Two easy ways to nerf archery units

El Caballerion

El Caballerion

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As we all know, ranged units are by in large the best units to build, and when properly upgraded excel in just about everything. Many of us rely on ranged armies and there should be a nerf to encourage players to build a variety of troops.

Hence, here is my idea to improve ranged units (ONLY archers, Comp. Bowmen, & Crossbowmen, and appropriate UUs):

1) They keep a range of two, but lack a range of one. This enables them to only attack at a distance, making them unable to attack adjacent targets.

2) They cannot defend themselves. If attacked, they simply take damage, but do not damage units back.

3) Ranged units cannot fight naval units, or if they do, can only give VERY MINIMAL damage! I still roll my eyes when I easily defeat a caravel with archers sitting on the coast. Makes no sense!

These two suggestions will make the player want to defend ranged units behind melee units, and enable the player to take out AI ranged units easily with cavalry.


Thoughts?
 
Number 2 can be a very good change. The main problem currently is that not only ranged units can attack without taking damage but also deal considerable damage when defending on a hill. So that would sound balanced. Regarding the ships thing, archer units could be given 50% penalty attacking ships. So you would need some ships of your own to deal with them or siege units.

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That's fine unless you're taking on say, Hiawatha and everywhere is covered in forests. So your archers never get a chance to shoot first then get run over in melee.

A melee unit of the same tech level runs over ranged units pretty well already pre-Gatling guns.

However, the biggest worry is how are you going to actually take high defense cities? you need the ability to damage them without being hit back. melee units just take too much damage and do too little back. If they have forest/jungle/hills near by it is quite possible there isn't anywhere to stand from 2 tiles away and hit.

If your plan is to allow siege units to fire adjacent, then i suspect people will just use siege units as a poor man's ranged and ignore ranged altogether.
 
Ranged units should excel against other units. They should do minimal damage to cities.
 
My other idea was that ranged units only do percentage based damage and never be able to completely kill ANY unit from Ancient to Renaissance times.

For instance, if an archer attacks a melee unit, which is at full strength, the archer does a huge amount of damage. However, each subsequent attack is less and less, and the ranged unit can never kill the melee unit, just weaken him considerably.
 
What about giving the warrior-swordsman line a 50% bonus against ranged units? It would nerf ranged units and make iron that much more valuable, right now you are just fine spamming pikemen instead.
 
What about giving the warrior-swordsman line a 50% bonus against ranged units? It would nerf ranged units and make iron that much more valuable, right now you are just fine spamming pikemen instead.
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That's the sensible approach, and therefore completely wrong and will never be implemented. The devs just really hate swordsmen and love pikes.
 
Good point, but I really don't see ranged as being OP. CB are good, but a knight will quickly shred them to pieces, or a well promoted pike/sword. Crossbows are about as good as the Ranged line gets, because once you get Gatlings+ the one range damage (2 range if you get the promotion) relegate the range line into a largely defensive role. Try using a 2 range Bazooka against a 3 range Battleship if you think its OP, the bazooka will never reach it.
 
A knight would be able to tear the CB to shreds if pikeman spam didn't make knights useless. How does one counter pikeman spam? Prolly with ample amounts of crossbows.
 
El Caballerion said:
1) They keep a range of two, but lack a range of one. This enables them to only attack at a distance, making them unable to attack adjacent targets.

2) They cannot defend themselves. If attacked, they simply take damage, but do not damage units back.
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I've suggested these both a few times in the past, and so naturally support them.

#1 would be a vast improvement, far more than it might seem. Consider:

The reason ranged units are so devastating is that this is a turn-based game, and all the units on one team get to act at the same time (and in the meantime, all enemies are frozen in place). Thsi leads to damage being focused on a single enemy unit until it's dead. With melee attacks, the statues at least get to hit back, and the attackers' melee units will get in each others' way.

With ranged attacks, it's a simple matter of just getting units into range and firing until dead.

By limiting the field of fire to range 2, you can't huddle archers together and expect to dump everything into a single target.


