Armies

Thalassicus · Jan 16, 2011

@Mentos
Thanks for pointing out the spearmen error, I've fixed it.
I'm hesitant to change great general movement speed since it's something primarily only the human player uses (so it'd give humans a buff), and might lessen the relative importance of the Khan UU.

@Tomice
I agree and went with that starting in 9.22beta. In addition to the morale effect, I think a larger up-front cost has the advantage of making rapid conquest more difficult to manage than a more gradual pace. Razing got nerfed now that captured cities only lose 1 population instead of half, and it likewise makes mass annexation a very difficult alternative. Puppeting becomes the best temporary solution, but isn't good to stick with in the long run due to the stiff penalties to culture and research puppets now get in the beta. I think these goals make sense:

Small, worthless cities can still be razed as easily as before.
Large cities are very punishing to try and raze en mass.
Puppeting is ideally good to deal with temporary conquest, but with the puppets weakened enough it's important to shift to annexation as soon as possible.

Polycrates · Jan 17, 2011

Thalassicus said:
@alpaca
That's the way I feel about it as well. I see several advantages of a high purchase cost:

AI naturally keeps a large standing army and low gold surplus, so changes to purchase costs should mostly affect the human player.

With low costs, a human can stock up thousands of gold and goad an AI into declaring war, then buy an instant army. Higher purchase costs mitigates this exploit.

There's a precedent from Civ IV where we'd keep some excess gold around to deal with "events." A sudden invasion and the need to buy forces is just as much an event as any. Requiring a little more gold on hand to deal with it wouldn't be unprecedented.

It's a pity the AI doesn't use gold-rushing, because it would be a good way for them to shore up their defences after their army has been wiped out. It seems to me like rush-buying slightly favours the defensive civ, who can whip up a military response quickly where it's needed, close to the battle lines - and can keep a defence going (which is otherwise hard when units take so long to build). The offensive civ is more likely to keep a standing army that upgrades to keep all the promos they've earned from all that war, as well as planning ahead enough that they're not scrambling to rush new units so much.

Rush buying seems kind of like drafting units, which I think is fair enough, and not something to be necessarily relegated to just the most desperate of times.
The BIG problem I have with drafting is that the units you rush buy start with all the xp from the barracks/armory/whatever in the city just like a unit you've built. That seems utterly wrong to me from both a realism and gameplay perspective, and favours just a single military city that can buy a unit every turn (plus the ones it actually makes), all of which have high-level promos. I'd be happy to keep the discount for spending gold on units instead of buildings if they didn't get the barracks xp.

Thalassicus · Jan 17, 2011

I'm very much looking forward to the day we can mod the AI... with just a month or two of work the CiV community will probably make the AI better by leaps and bounds. Basically all the major problems left in the game at this point are AI related. :\

=========

Here's some more information about the extended partisans/refugee mechanic in v.26 beta, if anyone's wondering about details of how it works.

City captured
1 guerrilla fighter rallies from refugees near the defender's capital (like earlier versions of Civ). The partisan created is a 0xp unit of the highest- resourceless type available to the defender. The goal is to help AIs recover after their initial defensive army is wiped out.
(This was added a few months ago in Combat v16)
If the city is at least 2, 1 pop dies in the siege.
If the city is still at least 2 after the deaths, 1 of refugees flee to the defender's capital.

This replaces vanilla's 50% population loss. In general this nerfs razing of large cities and gives the defender a slight advantage. At this stage there's 3 choices for the conqueror:

Raze the city (can take significantly longer for large cities now)
Puppet the city (now have 0/ and -50%).
Annex the city (courthouses +50% cost, but no maintenance)

If puppeting is chosen as a temporary solution (not enough funds or happiness to get a courthouse) we get these advantages/disadvantages once the decision is made to annex the puppet...

Gains:

Culture output of city doubles
/ enabled for city
Can control production, buy tiles, and buy buildings
Can change away from governor's gold focus
Can avoid population growth

Losses:

Increase in policy cost
More difficult to get national wonders

The new parts are highlighted. Since the policy cost increase is offset by increased culture output, basically the only downside now is added difficulty to get national wonders. Overall I think this makes annexation the ideal method for large cities, razing for small cities, and puppet states as a temporary solution if happiness is very low and there's not enough funds to purchase a courthouse.

