Combat Roles

Goals

My warfare goals are:

• Combat roles
  Each unit has primary and secondary roles. The primary role is something the unit is better at than any other unit. Secondary roles are other things the unit is decent at. Primary roles should be very obvious and powerful, since units without a strong primary role are seldom built (like vanilla Lancers).
• Reward combined arms
  Mixing units with different roles is more challenging and fun than winning with 1 type of unit.
• Common and Strong units
  Common units are the majority of our troops. They are less expensive than Strong units, which are the rare and powerful core of the army. Strong units usually require strategic resources.

The Vanguard unit class is the common footsolder counterpart to strong iron units. Vanguards better sight and speed than other unit classes, letting it fill the Detection role very well. We can specialize vanguards into three powerful and useful secondary roles:

• Scouts
• Medics
• Defense

Background

In military forces the vanguard is the leading part of an advancing formation, deploying first or in front of the main army. The roles of a vanguard are to seek out the enemy and secure ground. The word "vanguard" is from the original division of European armies into three wards: the Van, Main, and Rear. Avant-garde means "front guard" in French.

In the Communitas Expansion Pack armies are designed to combine a few expensive and powerful units (often requiring strategic resources), supported by a larger quantity of cheaper light infantry. In VEM the Vanguard Units are the forefront of these light infantry, sent to the front lines closest to threats like cities and armies. Fog of war and the potential for enemies to purchase things in cities creates unknown threats. The vanguard therefore has a high likelihood of injury or death from unexpected attacks, so they need to be:

• Fast - to get out in front
• Cheap - in case they die

No existing unit adequately met these criteria in the early game. Mounted units are fast, but expensive and valuable Strategic Resource units, painful to lose. Swords are slow, expensive, and valuable. Specialists like anti-mounted units are less expensive and require no resources, but are slow, and building many of these makes mounted units less viable.





The Communitas expansion pack features a fully formed Vanguard Class:

1. Scout
2. Levy (Medieval)
3. Skirmisher (Renaissance)
4. Light Infantry (Industrial)
5. Airborne (Modern) (Paratroopers)

Vanguard Units have lower strength, cost, and maintenance than strategic unit counterparts. Vanguards are stronger when next to an friendly military unit, and start with a defense bonus. Their promotion lines specialize a vanguard as a Scout, Medic, or Defensive unit.

Scouts
Recon 1: +1 sight, ignores terrain cost.
Recon 2: +1 , withdraws from combat.

Medics
Medic: Heals nearby units.

Defense
Trenches 1: +15% defense on Open Terrain, +1 sight
Trenches 2: +15% defense on Open Terrain, +1
Trenches 3: +20% defense on Open Terrain, +1 sight
Guerrilla 1: +15% defense on Rough Terrain, +1 sight
Guerrilla 2: +15% defense on Rough Terrain, +1
Guerrilla 3: +20% defense on Rough Terrain, +1 sight

Most vanguards specialize their role with the basic promotions above, while the following utility promotions are available for other purposes:

• March
  Heals self every turn.
• Cover 1, Cover 2
  Increases defense against ranged units..
• Survivalist
  +1 healing outside friendly territory
  No movement cost to pillage.

The lightly armed Vanguard units are now the only ones with the Medic promotion available. It fits their "first responder" role. Recon combat withdrawal is useful for wartime scouts, but on the front lines, breaking ranks makes units behind the Vanguard vulnerable. This could be a liability when protecting high-value land targets like Catapults. Survivalism is useful in the pillage-frenzy tactic outlined by GoodRevrnd in the strategy forum.






The melee promotions are similar to military rank insignia used by most armed forces, so I searched for similar iconography. Another common theme is horizontal stripes like South Korea:



A flat line made sense for the flat-land Trenches promotions, and following the pattern of Shock/Drill, I added a small rounded hill on the top for Guerrilla. Shock and Drill have an angled chevron symbolizing the attack bonuses they have. Trenches and Guerrilla have no chevron, indicating their lack of an attack bonus.

Ingame I found a simple flat line looked too similar to equals or minus signs. I therefore added small points to the top symbolizing the crenelations of a guard tower, or borders of a trench. As we advance in ranks it resembles increasingly tall towers - one with an open roof, the other with a covered roof. I also added a slightly wider gap between the bars of the second rank to make it easily distinguishable at a glance.

The towers represent the defense and detection roles of the vanguard.

