stolenrays
Deity
- Joined
- Aug 2, 2009
- Messages
- 2,061
dcm 2.5 has 2 accuracy related promos.
Are you trying to say that it's not a big difference from 10% strength vs the ability to remove the xp cap from animals or barbs?Not directly related to this project, but I feel the current promotion system (especially with fight or flee) is too overwhelming to be really useful; if there are even more promotions, I'm afraid they will just add to the long list of promotions I never use... I don't know if I'm the only one, but the difference between most promotions appears too minor to be worth the effort - do I want +10% str or +1 first strike? removing xp cap from animals or barbarians? etc. - that I always pick the same ones.
We've been gradually making cities harder and harder to capture for a reason. This is one of the ways we can get our limited map sizes to sustain a game long enough to reach later eras in play. Making it tougher to expand into another's territories is showing to be a big key in this. And of course since it feels harder to gain ground, it should also feel like a greater accomplishment when you do.I feel the current combat system is greatly biased in favor of defense, particularly regarding city invasion. I'm thus not a great fan of giving more possibilities for a city to defend; a walled city with damages on nearby units is already quite hard to take, if it's able to bombard stacks from inside, it will become nearly invincible...
IMO, units in the field are far more vulnerable than those in the city so there shouldn't be a penalty for bombarding from a city, only into one. Your statement about there being limited space to setup properly makes some sense but is it really that hindering? Maybe if it shows to be nearly impossible to capture cities thanks to this feature, we'll have to limit the amount of bombards that can be made from a city in a given round to reflect that.OK, once again that's a broader subject than just bombardment (and the way it works now seems to be unintended rather than a feature), maybe the answer is in removing the penalty while rebalancing something else, but simply removing the penalty without changing anything else would not be a good thing IMHO.
My suggestion:
- Remove the possibility to bombard from inside a city from all siege units (catapult, cannon, etc.) as well as ships. This would probably make sense from a historical point of view by the way - those units need a large space to be handled properly, something that is usually lacking inside a city's walls. Also, even though city fortifications could include some bombardment elements, one could argue this is already represented through the defense bonus (increased damage done to attacking units) and the area damage bonus (spike traps, etc. - there could also be some arrow bombardment buildings).
There's actually a downside for bombarding from the city that you might not be giving consideration to here - any action a unit takes breaks it from any fortification bonus it may have earned by rounds of remaining fortified. This loss of up to 25% defense bonus can be lethal for a unit and choosing to bombard probably wouldn't begin to pay off in light of the loss of combat strength.- For the other units (archers, riflemen...), either also remove it, or maintain it but significantly lower their defensive capabilities. Their defense (including first strike) already represent the capacity of these units to take advantage of their long range to damage incoming enemies, now that this bombard capacity is implemented, they would really become overpowered.
Currently, they are units that are very hard to dispatch, but not that great in attack - great potential for synergies with other units, but not outstanding by themselves: they stand their ground (particularly in cities), but if you don't attack them, they are not a threat to nearby units.
With added bombardment, they would become both hard to dispatch and dangerous for units around them - no weak point!
My personal preference would be to remove at minimum the base city defense bonus (including available city defense promotions) from these units if we let them keep the bombard option from inside cities.
I'd not limit the amount of units possible in the city but I might limit the amount of bombard attacks that can be made. There's AI problems with stack limits and Size Matters would really complicate any other attempts there.Or, for a wholly different approach, allow only a limited number of units "inside" a city - any number of units may be on a city square, but only, say, size/4 units (or another combination based on unit size with Size Matters) get the defensive bonus of the city (including wall protection), and they are attacked last - thus you can't stockpile large amount of units (especially with bombardment) inside a city.
As far as I can tell what Thundebrd has done here is what is in dcm, ie it is bombardment as part of the combat phase not ranged combat which occurs before/after combat or when no combat is occurring at all.
I agree with much of your assertions though the Invisibility prereq on those ships... do they HAVE the invisibility ability that tech grants some units? I don't know without looking further.
Are you trying to say that it's not a big difference from 10% strength vs the ability to remove the xp cap from animals or barbs?
We've been gradually making cities harder and harder to capture for a reason. This is one of the ways we can get our limited map sizes to sustain a game long enough to reach later eras in play. Making it tougher to expand into another's territories is showing to be a big key in this. And of course since it feels harder to gain ground, it should also feel like a greater accomplishment when you do.
Therefore, I'm highly in favor of weighting towards city defense. Vanilla Civ makes defending a city almost impossible and it should not be a given that a city will be capturable. Perhaps with this adjustment we're finally getting the right difficulty.
My wife's game is showing the AI is somehow taking out cities in their wars with each other though despite the min defense for entry issue and the fact that they STILL aren't bringing any siege with them - something that does really need to be addressed!
There's actually a downside for bombarding from the city that you might not be giving consideration to here - any action a unit takes breaks it from any fortification bonus it may have earned by rounds of remaining fortified. This loss of up to 25% defense bonus can be lethal for a unit and choosing to bombard probably wouldn't begin to pay off in light of the loss of combat strength.
First strikes, combat modifiers, all regard a closer range battle where the enemy really approaches with serious intent to kill. Ranged Bombard are basically little more than potshots. I think you'd find in play that the damage inflicted by Ranged Bombard is fairly minimal until much later as techs improve a great deal or unless the unit is very specialized towards it and as a result quite vulnerable to direct combat. And it can be horribly unreliable as a strategic gamble. It's probably a bit weaker in this version than it was previously if I'm reading the numbers correctly but I'm needing to test much more than I've been able to before I can say that for sure.