Txurce · Jan 17, 2011

Thalassicus said:
Here's some more information about the extended partisans/refugee mechanic in v.26 beta, if anyone's wondering about details of how it works.

City captured

1 guerrilla fighter rallies from refugees near the defender's capital (like earlier versions of Civ). The partisan created is a 0xp unit of the highest- resourceless type available to the defender. The goal is to help AIs recover after their initial defensive army is wiped out.
(This was added a few months ago in Combat v16)

I like all this... and I think i may have figured out why I get a free unit every time I sell a city! Wanna make a guess, given the above?

Thalassicus · Jan 17, 2011

Oh right! I remember someone mentioning that once . . . the thing is, the game considers cities given away to have been "captured" even though it can only be considered a "capture" in the loosest meaning of the word. So when I do this...

Code:

Events.SerialEventCityCaptured.Add( doCityCapture );

Gifted cities apparently activate the SerialEventCityCaptured event. I coulda sworn I'd added finding a workaround to this to my todo list! :crazyeye:

I think a simple solution might be to check if a military unit exists in the city controlled by the new owner... I don't think there's any possible way such a unit could exist in the city when the city's gifted, since units cannot move into non-owned cities.

Txurce · Jan 17, 2011

Thalassicus said:
Oh right! I remember someone mentioning that once . . . the thing is, the game considers cities given away to have been "captured" even though it can only be considered a "capture" in the loosest meaning of the word. So when I do this...

Gifted cities apparently also activate the SerialEventCityCaptured event. I coulda sworn I'd added finding a workaround to this to my todo list!

I think a simple solution might be to check if a military unit exists in the city controlled by the new owner... is there any possible way such a thing could occur when a city's gifted?

I received a pikeman, and didn't have one in the city I sold. I think it's simply the workaround you didn't do yet. Since it's such a rare thing, I just delete the unit when it appears. I feel much better now that I know a bug isn't causing it.

By the way, selling a captured city back to a defeated adversary as part of the peace treaty can bring in wagons full of gold.

Tomice · Jan 18, 2011

I like the changes you described two posts above, Thal!

It really bothered me that so large amonts of population simply diappeared in vanilla. I'm glad you have some love for realism in addition to balance.

If I may suggest something in addition:

The "war fugitives" mechanic could be expanded on cities being razed. If I understood it correctly, the complete population of such a city dies right now. If a fraction of the population would flee to another city, this would be a nice buff for defenders and very realistic. It might be too much making them all migrate to the capital, though.

Thalassicus · Jan 18, 2011

The refugees can result in a very challenging and fun last-ditch battle in and around the capital.

In my latest game, I destroyed or captured 7 Aztec cities on my march up to Tenochtitlan, so by the time I got there it had swelled to 22 :c5citizen:

and had over ten units fortified around the city. Since it was surrounded by open terrain, it was very hard to advance. The battle lasted a very long time, and after the capital fell and its defenders destroyed, that was basically the end of Montezuma.

The big difference is that in vanilla once the AI's standing army is destroyed, it's a relatively easy cakewalk through their cities. Unless their capital is one of the closest cities to us (which happens sometimes) this basically allows for 2 big battles instead of 1.

Ahriman · Jan 18, 2011

Razing got nerfed now that captured cities only lose 1 population instead of half, and it likewise makes mass annexation a very difficult alternative. Puppeting becomes the best temporary solution, but isn't good to stick with in the long run due to the stiff penalties to culture and research puppets now get in the beta.

I'm really liking these changes.

Another thing to notice: city disorder is 1 turn per pop, so capturing a large city also means that city is stuck in unrest for a long time. I captured size 18 Arabian capital, was very hard to capture (took 3-4 trebuchets with siege promotion + other stuff), took ages to assimilate, but felt like a really juicy prize to have won. Which is awesome.

I think the refugee and few unit changes are fine as long as we keep some mechanic that limits ICS. If the AI has 10 junk size 4 cities, then they're going to get a huge payoff from losing these with not much loss.