To clarify this first: I do like what you're doing here, and I have no problem with new stuff. I also know about the classical/medieval era dilemma where we don't have some kind of basic, ressourceless unit after the warrior, let's call it "warrior-musketman gap".

That's first a problem in that someone without horses or iron can rely solely on spears and pikes, which are either too weak to allow meaningful defence or so strong that they make horse units obsolete; giving them only a minimal edge vs. mounted would work, but is also a boring solution. Secondly, it interrupts promotion lines or forces them to follow weird paths (upgrading ressourceless units to iron units and then back to ress-less is questionable IMO).


But your current suggestion doesn't seem quite right yet. Apart from the aforementioned gap, we do have basic, ress-less units. To me, this seems like a clear hole to fill. There are other fields where units are missing, of course, but your plan of pulling one line of consecutive units through history to fill gaps in various fields while leaving the other questionable upgrade paths as they are doesn't seem like the final solution.



If you're willing to add several new units, what about trying to fill the existing upgrade paths/lines of units without adding a new one?

- basic ress-less
- elite ressource-consumers
- ranged
- siege
- heavy mounted (using ress)
- counter-mounted
- recon

Of course, I'm not talking about having just a few types of units where only the strenght and cost numbers change through the course of history. My point is: if you wan't to get this done right, don't be shy to change vanilla unit roles/upgrade paths instead of adding a band-aid all-purpose unit type.

I know that's difficult, however. Since there's few historical counterparts for swordmen, archers or spearmen during the renaissance, we might have to accept that some upgrade lines are much shorter than others...

The main goal is a unit line that fills the role of a vanguard. What I discussed on the Militia thread about resourceless units was only beneficial side-effect of the goal, not the goal itself. I realized my mistake after talking with my brother about this subject for a few hours. The real goal was mentioned only briefly on the Combat page of the website documentation. How could anyone ever figure it out from a tiny snippet hidden away in pages of information!

Since March I've tried converting existing units to meet this goal, but gradually realized making a dedicated unit line is a better approach. Existing units like Anti-Tank and Anti-Mounted already have the Special role as unit counters, and Longswords/Rifles are in the Melee category.

I really like this re-imagining of the support class - your perspective in the recent discussions really falls into place in this light. The defense-only promotions are interesting, but I worry that it's too heavy on movement and sight (one could theoretically get 4 move/5 sight units!). So maybe remove some of those buffs and replace them with some other effects, such as:

• Ranged defense bonus (a la Cover)
• Free pillage (no movement cost)
• An evade chance like the Slinger's (I know you're not crazy about the effect, but..)
• Embarked defense
• Move after attack (overlaps with mounted too much?)

Or perhaps combine two of these into another standalone promo. One idea - Raider promotion: free pillage and move after attack or +1 healing outside of friendly territory (removing the effect from the base unit). The explorer promotion seems very powerful, perhaps it should be split into two promos or moved back, requiring R/G I.

All in all, good work - I can't wait to "explore" lol these units' capabilities!

It's difficult to get 5 or more promotions before the Industrial era, especially for non-ranged units with low strength. By the Industrial era we have units with 5 moves (tanks) and 6 sight (fighter planes) without any promotions. I don't think it will be a problem, but that's something we can figure out for certain in testing.

Standalone promotions would probably be best for the effects you list - I'm not sure how those could be made into good 1-2-3 promotion lines.

I've also been thinking about which unique units might be appropriate as Vanguard class. One obvious possibility is Washington's Minutemen... maybe a Renaissance-era conscript that starts with the Explorer promotion.

It just seems somewhat (no offense) uninspired, having each effect boost movement or sight (and having both lines mirrored exactly, but that's less important). I understand the utility of the movement and sight bonuses but I think it would be more fun to let the promotions have more variety and flavor.

[I tend to think about "fun" first, then balance, but have always tried to phrase my responses in these forums in terms of balance - perhaps a habit I should try to drop, given your statement in the "Goals" thread.]

EDIT - Forgot to ask earlier: Do the vanguard units have the road-building ability?

Seek said:

It just seems somewhat (no offense) uninspired, having each effect boost movement or sigh. I understand the utility of the movement and sight bonuses but I think it would be more fun to let the promotions have more variety and flavor.

Click to expand...

