RFC Europe: Military Redesign

Semantics do matter. I'm going to go with "Foot Knight" for now unless someone else comes up with a compelling name.

On the one hand I agree that the light->heavy upgrade is a little unfortunate. Essentially we have all light infantry early, then all heavy, and then light (pikemen) again. This does allow a nice way of keeping counter-units period specific, but makes for this rather odd situation. Of course, since the light spearmen are no-resources-required, we'll probably see them throughout (due to barbs, indies and isolated cities). I could see re-classifying some of the early infantry as heavy and some of the later middle age infantry as light at some later date, but not just yet.

Now that you have (or could have) the new unit structure, what do people think about promotions for the new unit classes? Here's where the light/heavy breakdown by armor rather than function complicates matters, at least for infantry. For cavalry, light cavalry function as light cavalry, and heavy as heavy, so it definitely makes sense that these cavalry will have slightly different promotion options.

Here are my thoughts right now:

The basic structure will remain.

Gunpowder units will get city raider.

Ambush (used to be +versus armor) will now be + versus heavy cavalry.

I like the skirmisher promotion from Tsentom1 http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=7692014#post7692014, but other than that don't want to get carried away with new promotions. This will be available to light cavalry (and maybe light infantry?). This can be used as a "gateway" into later promotions for these units.

Hey Jessiecat,

Excuse me for responding in a different thread.

I like the progression of grades esp. of swordsmen and spearmen. Though I wonder if the pre-gunpowder units have been weakened too much. I think that 4/7/10 for swordsmen and 6/8/10 for the spearman upgrades would be better. The strongest swordsman should not be weaker than a pikeman, I think.
And what happened to the swiss pikeman? Shouldn't that be a further upgrade so it can be used in formation with musketmen? Maybe strength 12. Same with the Landsknecht?
Also the Hungarian UU (9/3) seems unbalanced with the Armored Lancer (11/2) its supposed to replace. Maybe should both be strength 10.

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I'm not sure I completely understand your strength recommendation. I assume you actually mean 4/7/10 for spearmen and 6/8/10 for swords?

Swiss Pikemen were renamed to just Pikemen. At strength 10 they are on par with muskets (strength 11), and should be used with them to defend off cavalry (knights are strength 13). Foot knights should be weaker than the pike formations these guys now represent.

The Hungarian Huszar is weaker than the Armored Lancer, principally because it is light cavalry. I couldn't find many great light cavalry in medieval history, so where I did I used it. The mobility (and lack of the heavy cavalry crossbow/pike counters) here is designed to offset the strength. Try it out and see if you agree that it's useful. I do see I have the tech prereq for it wrong though. I'll have to fix that.

sedna17 said:

Hey Jessiecat,

Excuse me for responding in a different thread.



I'm not sure I completely understand your strength recommendation. I assume you actually mean 4/7/10 for spearmen and 6/8/10 for swords?

Swiss Pikemen were renamed to just Pikemen. At strength 10 they are on par with muskets (strength 11), and should be used with them to defend off cavalry (knights are strength 13). Foot knights should be weaker than the pike formations these guys now represent.

The Hungarian Huszar is weaker than the Armored Lancer, principally because it is light cavalry. I couldn't find many great light cavalry in medieval history, so where I did I used it. The mobility (and lack of the heavy cavalry crossbow/pike counters) here is designed to offset the strength. Try it out and see if you agree that it's useful. I do see I have the tech prereq for it wrong though. I'll have to fix that.

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Sorry. I responded in the wrong thread. Yes I meant as you say. I just meant strengthening the 2nd. step in each case. I still think the swiss pikeman should be further pike development, stronger but more expensive. I see what you mean about the Hungarian UU its just that making it weaker than what it replaces seems strange to me. A UU should be at least as strong I think. Overall though, the rest seems fine.

1. Where is pinch (+25% vs. gunpowder) went to? I don't see it anymore.

2. Knight are more expensive. (From 100 to 120), but all the UU of it aren't. (Paladin, Winged Hussar, Boyar and Keshik) They are still 100 .

merijn_v1 said:

1. Where is pinch (+25% vs. gunpowder) went to? I don't see it anymore.

2. Knight are more expensive. (From 100 to 120), but all the UU of it aren't. (Paladin, Winged Hussar, Boyar and Keshik) They are still 100 .

