The biggest problems of current combat system

Which of the features mentioned in the poll are - in your opinion - the most unbalanced/annoying elements of combat and unit system in Civilization 5?

I didn't include AI problems because they are obvious. I mean problems of the entire technological tree of units and balance between them.

Krajzen said:

Which of the features mentioned in the poll are - in your opinion - the most unbalanced/annoying elements of combat and unit system in Civilization 5?

I didn't include AI problems because they are obvious. I mean problems of the entire technological tree of units and balance between them.

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Composites wreck the early game balance. But my biggest gripe is we don't have a cavalry archer line, making promotions on keshiks etc. useless in the long term.

I think the main problem is swordsmen. They are weaker than pikes and come with a far less desirable tech which also happens to be rather expensive. I would buff their strength by 2 (more for Rome). Same could be said for long swordsmen.

Units vs units, there's no real problem or balance. IMHO, issue is city strength + defense bombardment which make melee units useless. This is where 1upt reach its limit.

Actually, the biggest problem isn't on the poll:

Over-powered city bombardment.

Of those you list, I voted for overpowered cb/xb, but that is not my biggest complaint!

I am actually more bothered that (1) cover doesn’t help protect ranged units against city, and (2) pikes/lancers don’t get a bonus when attacking mounted ranged units.

After those bugs, I think the biggest problem is that early siege is relatively underpowered compared to their contemporary units. (Also not one of your poll choices.) People would hate it, but I think the easiest (and correct) balance fix is to take away the extra range that archers/cb/xb get. That would nerf raged quite a lot, but they are so OP as-is. It would really shake combat up, but would IMHO be a net plus.

Also, getting indirect fire plus extra range is too big a jump in the siege line. I guess I would like to see indirect fire as a promotion that the early siege line (and other units) might earn.

Memoryjar said:

Units vs units, there's no real problem or balance.

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I respectfully disagree as I think early siege is underpowered compared to their contemporary units. Also, its just crazy that gats/mg have less range than archer. I agree that gats/mg/bazooka are well balanced against their contemporaries.

IMHO, issue is city strength + defense bombardment which make melee units useless.

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joncnunn said:

Actually, the biggest problem isn't on the poll: Over-powered city bombardment.

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I don’t get this. Melee units with cover can take a beating from cities. A few melee units with siege can conquer cities with little or no ranged support. Cover should work on ranged/siege units, but that is a different problem than city bombardment being OP. City bombardment power is just about right IMHO. I am not the best player, but I frequently lose cities to the AI. I certainly would enjoy the game less if my own cities were weaker! If anything, I would prefer having early cities stronger!

Also I was reading about cavalry and...

Although the lance had its greatest impact in the charge, lancers were vulnerable against other cavalry, as the lance proved a clumsy and ineffective weapon (compared to the sabre) at close quarters.

So WHY THEY ARE ANTI CAVALRY UNITS in this game? This is just ridiculous!

It should rather go

knight - lancer - cavalry
pikeman - dragoon - cuirassier

right?

I also chose overpowered CBs/XBs, but that is vastly oversimplifying the problem. I actually think the problem is having a range of 2. It totally distorts the nature of early combat. And, because they can fire as far as catapults/trebs/cannon, people use them for besieging cities. And then complain that city bombardment is too strong. But, archery units *should* be useless against a walled city!

Here's a proposed solution:
- Archery units should be 1-range, with higher base strength like gatling guns. They would still be tactically impressive versus melee units; head-to-head, back-and-forth, they will damage the melee unit twice as often. To give melee a chance, archers shouldn't get terrain or flanking bonuses. Cover should stay useless vs. bombardment - if you want to take a city, build siege units or just slam it with waves of melee with cover.
- To that end, cover should be a 1st-rank promotion for melee units. (In fact promotions should be more liberal in general - what's the logic behind making a unit train in a particular terrain type before they can train as medics??) Also there should probably be a 'city raider' promotion for swordsman, like in Civ4.
- To protect siege units from bombardment, increase their ranged strength by 50% and drop the city attack bonus from 200 to 100. Their attack will be identical, but they'll survive bombardment better, and they'll still be weak against melee.

This will make cities weaker, because they will lose their de facto 2nd bombardment from a garrisoned archer. But they will also be stronger, because they won't be subject to ranged archery attacks. And it would create tactical reasons to change up your play style a bit, using other units for city garrisons.

