Two easy ways to nerf archery units

How about removing 'cover' as a promotion, and instead making it an automated unit action. Like fortify, except that it is invoked automatically after being fired upon by a ranged unit.

In reality this would by explained as follows.
1 Archer unit fires on a Swordsman unit. The Swordsman unit is automatically set to 'cover' for the rest of that turn. All subsequent ranged attacks from other Archers on this unit deal reduced damage.
When it's the player's turn again, the unit is no longer in 'cover' mode.

Alternatively make it a selectable unit status, like fortify.

Edit: the idea being, of course, that if a unit is being fired upon consistently, they're going to put up their shields to reduce casualties until the rain of arrows has subsided.

Thoughts?

Range has always been OP in RL. Thats why we have fighter jets, use guns, drones, RPG's, missiles, rockets, helicopters eqipped with missiles, grenade launchers, grenades ect. Goal is to kill before you get killed, not have a fair fight.

I like the idea of archers not fighting back when being attacked, actually. Or even just giving them all, automatically, a negative promotion that vastly reduces the damage they do when defending (because it seems easier to implement than changing how they fight completely).

I wouldn't mind the Sword line and the mounted line (especially the mounted line - mounted units were REALLY a devastating attack force throughout much of history) getting a buff, too. I still think that Pikemen used to be WAY too weak a long time ago, then the devs went too far in balancing them and made them too strong in comparison to Swords.

So, yeah. Archers being very weak on the defense, Swords being a little stronger and all mounted units being considerably stronger would work. It would make archers the support unit, swords the unit to hold position and deal with cities, and mounted units the primary strike unit. Which is pretty much how I think it should logically be. None of the unit types would be particularly weak or useless - but a combination of all three types would be the strongest army (with some siege units and navy thrown in for good measure).

Like the discussion shows, the problem is a little deeper than just ranged being too strong - the spear line is also too strong.

It's also a little more complicated than just pure killing ability. The shape of the tech tree also has something to do with it. The melee line has techs that are mostly about unlocking them and little else. Composite Bowmen come with Colosseums, Pikemen come with increased farm output and one of the game's better wonders. The melee line comes with little of interest after Bronze Working, while also not being required for any essential techs until quite late in the game.

The change of showing iron at Bronze Working has been useful and at least civs with Swordsman/Long-swordsman uniques will be more tempted (and capable) to use them early. But it doesn't mitigate the whole problem, in my opinion. Personally, if it were up to me, I would move the Forge to Iron Working, to make the whole tech more useful.

Besides that, I do agree that the Civ 5 devs gave archers too many advantages. In other games archers generally can't fire after moving and are forced to fight in melee mode when they have an enemy proximity. In Civ 5, they actually fire at full strength when in proximity and don't even receive retaliation. For a future Civ game where they keep the 1upt system, I would increase the range of archers by 1, while at the same time making them switch to melee mode if they have a unit in proximity and also making them unable to fire after moving a single hex. This would mean that you would actually have to keep them behind a wall of melee fighters if you want them to achieve anything.

For Civ 5 it's too late to go crazy with changes, but tweaks wouldn't go amiss. Giving archers a significant penalty when attacking cities, while perhaps giving swordsmen a 10% bonus in the same situation would help significantly. Decreasing the spear bonus against horses is another obvious one (I do also like the idea of making their bonus activate only when attacked).

Things like damage that gives diminishing returns are too complicated for people to follow and to optimize and I don't think it's a great solution.

So long as points 1 & 2 don't apply to Gatling & Maxim guns and that sounds good to me

I suggest making all ranged damage dependant on the targits health. If you shoot at 100 men it is easier to hit the targit from afar than shooting at 10 men. So make a damage modifier dependant the health of the targit.

The same formulae used to calculate combat strength modifier based on health could be used. The formulae is 50% + 50%*(health/100). This means you would deal around 75% damage to units with 50 health and 60% to units with 20 health.

To balance this the base damage should perhaps be a bit higher.

All in all this suggestion would mean you use ranged to weaken a unit, but need different units to finish a them off.

As for city damage i suggest walls should provide a further damage reduction bonus vs. archery units.

Even with a considerably large nerf, archers would still be an important unit and would be built. They provide free damage, so making them a strong standard unit as it is i feel is overkill, you should have to work for the free damage, think about placement of units etc.

I like the idea of range only being two. But i would amend that to giving them range of 1 or 2 when they are stationed on a hill. I also like the idea of them not having a melee attack.

Essentially they are such a powerful unit simply with the ranged attack that they don't need anything else to be a viable pick.

#2 is a very good suggestion.
Also, they should totally bring back the 25% penalty when attacking cities archers had in vanilla. Or maybe make it even 40% or so. Siege units should be tearing down walls, not ing archers...

Lowering their melee strength will essentially result in the same as #2. This will make it more important to bring melee units to guard them, and they will do less damage on return.

