What do you think about Anti - Mounted upgrade path?

Before Gods and Kings:

Spearman upgraded to Pikeman, Pikeman to Musketman, Lancer, Anti Tank Gun and Helicopter were standalone units.

After Gods and Kings:

Spearman upgrades to Pikeman, Pikeman to Lancer, Lancer to Anti Tank Gun, AT Gun to Helicopter.

What do you think about this upgrade path?

Personally I really don't like it for many reasons:
1) slow infantry -> fast cavalry -> slow artillery -> fast air recon unit?!

2) Lancers were historically WEAK against cavalry as they had lances which were powerful during charges but bad at melee fights against sabres or guns.

3) Pikemen are infantry while Lancers are cavalry. Both units just do other things on the battlefield and have other traits...

4) Civilisations with spearman/pikeman/lancer unique units are screwed. Especially with lancer units as...

5) Lancers have no upgrade for VERY long time and when they finally get it...

6) ...anti tank guns are almost useless. They are melee, very slow, weak and vulnerable to absolutely everything except from tanks (which are much faster so AT guns can't hunt them anyway).

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=465084&highlight=lancers

The question is, what do YOU think about that? Should some modders/developers change current Upgrade Division?

pikes should just upgrade to muskets but retain a bonus vs. mounted.

Lancers were just designed wrong...lancers are not an anti-cavalry unit. They were used as shock troops charging against infantry...it's just completely backwards and I never understood this design decision. It would make way more sense to come between knights & cavalry.

Agree anti-tank guns are pretty useless. The anti-horse line can just stop at pikemen, I would be fine with that.

While I agree that the upgrade path doesn't make a lot of sense, I will say that in Vanilla I never built Lancers, Anti-Tank Guns or Helicopters. At least I now use those units. Now, for the completely useless Marine unit, I still haven't built one of those.

shaglio said:

While I agree that the upgrade path doesn't make a lot of sense, I will say that in Vanilla I never built Lancers, Anti-Tank Guns or Helicopters. At least I now use those units. Now, for the completely useless Marine unit, I still haven't built one of those.

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So what would you say about system like that:

Pikeman -> Musketman (while retaining anti cavalry bonus as 'Bayonet' promotion)

Knight -> Lancer -> Cavalry

Anti - Tank Gun: Standalone unit but which actually works as field artillery. 3 range, no indirect fire, no bonus against cities, good against tanks and equal against other modern units.

Helicopter: Just strong

The anti and mounted upgrade paths are great. I have used the helicopter gunship that was upgraded from a lancer and the armor that upgrades to a modern armor.

I also like the gunships, and it would suck to build those from scratch.

Ideally, IMO, cavalry could branch out to either tanks OR helicopters. That would make sense considering modern "armored cavalry" and "air cavalry" nomenclature used today.

I voted "extended and rebalanced".

I play with a mod, that makes it like this:

• Pikeman -> Tercio -> AT Gun (Spain has a UB instead of Tercio)
• Lancer -> Airship -> Helicopter Gunship (no longer anti-cavalry focus)
• Knight -> Cavalry -> Landship (unchanged)

For me, this is much better in all regards, it makes the anti-cavalry line more consistent, and it makes the Lancer upgrades make sense.

The whole system needs revamping. There's too many instance of units being refitted into egregiously different roles that waste their skills.

Chariots should have an upgrade path of harassing ranged mounted units; chariot - horse archer - dragoon - tricyclist - gunship.

Infantry started carrying Pikes after cavalry developed Lances for charging; the Lancer is silly. The armoured warhorse was the Tank of it's day. Knights should upgrade into Cavalry and then into Landships.

PIkes weren't that deadly to cavalry, as the manoeuvrability of mounted units made it a lot easier for them to avoid the deadly frontage. Pike blocks either defended positions where their flanks were secure - think Battle of Thermopylae - or, with training, overran infantry. And they were screwed if disrupted. They'd be better represented with defence bonuses that diminish with damage and being outflanked, that are doubled against cavalry, and which apply on the attack when buffed by a Great General (this would make sense on Spearmen as well).

Pikemen should upgrade into a gunpowder unit line with similar defence bonuses, representing orderly close-ranged fire. Musket - Rifle - GW Infantry - Infantry - Mech. The Tercio's ability would be halving or losing the debuff for being flanked, and the Lancer could find work as someone's UU.

Swordsmen line should remain distinct and upgrade into a gunpowder line representing assault specialists. Off the top of my head, Grenadier - Commando - Stormtrooper - Marine - Special Forces.

