After the Patch - Pillaging heals units - Thoughts?

turingmachine said:

I'm concerned the heal amount is too high.

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As already mentioned, it's limited by the improvements available - it would be rather weak if it healed less HP and you ran out of improvements before you did anything useful. It does need to compensate for the need to rebuild said improvements.

But mainly I think it's deliberately asymmetrical to help AI attacks - human players improve most or all of their tiles; AIs do so less consistently. So a human attacker will have fewer improvements to pillage and so benefit from than an AI. I suspect the improvements to Denmark and cavalry are incidental, with the AI buff the primary purpose.

turingmachine said:

I'm concerned the heal amount is too high. You already had the option to waste your move points and heal 10 with the standard heal. Improvements can be only pillaged once but they will be on every tile. There's very little reason to use a standard heal in enemy territory now. Not to mention it devalues healing promotions and abilities. What is so special about the Immortal now when before he could standard heal for 20 and everyone can now heal for 25? Why choose medic promotions when everyone has a 25 instant heal? The Khan is also weaker now as before he let people heal 25 but you no longer needed him now to do that. The instant heal promotion is also worse as you can now get half of its bonus just pillaging (why ever give up your promotions now?)

You already got gold pillaging and you hurt the enemies tile yield. Those were decent bonuses by themselves. Adding a healing incentive is not a bad idea but 2.5 x the standard heal seems too much, especially in addition to the standard pillaging value.

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I'm with you. Pillaging was already good with the gold and damage to that cities resources.

Having said that, when I was within a cities range, I was there to take it, and would do my best to ensure the odds where in my favour. This meant it was better for me not to pillage, as most times the cities would be mine soon enough.

Perhaps increasing the gold, or providing XP or something would've made it more interesting. The HP is okay too, but I'm thinking +25 is too much.

It will bring back melee play.

G&K did something with the city strengths that made it kinda hard/really hard to take cities that have multiple forests/hills stopping a proper ranged surround.

With them fixing RAs and this thrown in... Seriously buffs all the conquests oriented civs.

Its basicly a change made for the AI So that it will be able to conquer better "just like the instant heal promotion in vanilla " Remember that you can still do this in gods and king (50 Hp only but still usefull and gamebreaking)

My prediction it will be a broken game mechanic and firaxis will not remove it because its usefull for the AI.

I thinx this is a little bit to overpowered +25 HP means that range unit become weaker and cities are easier to take(wich they buffed in gods and kings and it was needed)

It means that you have a advantage if you are on the offence wich doesn't make any sence at game balance in my opinion.. It should be equal and offence a little bit harder because it gives you more in the long run..

It olso favors conquest over other strategies like science ,culture or diplomatic. Wich brings us back to vanilla where conquest victory was the way to go...

it ciuld be intresting if difrent improvments gave you fiffrent bonuses:

farms, camps and food plantation +25% health, cattle, cheap and horses + 40% health.

tradeposts, cotton, and othe plantaions 10 turns of that imprevments gold output, gold , silver, jewels, silk 20 turns of gold output.

wine, inscense, dye one turn of that civiluzations culture per turn

mines and saw mills +15 xp,
iron, bronze, oil, aluminium and uranium + 30 xp

gp improvment 10 turns of that yeald.

what.do you think?

apocalypse105 said:

Its basicly a change made for the AI So that it will be able to conquer better "just like the instant heal promotion in vanilla " Remember that you can still do this in gods and king (50 Hp only but still usefull and gamebreaking)

My prediction it will be a broken game mechanic and firaxis will not remove it because its usefull for the AI.

I thinx this is a little bit to overpowered +25 HP means that range unit become weaker and cities are easier to take(wich they buffed in gods and kings and it was needed)

It means that you have a advantage if you are on the offence wich doesn't make any sence at game balance in my opinion.. It should be equal and offence a little bit harder because it gives you more in the long run..

It olso favors conquest over other strategies like science ,culture or diplomatic. Wich brings us back to vanilla where conquest victory was the way to go...