I'd not limit the amount of units possible in the city but I might limit the amount of bombard attacks that can be made. There's AI problems with stack limits and Size Matters would really complicate any other attempts there.
There's the concept of overloaded plots approaching a development point though. I think it's Realism Invictus that has implemented this but the idea's been shared here and is now part of the eventual development plan. In RI they allow so many units on a plot before all of them get a temporary penalty promo for the plot being overloaded. The crowd harms their abilities. I'd implement it here by two mechanisms, one for Size Matters that would be based on the overall cargo volume of units on the plot and one for the core that would be based on the number of units. implementing penalties to bombard abilities would be appropriate as part of the penalty set for being overcrowded.
At the same time there's also another plan to bonus units for the teamwork enabled by having multiple unit roles in the stack so it will make for a very interesting pinching system when both are in use, one side promoting larger and more diverse stacks while the other penalizes stacks that are too big. Both systems would be rational and it would ask players to strike the right balances in their stacks and be prepared to reinforce them to appropriate degrees.
2) You can't guard your coasts - ever.
This makes me wonder why they can get THIS fast. Is it the promos, circumnavigation alone or is it coming from other 'national level' modifiers that should be looked into? If this is true, the base values are not enough to pull back on alone.The Mouse said:Even Galleys can end up with 10 or more Movement when you keep them in the later eras.
Oh! They do have invisibility. Hmm that is problematic now that the Fusion and Invisibility techs are so far apart. I recommend we have 2 units an earlier Fusion one and a later Invisible one.
EDIT: In fact all the types should do this. Just like how there are Nuclear Subs and Stealth Subs, we can have Fusion and Invisible. Fusion being the main power source upgrade and then Invisible making the ship harder to detect. So like ...
- Fusion Battleship -> Invisible Battleship
- Fusion Carrier -> Invisible Carrier
- Fusion Cruiser -> Invisible Cruiser
- Fusion Destroyer -> Invisible Destroyer
- Fusion Submarine -> Invisible Submarine
- Fusion Transport -> Invisible Transport
Strength wise the Fusions would be in the 100s while the Invisibles would be in the 200s.
EDIT2:
So grouping the ships a bit more so they keep your ratio idea I am seeing some key techs ...
- Steam Power (X62) - Important for Steam Ships
- Screw Propeller (X64) - Important for Non-Wooden Ships
- Combustion (X66) - Important for Diesel Ships
- Coast Guard (X71) - Important for Coast Guard Units
- Submarine Warfare (X73) - Important for Subs
- Sonar (X75) - Important for Subs
- Naval Aviation (X76) - Important for Carriers
- Nuclear Power (X80) - Key for Nuclear Powered Ships
- Modern Warfare (X84) - Key for Modern units
- Unmanned Naval Vehicles (X92) - Key for Unnamed based Vehicles
- Fusion (X98) - Key for Fusion Powered Ships
- Invisibility (X107) - Key for Invisible units.
I don't mind reducing overall naval movement some but you said something in there that made me wonder...
This makes me wonder why they can get THIS fast. Is it the promos, circumnavigation alone or is it coming from other 'national level' modifiers that should be looked into? If this is true, the base values are not enough to pull back on alone.
But yeah, some more reasonable movement speeds could be assigned to start and then we can look into some of the other concepts presented for naval movement here (that would mean some coding rather than just xml restructuring.)
1) I'd agree to something CLOSER to what you've suggested... my counter suggestion:It's been a while since my last game but:
Base: 2
Various Techs (I remember Sextant, Navigation maybe, Refrigeration....): 4-6 (or more)
"World is round": 1
Promotions: 2-3 (Nav I or even II was free with certain buildings)
My opinion:
1) Wooden ships (Rafts): 1 MP; Wooden Ships with Sails 2MP, High End Wooden ships (3 MP), Steam ships (2 MP), Dieselships (3 MP), Nuclear ships (3 MP), Fusion (3 MP).
2) Battleship -1 MP, Destroyers and Sub +1 MP
3) Change Navigation... 1 MP from Promos is enough.
4) All those techs... I dont know. I mean, we have other applications were your units don't get a benefit from, we have just new units then. Like better rifles doesn't make your old gunpowder units stronger. Armour Crafting doesn't effect your old units etc. Why would ship techs make your old ships faster then?
5) Increase ocean movement to 3.
I think of plots in terms of how far they can see and go by visibility rules to determine that... They might be able to fire farther than 1 (with some development) but their accuracy won't be very good at hitting at that range most likely.Frigates have mysteriously picked up a range of 5 tiles. Everything I can find in this thread suggests that's a mistake, and it really is. Bombard being about unpowered projectiles, I don't see how a range of more than one tile (which is roughly 250 miles on Large btw) is possible, even for future tech.
Sounds good to me. But maybe you also should take into account that movement points also mean how often you can attack if you have a Blitz promotion. Being able to attack 15 times a turn is really crazy, so I think that´s another good argument to reduce movement points.Would all these be an acceptable concession to your points?
I'm not sure if I'm answering your question very well here but rifles have a very long range for a handheld weapon - more than that of an archer. The can take positions and fire at long range at others passing by without having to move in to engage them. Rifles aren't terribly EFFECTIVE at ranged bombard but they have a range of nearly what you can see.How does ranged bombard using rifles work? I really really think that's one weapon that should not have the ability.