So Machine Gun has the strength of a Panzer?

b ) .
 
Great discussion here! I think another relevant data point from the screenshots is the way they are deployed. Looks to me they are setup in a classic trench warfare covering fire formation. Any melee unit dumb enough to try and split that gap would be shredded if these things had range one, and the formation would not be ruined.
 
Definitely b), as it is the only no-indirect fire variant. And, please, *not* in the archer-upgrade-path, as there might be the +1 range promotion then - which would lead to 2 range attacks.

Machine guns with +range, indirect fire and logistics would be a particular treat. :p

"Sir, it appears to be raining bullets. Lots of bullets."
 
Yes I've read the combat mechanics article and no it does not say the damage you deal is a percentage of the health of the unit. What it talks about is the range of damage you deal based on the strength of the two units involved.

Now to prove my point about increasing the hit points to 100 yet still only doing the same damage we do now, I modified my global defines to do just that. Here's the line in the file that does this.
<Row Name="MAX_HIT_POINTS">
<Value>100</Value>

Then I loaded a game I was already playing and took some screenshots. In them you will see that units do have a max of 100 HP and that the damage is still around the 5 HP mark with the variations described in Vexing's article.
My warrior has 96/100 HP.
Spoiler :

The Jaguar on the next hill has 91/100 and my warrior is estimated to do 5 damage.
Spoiler :

After attacking you can see the Jaguar not has 87/100 HP, so my warrior only did 4 damage.
Spoiler :

In the last shot, you can see the floaty text says my archer did 5 damage, but the Jaguar still shows 86 HP, indicating it actually only took 1 damage.
Spoiler :

After these screenshot I also modified the Civ5Units file to give the warrior and Jaguar 11 strength (based on that screenshot of the Pictish warrior) and the archer an 11 ranged strength and 7 combat strength. That's an 83.3% increase. Unfortunately only the archer's ranged strength actually increased when I relaunched the game and reloaded the same save. However, the archer's 11 ranged strength vs the 6 combat strength of the Jaguar only increased the damage dealt by a couple of points.

So I then looked further down in the global defines file and found these lines.
<Row Name="ATTACK_SAME_STRENGTH_MIN_DAMAGE">
<Value>400</Value>
</Row>
<Row Name="RANGE_ATTACK_RANGED_DEFENDER_MOD">
<Value>125</Value>
</Row>
<!-- Note: this will actually produce between 0.00 and 3.99 damage (rounded down to 0-3 typically) -->
<Row Name="ATTACK_SAME_STRENGTH_POSSIBLE_EXTRA_DAMAGE">
<Value>400</Value>
</Row>
<Row Name="RANGE_ATTACK_SAME_STRENGTH_MIN_DAMAGE">
<Value>200</Value>
</Row>
<!-- Note: this will actually produce between 0.00 and 3.99 damage (rounded down to 0-2 typically) -->
<Row Name="RANGE_ATTACK_SAME_STRENGTH_POSSIBLE_EXTRA_DAMAGE">
<Value>400</Value>
</Row>

So, I reverted the Civ5Units file back to it's original values and modified these lines in the GlobalDefines file and reloaded. I increased these values by a factor of 5, so that when coupled with the 100 HP it should take 4 hits instead of the 2 hits we see now. Here are the screenshots of that change.

As you can see, now my warrior is expected to do about 27 damage with modified strengths of 7.2 vs 7.5.
Spoiler :

Yet my archer is only expected to do 19 damage even though both it and the target Jaguar show a modified strength of 7.5. That's a potential of 42% less damage from the ranged attack.
Spoiler :

Here you can see the Jaguar only has 76 HP after the Archer shot it, so the actual damage done was only 15 HP.
Spoiler :

Conclusions:
  1. The damage formula also has to be modified if the HP are increased to 100. Otherwise, as I pointed out earlier, a normal 2 attack kill on a similar strength unit would take 20 attacks.
  2. When increasing the ranged damage and melee damage by the same factor, the ranged damage is lower than the melee damage even though the ranged attack strength of my archer was 0.3 higher than the melee attack strength of my warrior against the same Jaguar.
Therefore, either a higher base ranged strength or a higher multiplier to the ranged damage is required to have the same damage output as a melee unit of the same era.
 

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You don't use it offensively, you use it defensively. A border with three of them would be very strong. You could put one in a Citadel and essentially hold the position indefinitely.

While I think a range of two is a possibility, that runs the risk that people will use them offensively, which I think defeats the point. It's no supposed to be a city siege unit. If anything, it should get a significant penalty against cities.

1 ranged unit is almost useless defensively. It can't hit an attacker that is two tiles away (without moving) but in most cases that attacker can take it away. If the MG is 1 ranged, it will be definitely used mostly offensively. You want to put your 2+ ranged units to choke points and cities as they are vastly superior there.
 
Which would you like the most:
b) machinegun would need to be set up prior firing and would have range of only one

This would be a laughable unit. It would be almost impossible to ever reach a competitive enemy as it can't even move closer and shoot. Of course extremely high strength combined with AI stupidity could somewhat compensate it. Pretty useless against a human player.
 
This would be a laughable unit. It would be almost impossible to ever reach a competitive enemy as it can't even move closer and shoot. Of course extremely high strength combined with AI stupidity could somewhat compensate it. Pretty useless against a human player.