* * *

It's a pity the AI doesn't use gold-rushing

Are you sure? I'm pretty sure I've observed the AI rush-buying units (and worse, I think it gets to use them on the turn it buys them).

because it would be a good way for them to shore up their defences after their army has been wiped out

I think you don't observe this much because the AI starts rush-buying units when it gets into a war, so by the time its army is really wiped out, it has no gold left.

Puppet the city (now have 0/ and -50%).

0 science seems far too harsh.
I would much prefer, say, a -30% gold, -30% science, -50% culture penalty.

CGPanama · Jan 18, 2011

Military units cost more to instant-buy, maintain, and upgrade
Feedback in the Combat thread please.

In vanilla it's rather easy to buy an army and keep it around the whole game, without much reason to actually build units (much less structures like the Forge and Arsenal). The goal is to shift things slightly so it's desirable to upgrade the most experienced units and replace the rest through traditional building practices. Unit production buildings now build units somewhat faster too (forge went from 15% to 25% for example).

Thal, First off thanks for all of the great work. I downloaded this mod back when it was v3 or 4 and all though it helped, I went off the mod as patches were released to give the game some run throughs to see how the balance was improved. After several weeks with the latest, I am finding though it is greatly improved I still want some balance improvements so have returned for another run at the mod.

Enough of a preface, now my comment/suggestion. I too have been bothered by the unit upgrade capability as being too powerful. Especially against the AI who does not do as good of a job at nurturing the growth of the units (my last game I had a former catapult that had reached mobile artillery with 4 range, multiple attacks and tons of bonuses which pretty much defeated an invading army single handedly - across a plain, not some narrow mountain pass). While reading your comment that I quoted I had an inspiration: Would it be possible to tie unit upgrades to military structures - upgrade a warrior to swordsman requires the unit to be in a city/or city's range with a armory; rifleman needs Military Academy, etc. This would require the original unit, the upgrade funds, infrastructure growth, as well as pulling the unit back to a location where it could be upgraded (avoiding the option of conquering a city remote from your core cultural base and instantly upgrading all of your invading units).

Anyway, just a though, and maybe a small contribution to your efforts. I plan on installing the mod this week and giving it another go. Thanks again for all of your hard work.

Panama

Ahriman · Jan 18, 2011

Would it be possible to tie unit upgrades to military structures - upgrade a warrior to swordsman requires the unit to be in a city/or city's range with a armory; rifleman needs Military Academy, etc. This would require the original unit, the upgrade funds, infrastructure growth, as well as pulling the unit back to a location where it could be upgraded (avoiding the option of conquering a city remote from your core cultural base and instantly upgrading all of your invading units).

This kind of thing tends to screw the AI really badly. AI never does a good job of moving a unit back to a specific location in order to upgrade. There's no code to do it now, and any new added code isn't likely to be very smooth.

Also, its not really "fun", it tends to feel like MM busywork.

Not worth it. Far better to do things like cost tweaks, which have the same impact on the AI as the human (or favor the AI, since it has more gold).

Txurce · Jan 18, 2011

Russia on Immortal with v25, WWGD and FR:

I skated by with a spearman and then a horseman until I built 5 longswordsmen. These were upgraded to rifles, and a few to infantry. The cost was close enough, and I had enough production cities, that I debated disbanding instead. I didn't for sentimental reasons.

Thalassicus · Jan 18, 2011

@CGPanama
Glad to see you're enjoying the mod! I agree upgrades are an issue, I've been trying to fiddle with them for quite some time now. One of the big problems, as you point out, is the player can get hugely experienced units but the AI cannot. You've got an interesting idea there that would sort of replicate "supply chains" for armies... this is one reason I sorta liked the way siege units were throwaway units in Civ IV, they were somewhat like "ammo" for an army.

Unfortunately, there's not really much we can do about upgrades other than minor cost tweaks, because our modding tools are limited for now.

Thalassicus · Jan 18, 2011

Txurce said:
I tend to build farms to excess, and wound up with six Maritimes that I kept all game (four after a late Astronomy).

(crossposted from the Leaders thread)

I'd like to ask the audience: is the +3 :c5citizen:

in

from capturing a Maritime not enough incentive to do so? I've recently been thinking about ways to boost it...

