What balance changes are you hoping for?

Guys changing Swordsmen is not the answer. You can buff them all you want, Range units still will be better due to the simple fact they deal damage with no cost, damage that is easy to multiply also due to the fact its much easy to have 5 archers attack one unit than it is to have 5 warriors attack one unit. In the later eras, archers and crossbows just become artillery and bombers.

These units currently rule the game in warfare over land
Archers, Composite Bowmen, Crossbowmen, Artillery (3 range makes up for reduced damage and the fact you can concentrate fire on any units), Great War Bombers, Bombers, Rocket Artillery. Bring along one or two mounted units for taking cities and spam the best unit of the timeframe which wins wars. (Note this list doesn't include unique units, but Longbowmen, Camel Archers, etc are even more overpowered).

If you disagree with these units being overpowered than you probably have never played multiplayer (against players). Hate it or not, multiplayer is the where game balance is best seen since human players can use units to their full efficiency.

plokoon9619 said:

Guys changing Swordsmen is not the answer. You can buff them all you want, Range units still will be better due to the simple fact they deal damage with no cost, damage that is easy to multiply also due to the fact its much easy to have 5 archers attack one unit than it is to have 5 warriors attack one unit. In the later eras, archers and crossbows just become artillery and bombers.

These units currently rule the game in warfare over land
Archers, Composite Bowmen, Crossbowmen, Artillery (3 range makes up for reduced damage and the fact you can concentrate fire on any units), Great War Bombers, Bombers, Rocket Artillery. Bring along one or two mounted units for taking cities and spam the best unit of the timeframe which wins wars. (Note this list doesn't include unique units, but Longbowmen, Camel Archers, etc are even more overpowered).

If you disagree with these units being overpowered than you probably have never played multiplayer (against players). Hate it or not, multiplayer is the where game balance is best seen since human players can use units to their full efficiency.

Click to expand...

The fact that ranged units are much stronger than swordsmen is only half the problem. The other half is the fact that spearmen and pikemen outclass the swordsmen and longsword by miles. This is mainly due to the position of the iron units on the tech tree. Since melee units are largely ineffective, their role is reduced to being a meatshield; which pikemen are far better at being.

To repost my suggestions from the refent Melee Line thread, which apply here as well:

-sword unit attacks on a city prevent the city from attacking next turn. this will make sword more valuable and less vulnerable in a city attack.

-reduce city attack range to 1 after ancient era, or reduce the attack at range 2 to be roughly equivalent to cannon strength. Cities need to stop being GDR's so units can engage each other freely. In regards to making it easier for mounted units to flank, they already work beautifully in the rare instance two armies are fighting away from cities. The game needs to reduce the city range so mounted units can threaten archers more effectively, which will raise the value of melee units as defense against mounted.

-allow industrial era melee and range units to entrench as a defense against artillery. this will make melee (and later armor) presses a necessity for industrial conquest so 3 artillery+horse can't take over an entire AI civ.

Unresolved said:

The fact that ranged units are much stronger than swordsmen is only half the problem. The other half is the fact that spearmen and pikemen outclass the swordsmen and longsword by miles. This is mainly due to the position of the iron units on the tech tree. Since melee units are largely ineffective, their role is reduced to being a meatshield; which pikemen are far better at being.

Click to expand...

That would be a secondary a problem because as spearman and pikeman are melee units they are only good for bringing 1 or 2 along for taking cities if you don't have horses.

plokoon9619 said:

Guys changing Swordsmen is not the answer. You can buff them all you want, Range units still will be better due to the simple fact they deal damage with no cost, damage that is easy to multiply also due to the fact its much easy to have 5 archers attack one unit than it is to have 5 warriors attack one unit. In the later eras, archers and crossbows just become artillery and bombers.

Click to expand...

That is only hypothetically true. Try to pitch an Archer against a Musketman and see how much he is bothered. The multi-targeting ability of Archers is severely reduced in reality by terrain and the fact that you need to shield them against high-movement mounted units that can sweep in and out in the same turn (or at least you would need to, if melee strength difference between Mounted and Ranged was big enough).

