So Machine Gun has the strength of a Panzer?

Monthar good points about the strenght and hitpoints' relations.

I still put my money on machinegun being something different than just an archer-type unit, who knows yet.. ;)
 
Well, as you say, the attacking unit will hurt the next turn, which gives the MG more survivability.
You can see that ranged and melee strenght are te same, which would make sense in this context.

It's slightly different in theory. In practice it would be totally uninteresting. The point of a ranged unit is that it's tactically clearly different beast than a melee unit. 1 ranged unit isn't different enough. They now actually have a qualified lead designer and I doubt he would create such an anomaly as a "ranged unit with a range of 1".
 
Monthar, we do know that MG's are going to be ranged. Secondly we do know that MG's -cannot- produce indirect fire. So therefore the argument that MG's should have longer range so that they could be used from behind friendly units is an invalid argument. MG's are a frontline unit, end of story. Altough im not saying that MG's are going get range of just 1 hex, since it was just my initial thought when saw the strenght of the MG unit and didnt know that they were going to do a complete overhaul on units strenghts.

Still I if you count out the fact that arrows would shoot effectively further than a machine gun would fire (well this same problem comes with modern rifles vs ancient arrows anyway so..), then I dont see any problem giving a frontline defensive unit a range of just 1 hex. Still im not saying that this would be the case here.

What comes to the duration of the combats / wars, I have allready given my 2 cents on that also. I will quote myself: "For instance if units have 2 times the survivability than before, then I would reduce army sizes (not yet sure how but one thing would be to double the upkeep of a single unit) to about half of what they were before. That way the battles wouldnt last too long plus there would be more space to manouver these more durable units in the battlefield."

EDIT:

The point of a ranged unit is that it's tactically clearly different beast than a melee unit.

Machine gun is not a siege unit, it is a ranged frontline unit.

Btw I also edited the opening post.
 
Come to think of it, it might indeed have a 2 range.
But it'd make a lot of sense if it needs to deploy to set up.

I think the possibility of creating a 'kill wall' (trench war/Maginot line style) of MG's is a nice addition to the game, making late game war a lot more strategic. Making it harder to just 'smash through to the capital'.
 
I think ya'll are overlooking exactly what the increase from 10 to 100 HP would do without also increasing the strength of all units, so let me enlighten you. With the current strengths two of the same unit fighting each other with no bonuses on flat grasslands would do about 5 damage. With the current 10 HP that's 50%, so a minimum of 2 turns or two of that unit to kill the enemy unit. Increasing the HP to 100 would mean taking 10x the attacks to kill that same unit, so either 20 turns or 20 of your units to kill 1 of theirs.

Now if they also increased the strength of all units to about double their current strength that 20 turns or 20 units drops to only about 10, because the units are now doing about twice the damage per hit. Even if, as I suspect, the strength increase is only 66.7%, thus making the infantry also have a strength of 60, that 5 damage per hit become about 8.33, reducing it from 20 hits to 12 hits for that same kill.

Let's put this into perspective. Your scout upgrades to archer. You use it and your warrior to take out a barb camp. The barb is fortified giving it a 50% bonus, so it generally takes 2 hits from the archer and 1-2 from the warrior to clear that camp, so a minimum of 2 turns. Now they increase the HP of all units from the current 10 to 100. Do you really want to have to spend 20 turns or send a full army to deal with a single barbarian brute in its camp? Especially since it'll most likely spawn 2 more units in the time it takes to clear it with just that archer and warrior, or even the time it takes to build/buy enough units to reduce that to a reasonable number of turns.

Also look at just how fast units become obsolete on standard speed in the current game. Making combat take up to 10 times longer by only increasing the HP to 100 and not also increasing the strength of all units would only exacerbate this problem.

Now let say they did double the strength of all units. That would turn the infantry into a 72 strength unit vs the machine gun's 60 strength. Would it then make any sense what-so-ever to have those ridiculous restrictions on the machine gun ya'll keep harping about?

So you are saying combat will take 12 times longer? I don't think so. I think that when a unit is dealing 50% damage to the enemy in the current situation, it will deal 50% of the damage in the new situation. Ok, a little less then 50% probably because it is said combat takes more time, but nowhere near 12 times longer.