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I think it will help the AI but more than anything it should help move the action from the cities to the fields sooner. Even in most ancient battles, if an enemy army got to your walls, you were in trouble. As early as the Second Punic War, Rome was very much threatened. Hannibal was at the doorstep of the city, and had he marched, we now know Rome would have been obliterated. We don't know why he didn't march on Rome, but we do know that Rome considered the fact he didn't a sign that they were favored by the gods.

The two times Rome WAS sacked had less to do with military power and more to do with logistics. Had the Roman army met the invaders, Rome would have won both times, but the enemy got to the city, and the rest is history.

Compare that to Greece, who, with generally small alliances among the city states, was able to hold off the much larger Persia several times. All the famous battles between the two took place outside of cities. Had Greece defended their cities from within, certainly the Persians would have dominated them.

It may force people to get a bigger army earlier, but it will simply move the focus from cities to the battlefield sooner.

city fights and stacks of doom were the worst problems in civ4 so i'm glad now both of these things will be gone. i think the pillage healing is a really good idea, even if they have to change the heal amount in a future patch

I might actually build mounted units now

Cyon said:

it ciuld be intresting if difrent improvments gave you fiffrent bonuses:

farms, camps and food plantation +25% health, cattle, cheap and horses + 40% health.

tradeposts, cotton, and othe plantaions 10 turns of that imprevments gold output, gold , silver, jewels, silk 20 turns of gold output.

wine, inscense, dye one turn of that civiluzations culture per turn

mines and saw mills +15 xp,
iron, bronze, oil, aluminium and uranium + 30 xp

gp improvment 10 turns of that yeald.

what.do you think?

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Too crazy or too useless.

Pillaging right now gives gold. Which if you factor that if you take the city there some good grace period before it's even workable is fine. The problem is that it usually takes movement points and offers no immediate tactical advantage so you need to reallllllly be crushing a city for it to be worth pillaging, but that's sorta a catch 22, because if you are crushing a city that hard, you'll want the improvements running sooner.


Now if you move in for a surround, second turn, one or two of them (or more) get injured, instead of fortifying the injured ones to sit there and heal, you can pillage and attack again, assuming it's an age relevant units.

Btw whoever listed that ton of unit healing or using medic 1 and 2... You can't pillage and heal on the same turn. Jaguars and Jannisaries could say pillage and then attack and kill a unit next to them, but that's about it.

Blitz is probably going to be better than March in some situations.

Denmark just got some serious love <.<.

This will be nice for early siege units that take very hard hits from a city. Make sure you park them on an improvement during your move in/setup turn, and then next turn if it takes a hit you should be able to pillage, then fire.

PhilBowles said:

But mainly I think it's deliberately asymmetrical to help AI attacks - human players improve most or all of their tiles; AIs do so less consistently. So a human attacker will have fewer improvements to pillage and so benefit from than an AI. I suspect the improvements to Denmark and cavalry are incidental, with the AI buff the primary purpose.

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It is poor game design to balance this type of game around deficiencies in the AI. If they wanted to they could have increased the Ai heal amount or on higher difficulties instead of making it universal. Also, if this is true, it's just further evidence of how little they care about MP.

Also it's not really limited that much by the number of improvements because, as already said, improvements are everywhere.

turingmachine said:

It is poor game design to balance this type of game around deficiencies in the AI. If they wanted to they could have increased the Ai heal amount or on higher difficulties instead of making it universal. Also, if this is true, it's just further evidence of how little they care about MP.

Also it's not really limited that much by the number of improvements because, as already said, improvements are everywhere.

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Yeah but you'll eventually run out of improvements unless you bring in the workers to somehow repair them, i doubt workers can repair enemy infrastructure. But i think you can lay down roads but that's basically it.

I doubt that is balanced around deficiencies in the AI. Its balanced around the fact no one would pillage. Why should I pillage a city I am about to take? It just requires more work for me to get it back into action. Now there is a real choice on whether it is worth it for me to pillage some of those farms around the city.

apocalypse105 said:

Its basicly a change made for the AI So that it will be able to conquer better "just like the instant heal promotion in vanilla " Remember that you can still do this in gods and king (50 Hp only but still usefull and gamebreaking)

My prediction it will be a broken game mechanic and firaxis will not remove it because its usefull for the AI.