Yes, being able to attack at a distance without having return damage is a huge advantage, and that is why Archers need to be relatively lower in strength - not only in melee strength, but also in ranged strength - than contemporary melee/mounted units, but saying that they will "always be stronger" is too much of a simplification.

Archers are overpowered. Focus Fire is too strong. I like the idea that cities can't attack if having been attacked by a melee attack the turn before. I'd also like to reduce attack strength of ranged units garrisoned in cities by 50%, he's invulnerable in the city as well. To make city garrisons of melee units more worthwhile, their healing rate could be doubled in cities not in resistance. Finally, the fortify command for units should give them +50% defense against ranged, not more melee defense.

But balance is a tricky thing, at the beginning of the vanilla cycle, horsemen were the overpowered unit f.e., so all those suggestions might go too far

Remove city attack, make unit in city stronger, make attackers have to defeat unit in city before city falls.

Problem solved.

Light Cleric said:

I didn't see a similar thread to this but my luck I just searched the wrong terms

I would like to preface this by saying I think G&K made Civ V much more balanced than it was in Vanilla. The length of this post may make it seem like the game is broken, but I don't; I find it very well balanced for its complexity(when you consider UUs).

With that being said, what imbalances are you hoping to see fixed in BNW? This is my personal list:

1)Swordsmen.

Spoiler :

Swords went from being the end-all in vanilla to terrible in G&K. They require a strategic resource that you can't see until you reach Iron Working, which is a very heavy investment and makes it hard to settle cities near, and for your trouble you get a 14 Strength unit. Especially on higher difficulties, the AI will start to field its own Swords as early as turn 50, and by turn 65-70(it varies b/c some civs ignore Civil Service) you see 16 Strength Pikemen. They also suffer from the problem all non-horse melee units suffer: having to take an attack on the approach, damage during the attack, and damage after the attack. This is mitigate later on with Siege/March/Cover etc, but at that point in the game you don't have those promotions.

Proposed changes:
-Reveal Iron at Bronze Working, allowing you to determine if going to IW is a worthwhile investment, either to grab your own Iron or see if a City-State has it.
-Change Pikemen and Swordsmen to both have 15 Combat Strength. Yes, Pikemen are farther along in the tech tree, but the Pike user did not have to deviate at all from the Philo/Education tech path to get them and also doesn't need a strategic resource.

2)Lancers.

Spoiler :

They may not be "bad" units, but they're on an odd upgrade path, going fromSpears(2 movement) ->Pikes(2 movement)-> Lancer(4 move + strategic resource) -> Anti-Tank Guns(2 movement)-Helicopters(6 movement). It puts them in the awkward position of constantly flipping between defensive and offensive units.

They're also not great at filling their niche of mounted units. The Lancer fails to take down one of the most dangerous mounted units in Stampy(aka Naresuan's Elephant); despite being very far ahead of it on the tech tree, the Lancer actually loses heads-up with Stampy because it only receives +33% vs mounted from Formation I whereas Stampy has a flat +50% vs mounted units. It's also followed very quickly by Cavalry which have the same combat strength vs mounted uints.

Proposed Changes:
-I'm honestly not sure what can be done outside of a straight combat strength buff. My preferred option would be "multiple upgrade paths" that I have wanted for a long time; that is, allow your Pike to become either a Musket or a Lancer. This also prevents players from being stuck with a bunch of pikemen they can't upgrade which is why you see City-States have tons of Pikemen.

3)Liberty.

Spoiler :

I understand why the Collective Rule/Republic sawp was done and if this were still vanilla, where Tradition's finisher didn't get Aqueducts and Legalism wasn't working correctly, I would support it. However, the pendulum seems to have swung too far and made Tradition the no-brainer instead of Liberty. This swap did more than slow down the settler; it slowed down everythingin the tree and made it much more painful. Citizenship takes 4 policies, and Representation/Meritocracy take 5; this is the most annoying part, because the only happiness policy in the entire tree, Meritocracy, often has to be taken last because without Representation the cost for the last policy is very high. And if you go Citizenship first, Collective Rule often comes so late as to be meaningless.

