Expansion: While were at it, fix Artillery

TheHanzou

Chieftain
Joined
Feb 20, 2012
Messages
93
Ok im comming from a Multiplayer Point-of-view here. when you play against good opponents in Multiplayer, the whole game comes down to a tech race. Once Artillery is researched, the game becomes a stalemate and Techrace to Nukes. Artillery is such a big jump in Power and Utility that it halts all attemps at attack.

The Problem with Artillery is that its way to good. Normal Unit Progression is usually +some Power, but not so with Artillery.

Its like this with Catapult-Trebutchet-Cannon. So now we get Artillery. Artillery does not only have the mandatory +Power Upgrade, no it also has +1Range AND indirect Fire. Now the real problem is obviously indirect fire. It is insanely powerfull. Giving Artillery both at the same time is just to big a boost. It doesnt make much sense either.

Historically Artillery wasnt that strong, especially not in defense, where it is at its strongest in Civ 5.

My solution is quite simple: dont give Artillery both +1Range and Indirect Fire. The progression in military power coming from this is to big. Coupled with the defensive Nature of Artillery this leads to a complete stalemate. It would be much more reasonable to give Artillery +1Range and introduce a second progression point in a new or later tech that is Howitzer or something which then has +1Range and indirect Fire.

Getting the tech to Artillery when u already have Cannons is really fast and easy. Its so fast in fact that attacking after researching Rifleman and Cannons is pointless because by the time you will have a meaningfull army at the front lines the opponent will have Artillery.

Artillery is in fact so strong that once u can build it you build nothing else. Nothing can stop Artillery in Defense (not even other Artillery), and if you dont have Artillery when your opponent is attacking you with it you have basically lost.

Now the only Unit to stop artillery would be air Units, and ultimately Nukes. Its also possible to abuse the end of turn moves and attack with Lancers, but Lancers will not be able to kill a defended Artillery (hill,Fort,General boni), so thats not really an option. Its also an option to try and limit their viewing range, but this is really hard to do even with culture Bombs.

The Problem here is, if the other side has Artillery first, he will most likely have fighters and Nukes first too. This leads to a simple truth: If you have Artillery first you have won the game.

In my last 30 one vs one games, at least half of them were won this way, the rest was against weak opponents that left earlier or were even destroyed.

tl:dr Artillery military progression is to much, leading to stalemate combat and tech race. Remove indirect fire and introduce advanced Artillery in the next tech step.
 
I say go to 2 UPT.... or a system where you can not have two melee and range on the same tile.

But you can overlap melee/range similar to worker/military, etc.

Then you cut Archer range to plus one all tiles. So no +2 over plains. Crossbowman get the same range but deadlier attack.

Trebuchets and cannons get +2 in plains but +1 in rough terrain. As the Archer is now. Longbowman also get this range.

Artillery get +3 over plains, +2 when firing over rogh terrain (forest/hill).

NO firing over mountains unless you get the bonus from XPs.
 
I say go to 2 UPT.... or a system where you can not have two melee and range on the same tile.
He is talking about ciV expansion NOT civ VI. :rolleyes:

To OP : I think artillery problem will hopefully be fixed as new air units & an early tank unit is added as well as all old units are tweaked for better game balance.
 
I have also been thinking that they should allow more than one unit per tile (whether it's 1 melee + 1 ranged, or just unlimited) and reduce all the ranges by one. The way you balance it to prevent stacks is to use the same feature from Civ I: if the tile is attacked, only 1 unit gets to defend, and if it's destroyed, the whole stack is destroyed. Although with the new increased health in G&K, I'm not sure the idea is viable anymore.

But yeah, I consider this an unlikely change for G&K.
 
Ok im comming from a Multiplayer Point-of-view here. when you play against good opponents in Multiplayer, the whole game comes down to a tech race. Once Artillery is researched, the game becomes a stalemate and Techrace to Nukes. Artillery is such a big jump in Power and Utility that it halts all attemps at attack.

In my last 30 one vs one games, at least half of them were won this way, the rest was against weak opponents that left earlier or were even destroyed.

Euh, no. MP duel is everything but a tech race. In the league game (civplayers.com) and public games I have played, you have 2 cases :

1) If the maps has seas, go for frigate rush. Build 3 frigates and you win the game.

