So Machine Gun has the strength of a Panzer?

Yeah, I'd say it's certainly more than a non-important difference. Basically, it means any unit three tiles away isn't going to want to advance because the counterattack will hurt you without hurting them (and you'd still struggle to attack because the melee strength is pretty good).

If that's the case, machine guns would be a very interesting unit.
Managing to create a new kind of unit (defensive) without creating new promotions (well, unless you count 1-hex ranged attack) is always a plus in my book. It shows that you can make the best out of every already existing feature.
I guess that's the boardgamer in Shirk talking (since in boardgames, you have to do all the bookkeeping, so the less rules to remember, the better).

If the machine gun is indeed a deployable defensive unit, then it'll really draw WW1 (and trench warfare) into the game and also be a good anti-steamroll unit.
Planes and tanks will be a welcome development to get past machine gun lines.

A ranged unit with 1 range is stupid and here's why. One unit per tile and attacking a city with those ranged units, means you have to surround the city leaving no room for the melee units to get in. Plus it goes against the point 2K & Firaxis made about ranged units and the 1 unit per tile rule. That is the ranged units are meant to be behind the melee units. With a range of 1, they can't be behind anything and still shoot.

Also consider the fact that Rocket Artillery only has a ranged strength of 46 and the stealth bomber has 80. So a 60 strength would put the machine gun between these two, even though it come well before either of them. Therefore it's rather naive to think they didn't drastically alter the combat and ranged strength of all the units to go with the increase from 10 HP to 100 HP.

As I point out in another thread, that 60 strength when compared to the infantry, which comes around the same time, would represent a 66.7% increase in strength. Therefore it's as on par with infantry as archers are with warriors or crossbows are with longswords.

It would also be pointless to make it require being set-up before firing as it would then be a siege unit, which would be rather stupid since there's already an industrial era siege unit, artillery.

If it has a one-tile range, but requires set up it would certainly not be an offensive unit. It would only be useful for fortifying set positions. In that sense, a higher strength makes sense to counter it. However, you're right it can't be too high.

Louis XXIV said:

If it has a one-tile range, but requires set up it would certainly not be an offensive unit. It would only be useful for fortifying set positions. In that sense, a higher strength makes sense to counter it. However, you're right it can't be too high.

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Very similar to the MG in CiIV. It was an excellent city defender, but it was weak to Marines.

In this case, it would be weak to Tanks. Actually, I'd probably actually give it a penalty against Tanks to weaken it further. Essentially, it would mow down infantry, but that's it.

Monthar said:

A ranged unit with 1 range is stupid and here's why. One unit per tile and attacking a city with those ranged units, means you have to surround the city leaving no room for the melee units to get in. Plus it goes against the point 2K & Firaxis made about ranged units and the 1 unit per tile rule. That is the ranged units are meant to be behind the melee units. With a range of 1, they can't be behind anything and still shoot.

Also consider the fact that Rocket Artillery only has a ranged strength of 46 and the stealth bomber has 80. So a 60 strength would put the machine gun between these two, even though it come well before either of them. Therefore it's rather naive to think they didn't drastically alter the combat and ranged strength of all the units to go with the increase from 10 HP to 100 HP.

As I point out in another thread, that 60 strength when compared to the infantry, which comes around the same time, would represent a 66.7% increase in strength. Therefore it's as on par with infantry as archers are with warriors or crossbows are with longswords.

It would also be pointless to make it require being set-up before firing as it would then be a siege unit, which would be rather stupid since there's already an industrial era siege unit, artillery.

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1-hex ranged units shouldn't be regarded as true ranged units, more like undefendable melee units. They make more sense that way.

If limited to one hex range and setting before firing that would mean (barring roads and railroads shenanigans and some UAs) that you can only attack another unit if starting next to it, which is a huge handicap. Sure, RAs only have 46 strength, but their available targets are much much more flexible than that, and the chances of retaliation are lower (it can even attack from outside a city's range!). Not saying that they won't revise the whole way combat works (they probably will, at the very least for naval units), but I don't think the changes will be massive.