About the 60 strength MG, there are some indications everything has a higher combat value (the 66.7% you are talking about), so MG's wouldn't be overpowered. But it is still guessing hoe it will play out against other units. The only fact we have is that ranged strength and combat strength are equal. This is a good clue it is a unit which can defend them self in melee combat, unlike other ranged unit where the ranged strength is 50% higher for 2 archery units and 100% higher for the other ranged units. So it is likely this unit doesn't need to be defended by a melee unit like the other ranged units. To me that makes it clear it will have 1 range. Realistically, you wouldn't put your soldiers in between your machine guns and the enemy, and giving them range 1 is the solution. ;)

I don't think they will need to be set up. For one, they are likely on an upgrade path of crossbowman, something badly needed. Suddenly adding this requirements for those units as well would not seem right and I think it is not needed. Ok, you could move 1 tile forward and shoot, but what is the problem with that? Now you have giving up your fortification, and the MG is now closer to the enemy to retaliate. With the range of 1 this is a tactic that would only work in certain cases, where the enemy is 2 tiles away and no backup forces. But still, I can also imagine MG's need to be set up to eliminate all offensive capabilities. I'm fine with that.

In the screenshot there are 3 promotions: the embarkation, a generic positive promotion and a generic negative modifier. Most likely this is a penalty against armor, and the positive one should be some kind of advantages against ranged attack. I would assume they've should be using the Cover promotion, so one alternative it is a positive modifier against gunpowder units.
 
I think ya'll are overlooking exactly what the increase from 10 to 100 HP would do without also increasing the strength of all units, so let me enlighten you. With the current strengths two of the same unit fighting each other with no bonuses on flat grasslands would do about 5 damage. With the current 10 HP that's 50%, so a minimum of 2 turns or two of that unit to kill the enemy unit. Increasing the HP to 100 would mean taking 10x the attacks to kill that same unit, so either 20 turns or 20 of your units to kill 1 of theirs.

Now if they also increased the strength of all units to about double their current strength that 20 turns or 20 units drops to only about 10, because the units are now doing about twice the damage per hit. Even if, as I suspect, the strength increase is only 66.7%, thus making the infantry also have a strength of 60, that 5 damage per hit become about 8.33, reducing it from 20 hits to 12 hits for that same kill.

Let's put this into perspective. Your scout upgrades to archer. You use it and your warrior to take out a barb camp. The barb is fortified giving it a 50% bonus, so it generally takes 2 hits from the archer and 1-2 from the warrior to clear that camp, so a minimum of 2 turns. Now they increase the HP of all units from the current 10 to 100. Do you really want to have to spend 20 turns or send a full army to deal with a single barbarian brute in its camp? Especially since it'll most likely spawn 2 more units in the time it takes to clear it with just that archer and warrior, or even the time it takes to build/buy enough units to reduce that to a reasonable number of turns.

Also look at just how fast units become obsolete on standard speed in the current game. Making combat take up to 10 times longer by only increasing the HP to 100 and not also increasing the strength of all units would only exacerbate this problem.

Now let say they did double the strength of all units. That would turn the infantry into a 72 strength unit vs the machine gun's 60 strength. Would it then make any sense what-so-ever to have those ridiculous restrictions on the machine gun ya'll keep harping about?


OR, the same strength difference between units cause more damage. Instead of thinking of having 100HP units, think of it as having 10.0HP units, but being able to take/inflict 2.7 or 5.1 damage rather than being stuck with integer numbers. Kind of like when they moved to decimal point science/gold/culture in a Civ4 expansion pack. We didn't suddenly get 100x more of everything, instead we got a finer, more gradual system.

I suspect incredibly strongly that the same thing will happen here. Maybe the 100HP 'new' will map on to 15 or 20 'old' HP, but no more than that. Otherwise all wars would become mindless micromanagement and waiting a ridiculous number of turns for anything to happen. We have no indication that Firaxis is about to do something quite that stupid.
 
Incoming wall'o'text...

All unit strengths will surely be tweaked so Machineguns won't be OP. Just look at the Celtic UU strenght. It has 11 strength & it is probably not a sword, so that definately indicates that unit strengths would be increased & gaps between different units like rifles & muskets could be adjusted for better balance.

The point about the pictish warrior is a good one, actually, but we don't know if they have added new units for the ancient/classical era, in which case the 11 strength could not need to be justified (especially since it's a UU).

Good point. Melee units are generally stronger in close combat than ranged units so even though machinegun would deal great damage without taking any, the next turn your enemy would use their infantry & tanks to annihilate your '1 range' unit.
The 1 range mechanism could work really well for some UUs which have both good melee strength & ranged attack however a pure ranged unit (in this case machinegun) with 1 range would be useless. They already said that they are increasing unit HP to 100 & several other strength tweaks so u can't say that Panzers will be useless or no one will make infantry etc.
In my opinion they are adding machineguns (and perhaps another unit between xbows & machineguns) to fill the gap of ranged infantry so that u can still have a more mobile & cheaper ranged unit than cannons & artillery and also making ranged promos for xbows useful.