This is why I'm against the Scout being the base of this line, but I'm warming up to it with the Ranger/Guerrilla promotions. I still vote for a Songhai promotion, maybe with Explorer II. It would be situational use through Renaissance but probably ignored after that (but so would Explorer I to be honest).

I think it's dangerous to have +1 move on the first level G/R. Because of the low defensive bonus I would ALWAYS take one point in each of those just for a super speed unit. I think the movement boost needs to be moved to the second level so you're actually committing to a line, and I'm not sure I care for being able to stack that much sight either. I think the unit just needs one more base sight than normal, the Explorer line gives extra sight at I & II, and G/R are your defense lines with the +1 movement at level II (+15/+10,+1m/+15). Even if they're weak on attack we don't want them *surpassing* cavalry on mobility.

Here some possible names:

(conscript)
skirmisher
tirailleur
voltigeurs (Around 1800 in armies of french allies)
dismounted cavalrymen
dragoons (before they got a purley light cav force, dragoons fought on foot using their horses only for mobility. Their primary role was to garanty order and stop riots)
Jäger (in german speaking countries)
Grenzer (K. u. K.Austria-Hungary)
Hunters
Rangers
Guerrilla
Irregulars
Salvagers
Naval Infantry or Marines (Marines where used as auxilliar Units in land battles, I think they are the roots of the modern Marine Corps like the USMC)
Mounted Infantry (again the horses are used for mobility not in battle)
Merceneries
Swashbucklers (Let them look like Zorro ^^)
Swiss Guard/Swiss mercenary regiments (They where used in various armies until late 18th century, even until today the protect the pope)
Irish Regiments (Served in many countries, before it was made illegal in 1745)
Gendarmery (In the 18th century modern "men-at-arms", today more a police forces)
Carabinieri

(Recruit)
light infantry
light mechanized infantry(imagen them with half tracks as they should be more mobile)
Army Rangers
Army Scouts
Guerrilla
Partisan
Paramilitary Forces
National Guard
Insurgents
Commandos (Also a great game with ww2 setting)
special froces
special police units
light recon
Engineer Regiment
Demolition unit
Mercenaries

Just a little brainstorming, so don´t mind that some are rly bad.

I've made the changes suggested by GoodRevrnd and Seek. I've also renamed the new units to "Skirmisher" and "Light Infantry" as suggested by Herb0815.

There's historical precedent for light infantry that use horses for travel and dismount to fight. This was how most cavalry conducted combat in WW2. I think it's okay for light infantry in CiV to move as fast (with promotions) as those that stay on the horse. This only applies to the post-Renaissance period though, since before then horses were proportionately less common and more expensive, owned mainly by nobles like Knights.

Seek said:

Do the vanguard units have the road-building ability?

Click to expand...

I could do that if you like, though as Sneaks said, we don't want to load too many things onto one unit.

Roadbuilding is also done on the unit itself, not a promotion... so I couldn't offer it through a promotion. The Legion's roadbuilding "promotion" is actually just a dummy promotion that does nothing but inform the player the unit has that ability. If the effect could be on the promotion itself, I think it'd be really fun for all of Rome's mainline strategic soldiers to be capable of building roads... would have done that months ago.

GoodRevrnd said:

a Songhai promotion, maybe with Explorer II.

Click to expand...

By this do you mean, give Songhai units Explorer II for free?

Thalassicus said:

By this do you mean, give Songhai units Explorer II for free?

Click to expand...

I mean give Explorer II the river warlord perk.
or i guess you're calling it recon now. although it might be too much w/ the additional perks we've stacked on now.

btw i would have loved to have the new levy unit in my current england game to assist longbows.

Your depth of reason for your choices has motivated me to no longer lurk and to contribute to the discussion.

I see you establishing long term continuity with this unit. This is good, as I loathed giving up my scouting upgrades when it was time to upgrade to musketmen.

I also see a player making a choice between training a huge number of people poorly and making them damage resistant due to being a giant mob, or hiring the specialists in the community that know how to track or hunt and in later eras know how to navigate/read maps. This differentiates between the two very different roles of the conscript.

Until I came about the logic this way I was having difficulty imagining a group of conscripts being good at damage resistance or being more or less special agents.

I hope this aids in the rationalization of your choices.

Please do keep up the excellent work.

I've changed promotions around a bit and posted a visual promotion tree.