Bagi said:
What about giving the warrior-swordsman line a 50% bonus against ranged units? It would nerf ranged units and make iron that much more valuable, right now you are just fine spamming pikemen instead.
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The very, very critical thing to understand here is that what makes archers overpowered has a lot less to do with what that swordsman can do on his turn, and lot more to do with how that swordsman survives the focused-fire that descends on him between his turns.

Thus, my idea is to go somewhat in the other direction. Turn that iron unit from "swordsmen" into a "phalax" or "testudo" unit that takes reduces damage from ranged attacks.
 
Elz Majesto said:
Good point, but I really don't see ranged as being OP. CB are good, but a knight will quickly shred them to pieces, or a well promoted pike/sword.
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The flaw here is treating this as a one-unit-on-one-unit equation. The problem with archers, as stated in previous post, is mass fire.

The knight may hit once for okay (but not tremendous) damage), but then in response the bowmen will mass fire on him and kill him in two or three shots without taking any damage themselves.


Sonereal said:
A knight would be able to tear the CB to shreds if pikeman spam didn't make knights useless. How does one counter pikeman spam? Prolly with ample amounts of crossbows.
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In vanilla civ, there were a lot of large bonuses in the game. +20% or +30% bonuses weren't hard to find. For some reason, while a lot of those bonuses were aggressively nerfed down, with 15% now being the median, the gross "kryptonite" bonuses of spears, pikes, lancers, anti-tank, and AAG's were left intact. It's thoroughly wrong-headed to take such a punishing stance against resource-intensive units.

At least lssen the bonus, or make it purely defensive. But on the whole, I'd say just get rid of most of them.
 
Out of all units in the game you think Archers need to be nerfed.. Lets talk about units that need to be nerfed right now (Ie. the battering ram). Archers still have there weaknesses and I like them and they are pretty balanced in my opinion. But still I agree with #2 100% to encourage melee units.
 
Why not simply reducing the amount of damage ranged units do to cities? Right now I often prefer to simply bring a ton of ranged units instead siege units because they simply do a much better job at whittling down cities, because of no set up cost.
 
Bagi said:
What about giving the warrior-swordsman line a 50% bonus against ranged units? It would nerf ranged units and make iron that much more valuable, right now you are just fine spamming pikemen instead.
Click to expand...

Give horsemen +x% damage against and swordsmen -y% damage from (ie cover promotion) ranged units.
 
I dont know if anyone noticed that AI takes cover promo more often now. Really even 10 % vs cities penalty and AI using cover promos would change the way game is played. Early on it doesn't show up as the AI can't level it's units up, but in renaissance and later I see bunch of muskets and rifles showing up with cover. Though SBs to take down with XB now. Just changing AI preference for cover promotions would nerf the archer line like that.
 
I think buffing mounted units against ranged units would help - I mean right now, knights are fairly useless as the AI will just spam pikeman. Maybe give all mounted units a 50% bonus to ranged units so that they can actually do damage before they're taken out. Also make cover a level 1 promotion so that you can upgrade your units to be better against ranged units.
 
How to nerf them? Well, buff all horse/armor units and buff all melee/gunpowder units.

Something like buff Warrior from 8 to 9 strength, Spear from 12 to 13, Swordsman from 14 to 16, Pikeman from 15 to 16, Longsword from 21 to 24, Horse from 12 (or was it 10?) to 14, Knight from 20 to 24 and etc. Are those buffs big? Yeah, they're supposed to be, to make those units worthwhile. Of course it could make them OP, but I doubt it - Archers would still be useful, just not as the main backbone of an army, but people to weaken enemy with, standing behind your melee.
 
IT woudl be interesting to see the impact of #1 on the gameplay.

Personally, I think there should be a penalty to attack % for every consecutive ranged attack on the same target.

This prevents the focus fire issue, that overpowers ranged units, and is a bit 'realistic' in that units would hunker down from a ranged attack, such that consecutive attacks should do less and less damage.

This way you would need to melee units, so you could break up consecutive ranged attacks.
 
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