Dunkah
Emperor
Having written that down, it's now clear to me why that screws up the CS UU thing...
Hahaha... that is great! Bug Tracking 101~!
Having written that down, it's now clear to me why that screws up the CS UU thing...
@ OP:
I agree with most of your reasoning but not the planes.
I believe in fact that bombers are way too week. Especially vs Cities.
Frankly, I don't know how anyone can say bombers are weak. In AI hands - of course, but everything is weak in AI hands. Given a reasonable tech level when controlled by humans bombers pretty much mean game over.Likely to balance out their ability to have unlimited stacks. Just for the sake of discussion, are you implying that you wouldn't mind seeing a cap on planes per city if their relative power was also increased? Because as it is now, a stack of 20 planes will clear out anything. They are weak, but you can also attack a single hex a million times.
@ OP:
I agree with most of your reasoning but not the planes.
I believe in fact that bombers are way too week. Especially vs Cities.
Against a fully fortified (all defensive buildings) a bomber (even a stealth one) with the bonus against cities promo is relatively week (even without anti air into the mix).
My suggestions
- Increase the strength of resource melee units (swords= +2, longswords= +1).
- All melee units (except spears & pikes) take less damage from city attacks (about 10%) when fortified. They do additional 5% damage to cities for each adjacent siege unit. (more effective meatshield in sieges, can actually deal damage when combined with siege units.
- Siege units resist ranged attacks by 50% !
- Slight reduction in melee strength of archer units.
- Ranged attacks get a slight penalty directly proportional to the target unit HP. So ranged units would be better in softening up enemies but you may need some melee units to finish the task more effectively.
- Units garrisoned inside cities take considerable damage when the city is attacked by enemies. This can be significantly reduced by constructing defensive buildings. So no more destroying AI stack of doom with the help of just city attacks & 2 crossbows.
Just throwing some things out there, but here are the historical answers to 'ranged effectiveness':
1. Drop the 'combat strength' of all ranged units. Most of them don't have (historically) anything more effective than large knives as close-in weapons - against spearmen or swordsmen in melee, the result is a quick massacre or archers running for their lives, having thrown away bows, arrows, and anything else portable.
2. Program all melee units so that their reaction to being shot at by ranged is not to sit there and try to heal, but charge the ranged unit.
3. Penalize all ranged units against cities WITH WALLS. Against an open city, they are still effective: against fortifications, only specialized siege weapons do much good, or you resort to a 'storm' with melee units, taking nasty casualties on your way over the walls.
The result should be that ranged units with melee support are still very useful, but ranged unit on their own will get quickly slaughtered without forts or some incredible terrain benefits.
Changing production cost may be the key here. If melee units cost 50% of current costs and ranged 200%, I bet we will see a dramatic shift towards combined arms. Obviously these values are exaggerated to show my point, but it could be worth looking into. Opportunity cost is the main balancing mechanic in Civ 5, so it would be a natural fix instead of changing mechanics; plus it would also be simple to code.
Another simple and easy solution would be to make the entire ranged line have a range of one like the Gatling and Machine Guns. Added bonus: more realism!
Making the unit cap an effective part of gameplay would be nice (I often forget it even exists!) - we could have ranged take up more supply than melee as a simple balance mechanism.
A "soft" cap to ranged attacks might be better than a "hard" cap at 25%
If the damage done to a unit by a ranged attack were scaled by (the amount of defender health left +x)/(100+x) ,where x is a natural number selected as balance dictates,then your archers would be very effective at initially damaging a unit, and although they could kill it, they would be inefficient at killing it.
A ranged attack on an undamaged unit would still do the same damage it does now, but damaged units would take less damage from ranged attacks.
if x=20 this would result in requiring twice as many ranged attacks to kill a unit, but a set of attacks that would kill it now would still get it under 30 HP remaining; low enough for a single melee attack to finish it off.
Interestingly, this would naturally have no effect on ranged attacks strong enough to kill in a single shot, they would still be fatal.
This would make having melee units in your force a necessity. At the very least, my archer horde would bring a few mounted units to charge in, kill, and run away.
I know above posters have also said this, but this is one of the more bizarre statements I've seen. Ok yes, a single bomber will not take out a city, but with current rules, like others said, you can stack bombers infinitely, and unlimited stacking of Bombers + very easy access to self-healing and double-attack promotion + always get city healing bonus = kill anything. AI doesn't understand how to use Fighters and doesn't understand how to heal planes, so taking out their airforce is pretty much a formality, and from then you just roll over them. So unless you play on a level where AI gets so crazy science and production bonuses that they will get to Flight much before you (Immortal/Diety) game is pretty much over for AI once you reach Flight if you want to go domination.
Likely to balance out their ability to have unlimited stacks. Just for the sake of discussion, are you implying that you wouldn't mind seeing a cap on planes per city if their relative power was also increased? Because as it is now, a stack of 20 planes will clear out anything. They are weak, but you can also attack a single hex a million times.
Your city will get an per-era bonus to its defence along with population effect and defence buildings, so yes that will have an effect. I'm still surprised that seven B17's were not able to take it down fairly quickly, but what do I know, I only play vs. AI, and AI doesn't ever manage to build Military Bases, and frequently not even Arsenals, so obviously that does make a difference. And yes, Firaxis have "fixed" the Airplane stacking problem by making Nukes indefencable and destroy all units, but imo. that's not really a solution, but rather introducing another balance breaking feature. I hate Nukes.That said the most powerful airforce I have faced was a US special airfleet (7 planes) bombing one of my puppet cities. (...) I don't know if the fact that I was to the info era means anything.
Your city will get an per-era bonus to its defence along with population effect and defence buildings, so yes that will have an effect. I'm still surprised that seven B17's were not able to take it down fairly quickly, but what do I know, I only play vs. AI, and AI doesn't ever manage to build Military Bases, and frequently not even Arsenals, so obviously that does make a difference. And yes, Firaxis have "fixed" the Airplane stacking problem by making Nukes indefencable and destroy all units, but imo. that's not really a solution, but rather introducing another balance breaking feature. I hate Nukes.
My main gripe with Nukes is that you can't defend against them. It may be realistic, but it's bad for gameplay imo. Things that can't be countered are bad in a strategy game imo. And I know that you can always "nuke them, before they nuke you", but that forces one to always play agressively, which again is bad for a strategy game that is supposed to offer multiple game styles. But I hope the changes in BnW diplomacy will fix this.As for the nukes.Well given the fact that it is nukes P) they should be powerful. But I agree there should be some limit on how many you can base in a city. I would go as far as to propose a building (nuke silo?) that would allow a city to slot them in before use, but I fear that may move them to useless part of the scale.
Capitals should have more defense. +25HP & +25% strength or something.
Limiting stacks of planes in cities. Maximum of 3 per type (Fighter, Bomber, Missiles, Nukes) per city, some buildings could give +1 capacity.
My main gripe with Nukes is that you can't defend against them. It may be realistic, but it's bad for gameplay imo. Things that can't be countered are bad in a strategy game imo. And I know that you can always "nuke them, before they nuke you", but that forces one to always play agressively, which again is bad for a strategy game that is supposed to offer multiple game styles. But I hope the changes in BnW diplomacy will fix this.
Yes, there should be some sort of missile defense system
Frankly, I don't know how anyone can say bombers are weak. In AI hands - of course, but everything is weak in AI hands. Given a reasonable tech level when controlled by humans bombers pretty much mean game over.