Removing their range-1 attack will not work when fighting in forest as someone pointed out, so that's probably a bad idea. I'm myself also a strong proponent of the 25 % penalty against cities to return.

kaspergm said:

Lowering their melee strength will essentially result in the same as #2. This will make it more important to bring melee units to guard them, and they will do less damage on return.

Removing their range-1 attack will not work when fighting in forest as someone pointed out, so that's probably a bad idea. I'm myself also a strong proponent of the 25 % penalty against cities to return.

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Lowering melee strength would make them more susceptible to one hit kills which is not something desirable & can be extremely annoying for the player, it would also be a big nerf to barbs. Not dealing damage in defence would however balance things much better.

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Babri said:

Lowering melee strength would make them more susceptible to one hit kills which is not something desirable & can be extremely annoying for the player

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It would make them more susceptible to one hit kills, yes. Not sure that is not desirable. After all, making it thus will give you more incentive to bring melee units to guard them. And is that not exactly what we want?

kaspergm said:

It would make them more susceptible to one hit kills, yes. Not sure that is not desirable. After all, making it thus will give you more incentive to bring melee units to guard them. And is that not exactly what we want?

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Lowering melee strength would also make them weaker against ranged units. And a situation where units die very easily, and often "who shot first" is the primary concern, would potentially damage the gameplay, methinks.

oddtail said:

Lowering melee strength would also make them weaker against ranged units. And a situation where units die very easily, and often "who shot first" is the primary concern, would potentially damage the gameplay, methinks.

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Yeah, that I agree with.

Mesix said:

Ranged units should excel against other units. They should do minimal damage to cities.

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This!

Ranged units are fine in combat but they are too good against cities. Just give them a penalty against cities similar to melee units. Maybe give them a siege promotion at XP level 3 or 4 instead.

I don't like any of the OP's suggestions, by the way. And I honestly think that ranged isn't as big of a problem as it was in G+K anyway.

kaspergm said:

It would make them more susceptible to one hit kills, yes. Not sure that is not desirable. After all, making it thus will give you more incentive to bring melee units to guard them. And is that not exactly what we want?

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Generally hard rules aren't very fun for the player in ciV plus AI is known to make strategic blunders. If the AI makes a dumb move or you misclicked your archer then your unit will be dead. This can be extremely frustrating for the player leading to rage quit at times & AI would become more exploitable if it makes a similar mistake (which it WILL).

One of the major reason for having multiple fights in ciV instead of binary victory system of cIV was that you were given a chance to correct your mistake & retreat/focus.

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NO.

There are some good ideas here, perhaps for Civ6 or another game, but let's stop tweaking things like ranged attack that is at best, a personal view of overpowered.

Ranged units are fine they are in Civ5, there are other things to balance and AI war bugs fix than for the devs to go into a major battle systems overhaul.

Bugs such as AI trying to use Melee ships to take a land target like a barb camp
General AI issues such as AI propensity to suicide red-lined units shuffling outside a city.

dexters said:

NO.

Ranged units are fine they are in Civ5

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Ok. I guess you're right. Ranged unit combat is perfect as is... after all, seeing crossbowmen take down an Ironclad is perfectly fine.

El Caballerion said:

Ok. I guess you're right. Ranged unit combat is perfect as is... after all, seeing crossbowmen take down an Ironclad is perfectly fine.

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Don;t put words in my mouth. Ranged is always an issue since Civ3, which BTW, has ranged units that couldn't defend.

And Civ3 didn't have lethal bombardment either until c3c and it was still severely broken.

My point is, range units will always be OP under human control.
Instead of spending resources trying to fix it and likely only succeeding in small ways, but also opening up the battle system to a whole lot of needless re-balancing, it's better for them to focus resources on what's actually broken, not a subjective view of broken.

Finally the ideas in OP are fine, just not for Civ5. Ship has sailed on that.

Paper rock scissors approach:
Mounted have bonus defending and attacking against ranged and siege. Take less damage from city attack but penalty if THEY attack the cities. Create a ZoC.
Warrior/Swordsman have bonus against spears/pikes and strong vs. cities and create ZoC.
Spears/pikes have bonus against mounted and strong vs. cities and create ZoC.
Ranged suck vs. cities and mounted but good against spears, pikes, siege and swords with no ZoC. Cannot take and hold the city.
Siege deal no defensive damaage when attacked, penalty against all units, superb vs. cities or units inside of forts/citadels. No ZoC. Cannot take and hold the city.

Encourages a mixed line. Bring only pikes and archers/trebuchets and my swordsmen wipe them out and then my mounted run over the ranged and siege. Bring only swords and my mounted/ranged take them down. Bring no siege my walls stay strong. Bring no ranged you can't weaken melee and enemy pikes.

The typical line would have mix of pike/swords leading the way with mounted on the flanks to create zones of control to slow attacks against your ranged units and siege weapons that form a second line.

This forum is so impressive when it comes to balance suggestions. Almost every single idea is good.

If only the industry needed more "idea people"