Civilization V-An Improved Combat System

Although Civilization V received many good reviews from professional reviewing groups, popular reception was mixed. Many complained that changes to the game just left them clicking the end turn button repeatedly since there just wasn't much to do in a typical turn. Although I agree with many of those comments, one aspect of the game that I found much improved was the combat system.

The Major Changes
The single largest change is that you can no longer stack units together on the same hex. Every unit needs its own hex space. This changes the look of a major battle from this:


San Antonio is besieged by an entire army, from artillery to cavalry to infantry, all secure in one hex of jungle terrain.

To this:


Two sides face off in Civilization 5

Just from a glance at the game's main map, you can tell how much opposition you will be facing. In previous civilization games, a player can store an entire legion of troops in one hex that slowly advances toward your cities. In Civilization V, you see the entire horde spread out and can also easily tell what kind of units are attacking.

Another advantage of this system is that it requires players to think more about the terrain they are advancing through. In previous games it was easy to throw all your troops up on top of a mountain or another formidable defensive bastion, but now terrain with more marginal defensive benefits have to be considered as well. After all, only one unit can go up on the mountain or inside the city, the rest need to find a place to camp out as well.

The last major change is that certain units, such as archers and artillery, can fire at enemy soldiers from a distance rather than having to just directly attack like every other unit in the game. In the past, this ranged advantage was noted by making archers have defensive advantages or by allowing them to inflict some damage on attacking units before the random dice rolls began to play out. Now archers can pick off some enemy soldiers before they get in range to retaliate, a much more interesting system. Additionally, it requires a player using archers or artillery to protect them with melee units in front so that these valuable soldiers don't get slaughtered in close combat.

Why is this an improvement?
My biggest complaint with the combat systems in Civilization II-IV is that the defender received an overwhelming advantage at times. If an enemy is advancing, the solution is to garrison your towns and cities with every nearby unit, which apparently have no trouble housing or feeding the entire army of a nation, and it will be very difficult for the attacker to defeat them unless they brought a far superior number or quality of units along for the fight.


The entire population of Greece defends Athens.

Civilization II at least had a couple features that made it a little easier to take out a defending army. If you stacked units outside of a city or a fortress and you lost a defensive battle, the entire stack of units was destroyed. Additionally, when a unit defending a city lost a battle, the city lost one unit of population. This could even cause a city to be destroyed if it was reduced to a population of 1. Unfortunately, these were removed in Civilization III and IV.

The worst part for Civilization IV is that there are so many features that should add depth to the combat system. There are many units with bonuses against other units. For example, macemen gain a significant bonus in strength against other melee units like swordsmen and pikemen gain a significant bonus when fighting cavalry. There is also unit veterancy, which allows for units to gain bonuses to their basic combat abilities or to gain extra potency against the units they specialize in fighting. Unfortunately, these don't add a lot of depth to combat because of two problems. One is the ability to stack a limitless number of units on top of each other. The other is that when attacking a stack of units, the best defensive unit is always picked to defend. So, if you're attacking a archer and a knight with a pikemen and a horse archer, the archer will be chosen to defend against the pikemen and the knight against the horse archer. This means that you are guaranteed to lose either way when you attack.


Even Landsknecht in their snazzy uniforms have to follow those rules.

All of this isn't to say that winning a military victory was impossible in previous Civilization games, but it was only possible if your opponents didn't know what they were doing. All you have to do to survive an assault is spam units to defend your cities with and it becomes cost prohibitive to try and defeat an opponent in warfare. Although Civilization V was a step backward in many respects, the combat system certainly added a lot of depth and interest for me.