Proposed Changes:
-Switch Collective Rule/Republic back.
-Fix the Liberty finisher. The last time I checked, selecting a Great Prophet with the Liberty finisher increases the cost of all Great People by 100 points, which Great Prophets are not supposed to do. This is an extremely frustrating thing to run into if you want to use Liberty to found/enhance a religion.

4)Honor

Spoiler :

My main gripe is the early part of it. The opener does not pay for itself because of the massive spike in policy costs after the first few. Honor is best used as a second tree to Tradition/Honor, and the opener is only useful when you should not be opening Honor. I really cannot think of a game where you could not get at least the same outcome, often better, with Tradition or Liberty.

The other issue is Warrior Code: the +15% production to melee units is painfully narrow since this does *not* apply to Horse units. The free Great General is nice but it is not particularly difficult to generate the first GG with combat.

Proposed changes:
-I'm not 100% sure what to do with the opener but it needs changing badly. I would suggest something like "free Barracks" but that opens the possiblity of "dipping" 1 policy into Honor and getting too much from it. I would also support moving the -15% unit maintenance from the now-defunct Autocracy tree to the Honor opener.
-Make Warrior Code's +15% production either apply to all military units or at least also affect mounted units.

5)Planes.

Spoiler :

This is most egregious one in my opinion. As MadDjinn has explained, the AI has a weird dislike for Fertilizer. It tends to just go hard to Flight and ignore Artillery, which creates a very stale mid-game because you are also forced to go Flight if you don't want to get slaughtered. The problem becomes worse if you didn't get Oil; the first counter for planes that doesn't take a resource is Anti-Aircraft Guns, which require Flight *and* Ballistics. This force you to not only go Flight yourself, but also down through Dynamite, Raiload, and everything else down there, THEN you can start hard-building your 250 hammer AA Guns from scratch. AA Guns are very lethal against planes, yes, but there needs to be some answer to them that becomes available in a reasonable timeframe. Pikes, Anti-Tank Guns, etc. all come before or shortly after the unit they counter, not 6 or 7 Industrial/Modern techs later. It also makes the game pathetically easy if you happened to get Oil and the AIs didn't; even a Deity AI army is shredded by Great War Bombers if there's no Triplanes to deter you.

Proposed Changes:
-Knock Great War Bomber attack strength down slightly. I'm not sure what number is good, but as-is they do a significant amount of damage even to units that have Cover I/Cover II.
-Make AA Guns more accessible. IIRC there was a change a while back that made Ballistics require Railroad, the idea probably being to get the AI to go through Fertilizer. It had the side effect of making AA Guns a massive pain in the ass to get.

You deserve a sticker if you read all my rambling crap.

Click to expand...

1. make ranged units very susceptible to melee attack but still tough to kill by ranged, i.e. ranged defensive against ranged only. It's not swordman's problem it's ranged problem.

2. Lancer can reduce to 3 movement points and not require horse, road usage should make them good at defence but not offense. but not a big issue from I can see.

3.liberty is fine if the social policy cost is going down, but the Great Prophet bug should be corrected.

4. Free four barracks somewhere? to enable early heroic epic without delay expansion?

5. did;t realise antiair was a problem, but I guess you are right. Although I felt AI is very bad at dealing with 3 ranged artillary, so they should be given advantage by going air.

Great post! I agree with all of this!

Well I'm glad this sparked a good bit of discussion.

mitsho said:

Archers are overpowered. Focus Fire is too strong. I like the idea that cities can't attack if having been attacked by a melee attack the turn before. I'd also like to reduce attack strength of ranged units garrisoned in cities by 50%, he's invulnerable in the city as well. To make city garrisons of melee units more worthwhile, their healing rate could be doubled in cities not in resistance. Finally, the fortify command for units should give them +50% defense against ranged, not more melee defense.

But balance is a tricky thing, at the beginning of the vanilla cycle, horsemen were the overpowered unit f.e., so all those suggestions might go too far

Click to expand...

