Rebalancing attacks to fit real world

People constantly complain about ranged being overpowered but the reality is that ranged doesnt have the disadvantages that it should.


I am going to use total war as how to approach this problem.

Cavalry does extra damage vs ranged.

Since they completely lack weapons to deal with them.

Pikes do extra damage to Cavalry as currently in the game.

Simple. Big spears > large horses

melee Infantry do extra damage to spears.

Melee infantry do extra damage to spears and ranged.

siege does extra damage to spears.

Tight formations = large casualties. All siege from trebuchet onward have 3 range.

ranged does extra damage to cavalry and melee infantry. 1/4th damage to cities.


Now defensive affixes

new traits for types.

Melee infantry no longer receive retaliation attacks from siege or units at a lower tile. melee infantry also take half damage from city defenses when attacking.

Spears now receive 50% less damage for every consecutive attack of the same type.

example being 2 volleys of arrows. First one would do bonus damage due to arrow passive but second would do less then normal and any further shots that turn would almost do nothing.

Reasoning for this change is all spear formations throughout history had heavier armor then most and tools to avoid light arrows. Once they got hit by arrows, they would tighten up and raise shields.

cavalry now only receives relation from spears. Their attacks are to fast. movement range is decreased by 1.

Simple logic. Cavalry are too fast to counter react in melee unless you have a wall of spikes.

Archers now receive 1 extra range on higher tiles but lose 50% of the damage if firing on that third tile range. They also do 150% damage in melee.

Ranged usually loses effective killing power the further away they are. Especially when lobbing them way past their normal maximum range. Additionally, melee arrows will penetrate even the best armor, destroying anything it hits.

Siege now has no retaliation vs any units.

Siege is notoriously bad at reloading or moving. Thus anything attacking them in melee will reach them before they can even fire. But with that being said, siege now has more range much earlier and indirect fire.


This is how I would change the mechanics of the game. Feel free to comment, ridicule, or praise.

Interesting thoughts. I would recommend trying to make that in a mod so you can test it out.

Callonia said:

Interesting thoughts. I would recommend trying to make that in a mod so you can test it out.

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if only I knew how to mod O_O

I deferentially like these ideas, they do seem a little complicated on paper, maybe in game they are perfectly intuitive. One thing that you nailed is the retaliatory attacks, those should defiantly be changed:
melee vs melee, even retaliation
melee vs archers, archers take a penalty to retaliation attack
horse vs melee, horse have bonus attacking or defense against retaliation
spear vs melee, even, but the melee is way stronger
horse vs archer, horse have bonus attacking or defense against retaliation and the archer has a penalty
spear vs horse, spear has big bonuses against horses and negates the horses bonus

That is a simpler more streamlined version of your idea, which one is better in game? I don't know, but I think that at least on paper these rules are easier to follow

Having done some XML modding before I would probably say that Atahop's suggestions would be a bit more doable than Godman's simply because I don't think the game keeps track of "first attack." I also don't know if it keeps track of higher to lower or lower to higher terrain attacks, just the tile the unit being attacked is standing in.

Still, this could be a fun Mod to play around with. Unfortunately, I probably won't have time to whip something like this up with all the other things I've got to do this summer.

If the Devs of Civ5 wanted to make warfare realistic, they would`ve done by now. They really don`t care as long as the bucks come in.

godman85 said:

People constantly complain about ranged being overpowered but the reality is that ranged doesnt have the disadvantages that it should.


I am going to use total war as how to approach this problem.

melee Infantry do extra damage to spears.

Melee infantry do extra damage to spears and ranged.


ranged does extra damage to cavalry and melee infantry. 1/4th damage to cities.

Click to expand...

Anything I didn't include means I thought it was a really good idea.

With melee infantry doing extra damage to spears, this is tricky because spears only had the weakness of poor flanks and relatively low armor (except not in all cases like hoplites and Danish pikeman in the middle ages). Instead, it should deal with flanking, so flanking bonuses are greater against them or something. Anything else would require taking into account the specific units to have it make sense.

With ranged to cavalry, this depends on armor and whether or not the cavalry is moving. Stationary cavalry was very susceptible, but moving cavalry (even lightly armored) was hard to hit.

Also, with ranged to cities, they show the archers using fire arrows, so they shouldn't be weaker against cities.

Tyrvos said:

Anything I didn't include means I thought it was a really good idea.

With melee infantry doing extra damage to spears, this is tricky because spears only had the weakness of poor flanks and relatively low armor (except not in all cases like hoplites and Danish pikeman in the middle ages). Instead, it should deal with flanking, so flanking bonuses are greater against them or something. Anything else would require taking into account the specific units to have it make sense.

With ranged to cavalry, this depends on armor and whether or not the cavalry is moving. Stationary cavalry was very susceptible, but moving cavalry (even lightly armored) was hard to hit.

Also, with ranged to cities, they show the archers using fire arrows, so they shouldn't be weaker against cities.