Company of Heroes-Force Multipliers

This is an article I wrote a couple years ago about the RTS game Company of Heroes. One of the most interesting game concepts found in Company of Heroes is the presence of units that can turn the tide of battle against a much larger army. In most other RTS games, this sort of mechanism is accomplished through a rigid counter system, such as a spearman unit that can kill two light cavalry units, or an archer that can kill two spearman units. Company of Heroes has a much more interesting take on this, where support units like HMGs, buildings, and the map’s terrain itself serve to let a skilled player take advantage of this force multiplication concept. However, you can use the strategies in this article and apply them to almost any game, you just have to look at what methods you can use to defeat a numerically superior force.

HMGs: Heavy machine guns, such as the Wehrmacht MG42 and American .30 cal, are one of the most obvious tools that enable a smaller army to beat a larger one. They get accuracy bonuses against larger groups of troops and can suppress the enemy. This causes troops to crawl around on the ground, lowering their movement speed and making them more susceptible to the firepower of your main infantry, such as Grenadiers. Soon after becoming suppressed, those troops then become pinned, completely unable to fire or move. A well placed MG can stop a large infantry-based attack in its tracks.


MG-42 forcing British infantry to retreat


A 260 manpower brings 2000 manpower in British troops to a halt

Though MGs lose some effectiveness as the game progresses due to the increased availability of indirect fire weapons, such as mortars, howitzers, and doctrine based artillery call-ins, their suppression effect can still be very effective throughout an entire match. A well supported MG can be one of the best tools for stopping the current mainstream tactic of ‘blobbing.’

Tanks: With complete invulnerability to small arms fire and a powerful main gun (and potentially even an upgradeable turret-mounted HMG,) tanks serve as an extremely potent force multiplier for your army. Tanks that have heavier frontal armor, such as Tigers, StuGs, StuHs, and Hetzers, can laugh as weaker projectiles, like bazookas, bounce right off their hood.


A Hetzer watches as a bazooka round bounces off its hull, no penetration achieved


Riflemen and Rangers are forced to retreat with heavy casualties, Hetzer suffered no damage

A tank with infantry support can dish out a lot of damage, while any damage it suffers (short of death) does not cost any resources to repair - it only requires some of your repair crew’s time. In comparison, every soldier your tank kills will cost your opponent Manpower to replace. It’s important to keep in mind that you need to have infantry support with your tank for it to be truly effective and game changing. If you send in a tank solo, it will tend to die unless it is facing inferior forces.

Cover: This is easily the most available and widely used method of force multiplication. Yellow cover is frequently present all over a map in the form of small trees and brush dotted along the ground. Yellow cover gives your forces a moderate amount of protection from gunfire, allowing your squad to take fewer casualties as it faces off against a squad not in cover. Green cover, usually seen in the form of stone fences or hay piles, offers considerably greater benefits. If you have two Grenadier squads in green cover behind a stone wall, they can defeat three charging Riflemen squads. Obviously, the more cover you utilize, the better.


These grenadiers would be in trouble in the open


But behind their heavy cover they defeat these riflemen with ease

However, there are also ways to use the negative cover on the map (which causes soldiers to take additional damage) to your benefit as well. On maps like Semois and Angoville, the roads are common retreat routes. If you position some troops or a MG along these routes, you can easily get a squad kill as your opponent is attempting to flee.

Buildable defenses: Unless you’re playing as British, these tend to be forgotten in terms of improving your position on the map. A well thought out system of fortifications can make your opponent hemmed into a tiny area of the map, losing precious Manpower every time he attempts to leave that area. Each type of defense has advantages that merit individual discussion:

Barbed Wire: Currently, this isn’t used anymore due to the crappy wiring AI of the game, but I hear that this is fixed in the beta so it merits a mention. The point of barbed wire is to deny your opponent easy access to an area, because only weaker units, like Engineers and Pioneers, are able to cut it in the early game, and they suffer increased vulnerability to enemy fire as they do so. It can be built for free and VERY quickly by a variety of units from each side.