Based on healinbear's feedback I've returned the name of the unit class back to Vanguard Class (was Conscript Class for a day or two). While conscripts were often used as garrisons or sent to the front lines, special forces like commandos have also been vanguards, so the term "vanguard" is more broad and probably fits better. The general term "vanguard" also makes sense for this type of city garrison, since I move them out of cities to intercept enemies like barbarians - they're first responders.

I also changed the name of one promotion line from Explorer 1-2 to Recon 1-2. The word "explorer" generally implies exploring unknown land, while "recon" usually refers to battlefield reconnaissance, so recon is more accurate.

I'm trying to get accurate names for all these things and welcome suggestions.

@GoodRevrnd
What I'd really like is to increase embarked speed with the recon promotions... but unfortunately there's not an option for promotions to do that. Since none of the recon promotions help at sea, I'm okay with giving either one Defensive Embarkation (the Songhai effect). I've added it to Recon 1.

So as I'm looking at the promotion list - I'm imagining what the starting statistics for this unit are going to be. Before copper and the barracks are we going to be building scouts without the ability to ignore terrain?

If you default them to having recon 1 then they aren't really a mob of damage resistant cannon fodder. They're something much more.

I'm resistant to the defends while embarked for the same reason.

The promotions will define what we do with this unit, but in order to not change the game significantly the scout has to pop out with no promotions and be able to do what a scout does, but if you do it this way and add these defense buffs and movement buffs they aren't scouts.

On the other hand I can see a recon 1 - medic - recon 2 unit being a great addition to the game. And with those promotions and the rules for the helicopter (with which you replaced the paratrooper) you get a med evac unit which is also very cool.

But I can't imagine a tough helicopter - so once again I see the promotions doing some odd things.

I think "attempts retreat" and "defend while embarked" should maybe be switched. They both feel too powerful for level 1 honestly, but stacking them both on level 2 weighs to heavily on one promotion and adding a level 3 makes you wait to long to get these traits. Probably just best the way it is. You're right though, if you could just do faster embarked movement that would probably be best at level 1 and we wouldn't be having this discussion.

Scouts are unchanged - weak in combat, no sight bonus, and start with "ignore terrain" as an attribute that does not persist when upgraded. The Vanguard role will mainly start in the medieval era. I'm doing this because of how difficult early game balance is... there's not much wiggle room when the numbers are as low as 4 and 6, and early changes have a disproportionate impact on the game as a whole. I swap the promotions for all units after the Scout because ignore terrain by default on everything would lessen the importance of various terrain movement costs.

However, due to their very low cost Scouts will still be useful as city garrisons.

Embarkation isn't available until the classical era when we have the 2nd promotion anyway. It's somewhat useful for later in the game though... which might be a good thing, since units with Recon 1-2 will be rather weak in land combat. I can also change the withdraw likelihood. It's currently at a maximum of 80%, which drops based on terrain and the movement speed of the attacker. Something else I could do is the Viking land/sea transition movement bonus instead of defensive embarkation.

I also realized the same thing you did (defense doesn't make sense for a helicopter) so I changed it back to a paratrooper. I'm not really happy with that as a front-line unit either from a realism perspective, but I do think the paradrop promotion fits great for the vanguard role from a gameplay perspective. I'd like a different name for the Paratrooper, but I'm not sure what to call it, if anyone has ideas.

What'd be really fantastic transport helicopters instead of the attack helicopters - highly mobile troops that deploy on the ground to fight. These would make perfect sense for modern Vanguards, but I don't think it's feasible in Civ, even from a conceptual perspective...

You mention the term first responders earlier. The idea of responding to barbarians was your intent, but this talk of the medic promotion made me think of fire departments and EMTs and militarily: coremen, and the WWI volunteer ambulance corps.

The paradrop ability does what you're talking about and fits as far as a fast deployment unit, but historically this is not how rank and file deploy.

The helicopter as only a gunship in civ leaves off the many major roles it's had in history. They're used extensively at sea to detect subs. The air cav was famous in Vietnam for delivering troops quickly in nearly impossible conditions. They are scouts, and are used to paint targets with lasers for laser guided bombing runs. We've already mentioned that they would make cool medical units - buzzing towards the most wounded troops to help heal them at the end of the turn.

But as it is we're trying to balance the existing game not re-write it. Makes me wonder if the developers had these same discussions.

I just found thread on the download page. As usual, I feel that you really listened to the feedback you received, and came up with a system that augmented it. This looks fantastic - fantastic enough for me to quit my 9.1 game with Germany (as usual). "Vanguard" and all of the unit names work for me, with "levy" being the least aggro.