MGs have both 60 melee strength and 60 ranged strength, so I'd say you just gave arguments for both sides of this discussion... Infantry wouldn't be able to make great damage against a fresh MG. Even tanks would have trouble, which is kinda the only reason that makes me think that other units strength may have been increased.

Questions arise though if MGs are added in the promotion tree of crossbowmen (instead of the infantry tree), because those units don't have the same function at all, and it would indeed be weird (but would it be weirder than xbowmen upgrading into riflemen?). On the other hand, if you managed to get the ranged and the double shot promotion as crossbowmen, you have a beast here (You think England is underpowered? Think again...)

I think ya'll are overlooking exactly what the increase from 10 to 100 HP would do without also increasing the strength of all units, so let me enlighten you.

If you increase ALL units strength by the same multiplicative factor, there would be NO influence whatsoever in the damage dealt (again, check Vexing's impressive article). Plus, making combat last 12 more than now is just as improbable as making it last 20 times more.
I don't believe the durability of units has been increased over 2.5 times, and even then I believe the penalty for being damaged should be increased to account for it; but that's just speculation.

In short, they will change the combat formula, and will probably just multiply by 5 (at the very least) the result given by the current formula.

It's slightly different in theory. In practice it would be totally uninteresting. The point of a ranged unit is that it's tactically clearly different beast than a melee unit. 1 ranged unit isn't different enough. They now actually have a qualified lead designer and I doubt he would create such an anomaly as a "ranged unit with a range of 1".

As I said, you should regard a unit with 1 hex ranged attack as a ranged unit, because that isn't its function, but rather like an undefendable melee unit; this is supported by the fact that MGs have as much ranged strength as melee strength.

The only fact we have is that ranged strength and combat strength are equal.

Amen to that.

This is a good clue it is a unit which can defend them self in melee combat, unlike other ranged unit where the ranged strength is 50% higher for 2 archery units and 100% higher for the other ranged units. So it is likely this unit doesn't need to be defended by a melee unit like the other ranged units. To me that makes it clear it will have 1 range. Realistically, you wouldn't put your soldiers in between your machine guns and the enemy, and giving them range 1 is the solution. ;)

I can't see how someone could disagree with that reasoning. Archers and crossbowmen are extremely weak to melee combat, MGs would actually be better on defense than on attack (unless they change the ranged-melee raw strength formula, since now ranged strength is 33% weaker than melee).
Giving reasons that support other theories is something, but undermining this argument is another thing altogether.

In the screenshot there are 3 promotions: the embarkation, a generic positive promotion and a generic negative modifier. Most likely this is a penalty against armor, and the positive one should be some kind of advantages against ranged attack. I would assume they've should be using the Cover promotion, so one alternative it is a positive modifier against gunpowder units.

Thinking about the promotions, the penalty promotion is "ranged unit: cannot melee attack" (all ranged units have this promotion, regardless of everything else). So that throws the theory about needing to set up before firing out of the window. Which reinforces the idea that it only has 1 range (plus all the reasoning about indirect fire made by aziantuntija). Although even then I guess that's a way too impressive unit, so they will probably have increased infantry's strength somewhere in the 40s, while MGs probably need some strategic resource (otherwise they are just plain better than infantry).

No idea about what the positive promotion is, though.


Conclusion: other units' strength might indeed be increased, but not by a 67% factor, if you want my humble opinion.
 
The 100 hp is going to be like the current 10 hp but with 10.0. This will allow for more fine tuning and lesson the effect of 1 hp minimum damage. No more 5 Cho Ku Nu killing a GDR in a round. This will be like the VEM mod, which makes combat much better.

The 1 range machinegun makes a lot of sense, probably with need to set up first. With a 60/60 strength imagine a prepared defense of forts with machineguns in them? Currently arty in a fort is susceptable to attack unless it has an infantry screen which should then also be in a fort. With the MG you are good to go. Throw some arty behind and you are a tough nut to crack.

All this is purely conjecture on my part.
 
Doing damage without taking damage doesn't matter much as a survived enemy unit can attack and hurt immediately on the next turn. If there is a melee unit with equal attacking strength, I don't think there are real reasons to ever use 1 ranged unit.
If that unit survives the ranged attack, and even then it will be a lot weaker and do less damage then it would have done normally. With the new system where units will survive longer, making a melee attack would have the same effect, you attack and do damage without killing the unit and next turn they counter attack. The difference is that with a range 1 attack, you only take damage on your opponents turn rather then on both yours and his.