I think you hit the nail on the head there. I was trying to stick more towards changing numbers, altering tech tree things etc., simple things that probably won't alter the game dramatically rather than things that might dramatically alter 1UPT etc. Trying for baby steps here

My issue is with Swords themselves. If Pikes/Swords were equalized at 15 strength, Swords could do a much better job of attacking the enemy defensive units and be slightly better meatshields. Their role isn't to be city atatckers like in Vanilla where you would hit bulb Steel on turn 45(yeah...early vanilla was broken...) and go on a rampage; that comes later at Rifles and (Great War) Infantry with sufficient promotions(Siege Infantry can be disgusting).

The only gripe I have about cities is the fact that you can stack a land and naval unit in the city so that you have to stomach 3 attacks per turn and there's nothing you can do about it. This is really compounded by the fact that naval units get a flat bonus vs land units from Bombardment instead of a terrain-based one. Having to fight a 40 defense city + a Crossbow + a Galleass with +33% vs land units just because the city is next to a lake is kind of ridiculous.

-Remove mounted units city penalty and give them bonus vs ranged units.
-Give free siege promotion to infrantry line units
-Give archers penalty vs cities (like they had in vanilla)
-Reveal iron at mining

EEE_BOY said:

5. did;t realise antiair was a problem, but I guess you are right. Although I felt AI is very bad at dealing with 3 ranged artillary, so they should be given advantage by going air.

Click to expand...

One should never "fix" a problem by introducing another problem - that's very bad problem solution.

Light Cleric said:

Archers are overpowered. Focus Fire is too strong. I like the idea that cities can't attack if having been attacked by a melee attack the turn before. I'd also like to reduce attack strength of ranged units garrisoned in cities by 50%, he's invulnerable in the city as well. To make city garrisons of melee units more worthwhile, their healing rate could be doubled in cities not in resistance. Finally, the fortify command for units should give them +50% defense against ranged, not more melee defense.

Click to expand...

(...)Their role isn't to be city atatckers like in Vanilla where you would hit bulb Steel on turn 45(yeah...early vanilla was broken...) and go on a rampage; that comes later at Rifles and (Great War) Infantry with sufficient promotions(Siege Infantry can be disgusting).

The only gripe I have about cities is the fact that you can stack a land and naval unit in the city so that you have to stomach 3 attacks per turn and there's nothing you can do about it. This is really compounded by the fact that naval units get a flat bonus vs land units from Bombardment instead of a terrain-based one. Having to fight a 40 defense city + a Crossbow + a Galleass with +33% vs land units just because the city is next to a lake is kind of ridiculous.

Click to expand...

I think the whole concept of how units placed in cities work should be rethought - if not for this establishment of the game, then for the next. The idea that a city can range attack on its own, and then if you put a ranged unit in it you get two ranged attacks is not a good one. Rather, city should only be able to range attack if you put a ranged unit in it, and this would count as the attack OF the ranged unit (but would have greater strength than the attack of the ranged unit alone). Putting a melee unit in it should give some other properties, like bigger resistance towards melee attacks. Naval units should specifically increase strength against naval attacks.

I wouldn't mind a city having several unit slots, like one slot for a ranged/siege unit stationed in town, one slot for a melee unit stationed in town, one slot for a naval unit stationed in town. Each unit stationed should give the city some specific properties against units of the same kind. This would make for a more varied and yet probably also more balanced aspect of city attack/defence imo.

What about - when you dedicate a city to gold or science it converts 25% of the cities production to gold/science, but what happens to the other 75%, do you guys think it would be a good idea to allow the city to produce other things at the reduced capacity 75%? (While also converting 25% of production to gold/science)

Or even allowing two build projects at the same time, but being able to decide what percentage of your production goes to what project?

First of all I have to say that I have been playing all my CIV 5 games the last 3 months in the GEM mod.
Part of that is they adress a couple of the issues you have brought forward.