Aside from well-deployed pikes, your classic anti cavalry force was stuff to scare the horses; War Elephants and stuff that goes bang. I'd suggest that there's room for a WE - Armoured Elephant - Cannon line that provides a buff for adjacent units representing the fear of the horses (and does away with this silly 'Carthage don't get a super-mobile flanking contingent and Rome never used Elephants' nonsense*). It could lead into a LOS anti-armour line with a similar ability, representing the reluctance of tank crews to try to overrun a position when a bazooka round near-misses them. A Bombard could replace the Cannon in the Siege line, and there's modern long-range infantry other than bazookas to inherit Crossbow regiments' heritage & upgrades.

I like @kaspergm's report of an Airship that upgrades, though I'm inclined to go for a Scout - Explorer - Airship line that perhaps has a few extra entries.

I'm hoping to mod all these ideas together, along with a Nile Delta NW that provides +1 trade route from the fertile soil producing more than one city can consume and something for Rome to want to steal to feed themselves

*I know either could potentially end up with CS gifts of UU hoss or heffalump, but really, both should be a standard option for anyone blessed with an abundance of beasts.

To keep the gameplay concise, all you need is to replace the Anti-tank Gun with the Tank Destroyer unit. Then the progress will be Melee unit good against cavalry -> Cavalry good against cavalry -> Tank unit good against tanks -> Gunship great against tanks.

The entire Anti Cavalry Line is problematic as hell. It seems everyone has his own vision of it and making it balanced + realistic is very hard...

It can be fun to construct Landsknechts into Helicopters. Expensive, but you've got one heck of a pillaging harrassment unit.

Provided the game last that long

Otherwise you can suffice with a Sipahi Light.

Ok guys so what would you say about something like this:

Horseman - Knight - Lancer - Cavalry - Landship - Tank - Modern Armor

Spearman - Pikeman - Tercio - Bayonet Infantry - Anti Tank Infantry - Tank Destroyer - Helicopter Gunship

Get rid of useless Anti Tank Gun and improve Lancer.

The problem is in shoehorning every unit into rigid classes of utility; and secondly, in allowing simple paid upgrades within those classes that make no rational sense. A cavalry unit learns to drive a tank and handle a large-bore gun? An anti-armor infantry unit learns to be pilots?? Etc. I would make a number of changes:

1) Make some clean breaks in the upgrade paths. Motorized armor units are something new; they should have to be built from scratch. Same with air units, helicopters AND planes.

2) Of course pike should upgrade to muskets, pretty much everyone agrees on this. But Krajzen raises a good question, about their anti-mounted strength: would this mean that only upgraded muskets would have that advantage, and hard-built muskets never could? That's not fair. That's why I would...

3) Turn the anti-mounted benefit into a promotion. 50% vs. mounted units or something like that. In fact I would liberalize promotions a lot: add this, and a city raider promotion (either extra strength when attacking cities, or same strength but take half damage in the attack), and make both of them plus Cover at level 1. Let players build interesting armies with specialized units. Also an anti-armor promotion for modern units, like in Civ4.

4) Finally, the Lancer. Not often used, because it's not often useful. With an anti-mounted promotion, swords/muskets/rifles can fill that role (you could even let knights and cavalry take it). So you can do whatever you want with this unit. Personally I would rejigger knights, lancers, cavalry and longswords (I don't understand what the longsword unit is supposed to be - a knight without a horse??) Probably I would call the longsword a "knight" and give it 3 moves, to distinguish it's utility from muskets; and call the knight a lancer at 20 strength; and call the lancer a cuirassier at ~30 strength; and bump cavalry to about 40 strength.

5) Finally, and this is a bit off-topic for this thread, but balancing one thing means balancing others. I would maybe drop Great War Infantry to ~45 strength (close to cabs, yes, but still much stronger with terrain and fortification bonuses, which I think gets the historical flavor right). And I would drop Infantry to ~65 strength to indirectly buff tanks. And buff Marines - maybe give them 3 moves and let them move after attacking.

[edited to add:] 6) I could go on! Another weirdness from the devs' obsession with never-ending upgrade lines is that "archery" units can keep going right into the modern era. That line should probably end with Gatling guns - they are an interesting unit, machine guns and bazookas not so much. Maybe have the 0-range anti-tank infantry upgrade to the 1-range bazooka, and keep the anti-armor promotion so it's useful against tanks, mech infantry and modern armor.

Thanks for your suggestions subtledoctor

One important thought:

Keep things as simple as possible but no simpler - Einstein

My current idea:
Swordman - Longswordman - Musketman - Rifleman
Spearman - Pikeman - Tercio - Rifleman

Where Riflemen have bayonets. All Riflemen have +25% against cavalry. Anti - Mounted problem solved. To balance that, cavalry can be particularly good against siege/gatlings.

So we have two versions:

Version 1
Spearman - Pikeman - Tercio - Rifleman and later act as infantry.

Version 2
Spearman - Pikeman - Tercio - Bayonet Infantry - Anti Tank Riflemen - Tank Destroyer - Helicopter.