SSgtDuke · Jan 18, 2011

Tomice said:
The "war fugitives" mechanic could be expanded on cities being razed. If I understood it correctly, the complete population of such a city dies right now. If a fraction of the population would flee to another city, this would be a nice buff for defenders and very realistic.

If you're going to lose the happiness buildings, then I'd guess you'd want to lose the population as well. Otherwise it could snowball into raging unhappiness and even lessen the defender's chance of holding off the attack or forging any kind of comeback.

Though I think it could be interesting if the victims of a razing city were to flee to nearby cities and rally as weak/medium military units. I also don't like when you wipe out the army and then have a sea of defenceless cities to smash through. Something like this could keep the field battles going and provide some challenge as the conquest pushes on.

Thalassicus · Jan 18, 2011

I could easily add a mechanic where razing a city causes one or more partisans to appear at a nearby city, as an extension of the 1 partisan at the capital when a city is captured. Possibly 1 partisan + 1 per 10 :c5citizen:

or so...

Since the partisans have no experience or resource usage, they probably fit the weak/medium units goal.

Your point about happiness is why I've kept the refugee population minimal, and since partisans are another thing entirely we have more freedom to play around with that.

Ahriman · Jan 18, 2011

Thalassicus said:
(crossposted from the Leaders thread)

I'd like to ask the audience: is the +3 in from capturing a Maritime not enough incentive to do so? I've recently been thinking about ways to boost it...

Maritimes feel reasonably balanced atm, particularly since something has changed that seems to be letting them field much larger/more effective armies than in past, so the benefits *other* than the food bonus (strategic resource, luxury, minor war help) can be more effective.

Maybe the city state tech costs didn't change when everyone else's did? Maybe its the TP yield, or something?

Txurce · Jan 18, 2011

Thalassicus said:
(crossposted from the Leaders thread)

I'd like to ask the audience: is the +3 in from capturing a Maritime not enough incentive to do so? I've recently been thinking about ways to boost it...

If what you're asking is if it's still a no-brainer to ally with a Maritime rather than conquer it... I think the answer is Yes.

Thalassicus · Jan 18, 2011

@Ahriman
I believe it's siege units' new lack of an iron requirement. I've noticed their armies seem to have doubled in size with about half their forces as siege units now, so basically just added a bunch of seige units. Those are quite good at defending fixed positions, so it's a nice (and totally unexpected) buff.

@Txurce
Yes, that's what I was asking. Hmm... so... just considering extremes here:

In vanilla maritimes are obviously bad to capture.
On the other extreme, if capturing Maritimes gave like +10 in the capital and +5 in other cities, it'd be silly-overpowered.

So it's a matter of finding some good middle ground, perhaps +5 :c5citizen:

/capital and +1 :c5citizen:

/other?

Keep in mind if neighbors have a quest to capture the CS it's +120 :c5influence:

when completed, the equivalent of about a 1500 :c5gold:

instant cash infusion per citystate asking for it (value increases over time). I find it's worth capturing Hostile citystates if 2+ neighbors ask, since hostile influence degrades faster than other personalities.

Txurce · Jan 19, 2011

Thalassicus said:
@Txurce
Yes, that's what I was asking. Hmm... so... just considering extremes here:

In vanilla maritimes are obviously bad to capture.

On the other extreme, if capturing Maritimes gave like +10 in the capital and +5 in other cities, it'd be silly-overpowered.

So it's a matter of finding some good middle ground, perhaps +5/capital and +1/other?

Keep in mind if neighbors have a quest to capture the CS it's +120 when completed, the equivalent of about a 1500 instant cash infusion per citystate asking for it. I find it's worth capturing Hostile citystates if their neighbors ask, since their influence degrades faster than other personalities.

I think part of the bias in favor of not conquering Maritimes is an accepted belief ingrained from vanilla that they are better left to be potential allies. On higher levels it's very hard to grow at a rate close to the AI without Maritime help. There is also a legitimate diplo hit for conquering one. To be honest, I don't even think about it... and of course I should. In my next game, if an opportunity arises where a Maritime (or any) CS within my range is targeted by another CS, I'll go for it - then report back as to how it works out.

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