And note that 60 ranged strength is as good as a no-retaliation 40 strength melee attack but with a higher variance in the result (see Vexing's in depth article in the war academy for that). Infantry has 36 strength. Seems reasonable to me, especially when taking into account how difficult it would be for MGs to attack. They are basically moving walls (60 strength on defense remains quite impressive indeed).

PS: and "setting before firing" isn't synonymous with being a siege unit. RA is a siege unit, so are bombers, yet they don't have that promotion. Why not do it the other way around too? Have units with "setting before firing" not be siege units, but rather defensive units with a penalty to limit their usefulness in attack (just like Ironclads and their inability to get into deep waters, for example).

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About tanks: they can simply ignore MGs if they want with their superior mobility, given the clunkiness on attack of MGs.


Although the fact that MGs have 1 range and setting before moving is wild speculation AFAIK though. If any of these isn't true (either more than 1 range or no need to set), infantry looks really tame compared to MGs, unless they are indeed boosted in strength.

Yeah, I looked at the numbers. Given that a Tank is 50 and Artillery are 32 with a range of 3, I can't think of a unit with such limited mobility having any number besides 60. If anything, the complaint is with the Panzer being too weak.

One of the things I like best about this unit, at least how it's currently being speculated, is that it looks easy for an AI to use properly. As long as they're programed to know that this is strictly a defensive unit I could see them having a few of these set up on terrain near their border, and just staying put. Having a few of these units around would make it a lot harder to exploit the stupidity of the AI because it would take some actual effort to dislodge the MG's and get at their otherwise undefended siege units.

It also helps them because they have the same defense (if our suspicions are correct, they won't be allowed to be used as offensive weapons) as their ranged attack (although I could see an argument for lowering that). That means the AI could be so stupid as to not attack at all with them and they'd still be useful for them defensively.

The downside is the AI will have to know how to avoid them when attacking or, at least, they got to be priced high enough so that the human isn't going to over-build them.

All unit strengths will surely be tweaked so Machineguns won't be OP. Just look at the Celtic UU strenght. It has 11 strength & it is probably not a sword, so that definately indicates that unit strengths would be increased & gaps between different units like rifles & muskets could be adjusted for better balance.
And I don't think machinegun would need to deploy or have one range. They might have extra fortification bonus & penalty against tanks. Deploying before attacking would be too similar to artillery & 1 range is unlikely as then it won't really be a true replacement for xbows of medieval era.

Monthar said:

A ranged unit with 1 range is stupid and here's why. One unit per tile and attacking a city with those ranged units, means you have to surround the city leaving no room for the melee units to get in. Plus it goes against the point 2K & Firaxis made about ranged units and the 1 unit per tile rule. That is the ranged units are meant to be behind the melee units. With a range of 1, they can't be behind anything and still shoot.

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I think it'd be odd if machine guns were designed to be used in attack. If you place a machine gun on a tile and an enemy unit approaches, your melee units will still be able to flank and attack that unit, and you can have an artillery unit pounding them from another line behind, too.

MkLh said:

A ranged unit with a range of 1 is quite pointless. It's virtually the same as a melee unit (yes, I know there are some non-important differences).

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As others have mentioned, they can do damage without taking damage, which is a huge plus. On top of that, it means they don't have to move in to the square that the unit they killed used to be in, allowing them to stay in the city/fort/forest or on the hill even after attacking.
Does attacking with a ranged unit remove your fortification status? If not, that's an another big plus.

They'd better buff tanks in some way or Germany's UU will be useless late game.
I'll admit I like the addition machine guns to the game a lot. They've made a real effort
to make it so you'll need a varied force to succeed.

steave435 said:

As others have mentioned, they can do damage without taking damage, which is a huge plus. On top of that, it means they don't have to move in to the square that the unit they killed used to be in, allowing them to stay in the city/fort/forest or on the hill even after attacking.
Does attacking with a ranged unit remove your fortification status? If not, that's an another big plus.

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Doing damage without taking damage doesn't matter much as a survived enemy unit can attack and hurt immediately on the next turn. If there is a melee unit with equal attacking strength, I don't think there are real reasons to ever use 1 ranged unit.