I thinx this is a little bit to overpowered +25 HP means that range unit become weaker and cities are easier to take(wich they buffed in gods and kings and it was needed)

It means that you have a advantage if you are on the offence wich doesn't make any sence at game balance in my opinion.. It should be equal and offence a little bit harder because it gives you more in the long run..

It olso favors conquest over other strategies like science ,culture or diplomatic. Wich brings us back to vanilla where conquest victory was the way to go...

Click to expand...

Nah, we can still focus fire. The thing to really bring cities will still be siege and ranged stuff in general... though perhaps the AI will actually use Keshiks and HAs much better now.

kaspergm said:

I'm dubious abut the thing in the first place since I don't really see it making much sense and it sounds very annoying, but having it heal more than using a standard heal action is downright horrible in my oppinion.

And it certainly will make those early AI rushes a lot more annoying than they are currently, which can be a good or a bad thing depending on your perspective I guess.

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I dread this. Currently you can make a decent-sized early military force to defend your cities, and have a good chance of defeating those huge mobs of units the AI rushes you with in the first 1/4 of the game. But only because they did NOT pillage all of your critical improvements. You could afford to back up your defensive units to good tactical tiles around and behind your garrisoned city, and hold them off without getting wiped out by their superior numbers- not anymore, since you can't afford to let them fill up most of your civ's tiles and pillage the crap out of them. And now, if you actually do manage to defeat those huge mobs of units (which will be much harder since they can pillage-heal now for extra staying power), you will end up with a ruined civ where it will take a bunch of turns to get back out of starvation mode and many more until your city(s) are actually moving forward and becoming productive again.

So, as hard as it is to start out, build up, and work feverishly to get an edge in the game now (on higher difficulties, anyway), once you have one or (often) more enemy civs bum-rushing you throughout the early game, you will be spending far more time just repairing pillaged tiles (presuming you survived, which will be much less likely than before the patch) than actually getting anywhere positive. If this kind of cycle hits you early, you may as well just retire and write off the game. The civs who are not getting this kind of punishment will rapidly break out and runaway. Whereas before, you could actually survive such BS from your neighbors if you played well, and have a chance of winning.

So, to survive these repeated pillage-healing bum rush AI civs, you would absolutely have to put a massive focus on building up vast quantities of your own military, to cow your neighbors into not attacking (and pigeonholing you into the victory condition of conquest, as right from the start you've had to cripple all other things for the expense of military buildup), and to be able to have enough units to prevent your enemies from even setting foot on your lands- as any significant enemy intrusion onto your lands will now equate to tile pillaging and instant economic depression and disaster within your civ, that will take a long time to recover from. And you'd have to invest in a LOT of workers, just to be able to repair pillaged lands and also be able to improve new tiles at any decent rate. So when will you find production time to build wonders? Culture/science/religious buildings? Again, you'd be locked into one and only one build option for the majority of the time- military units/bldgs.

So if you don't go total military/conquest from the start, at the expense of all other ways of playing, then you lose, game over.

Sure sounds like fun.... NOT.

Smokeybear said:

I dread this. Currently you can make a decent-sized early military force to defend your cities, and have a good chance of defeating those huge mobs of units the AI rushes you with in the first 1/4 of the game. But only because they did NOT pillage all of your critical improvements. You could afford to back up your defensive units to good tactical tiles around and behind your garrisoned city, and hold them off without getting wiped out by their superior numbers- not anymore, since you can't afford to let them fill up most of your civ's tiles and pillage the crap out of them. And now, if you actually do manage to defeat those huge mobs of units (which will be much harder since they can pillage-heal now for extra staying power), you will end up with a ruined civ where it will take a bunch of turns to get back out of starvation mode and many more until your city(s) are actually moving forward and becoming productive again.

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It doesn't take that long to repair improvements. If you hold them, they will have used up their healing power from pillaging and then you can remove them. I don't think it'll change things a lot.