I agree with the first point, the 2nd one, the 3rd one to an extent, and the 4th.
Ways to implement this, that imho still remain elegant are:

1). Show iron deposits when researching mining. One of the reasons why swords are so incredibly underwhelming is that you need to invest heavily, while taking a huge gambit.
If you know you have iron deposits nearby, you can plan ahead and invest in the very expensive ironworking tech. Also slightly increasing the strength of the swordsman by 1-2 points will help out, OR give the swordsmen bonus to attack cities like they had in Civ4.

2). This one is noticably tougher to solve. Part of what irritates me is that the lancer is a unit that counters itself, and not only that but it is countered by its previously unupgraded counterpart (the pikemen).
The best way to implement this would be introducing a new melee unit around the same tier. Historically there were multiple improvements to the 'pikemen' to deal with mounted soldiers up to cavalry. I even suggest completely removing the lancer all together and substituting it with this new unit.

3). Liberty is a tricky thing to touch, and it power is directly linked to the amount of happyness you can muster early, versus the amount of research boost you get from Tradition + NC.
I personally never believe in one strategy beats all line of thinking, and I have had games where I went a liberty opening and still had a T80 NC with a total of 6 cities.
Maybe the tree needs a little tweaking, but not to much.

4). The honor tree needs some tweaks. I have been advocating for a while now that the "X free units" policy in the former Freedom tree should be put into the Honor tree, and I think this is the perfect moment to do so.
It always has been an incredibly underwhelming policy for just that benefit alone, and its would be a great fit to merge it into one of the already existing policies.
Also I think the opener should just give culture for all military kills you make, not just barbarians.
Certainly this would be the same as monty's UA, but the number can always be changed, it would still stack with monty's UA, or monty's UA could simply change. Monty is already always a pushover in all my games anyways, so a little buff won't be pushing it.

For the rest of the changes I personally would want to see

I think they should finally allow you to 'rushbuy' items for the equivalent cost of the
remaining hammers. This always has been the case in all the civ games, and it actually makes sense both gameplay wise and 'reality' wise.
If I invest 5 turns in building something, and I want to rushbuy the remaining 5 turns with gold, I should not be paying the full amount still.

The Piety tree should also be slightly revamped. The finisher especially is incredibly underwhelming. Not only because the effect is relatively weak, but mostly because it lost a ton of its value when you will be able to attain it. Also settling GP's, something seriously has to gone awry in your religion game if you have to resort to settling your Great prophets.

Also some of the pantheons and beliefs need to be tweaked. Some are just much better than others, and some don't make any sense.
F.e. why does Tithe count for all cities, foreign and domestic, while its culture counterpart only counts for foreign cities.
Monasteries should not be a believe, but should just be a building everyone can build. It gives a very underwhelming effect, that becomes good if you got two very specific resources in your vicinity.

Also the musketmen tech is very awkwardly placed. Every single unit in the game has its upgraded counterpart a good amount of techs spaced between them, but Longswordsmen -> Musket are right next to eachother.

Redo the American UA, its useless, anyone who says otherwise is fooling itself.

I probably got another 10 points, but these are the immediate and most prominent balance changes I can think off.

Light Cleric said:

I think you hit the nail on the head there. I was trying to stick more towards changing numbers, altering tech tree things etc., simple things that probably won't alter the game dramatically rather than things that might dramatically alter 1UPT etc. Trying for baby steps here

Click to expand...

Well thanks, I was actually aiming at that last sentence. Maybe I got a bigger problem with the unit and warfare system in civ5. I just think it's very clunky and hope for betterments in the next itineration of civ. I see however five main problems with warfare in civ. 3 of those are in a different topic: 1) 3-range artillery making cities easy to take, 2) air units being limitless stackable = theoreticall dominance (but they lose health ever turn...) and 3) navies can dominate and theoretically make a land army unnecessary (and you can't build up a navy as the ships built one-by-one get eaten up by the enemy, on land you can hide behind your other cities "defense in depth"). But what really is interesting is to me the other two points:

4) Cities are too strong / the triple attack of ranged+city+naval unit (+fresh built ranged unit via a bug): This one may be easily solvable by either giving ranged units in cities a malus or coding it so that they can't attack the same unit. No focus fire from a city! Period!