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Good points. I accidentally deleted pinch, and forgot to upgrade the other knight expenses.

Quoting from 3Miro in another thread:

- the unit mechanics need balancing. The Horse Archers are overpowered. The two extra first strikes give them unfair advantage against any other early unit (incidentally, the Bulgarian Konnik does not receive first strikes). The spearman (that are supposed to counter Horse Archers) get only + 25%, which means that they get to 4 + 1 vs 6 on open ground, in other words the odds are for the Horse Archers. Which means that a player with spearman can only defend his own cities (barely) against a significant number of HA. A possible solution would be to increase the Spearman bonus.
- similar disbalance exists for the second level of pikes vs heavy horseman. The ratio is something like 6 + 3 vs 11.
- the only defense is to use heavy cavalry vs heavy cavalry, in which case the human is in a disadvantageous position since the AI pumps units much faster.

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I certainly did want cavalry of each era to dominate over infantry, for historical accuracy. Of course, that shouldn't come at the expense of gameplay. But I feel that in normal civ, where you have strong counters to cavalry, smart humans always eschew cavalry. My desired model was cheap/relatively-weak counters to cavalry. So while an individual spearman may not be sufficient defend a city, if shouldn't be too expensive to rise a good number of them.

That's the theory, of course. In practice, you're probably right. I'll consider some tweaks as you suggest.

If it takes 2 spearman to stop a horse archer and you get 2 HA spawning next to your borders every 3 - 5 turns, you need to have both Bulgarian cities spawning spearman just to fend off the Barbs (that is defend improvements and workers as well as cities). HA can just walk straight into a city guarded by an Archer, no chance for the archer or whatsoever.

I checked the civilclopedia and I found some more Units that haven't the right amount of .
English Longbowman, konnik, ghazi, berber cavalry and berserker have too little .
The Zapsomething Cossack (Kievan) and the huszar have also less but I think that is one of their bonus'.
The "Blitz" promotion is also gone. Did you also deleted that accidentally?

Thanks for the report on UU costs. Blitz was normally available only to armor I think. I could add it to cavalry though (perhaps with a different name).

And ships. I love it when I destroy others Caravels and Carrack (and a few Cogges) with my privateers. With Blitz they can destroy even more.

Thinking out loud about the current military system.

Problems with the current system:

Too few light cavalry. This means horse archers come too early and are too powerful at the beginning and too weak at the end.

No good distinction between light/heavy infantry. Current system is odd mix of armor and tactical role.

At any given time, vanilla civ has 7 units available: Archer (archer, longbow), horse (chariot, horse archer, knight), polearm (spear, pike), melee (sword, mace), anti-melee (ax, crossbow), siege, recon. With any more, it becomes hard to make distinctions or chose what to build. We currently have: light cavalry, heavy cavarly, archer, polearm, sword, anti-melee-melee, siege, extra (mounted inf., longbows, arquebusiers), recon. 9 is too many. "A designer knows he has achieved perfection..."

Proposed corrections:

Light cavalry will be pillagers and explorers/sentries. We will eliminate recon. Light cavalry will be weaker than just about any other unit comparable unit, but with high withdraw, extra speed, and flank attacks against siege, will still have a useful role. Western europe eschewed light cavalry during the high middle ages, so we will use mounted infantry art as a "mounted seargent" for the "light" cavalry in the west during this time and horse archer in the east/south.

Polearm is worthy of its own distinct class which will allow promotions to counter them and simplify things conceptually.

Arbalest will just upgrade to longbows, eliminating the last extra unit.

That gets us to 7.

Further cuts could come from combining the axe/sword/maceman/heavy-sword lines. This would be appropriately done like: Axe > Sword > Heavy Sword > Maceman. Eliminate all that anti-melee stuff and just make these guys stronger than polearms and with some bonus versus polearms. Then our classic RPS is:

Heavy Cavalry > Melee > Polearm

Light Cavalry, as explained, would typically fare poorly against any of these in direct combat.

Archer is a distinct class and good city defender. Melee (and possibly polearm) are the only unit categories to get city attacker, and melee would be the preference.

Armor piercing units should work only against their own era (i.e. specify targets for crossbows, longbows, axe, maceman). Alternatively, if we make the guisarmier unit a little less armored looking, then we can give an anti-heavy-cavalry and anti-melee bonus to the armor-piercing guys.