This could probably be done pretty easily with a mod... Krajzen, your stuff is great, get on it!

overpowered archery in early game. in my current game i conquered delhi with 4 archers (not even comp), starting warrior and a scout without losing a single unit

Krajzen said:

It should rather go
knight - lancer - cavalry
pikeman - dragoon - cuirassier
right?

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Further along those lines: I was wondering the other day what the Longsword unit is supposed to represent. Isn't that basically a knight? Didn't knights historically fight as often or more unmounted, as mounted? Why does it require a different tech than knights?? Plus, muskets with bayonets really took the place of pikemen, not archers or swordsmen. (Swordsmen/knights pretty much destroyed early musketmen/arquebusiers, until the spread of flintlock technology.)

So I'd really suggest something like:

horseman - lancer - cavalry - Great War infantry
pikeman - musketman - rifleman - Great War infantry
swordsman - knight - cuirassier - Great War infantry

... with stat tweaks as necessary. Knights could maybe be strong 3-move units... the mobile infantry of their time. And like in Civ4, nothing should upgrade to tank or helicopter units - those should be new. For balance, they should be stronger as well. Maybe just drop Great War infantry to 45 strength, and infantry to 60. (That would help marines, too! See, we're fixing everything here!)

joncnunn said:

Actually, the biggest problem isn't on the poll:

Over-powered city bombardment.

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Which is under-powered in pre-catapult era...

I have a balance mod that gives Archers a 20% City/Wounded unit attack penalty. It also grants Catapults/Trebs/Cannons automatic Cover promotion. It helps in making the combat a lot more interesting. Furthermore, it has nerfed cities that don't build defensive buildings as well. Great way to fix some of the biggest issues IMO.

...could you link this mod?

Only 1 range of gatlings, machine guns and bazooka

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I've gone the other way: reduced range for the other units (with limited stacking by type added)

@Krajzen : You may want to try R.E.D. Xtended to fill some gaps. And C.S.O. if you want to try something different for combats

Melee units turning into helicopter gunships always remind me of this:

@Gedemon - I know and appreciate your mod

@Resurrection -



But yeah, current anti - mounted line is awful.

Spearman -> Pikeman
[both units are weak against anything other than cavalry... useless against composites/crossbowmen]

-> Lancer

This unit is wrong on so many levels.

1) Lancers historically were WEAK against cavalry. In fact cavalry with lances should be countered by cavalry with pistols/sabres, according to historical post - medieval warfare.

2) It is very good against knights... But pikemen is already designed to counter knights who are medieval unit! And 'anti cavalry' Lancers are bad against Cavalry

3) They have the same combat strenght as musketmen but they are awful at defense, expensive, require horses, bad at capturing cities and have awful upgrade path (later I will comment that). They only upside: good movement speed.

4)

...Slow infantry pikemen -> Fast horse lancers -> Slow anti tank artillery -> Super fast helicopter?! This entire path is insane

First we get pikemen who are massacred by everything except knights (...and knights have double movement so hunting them with pikemen is de facto impossible), later lancers who are massacred by everything including cavalry , lancers have no upgrade for VERY long time (while all other units from renaissance have upgrades soon) and are useless until finally getting to the Anti Tank Guns...

...which are also almost useless units AT guns are good against tanks - but tanks can always escape them easily - and awful against everything else, including Great War Infantry. Also slow and melee. Jesus Christ.

Finally they upgrade into helicopters which are very good to killing artillery/tanks/pillaging... But nothing more.

Yeah.

I would completely abandon the entire Anti - Mounted line as Mounted units aren't even so powerful to counter them so much, make spearmen/pikemen separate 'early melee' upgrading into musketmen, make knights upgrading into lancers and AT guns/helicopters separate units like carriers. The end.

1) i like the idea of spearmen > pikemen > musketman. just makes more sense to me. (sidenote, i would make the Tercio a pikeman replacement (so comes with civil service) with the strength of a musketman).

2)for cavalry, i think horse > knight > cuirasseur > helicopters makes sense. cav can still sorta work as scouts/recon (which makes sense), but they are no longer front line troops. however, MUCH later you can upgrade them to "air cav" if you want... but i would make the upgrade cost even higher. essentially, you keep your cav around for 2 eras, but that doesnt make too much sense to me.

3) anti tanks should be scrapped. theres no reason to have this unit. it doesnt make sense to have a division of anti tank guns. better left as a promotion.

