Ideas to Change Ranged Units

Ranged is too dominating. You can line up rows of ranged and focus fire. When they get +1 range promotions, you can have them two rows deep. Artillery is even more powerful. This makes combat a kind of fight to see who can get the best positioned ranged units, which leads to boring play. I think all ranged units should get a large penalty to attack if adjacent to an enemy non-ranged unit. This would incentivize people to advance their non-ranged units, and remove the domination that ranged currently has. It also makes sense in terms of historical accuracy, I think -- archers, artillery, etc..., are for attacking long range, but artillery pieces aren't going to be very useful with infantry right up on the piece. Further, the operators of the artillery are distracted by the need for self-defense. With this, the penalty to attack vs units introduced in G&K could also be removed or reduced. This also makes sense -- artillery is just as good at destroying infantry as it would be at bombarding cities -- just not infantry which are right up close.

The problem is then that people would only make catapults, trebuchets, cannons, etc. without bothering with other ranged units b/c you could attack them before they even got close. This is why they added composite bows and machine guns, to add more diversity to army composition. I see where you're coming from, but it's hard to implement that without changing a bunch of other stuff first. If you're frustrated that you can't take out enemy ranged units, mounted units work pretty well against ranged units.

My concern isn't that I can't take out enemy ranged, it's that MY ranged is too dominating vs. the AI. I'm winning an immortal game where pretty much all I'm doing is pounding them with artillery from behind forests and hills. I have the top score, the largest land mass, and I'm killing the Iriquois, who had (at one point) like 8-9 cities. Their tech is higher than mine, but just a handful of my artillery in rough terrain is enough to render the opponent's units completely useless. They just wander back and forth getting bombarded. I have spies in the two cities I'm attacking, so I have full vision. They have no worthwhile units challenging my artillery. I don't even need a single melee (non-ranged) unit, just a mounted unit to take cities once they reach 0 health.

My suggestion was that all ranged units, including archery and siege, but not necessarily gatling or machine gun (at least range 2), should get a penalty to attack if an enemy non-ranged is adjacent. That way, you can kind of neutralize enemy ranged simply by the virtue of having your melee there. You don't need to actually destroy the entire enemy force to get rid of their attacks. This would help, I think, to discourage the mass ranged strategies that are so dominant. IMO, you'd be able to attack a ranged force with a collection of melee much more efficiently than in the current game. So I don't think this would encourage extra siege unit production, I think it would punish excessive siege unit production. Also, I think it makes sense, in a flavor sense, because historically, siege is rendered less effective by nearby enemy forces. For example, catapults can't fire effectively at close enemy forces.