Good point. Melee units are generally stronger in close combat than ranged units so even though machinegun would deal great damage without taking any, the next turn your enemy would use their infantry & tanks to annihilate your '1 range' unit.
The 1 range mechanism could work really well for some UUs which have both good melee strength & ranged attack however a pure ranged unit (in this case machinegun) with 1 range would be useless. They already said that they are increasing unit HP to 100 & several other strength tweaks so u can't say that Panzers will be useless or no one will make infantry etc.
That's exactly it though, it has both good melee strength and a good ranged attack.

I think ya'll are overlooking exactly what the increase from 10 to 100 HP would do without also increasing the strength of all units, so let me enlighten you. With the current strengths two of the same unit fighting each other with no bonuses on flat grasslands would do about 5 damage. With the current 10 HP that's 50%, so a minimum of 2 turns or two of that unit to kill the enemy unit. Increasing the HP to 100 would mean taking 10x the attacks to kill that same unit, so either 20 turns or 20 of your units to kill 1 of theirs.

Now if they also increased the strength of all units to about double their current strength that 20 turns or 20 units drops to only about 10, because the units are now doing about twice the damage per hit.
As someone mentioned, that's not how it works. Damage is applied based on the ratio of your units strength compared to your opponents strength, and you can easily see this in the game already. A warrior VS warrior battle will result in the same amount of damage done to both sides that a mech infantry VS mech infantry battle does, despite the mech infantrys MUCH higher strength.
 
Good point. Melee units are generally stronger in close combat than ranged units so even though machinegun would deal great damage without taking any, the next turn your enemy would use their infantry & tanks to annihilate your '1 range' unit.

Except, in this case, it has a base 60 combat strength too, so it defends at twice the strength of infantry even without using its bombard. It could literally never fire and still have a good strength. That is, assuming our theory is correct. I like the theory because the unit will mirror the Machinegun in practice in WWI trench warfare. Other theories are arguing for gameplay first, this theory approaches immersion first.
 
I may have edited my post after you saw it. We're going in circles. One argument against a range one unit is that it couldn't defend itself. The inference being that combat strengths must have increased as well. My response was that it can defend itself provided that nothing else has changed because its base 60, therefore combat strengths may not have increased. We don't know if they've changed, but, provided they haven't, it can defend itself.
 
If that unit survives the ranged attack, and even then it will be a lot weaker and do less damage then it would have done normally. With the new system where units will survive longer, making a melee attack would have the same effect, you attack and do damage without killing the unit and next turn they counter attack. The difference is that with a range 1 attack, you only take damage on your opponents turn rather then on both yours and his.

If it doesn't have typical ranged unit defensive weakness, then it's stronger than a melee unit. But tactically it doesn't bring anything new to melee unit. You would use it almost precisely the same way you would use a melee unit (probably the only real difference is that a 1-ranged unit can't capture a city). So what's the point?
 
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.
 
If it doesn't have typical ranged unit defensive weakness, then it's stronger than a melee unit. But tactically it doesn't bring anything new to melee unit. You would use it almost precisely the same way you would use a melee unit (probably the only real difference is that a 1-ranged unit can't capture a city). So what's the point?
I already answered that.
The defensive ability to stay where they are while attacking so they don't move out to a vulnerable position. For example, having one of those in a city would allow you to stay invulnerable and still attack any units outside.
 
Also, imagine a unit is in range. If you attack and take damage, you're vulnerable to a counterattack. If you attack and take no damage, you are safe from attack.
 
Also, imagine a unit is in range. If you attack and take damage, you're vulnerable to a counterattack. If you attack and take no damage, you are safe from attack.

Yeah, that doesn't change the tactics about how you use them though, which is what he was getting at.
 
Well, I do think it changes the tactics. Melee units are offensive units. You move them into position and attack. These units are defensive units. If it requires set-up, you can't move and attack on the same turn (barring a Persian golden age).
 
Well, I do think it changes the tactics. Melee units are offensive units. You move them into position and attack. These units are defensive units. If it requires set-up, you can't move and attack on the same turn (barring a Persian golden age).

Yeah, I agree that it changes things, it was just that one specific part I could see where he's coming from with. The tactical difference is in how they move in combination with the attack, not that they don't take damage when they do, even though that's obviously an advantage.
 
Which would you like the most:

a) machinegun would be basically an archer for late eras, with the same range as archer but also deadly melee strenght

b) machinegun would need to be set up prior firing and would have range of only one

c) machine gun would be like an archer unit, but with penalties against tanks, strenght bonus to infantry/melee units

Personally I'm with the range one and set-up

(someone go ahead and send a question to the Dennis Shirk Q&A and tell us that we need machinegun's info ;) )
 
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