Combat sucks in this game

[MEGACHAD]

It needs to be much more informative. How can I know I am being attacked without having to read all 300 notifications? Why do I not know how many troops I can have? Why can't I have just as many troops as I can build? Why can't I have enough troops to station in all my cities without having to run them all the way across the map to fight the NPCs stack of 500 troops? Why aren't there more options for diplomacy other than giving them free stuff? Also on the other hand... Why do NPCs declare war on me when I VASTLY outnumber them? Why are they allowed to annoyingly runaround destroying all my structures when I have ranged units sitting right there DOING NOTHING. Shouldn't they auto-fire?

This game still needs a lot of work. If you're not going to have GOOD combat then it's probably better to have NONE AT ALL.

[MEGACHAD]

All the usual butthurt fanboys in a rage because someone doesn't like their game.

[Raven Fire_BI]

Personally I see only 2 problems with units:
1) the impossibility of returning units from formed squads back to the reserve. Only a complete dissolution of the entire squad with the complete removal of all units is available.
2) Already created units cannot be improved or upgraded to units of the new era. And it looks like complete nonsense when in battle modern rifle infantry fights against ancient swordsmen.

[The Former]

Originally posted by MEGACHAD:

Originally posted by VDmitry:

"You don't know where to look for that? Bottom of the screen to the left, or your nation screen."

It doesnt tell you how many troops you can have.

At the bottom left there are three icons: A mountain (land), waves (sea), and I’m forgetting the third because I’m not at my PC. I think it’s blowing wind? Anyway these represent Land, Air, and Sea forces respectively. The numbers next to them show how many you have deployed and how many you can deploy in total.

For example, if you see 2/6 next to the mountain icon, you cen deploy four more land-based Forces.

These are Forces, of any size. So one squad of a single unit is one Force, and one legion of four units is also one Force.

Now addressing the other parts of your OP…

- You can have as many troops as you can build, but your military tech and system of government dictate how many you can field at once without it being a clusterf*ck. It’s how real world armies do it too, Albeit gamified. The US Army is something like 300,000 strong, but two thirds of that are reserves who only get called up if manpower starts to wane.

- If you don’t want to run your troops all the way across the map, set up a road network and try to keep borders with choke points. I have five cities and three forces are sufficient to protect them, because I keep friendly relations with one of my neighbors and the other neighbors are up against a shifting defensive formation that allows me to quickly relocate a legion wherever it’s needed. If I REALLY need more, they’re two turns away via calling up reserves in the isolated city.

- There are. Events provide diplomatic opportunities, meddling against their rivals will pick up their opinion of you, even just having trade or research agreements will cause your established relationship to increase over time. Admittedly, there could stand to be even more options though.

- NPCs declare war for a variety of reasons including…
A. Their reserves give them larger numbers than you realize.
B. Their leader is just hyper-aggro and is willing to take the L for the chance at glory.
C. They just want to skirmish with you and mess up your economy, and have no illusions about actually winning a protracted conflict against you.

- Whether ranged units SHOULD auto-fire is a question of taste, but I don’t know of any 4X games in which they do, so they convention is to let the player decide who they fire upon. As to why they’re allowed to, it’s because you’re allowing it. Click the Ranged Attack icon on your Forces with ranged attackers or artillery when an enemy Force is close, then target them. If I’m not mistaken, they’ll continue firing on that target each turn without your input until they leave range.

[mr_root]

Originally posted by MEGACHAD:

Originally posted by Nimea:

Building an army is done in two steps.
1. Building the units themselves from your cities. This is bog standard procedure, familiar in all 4X games.
2. Drafting those units into formations. At the very start, you can only draft single units, up to a maximum of 3 "armies". As you go through the research tree, you'll unlock formations that use up to 4 or so units per army.

Other stuff:
1. Your unit inventory can be seen when you click on any of your cities, then "Manage Forces" on the lower left side of your screen.
2. Your forces "inventory" can be seen in one of the buttons on the upper right of the screen. The force cap however, is on the lower-left when you are outside of the city screen. Note that your force caps are actually divided into land, water (and I think air?); you can see all of these on the lower-left.
3. With regard to AI respecting your military: they only do this relative to the armies you actually have on the map, I think. They don't take into account the units that aren't formed into armies. That's why they can get ballsy even if you have a superior number of units.
4. Regarding lack of auto-fire: does any other Civ-like game have auto-fire from an army?
5. Note: Scouts don't count for the force cap, so you can build as many as you want of them. They're considered Specialists, similar to Settlers.

Thanks but that was no help whatsoever. I don't need a tutorial I need a better game.

1. War in the East
2. HOI4
3. Millenia

Have Fun.

[mr_root]

Originally posted by MEGACHAD:

All the usual butthurt fanboys in a rage because someone doesn't like their game.

MEGACHAT: Recent Playtime: 46,3h like a fanboy himself. Haha.