2) If the maps does not have seas, duels with top opponents turn into classical and medieval wars. Medieval UU or crossbows are beelined while you build up military and a production oriented empire.

If the game goes to renaissance, yes, it can turns into an arty race. But if your opponent is teching to arty, he is not building army, so many of the arty rushers can be beaten with late medieval units push (Knight + X-bows + Trebuchet).
 
You know tanks have 5 moves right?


However I do agree that it comes to early I don't know why it is actually in a indiviudal technology.

It would be really balanced that it would come at the technology " replacable parts" Because when you reach replaceble parts you usally are going to reach combustion,flight early so artillery can be countert quickly

I thinx many units have these problems they are at the wrong spot in the technology tree like the lancer and the cavalry unit or the musketman(to early obsolete)


I hope the expansion really balance these things out and with the new technologies change the tech tree
 
Ok after reading up some more on Artillery i guess the indirect fire is their trademark, which means they should be keeping it. Just put the range down to 2 and introduce a follow up tech with a howitzer Artillery that has range 3 again.

Artillery would not be uber strong anymore. If you commit to howitzer you need to bee-line more tech ressources punishing you more.

Howitzers would be pretty strong again, but youd get them later, leaving more room for potential attacks.

If we get a follow up for Lancers/Cav (like the new tank maybe?) these steps would help balance artillery.

currently Artillery changes (e.g. halts) the combat and strategy completely once deployed. This together with the way to good cost efficiency (for range3+indirect) is to much a progression in a single step.
 
Lancers are great against artillery. And they are somewhat cheaper.
 
Ok after reading up some more on Artillery i guess the indirect fire is their trademark, which means they should be keeping it. Just put the range down to 2 and introduce a follow up tech with a howitzer Artillery that has range 3 again.

I agree with this. I think really the only upgrade that's as game-changing as cannons->artillery is cavalry->tanks, and it looks like they may be introducing an intermediate unit to change that. A unit with indirect fire (plus the usual strength upgrade) would still be better enough compared to cannons to be worthwhile, and it would fit with the idea of expanding the industrial era, which I'm hopeful they'll do with the expansion.

Currently it seems like I generally spend ages in the Renaissance, then blitz through Industrial in a few turns, then finish the game in the Modern era, with enormous improvements happening very rapidly - if I'm playing Songhai or Spain I tend not to bother with cavalry, going straight from an army of knight UUs to an army of tanks, or even modern armour; something's wrong there. I barely even see the Industrial era so it could certainly stand to be expanded.

In a sense that could be deemed unrealistic (since accelerating change is the norm in reality), but then they keep pointing out that gameplay trumps realism.
 
I agree that artillery could do with a 3 to 2 range nerf. It's too easy to defend cities with artillery.
 
I don't know about multiplayer, but I never really got the impression that artillery was all that overpowered in single player at all. Bombers are the way to go, and they kinda make artillery look a little weak. I guess if you've got an opponent who is more willing to build air defence units, then it'd be a different story.
"Hopefully" ? Are not you beta tester MadDjinn ? :):):)

I'm sure that if he is, he won't be able to answer you. :p
 
I think artillery might have been a bit too important but not much. With the coming of new WW1 area-denial units (I hope that's what the machine gun and anti-tank gun will be) artillery will become somewhat more important though.

But since we're guessing here anyway. It looks like a WW-1 bomber unit is also coming, seems like a artillery counter unit to me.
 
If artillery are really that imbalanced, just take away all sight range from them except for one tile in either direction. This way they MUST HAVE a spotter ... just like real artillery.
 
If artillery lose there 3 range then the players with the kremlin and the great wall are even more difficult to break
 
Ok im comming from a Multiplayer Point-of-view here.

No offence to anyone but I stopped reading here. I think that this just shows me how much do I care about civ games multiplayer, well actually that same goes to every games multiplayer mode, except for online racing games obviously.
 
except for online racing games obviously.

Why this should be obvious? :confused:

Today, almost every big game has his multiplayer platform. Well Skyrim doesn't, but many modders are trying really hard to make this happen :)
 
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