Smokeybear said:

I dread this. Currently you can make a decent-sized early military force to defend your cities, and have a good chance of defeating those huge mobs of units the AI rushes you with in the first 1/4 of the game. But only because they did NOT pillage all of your critical improvements. You could afford to back up your defensive units to good tactical tiles around and behind your garrisoned city, and hold them off without getting wiped out by their superior numbers- not anymore, since you can't afford to let them fill up most of your civ's tiles and pillage the crap out of them. And now, if you actually do manage to defeat those huge mobs of units (which will be much harder since they can pillage-heal now for extra staying power), you will end up with a ruined civ where it will take a bunch of turns to get back out of starvation mode and many more until your city(s) are actually moving forward and becoming productive again.

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If you get into a war early, you better be ready. You'll want tactical land in front of your city, so you can defend there, or a city with improvements behind it until you can get a force ready later. Once you get engineering, you can start building forts in front of your cities to hold off the enemy better, too, making it a nice target tech, leading you by or to aqueducts and lumber mills for more peaceful civs, catapults for aggressive strategies, c bows and forts for anyone, and the newly useful Great Wall.

So, as hard as it is to start out, build up, and work feverishly to get an edge in the game now (on higher difficulties, anyway), once you have one or (often) more enemy civs bum-rushing you throughout the early game, you will be spending far more time just repairing pillaged tiles (presuming you survived, which will be much less likely than before the patch) than actually getting anywhere positive. If this kind of cycle hits you early, you may as well just retire and write off the game. The civs who are not getting this kind of punishment will rapidly break out and runaway. Whereas before, you could actually survive such BS from your neighbors if you played well, and have a chance of winning.

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Work on your diplomacy. I'm normally a king player right now (but ready to move up), and I have a win on Deity under my belt. It was a silly diplo win, bribing all the CS's to my side and declaring war. I had just industrialized at that point. I had Mongolia as a close neighbor and good friend throughout the game, and the first DoW on me wasn't until about 100 AD (and Alex was soon denounced by half the known world for that). Playing well is more than just army placement. Diplomacy is a big deal too.

So, to survive these repeated pillage-healing bum rush AI civs, you would absolutely have to put a massive focus on building up vast quantities of your own military, to cow your neighbors into not attacking (and pigeonholing you into the victory condition of conquest, as right from the start you've had to cripple all other things for the expense of military buildup), and to be able to have enough units to prevent your enemies from even setting foot on your lands- as any significant enemy intrusion onto your lands will now equate to tile pillaging and instant economic depression and disaster within your civ, that will take a long time to recover from. And you'd have to invest in a LOT of workers, just to be able to repair pillaged lands and also be able to improve new tiles at any decent rate. So when will you find production time to build wonders? Culture/science/religious buildings? Again, you'd be locked into one and only one build option for the majority of the time- military units/bldgs.

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Do you do this to the AI now? They are terrible at keeping workers so should be put at more of a disadvantage than you, and I believe they get bonus growth, meaning any food you take away hurts them more too. It's just not all that effective. If they stop to pillage lots of tiles before taking a city, they probably gave you more turns to prepare for their attack than had they just moved in, and they hurt themselves when they take it.

And all of this, again, is based off the idea you can't handle diplomacy early on, when it's easiest to make people happy, you picked city sites that didn't allow for you to defend out front, AND you didn't build your improvements on the other end of your cities first, and even if you don't do any of that, the AI is going to stop to pillage tiles instead of attacking your city and units, allowing you to get in free hits. And you should probably be able to kill 1 unit per turn...if you can't deal at least 25 damage, rethink your strategy.

So if you don't go total military/conquest from the start, at the expense of all other ways of playing, then you lose, game over.

Sure sounds like fun.... NOT.

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This is only true if you ignore certain things you can do. If you never build forts to help you hold forward land after the patch, maybe. If you can't handle your diplo, maybe. If you can't plan your cities, maybe. However, if you are willing to look at how the AI acts and plan accordingly, I imagine you can play many different ways.

could anyone tell me how to download the patch...im new to civ

It's not yet released, it has only been announced .

I think Rooftrellen has the intent of it. I'll definitely be setting up camp on my borders and will be putting more emphasis on forts. Will probably put an end to my days of stealing CS workers as the likely hood of surviving a muli front assault became much thinner. Interested to see how this one plays out.