and extra tile defense from forts or cities. This can make a great difference. I have seen a unit with a base strength of 5 have an actual strength of 15 in the right circumstances.
As a result, you will lose if you attempt to wage war with a large number of the same unit type... unless you maybe outnumber the enemy four to one. This isn't easy to achieve, and even if you can you deserve the win anyway. However, most times you will need mixed arms. Mounted units are fast and can sometimes retreat, melee units are slower but good vs. cities especially with the right promotions, and archery units are the best defenders. An early stack of Horse Archers would not take a city defended by a pair of Spearmen, whereas a mixed arms stack would do the job.
There are two more additions to the combat system. One is a new "first strike" system. This effectively simulates the advantages of ranged units, giving units such as archers the chance to make an extra strike before the "main" part of the combat begins. The second addition is with siege weapons, whose function is significantly different from previous games. They can cause collateral damage to units in the same tile, thus discouraging the Stack-of-Doom technique in many situations. They can also bombard cities to reduce their defenses. Given that city defenses can give a very considerable boost to the units inside the city, you will usually want to bombard the city before attacking it outright. Once the city defenses are taken down, however, your siege weapons can not bombard the units defending the city. You can choose to attack with your siege and inflict collateral damage on several of the city defenders, but you are likely to lose your siege unit in the process.
And then there are promotions, an entirely new concept in CivIV. This is indeed, I believe, the work of a genius. The idea is very simple: as your units earn points through battle, they can choose a promotion which improves them. The implementation of this is just awesome, as promotions bring a new element to the gameplay and make it more tactically engaging and more fun.
Promotions are many and varied. Not all units have access to all promotions, and for many promotions there are prerequisite promotions. For instance, a melee unit can for its first promotion choose Combat I or City Raider I (these are not all of the options, by the way). The latter will give a good bonus attacking cities. The former will give a small overall strength bonus, but at the same time enable access to a number of other good promotions. Gaining promotions is no easy task - it's not like a unit that wins 5 battles will gain 5 promotions. Each subsequent promotion is harder to get, and while the first three are somewhat easy to achieve, you will not likely have many units with five or six promotions around.
These promotions have a really big effect - in a way, they significantly increase the total number of units in the game. For example, a City Raider III Swordsman and a Combat II + Shock (bonus vs. melee) Swordsman both have three promotions, but are very different units. Also, promotions make it more important to capture cities quickly. If you attack a city but fail to capture it and have to wait for reinforcements, then the victorious defenders may gain enough experience (from their defensive wins) for promotions, making it even more difficult to take the city.
In previous Civ games, you would simply attack with a huge stack occupying one tile. In CivIV, that is a bad idea if your enemy has siege weapons because they will be able to weaken your stack significantly. However, spreading your attacking army out to occupy, say, 5 tiles can also be dangerous. If one of those tiles has, for example, no units that are good vs. mounted units, then some Knights might just take your units in that tile out. Be warned that the AI is competent in defending itself and does a good job at showing you just why one huge stack will not do you much good.
In the later eras, combat stays just as fun. There are still different types of units with their own strength and weaknesses; in a way, this is similar to the rock-paper-scissors combat system often used in Real-Time Strategy (RTS) games where there are also a wide variety of promotions to choose from. You also get new toys, such as better naval units that can bombard coastal cities, machine guns that can chew infantry up on defense, and so on. Finally, there are air units which can be potent on city bombardment and also attack ground units, but not without the danger of being intercepted or damaged by enemy fighters or ground units with SAM capabilities.
Navies are, by the way, actually important this time around. Of course, just how important exactly will depend on the map type you are playing. But even on land maps, navies are useful. First, there are water resources that you can harvest such as Fish, Whales or, late in the game, Oil. These resources need protection, and secondly, post-gunpowder naval units can bombard coastal cities.
Now, many likely want to know just how fair the combat system is. I should say that it is very fair. There is, as always, a small amount of randomness involved, so sometimes a unit might win against the odds, but certainly not against overwhelming odds. As far as the Tank vs. Spearman issue goes - assuming no modifiers from promotions or terrain, a Tank has an 87.5% chance to kill the Spearman with the first shot although, in reality, with modifiers the likelihood of this will be higher. Using a program that simulates CivIV combat, I ran fifteen thousand Tank vs. Spearman fights and the Tank won them all. Compare this for instance to a Knight vs. Pikeman fight. Without any modifiers except that Pikeman's bonus vs. mounted units, the Pikeman wins around 720 of 1000 battles. A significant advantage, but not a certain win.
Overall, I have had much more fun fighting wars in CivIV than in CivII or CivIII, owing to all of these changes. I have also not experienced the feeling of frustration when two of my superior units in a row die despite, theoretically, having much better odds.
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