MkLh said:

Doing damage without taking damage doesn't matter much as a survived enemy unit can attack and hurt immediately on the next turn. If there is a melee unit with equal attacking strength, I don't think there are real reasons to ever use 1 ranged unit.

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Good point. Melee units are generally stronger in close combat than ranged units so even though machinegun would deal great damage without taking any, the next turn your enemy would use their infantry & tanks to annihilate your '1 range' unit.
The 1 range mechanism could work really well for some UUs which have both good melee strength & ranged attack however a pure ranged unit (in this case machinegun) with 1 range would be useless. They already said that they are increasing unit HP to 100 & several other strength tweaks so u can't say that Panzers will be useless or no one will make infantry etc.
In my opinion they are adding machineguns (and perhaps another unit between xbows & machineguns) to fill the gap of ranged infantry so that u can still have a more mobile & cheaper ranged unit than cannons & artillery and also making ranged promos for xbows useful.

Just think of the WW 1 -era machine guns, the strenght and weaknesses:

NOT an attack or siege weapon.
In fortified positions, smashes infantry approaching on open field
Even heavy artillery bombardment couldnt really sweep them from their fortifications
In a way to defeat them, tanks were developed

In Civ IV the stack attack system was totally different with the current one, but anyway in Civ IV machineguns are done that they have bonus against all gunpowder units, immune to collateral damage, and can't attack a stack (so they were dragged in a stack as a defensive unit). I think, in the stack system, they were done really well. But anyway I'm glad the stacks are gone..

In Civ V I'm sure they don't simply have that amount of strenght against tanks, either thanks get a bonus vs them or machineguns get negative modifier against tanks.


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By the way, I think the new lead designer makes a huge difference. Award winning strategy boardgame designer with hobbies in history and AI programming, I think we're gonna see plenty of that in the new combat system.

I really hope he gets free hands to go with the combat system, we'll see.

I think ya'll are overlooking exactly what the increase from 10 to 100 HP would do without also increasing the strength of all units, so let me enlighten you. With the current strengths two of the same unit fighting each other with no bonuses on flat grasslands would do about 5 damage. With the current 10 HP that's 50%, so a minimum of 2 turns or two of that unit to kill the enemy unit. Increasing the HP to 100 would mean taking 10x the attacks to kill that same unit, so either 20 turns or 20 of your units to kill 1 of theirs.

Now if they also increased the strength of all units to about double their current strength that 20 turns or 20 units drops to only about 10, because the units are now doing about twice the damage per hit. Even if, as I suspect, the strength increase is only 66.7%, thus making the infantry also have a strength of 60, that 5 damage per hit become about 8.33, reducing it from 20 hits to 12 hits for that same kill.

Let's put this into perspective. Your scout upgrades to archer. You use it and your warrior to take out a barb camp. The barb is fortified giving it a 50% bonus, so it generally takes 2 hits from the archer and 1-2 from the warrior to clear that camp, so a minimum of 2 turns. Now they increase the HP of all units from the current 10 to 100. Do you really want to have to spend 20 turns or send a full army to deal with a single barbarian brute in its camp? Especially since it'll most likely spawn 2 more units in the time it takes to clear it with just that archer and warrior, or even the time it takes to build/buy enough units to reduce that to a reasonable number of turns.

Also look at just how fast units become obsolete on standard speed in the current game. Making combat take up to 10 times longer by only increasing the HP to 100 and not also increasing the strength of all units would only exacerbate this problem.

Now let say they did double the strength of all units. That would turn the infantry into a 72 strength unit vs the machine gun's 60 strength. Would it then make any sense what-so-ever to have those ridiculous restrictions on the machine gun ya'll keep harping about?

MkLh said:

Doing damage without taking damage doesn't matter much as a survived enemy unit can attack and hurt immediately on the next turn. If there is a melee unit with equal attacking strength, I don't think there are real reasons to ever use 1 ranged unit.

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Well, as you say, the attacking unit will hurt the next turn, which gives the MG more survivability.
You can see that ranged and melee strenght are te same, which would make sense in this context.