4) anti-cav should NOT have a bonus against range-cav. the whole point of mounted archery is that it provides mobility that slower, less flexible infantry can't deal with. see carrhae, the mongols, etc. i think simply having range-cav not receive defensive promotions is enough.

5) however, range cav should be its own line. it makes no sense for all civs to have one unit at the beginning of the game and thats it. i think chariot archers should either be removed (for consistency) or be fleshed out to upgrade to the horse archer (no longer a hunnic unique) with construction (same tech as composite bowmen), which in turn should upgrade to a carabinier (current "cavalry" unit). but i think this should be the end of this unit line. similarly, i would make this line have a range of 1, but be able to move after attack. seems more justified to have the 1 range here, as the move after attack makes these units fill an ACTUAL role.

5a) the huns should just get a special horse archer that either has extra strength, weakens nearby units, makes units retreat [a la winged hussar] or comes with siege. the mongol keshik should be a special upgrade of the standard horse archer, which comes with chivalry and actually replaces the knight. (basically how it is now) the extra strength, speed, experience gain, and khans should make the keshik remain as powerful as it currently is.

6) tanks. landship> armor (current tank) > Main Battle Tank
tanks should be new with the landships. they should have a higher strength then they do, have a special "armor plating" promotion that reduces damage taken from all types of infantry (ranged and melee... unless they have the "anti-tank" promotion, which negates "armor plating"), and they should ALL have the same ability as both austria's hussar and poland's winged hussar. ie, they should have crazy high flanking damage modifiers, and push other units back. if the opposing unit can not retreat, they take a much higher amount of damage and cannot move next turn (see the R.E.D. WW2 mod concept). that way tanks can be used to paralyze and cut off an enemies army, allowing your infantry/paratroopers/artillery to get in position. (german panzers should come with blitz, have a higher strength/even more flanking damage, and have a smaller penalty vs cities)

7) ranged units: archer > crossbowman > gattling gun > machine gun > TOW infantry (instead of bazooka)
all of these units should have range of 2. thats how they were used (though its arguable with the crossbowman...) and i think tactically it makes sense to have them keep this throughout. ranged cav. caught within an archers range should be at their mercy. infantry running through a line of MG fire should suffer! i dont think it makes sense having a composite bowman, since few civs in game actually used composite bows, and this unit takes away from the importance of melee units in this era. (archer units should have access to cover btw. think pavises)

8) siege. stays as is for upgrades because all siege units should have a range of 3 until artillery, which should be the first with range 4. (cannons should be the first to have a higher strength in general, so they can do better against melee units like riflemen and GW infantry, just like in history, as well as cities.) however, i would give all pre-cannon siege units a much reduced strength and an even higher percentage vs cities. they will clearly have a role as anti-city units, though they will not be so good against units, which makes sense. (exceptions would be the hwacha and the ballista, which should be strong against units too)

9) cities: should have range of 3. (and a slightly reduced strength)
think about it. this way, you need to plan your sieges better if you dont want to lose your army. you bring melee units (good bombard defense) up first to absorb incoming fire. you follow up with archers that can still range attack cities from a distance (which makes sense... this is the major argument against archers being range-1 units IMO). you only bring up your vulnerable siege equipment after you have the situation under control. the final stage of the siege is archers AND siege units firing at the city while melee units wait for their chance to storm it. this is how sieges have worked throughout history! (or at least the assault part) once you get artillery, you can no longer rely on your defense to effectively deter a siege. you will be out-ranged and will have to take to the field to prevent the enemy from reaching your city.

sorry for the length of that, but its fun to brainstorm.

I voted pre-renaissance naval combat because of the way maps is being made in civ5 basically hate on ancient era naval combat. pfft.

It gets bit boring watching Rome and Carthage trade triremes in that narrow coastal lane.

But on very rare occasion map bless us with enough coastal waters to manuver triremes and galeasses around! That's when the naval combat in those eras start to wake up. Hence why I use the mod in my sig xD It happens way more often in there compare to almost never on vanilla firaxis maps.

Size of the map is also an factor.

Everything else in the poll is pretty fine except for the anti horse line. I usually have my pikemen/landsknechts hold military parades in my cities for hundreds of years until I unlock anti-tank gun then they become a reserve force for just in case AI decide to use tanks in great quantity for the first time and blitz me with them.

For me it's the whole archery units have two range and "upgrade" to units with one range... and then there's the modern infantry with no range! Ancient bows have a range of two and modern day rifles have none; just makes the ranged attack seem to have nothing to do with the weapons being used.