This second version is ugly and I don't like it at all but this is for people who would love to see Neverending Upgrade Line.

I think that the unit upgrade paths are in definite need of review.

One issue that I have had for awhile with Civ5 is the Era names. Specifically: "Industrial" and "Modern". I think that these names contribution to some poor unit names, upgrade paths and choices.

First thing I would do is rename the current Industrial Era to Colonial Era. Then I would rename the current Modern Era to Industrial. Or change the names to Industrial and Late Industrial.

I would also need to move around some techs and change a few perquisites but that I am not going into right now.

Here is a Google Spreadsheet with what the units look like now (current tab) and what I think the
units should look like (proposed tab).

Units would upgrade left to right. Orange units are new units to fill in gaps. The Yellow units would effectively be a Restart of the Melee - Defense line. Great War Infantry would not have the Option to upgrade to Anti-Tank Gun.

Units:

Lancer
I would eliminate the Lancer. For Sweden, Poland and the Ottomans I would have Knights upgrade to their UUs at Metallurgy and then have their UUs upgrade to Landships skipping Cavalry. Kind of like how the Samurai skip Musketmen.


Horse Archer
I would introduce this new unit in the Classical Era. This would represent an upgrade to the chariot archer as the chariot fell out of use. I know not all Civs used some type of Horse Archer but there are Civs that didn't exist in the ancient Era either so... Game play over history here. For Civs other than the Mongolians and the Arabians this would upgrade to the Crossbowman. They get new weapons and just dismount. The Mongolians and Arabians would have their UUs upgrade from this with Chivalry. The Crossbowman, Keshik and Camel Archer would all upgrade to Gatling Guns.

Cog
I hate that the Trireme upgrades to the Caravel, this bridges the gap. It, like the Trireme, would not be able to enter deep ocean. This would also allow for The Vikings Civ with a UU = Viking Longboat that would replace the Cog and have better speed and could enter deep ocean...

Rifled Cannon
Basically a slightly more powerful cannon that would come with Rifling. I would also lower the strength of the current cannon.

Cruiser
Privateers would upgrade to this. These would be slightly more powerful than Destroyers and be melee. Probably 1 MP slower as well. These would represent the cruisers that functioned as commerce raiders etc. in the two world wars, fitting in with their upgrading from Privateers. This unit would also get Anti-Aircraft capabilities maybe 60. It would NOT get the ability to see subs, that will come with the Upgrade to Missile Cruiser

Dreadnought
Bridge from Frigate to Battleship (the current jump is too much for me). Ranged naval.

Missile Cruiser (Change)
This would now be a melee unit vs. Ranged. Its RANGED capabilities come from the Missiles it can carry. This might encourage more Guided Missile use in game. Also maybe give Guided missiles a bonus VS. naval Units to represent "sinking".

Anti-Aircraft Gun / Mobile SAM
These units would be fundamentally changed. Make these work like setters / workers so that they can stack with melee and ranged units. I hate to see SAMs and AA on the front lines.... have them be destroyed/disbanded on capture so they can't be captured.

What I would like to see is alternative upgrades, so that you can choose if you want to upgrade pikemen into lancers or musketmen. (Same for many other units. Warriors should have the alternative to upgrade into spears, knights into lancers etc.)

Voted "Pikemen should upgrade to Musketmen, Knights to Lancers." Because only that one makes sense to me. Even the 2nd option is better than the current one.

AT guns sucks and i have never had any use for them. And i cant see the logic in pikemen being upgraded to a mounted unit. Just stupid.

Krajzen said:

Get rid of useless Anti Tank Gun and improve Lancer.

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danieladler said:

AT guns sucks and i have never had any use for them.

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I wonder though, when people call AT Gun "useless" isn't that a reflection of the facts that 1) they come too late in game (after landships) and 2) tanks only play a marginal role in combat anyway, rather than the unit itself being bad?

kaspergm said:

I wonder though, when people call AT Gun "useless" isn't that a reflection of the facts that 1) they come too late in game (after landships) and 2) tanks only play a marginal role in combat anyway, rather than the unit itself being bad?

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wait what?

Late game domination is, at least for me, all about tanks.
Even aircraft can't compete with the speed you can take cities, just because of the ability to attack + pillage several times.

I can't imagine finishing a domination game without tanks, it would be so painfully slow.

On topic: I might be the only one but I do like the current path, at least for lancers. My only complain is that lancer is not enought different from a cavalry, and I would prefer a cav over a lancer any day.

My biggest pb is the useless AT gun: it could have 10000x more dmg vs tanks, he will still never be able to catch one.

But by far the most useless upgrade IMHO is the gattling. Losing a range on one of the most used unit and usually mass upgraded is really bad. In my games, old range units die their old age with crossbows in their hands.