That's not the point, they deny the area to the enemy, they're not getting trough without dealing with the MGs.
 
Another way to do them could be as a ranged unit that needs to get a clear line of fire, meaning there cant be friendly units between them and enemy, like there can be with artillery.

Of course Civ games are not a super realistic simulation, and it's good that way. For me it would just be a bit funky if machineguns just rambo forward. :p
 
Well, that's not the point of an MG, they're supposed to be defensive weapons.
I think he answered that.
1 ranged unit is almost useless defensively. It can't hit an attacker that is two tiles away (without moving) but in most cases that attacker can take it away. If the MG is 1 ranged, it will be definitely used mostly offensively. You want to put your 2+ ranged units to choke points and cities as they are vastly superior there.

That's not the point, they deny the area to the enemy, they're not getting trough without dealing with the MGs.
Hmm... That would just delay the invasion a bit, the enemy will bring artillery with infantries on front. That will outrange ur MGs
 
I think he answered that.



Hmm... That would just delay the invasion a bit, the enemy will bring artillery with infantries on front. That will outrange ur MGs

Place your own artillery and tanks behind so you can kill his weaker non-fortified infantry and then kill the artillery with tanks, or rotate damaged machinegun units to the rear to heal while putting fresh ones in.
 
Yeah, plus, having artillery is realistic (although I will point out it's better able to defend against artillery than infantry).

Essentially, it would work great as a deterrence weapon. No one will want to attack because they won't win on one turn (they'll probably take more damage than they give). In the counter turn, they'll take massive damage with a unit that isn't harmed. I agree a range two unit is more effective defensively, but it runs into the problem that they can then use it offensively, which I think is problematic.
 
Yeah, plus, having artillery is realistic (although I will point out it's better able to defend against artillery than infantry).

Essentially, it would work great as a deterrence weapon. No one will want to attack because they won't win on one turn (they'll probably take more damage than they give). In the counter turn, they'll take massive damage with a unit that isn't harmed. I agree a range two unit is more effective defensively, but it runs into the problem that they can then use it offensively, which I think is problematic.

Not just on offense, but range 2 would make it possible to have 2 rows of MG's, which would make it impenetrable. And you could have a strong melee in front of it to defend. And because the equal combat strength and ranged attack is designed for the MG to be directly at the frontline, range 1 seems necessary.
 
That's a good point as well.

Basically, with a range two unit, I don't see why it should be so dramatically higher than Artillery. We're all speculating, but for that strength, range one has the best combination of pros and cons.
 
Not just on offense, but range 2 would make it possible to have 2 rows of MG's, which would make it impenetrable. And you could have a strong melee in front of it to defend. And because the equal combat strength and ranged attack is designed for the MG to be directly at the frontline, range 1 seems necessary.

The line of any 2 ranged units is always very penetrable by Artillery, as it has a range of 3.

Assuming artillery is before MG on the tech tree which sounds plausible, MGs can be useful if they are (at least) 2 ranged and cheaper than arty.
 
In Civ IV:Bts, machineguns didn't get collateral damage, or was it that they were highly resistant to it. If I'd be designing MGs for this 1upt system I would represent their digging in by giving them a bonus vs ranged damage.

I mean, in WW1 the British might give a massive week-long bombardment with million shells to German trenches before attacking, and still be wiped out by machine gun fire..
 
Yes I've read the combat mechanics article and no it does not say the damage you deal is a percentage of the health of the unit. What it talks about is the range of damage you deal based on the strength of the two units involved.
[...]
Conclusions:
  1. The damage formula also has to be modified if the HP are increased to 100. Otherwise, as I pointed out earlier, a normal 2 attack kill on a similar strength unit would take 20 attacks.
  2. When increasing the ranged damage and melee damage by the same factor, the ranged damage is lower than the melee damage even though the ranged attack strength of my archer was 0.3 higher than the melee attack strength of my warrior against the same Jaguar.
Therefore, either a higher base ranged strength or a higher multiplier to the ranged damage is required to have the same damage output as a melee unit of the same era.

Well, it seems like my reply to you got lost in my wall of text, since we basically agree (only you decided to redo Vexing's research :p)
Indeed, the damage you deal isn't a function of total health, rather a function of relative strength of fighting units, thus why I said that increasing all units' strength by the same multiplicative factor wouldn't change a thing. Multiplying the current formula by 5 or (hopefully) more would solve the "100hp problem", as you concluded.

And indeed, a ranged strength of X is 2/3 as strong as a melee strength of X, thus your second conclusion.

The line of any 2 ranged units is always very penetrable by Artillery, as it has a range of 3.

Assuming artillery is before MG on the tech tree which sounds plausible, MGs can be useful if they are (at least) 2 ranged and cheaper than arty.

Well, infantry doesn't have a range of 2 (since it's melee), and it's still useful against artillery (even if only by sheer numerical superiority), so I don't think that particular argument is valid.
 
The line of any 2 ranged units is always very penetrable by Artillery, as it has a range of 3.

Assuming artillery is before MG on the tech tree which sounds plausible, MGs can be useful if they are (at least) 2 ranged and cheaper than arty.

Only if you're willing to leave the artillery with no units in front protecting them, meaning tanks can kill them.
 
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