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but what is fire going to do to a stone castle? Wait. You make a good point. Non-upgraded cities should take full damage from ranged. walls give half damage. castles give 25%. Arsenals give immunity.


Now that looks good.


I think your suggestion on spear weakness is actually really good. They should just have flanking issues. Maybe double damage if flanked.

I put in later that archers do more damage to cavalry. They were extremely easy to deal with if they ever were caught out of position. Maybe you missed that part. The only thing I changed was archers can not retaliate vs cavalry. For obvious reasons.

The real problem with ranged being OP is that there are specific techs that are MUST HAVE if you are fighting a war. CB is mandatory. Artillery (dynamite) is a MUST HAVE. More important than air or tanks or any infantry. You can roll over anybody with pikes + MOAR artillery. This makes the game flawed in my opinion, when there is really no thought to combat tech. Does anyone consider swordsman important at all? I use that tech to balance out overteching in other areas so my trade doesnt get too out of whack.

I'm guessing everyone plays the same way:
NEVER upgrade pikes to lancers.
pikes are there to be in front and catch arrows and cap cities after 5 CBs and 3 catapults shoot
Cav is there to run in and cap a city after 5 CBs and 3 catapults shoot.
Tanks are there to run in and cap a city after 6 artillery fire.
infantry are there to be in front and catch bullets and cap cities after 5 xbows and 3 trebs shoot

godman85 said:

Reasoning for this change is all spear formations throughout history had heavier armor then most and tools to avoid light arrows. Once they got hit by arrows, they would tighten up and raise shields.

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I think this might be mistaken. Spear-militia were far more common, globally, than professional, armoured spearmen. It's a cheap and easy-to-use weapon. If anything, spearmen tended to be the least armoured troops, after ranged units (bowmen, slingers, other irregulars).

jjkrause84 said:

I think this might be mistaken. Spear-militia were far more common, globally, than professional, armoured spearmen. It's a cheap and easy-to-use weapon. If anything, spearmen tended to be the least armoured troops, after ranged units (bowmen, slingers, other irregulars).

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Ya, it's differs by culture. The greeks had heavily armored spearmen, but the English used billmen, who weren't. It's really too random to make a generalization either way with spearmen. So it's rough to add that kind of feature.

godman85 said:

I put in later that archers do more damage to cavalry. They were extremely easy to deal with if they ever were caught out of position. Maybe you missed that part. The only thing I changed was archers can not retaliate vs cavalry. For obvious reasons.

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I didn't miss it. I was saying how it relies on multiple factors so you can't just have archers do more damage to cavalry, or even infantry really. They would need to categorize troops based on lightly an heavily armored (since heavily armored troops wouldn't be hurt by arrows much except for maybe crossbows), and with cavalry you would need to be able to differentiate mobile and stationary cavalry (which works in real time combat, but would be unfair in turn-based)

jjkrause84 said:

I think this might be mistaken. Spear-militia were far more common, globally, than professional, armoured spearmen. It's a cheap and easy-to-use weapon. If anything, spearmen tended to be the least armoured troops, after ranged units (bowmen, slingers, other irregulars).

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well i am not talking about volunteer militia. I am talking about civ units that are to be considered professional armies.

All spear INFANTRY, not militia, are much more heavily armored because they have to deal with heavy horse and withstand more direct combat. Regular infantry are used for speed and skirmishes. They also excel in siege due to their light armor and short weapons, not hindering their movement.

godman85 said:

well i am not talking about volunteer militia. I am talking about civ units that are to be considered professional armies.

All spear INFANTRY, not militia, are much more heavily armored because they have to deal with heavy horse and withstand more direct combat. Regular infantry are used for speed and skirmishes. They also excel in siege due to their light armor and short weapons, not hindering their movement.

Click to expand...

This completely relies on culture an time period. Rome used spearman for their flanks and their frontline armies used swords and were more heavily armored. Meanwhile, the Greeks used heavily armed spearmen (Hoplites) in their frontlines. Celts and Germans, meanwhile (if not fighting naked) still tended to be lightly armored in almost all cases. If nobles did have armor, they tended to fight with sword and shield, rather than spear.

But all of these arose from different tactics and terrain. The Romans used legions to fight in big open areas and needed armor for those arrows. Almost all their troops were well armored, except the front line armored most.

The Greeks fought with the phalanx because their battles tended to be less open field, because Greece is full of hills and mountains. So their fights were just slug fests.

The Celts and Germans preferred guerrilla warfare (they tended to fight in heavy woods or swamps), and therefore were lightly armored, and were more used to hunting and therefore preferred spears in most cases.

This doesn't even include Carthaginian or Middle Eastern combat at the time. It all relies on culture and warstyle, it's too hard to make a simple generalization.


Edit: Spearmen in history tended to be less armored because they needed to be mobile, weren't in the front line, and armor doesn't do much when a horse is falling on you. Spearmen relied on a wall of spears as their armor. This is especially the case once pike formations became a norm.