What looks off at first to me is the "embark" promotion. Why would a lightly-armed unit have this, but more heavily-armed units wouldn't?

I would also more or less echo GoodRvrnd and propose that Recon 1 and 2 be 2d and 3d-tier promotions.

Seek said:

I really like this re-imagining of the support class - your perspective in the recent discussions really falls into place in this light. The defense-only promotions are interesting, but I worry that it's too heavy on movement and sight (one could theoretically get 4 move/5 sight units!). So maybe remove some of those buffs and replace them with some other effects, such as:

• Ranged defense bonus (a la Cover)
• Free pillage (no movement cost)
• An evade chance like the Slinger's (I know you're not crazy about the effect, but..)
• Embarked defense
• Move after attack (overlaps with mounted too much?)

Or perhaps combine two of these into another standalone promo. One idea - Raider promotion: free pillage and move after attack or +1 healing outside of friendly territory (removing the effect from the base unit). The explorer promotion seems very powerful, perhaps it should be split into two promos or moved back, requiring R/G I.

Click to expand...

I agree at first glance that the danger of too many 5-tile movers too early in the game is pretty unlikely. The promotions you have also make sense, mirroring as they do the Melee promotions. I don't think these units should be more interesting than the rest, even though they're new and correspondingly fun. That said, side promotions along what Seek suggested seems like a good idea to me.

Recon 1
+1 sight range
Ignores borders & terrain cost

Recon 2
+1 movement
Defends when embarked
Can traverse mountains and ice

Recon 3
+1 sight range
Attempts to retreat when attacked

-or-

Recon 1
+1 sight range
Can traverse mountains and ice
Ignores terrain cost

Recon 2
+1 movement
Defends when embarked
Ignores borders

Recon 3
+1 sight range
Attempts to retreat when attacked


Slightly more balanced with effects, prevents Recon from hitting march faster than other lines (not that they really benefit as much). I like option 2 *slightly* better, but you can make good arguments for both (and I can also understand if you don't want to disaggregate the border/terrain effects). Realism Arument: Should Recon really be able to traverse mountains/ice at level 1 when a real world parallel would be not having the appropriate tech/experience to do this? Gameplay Argument: Do we want Vanguard units that are built with a more combat focus to go G/R II and take Recon, making a more combat effective unit that can ignore borders? Also, since Vanguards start with base sight IDK if Recon 3 adds too much sight in total.

What looks off at first to me is the "embark" promotion. Why would a lightly-armed unit have this, but more heavily-armed units wouldn't?

Click to expand...

Because if you're specing down the Recon line it like focusing on being explorers. It would be like the difference between zipping around in LCSs and transporting an actual army in transport ships (kind of bad example considering how much firepower an LCS can have, I know). You have to remember that these units' strength is still disproportionately low so this will allow them to often survive unfortunate encounters at sea but they will still be beat up for it.

I see the embarked defense promotion more as a gameplay thing than a realism thing:

1) It helps lonely scouts across the world in the medieval era to cross over to far away continents or close jumps to coast islands.
2) In case of a sea invasion, vanguard units would actually be in front, as they have a little defense ;-)

GoodRevrnd said:

Because if you're specing down the Recon line it like focusing on being explorers. It would be like the difference between zipping around in LCSs and transporting an actual army in transport ships (kind of bad example considering how much firepower an LCS can have, I know). You have to remember that these units' strength is still disproportionately low so this will allow them to often survive unfortunate encounters at sea but they will still be beat up for it.

Click to expand...

- No reason for Explorers to be tougher, either... and they're not Explorers.

- Low innate strength is not a good reason to singularly survive a sea attack.

mitsho said:

I see the embarked defense promotion more as a gameplay thing than a realism thing:

1) It helps lonely scouts across the world in the medieval era to cross over to far away continents or close jumps to coast islands.
2) In case of a sea invasion, vanguard units would actually be in front, as they have a little defense ;-)

Click to expand...

1. Helping lonely scouts across the ocean (and all other uses) break a universal Civ5 rule for all standard land units.

2. Vanguard units can still be out in front... and die like the cannon fodder they are. Giving them embarkation would create the additional problem of protecting the units behind them long enough to land in many cases.

In addition, embarkation largely benefits the human, making the game even easier.