The other one goes the other way around

5) Ranged units rule the battlefield. This is the only point where imho only baby steps are needed. I'm not sure which are the correct ones, but there are many suggestions in this thread

@Fluxx I agree with all of your points generally, but I would like to second especially the "rush buy only costs the remaining turns of production" thing. That's one of the real basic bugs they refuse to solve (others: the Farm bug, the above 'fresh unit of the AI can attack while in city with another unit, and so on).

Also, don't make receiving a unique unit of a military city state a chance, if you have the correct techs, it should be 100 percent. There's nothing more annoying than theoretically being able to get a Keshik, but receiving a levy, comp bowman and pike...

Definitely agree with your notes about combat. Swordsmen (and Longswordsmen too) went from being vanilla powerhouses to borderline useless. One suggestion I've seen is swapping Civil Service with Chivalry in the tech tree; I'm not sure how many long-reaching consequences that'd have, but I know it'd make Knights scarier than they are (as they should be) and would mean that the AI didn't automatically hit Chichen Itza on its way to Education.

Pikemen to Lancers is a totally weird promotion; I think Pikemen should just go straight to Riflemen (which they did pre-G&K, right?).

I actually haven't given AA guns so much thought, but I suppose you're right. It's odd that they come so far after aircraft come on the scene (and you'd think machine guns might be effective vs. aircraft, too, but they show up at the very same tech).

I think the biggest problem with combat, though, as others have noted, is that ranged units are totally dominant. I posted a bunch of ideas about fixing ranged combat in the Ideas & Suggestions forum a while back (plus some ideas about changed promotion lines, tweaking Pikemen, etc.), but the thread never got many views—I don't think many people visit that forum. Sorry to promote it here, but I'd love it if somebody would have a look at that and give me some feedback; I'll probably try to mod it after BNW comes out.

mitsho said:

@Fluxx I agree with all of your points generally, but I would like to second especially the "rush buy only costs the remaining turns of production" thing. That's one of the real basic bugs they refuse to solve (others: the Farm bug, the above 'fresh unit of the AI can attack while in city with another unit, and so on).

Also, don't make receiving a unique unit of a military city state a chance, if you have the correct techs, it should be 100 percent. There's nothing more annoying than theoretically being able to get a Keshik, but receiving a levy, comp bowman and pike...

Click to expand...

whoward69's DLL mod solves the rush-buy issue. Highly recommended.

About the CS UUs: You will always get the UU if it's not outdated, but only if you are allied. Friendly CS will also give you units, but not the UU, only regular units. People tend to forget that sometimes.

Great suggestions, Light Cleric. I think iron generally suffers from a lot of problems. It's an expensive tech, and unless the map is water heavy, you don't need it at all. You can be a powerhouse of a civ with absolutely no access to metal, which is baffling as a matter of gameplay and double baffling as a matter of immersion.

I also agree 100% on planes. There should never be a single tech path that is always correct (*cough* philosophy, I'm looking at you too). That's boring. Tech paths should be context sensitive. As it stands now, everyone who plays on diety and immortal takes almost an identical tech path because the philosophy, CS, education, flight techs are so freaking important. Someone who takes the ironworking gamble will be screwed twice. First, because they didn't go philosophy and CS, and second because the only thing they have to show for it is a garbage melee unit.

kaspergm said:

whoward69's DLL mod solves the rush-buy issue. Highly recommended.

About the CS UUs: You will always get the UU if it's not outdated, but only if you are allied. Friendly CS will also give you units, but not the UU, only regular units. People tend to forget that sometimes.

Click to expand...

Didn't know about the whoward's mod. I kinda dislike his system of mix'n'match, it's just such a nuissance to install and control and not lose the oversight. Oh yes, first world problems

The CS UU thing on the other hand though seems to have been screwed up by GEM and CivUp due to it's system of rebalancing the yield of military city state (In the vanilla game, they can give you nothing if you lose the alliance status again. GEM thus replaces that with a system of MilCS points that fills up with all you MilCS alliances/friendship and gives you a unit when it's full. Having written that down, it's now clear to me why that screws up the CS UU thing...