[MEGACHAD]

Originally posted by mr_root:

Originally posted by MEGACHAD:

All the usual butthurt fanboys in a rage because someone doesn't like their game.

MEGACHAT: Recent Playtime: 46,3h like a fanboy himself. Haha.

Enough hours to know what I am talking about, thanks level 0 steam noobie.

[MEGACHAD]

Originally posted by The Former:

Originally posted by MEGACHAD:

It doesnt tell you how many troops you can have.

At the bottom left there are three icons: A mountain (land), waves (sea), and I’m forgetting the third because I’m not at my PC. I think it’s blowing wind? Anyway these represent Land, Air, and Sea forces respectively. The numbers next to them show how many you have deployed and how many you can deploy in total.

For example, if you see 2/6 next to the mountain icon, you cen deploy four more land-based Forces.

These are Forces, of any size. So one squad of a single unit is one Force, and one legion of four units is also one Force.

Now addressing the other parts of your OP…

- You can have as many troops as you can build, but your military tech and system of government dictate how many you can field at once without it being a clusterf*ck. It’s how real world armies do it too, Albeit gamified. The US Army is something like 300,000 strong, but two thirds of that are reserves who only get called up if manpower starts to wane.

- If you don’t want to run your troops all the way across the map, set up a road network and try to keep borders with choke points. I have five cities and three forces are sufficient to protect them, because I keep friendly relations with one of my neighbors and the other neighbors are up against a shifting defensive formation that allows me to quickly relocate a legion wherever it’s needed. If I REALLY need more, they’re two turns away via calling up reserves in the isolated city.

- There are. Events provide diplomatic opportunities, meddling against their rivals will pick up their opinion of you, even just having trade or research agreements will cause your established relationship to increase over time. Admittedly, there could stand to be even more options though.

- NPCs declare war for a variety of reasons including…
A. Their reserves give them larger numbers than you realize.
B. Their leader is just hyper-aggro and is willing to take the L for the chance at glory.
C. They just want to skirmish with you and mess up your economy, and have no illusions about actually winning a protracted conflict against you.

- Whether ranged units SHOULD auto-fire is a question of taste, but I don’t know of any 4X games in which they do, so they convention is to let the player decide who they fire upon. As to why they’re allowed to, it’s because you’re allowing it. Click the Ranged Attack icon on your Forces with ranged attackers or artillery when an enemy Force is close, then target them. If I’m not mistaken, they’ll continue firing on that target each turn without your input until they leave range.

Thanks I never noticed the tiny little text in the very bottom left of the corner of the screen.

[VDmitry]

Originally posted by MEGACHAD:

Originally posted by The Former:

At the bottom left there are three icons: A mountain (land), waves (sea), and I’m forgetting the third because I’m not at my PC. I think it’s blowing wind? Anyway these represent Land, Air, and Sea forces respectively. The numbers next to them show how many you have deployed and how many you can deploy in total.

For example, if you see 2/6 next to the mountain icon, you cen deploy four more land-based Forces.

These are Forces, of any size. So one squad of a single unit is one Force, and one legion of four units is also one Force.

Now addressing the other parts of your OP…

- You can have as many troops as you can build, but your military tech and system of government dictate how many you can field at once without it being a clusterf*ck. It’s how real world armies do it too, Albeit gamified. The US Army is something like 300,000 strong, but two thirds of that are reserves who only get called up if manpower starts to wane.

- If you don’t want to run your troops all the way across the map, set up a road network and try to keep borders with choke points. I have five cities and three forces are sufficient to protect them, because I keep friendly relations with one of my neighbors and the other neighbors are up against a shifting defensive formation that allows me to quickly relocate a legion wherever it’s needed. If I REALLY need more, they’re two turns away via calling up reserves in the isolated city.

- There are. Events provide diplomatic opportunities, meddling against their rivals will pick up their opinion of you, even just having trade or research agreements will cause your established relationship to increase over time. Admittedly, there could stand to be even more options though.

- NPCs declare war for a variety of reasons including…
A. Their reserves give them larger numbers than you realize.
B. Their leader is just hyper-aggro and is willing to take the L for the chance at glory.
C. They just want to skirmish with you and mess up your economy, and have no illusions about actually winning a protracted conflict against you.

- Whether ranged units SHOULD auto-fire is a question of taste, but I don’t know of any 4X games in which they do, so they convention is to let the player decide who they fire upon. As to why they’re allowed to, it’s because you’re allowing it. Click the Ranged Attack icon on your Forces with ranged attackers or artillery when an enemy Force is close, then target them. If I’m not mistaken, they’ll continue firing on that target each turn without your input until they leave range.

Thanks I never noticed the tiny little text in the very bottom left of the corner of the screen.

You probably have very big display.

[The Former]

You can rescale the UI if you’ve got a big monitor. Should be in the settings somewhere, I know I saw it but I don’t recall precisely which submenu it was in.