If you have secured an important area of the map, you can use these idle troops to sculpt the terrain to your advantage for when your opponent inevitably returns to contest your holdings. You can wire off some of the entrance routes to the area, button-holing him into only one access point, which leaves him as easy prey to a HMG team. You can also take advantage of negative cover on the maps and wire off access to heavy or yellow cover, forcing his infantry to walk down the main road and take additional damage from any troops you have in the area. The infamous ‘Semois Pin’ involved significant use of barbed wire to leave an opponent stuck in his base, unable to do anything of value.

Sandbags: These provide the bonuses of green cover to wherever you choose to build them. They allow for you to fortify open areas of the map, such as the left side of Angoville or many areas of Langres, giving your troops a great deal of protection from enemy fire. Another creative use that players have come up with is to build sandbags at small entrance paths to key areas, such as the high fuel on Sturzdorf. This allows it to function like barbed wire, except that it cannot be cut. In either case, they can allow your army to win against technically superior forces by providing a powerful cover bonus.


Sandbags buy time for this grenadier squad to upgrade a panzerschrek, so they can damage the armored car

Tank Traps: Basically the same as barbed wire, except it is used against vehicles. They are difficult to destroy and allow you to hem your opponent’s vehicles into your anti-tank weapons' kill zones.

Land Mines: These are the buildable defense that I see most often in 1v1 play. They only cost 25 Munitions and have a lot of power for their price - it’s highly recommended to use extra munitions you have on these! Many players do not choose to buy minesweepers, so they continually step on these. There are several varieties in the game - Panzer Elite Tellermines that only trigger on vehicles; regular land mines that trigger on anything and can be built by Sappers, Engineers, and Pioneers; and the more powerful M8 land mines that also trigger on anything.


This sniper took one step too far


Hetzer receives a damaged engine from rolling over a mine. It would now be easy prey for any enemy tanks or anti-tank infantry to destroy

Against Infantry: Mines suppress the squad temporarily, deal a bunch of damage (usually killing at least one squad member) and generally can stop an opponent in his tracks. Mines function as a force multiplier simply because they kill enemy troops as they walk around on the map, but they can be used in support of your troops to work even more effectively. For example, you can put a mine on the obvious flanking route to your MG position, resulting in your opponent’s troops blowing up as they get ready to throw a grenade. They can also be put on critical points, such as the +16 fuel points or the connecting strategic points on Angoville, Victory Points, or on major roads to give you a warning about what your opponent is doing.

Against Vehicles: Land mines do a significant amount of damage to vehicles and also frequently cause engine damage, slowing your opponent’s vehicle to a crawl. This makes them easy prey for a nearby AT gun, Panzerschreck-equipped unit, or a tank of your own. At best, when used with support it can almost guarantee the destruction of that vehicle. At worst, it still puts your opponent’s vehicle out of the fight for a significant amount of time, as he has to move a repair squad out to fix the crippled vehicle.

Buildings: Lastly, I am going to discuss the use of the buildings that are typically spread throughout each map. Though they are frequently used merely to stick a MG in (to provide a more secure base of fire for it,) they have a great deal of value for your ordinary infantry as well. They provide a significant amount of cover that can allow your squad to defeat larger numbers or superior quality opponents.


Out in the open, this rifle squad would be no match for the panzer grenadiers. As it is fortified in a building, the grenadiers must bypass that point to avoid losing men


These volksgrenadiers would normally die in seconds to these infantry squads. Within the building, they can hold out for reinforcements

Also, some squads, such as MP40-equipped Volks and Assault Grenadiers, are devastating to face in the open but do very poor damage to troops in buildings. When you run into these types of troops, you can garrison a nearby building with a Rifle squad or Infantry Section, easily winning the day.

If you approach your CoH game with these ideas of how to make your army work more efficiently to defeat your opponent, your victories will come much easier than they might have otherwise. When using all of these ideas to maximum effect, you will inflict considerable casualties on your opponent while suffering few with your own army. This will drain your opponent of Manpower while preserving your own for teching, purchasing upgrades, or training more soldiers to overwhelm him in later encounters.