Peasant levies. We have introduced early conscription to simulate peasant levies. These units could be another class line (especially if we can we make them not-buildable?), but would have to be another class if we give anti-melee bonus. Another option is to levy from the polearm line (as it currently partly works). Conscription is not important later on in our period (re-appearing only with Napoleon), so feudal levies should become useless after gunpowder starts to show up.

Just a quick question -- where are the Camel Archers? Why don't Arabia start with the mix of hourse and camel archers? Saladin used them... Very nice flavor touch, desert movement could be really good for the huge Africa we have in the mod. One could just tune stats to make it light cavalery+desert bonus (strength 5 I guess).

Tigranes said:

Just a quick question -- where are the Camel Archers? Why don't Arabia start with the mix of hourse and camel archers? Saladin used them... Very nice flavor touch, desert movement could be really good for the huge Africa we have in the mod. One could just tune stats to make it light cavalery+desert bonus (strength 5 I guess).

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People felt they were cheesy/not important enough in history to be a UU. I didn't actually agree, but bowed to the wishes of the people. Maybe they will make a return as barbs some day.

sedna17 said:

People felt they were cheesy/not important enough in history to be a UU. I didn't actually agree, but bowed to the wishes of the people. Maybe they will make a return as barbs some day.

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I would agree they would be appropriate as barbs esp. in the western areas of N. Africa. Elsewhere, the mainstay of early Arab armies was light cavalry and infrantrymen who rode camels to a battle where they dismounted and fought in lines of spearmen backed by foot archers and swordsmen. Even the cavalrymen rode camels over long distances but switched to their favourite war horse for battle. I have never heard of camel archers being important in any Arab army, let alone Saladin's. Horse archers, like the Seljuks and Turcomans, of course. But never camels, except as baggage train or transport.

jessiecat said:

I have never heard of camel archers being important in any Arab army, let alone Saladin's.

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Yes, Barb Camels would look more appropriate. Maybe I just got used to them in vanila Civ and RFC to symbolize the Doom from the Desert. However Saladin still used them at least one can read about it in historical fiction "The Book of Saladin": It was a remarkable sight. The 10000 horsemen were followed by archers on camels, and then by the long line of foot-soldiers.

Tigranes said:

Yes, Barb Camels would look more appropriate. Maybe I just got used to them in vanila Civ and RFC to symbolize the Doom from the Desert. However Saladin still used them at least one can read about it in historical fiction "The Book of Saladin": It was a remarkable sight. The 10000 horsemen were followed by archers on camels, and then by the long line of foot-soldiers.

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Sorry. I don't know the book. I would not claim they were never used but they were far more suitable for desert skirmishes, esp. in the Arabian desert and the Western Sahara where horses lose their speed advantage in sand. I'd be happy seeing them in a Berber army like if we have Cordoba respawn as the Marinid or Saadi dynasties in Morocco after 1500AD.

The real issue for me with units so far is the defensive bonuses for cavalry (light or heavy). Fortified on the forested hill my Cathapract (Combat I) was able to kill 5 Seljuk (Barbarian) Lancers. Vanila Civ and RFC have it very nicely. You have to use combined arms strategy there. On the other hand I really support high withdrawal rate for light cavalry. Just make sure please it never gets to 100% even with Warlord Tactics promotion (+30%) .

Speaking of tactics, I would suggest begging the HOTK staff to borrow their legions system. There you'll have tactics.

Re: Cavalry. I think I agree that cavalry defensive bonus should all be removed -- an oversight on my part. What happens if withdrawal is over 100%? Currently, the highest withdrawl is 40%, only available on light cavalry. +10% from Flanking 1, +20% from Flanking 2, +30% from Tactics gives 100% withdraw chance, which is excellent, but I'm not sure it's game breaking. Light cavalry tend to be weak, and you have to spend a great general to get one of these units, which can still be killed if attacked. Technically guerilla 3 gives +50%, but that's not available to any cavalry (No, I lie, it is currently available on the Ghazi, that'll have to go).

Re: Legions. I confess I haven't played HOTK. I've looked at the description of legions and it seems... complicated. We're trying to limit the number of dramatically new rules players need to learn. However, I should probably try it before I knock it. If it really makes battles more nuanced AND the AI is able to deal with it effectively...