Flanking is overpowered.

I did a search, and couldn't find anybody else with an issue about this.... but it seems hideously overpowered at the moment.

The problem is.... unlike collateral damage, flanking seems to apply to all siege units in the stack, not just 5 or 6.

In my most recent game, Monty decided to attack me with a stack of about 100 units, about 30 of which were trebuchets. I threw about 5 knights at the stack, loosing all of them.... but killing all 30 trebuchets.

Am I the only one who thinks this seems kinda broken? The AI is terrible at using siege units as it is....... it makes it even worse now you can kill all their siege units with minimal losses, before they even get close to a city. If he had had 150 trebuchets in the stack, all of them would have died from the 5 knights I used.

The problem is....... theres no way he can really counter this. He had plenty of pikemen, which defended and killed my knights..... but still the flanking damage gets through, and killed the siege units.

Sure, you can argue that he could have countered by splitting up his SOD, but then I would have just picked off all the mini stacks with my own SOD.

It seems they've dealt with the problem of overpowered siege units, by just making another group of units hideously over powered.

Doesn't flanking damage only apply if the knight survives the battle?

I thought you only flanked when the unit survived the battle. Something with the new patch?
I agree that it should be limited to 5-6 units though.

No, the flanking is independant of the combat results. So.... I was attacking with 0.01% of winning, but still had 20% chance of damaging the siege units.

Has this changed in 3.13 then? I definitely thought flanking only worked if the mounted unit either won or retreated, and hence it wasn't that strong if there were pikes in the SoD.

Yes, it's still the case that if your Knight loses the combat, it won't do any flanking damage to the Catapult(s)/Trebuchet(s). It has to either successfully win, or successfully withdraw.

Bh

THiws is true. I was playing last night and I threw 4 knights at a 20 unit stack(4trebs were in the stack maybe 5) THe first 2 knights won and damaged all trebs about 40%, my next knight lost and there was no damage. My next knight won and killed 2 trebs and damaged only 1 of the remaining 2.

Two of my knights also had the seige promotion; 3 0f the 4 had flanking promotions. I luv this new feature.

I just tested it in the world builder:

It is just as it was before, flanking damage only occurs if the cavalry unit wins the fight or withdraws, essentially survives. Flanking damage does not occur if the cavalry unit dies.

Although flanking damage only applies when you survive combat, that doesn't mean it can't be overpowered.

[hypothetical] For instance, if you promote 25 knights with both flanking promotions and attack a stack of 1000 trebuchets and 100 pikemen, then you'd probably kill all of the trebuchets. You probably don't even need that many knights.

There should be a limit to the number of siege units that can be hit by one single flanking attack. I tested this before and posted about it, but haven't made a big deal about it. I might create a few savegames with the world builder to show the issue and post it in the bug report forum. But I haven't upgraded to 3.13 yet, so that will have to wait.

My suggestion is:
- (of course) introduce a cap for the number of units hit by flanking attack
- enable flanking attack only to units with a "Flanking 2" promotion

Very noob questio, do yuo need the flanking promotion to get the flanking effect ?

I can see that it's cetainly the best promo for mounted now. And formation for pikes.

Before flanking killed cat's and treb's I never built horseback units really. If I didn't have metal then sure I did, but otherwise I just stayed with my regular units. Horsemen get no bonus against anything except catapults which you had to wait until the stack was all the way gone before you could attack with them. Let's use the era with knights, macemen x-bows and pikemen for instance. A stack of x-bows,macemen and pikes will kill anything that attacks it, and if the macemen have city raider they can take cities. Where do knights fit in at all? Now that they can destroy cat's I make a fort close to a contentious border, and put a maceman or two to fight off pikes and then a stack of knights to destroy the enmies stacks of cat's and treb's. Sure they can pillage but if a pikeman is promoted at all properly he can take a knight out like 80%+ of the time.

King of Town said:

Where do knights fit in at all?

Click to expand...

Well, mounted units are excellent anti-archer units, because are the only units that can be immune to first strikes. I always give Flanking 2 to my mounted units, and then Cover.

mice said:

Very noob questio, do yuo need the flanking promotion to get the flanking effect ?

I can see that it's cetainly the best promo for mounted now. And formation for pikes.

Click to expand...

You get a flanking attack on the siege units when the horse mounted unit or gunship survives the attack on the stack. Each horse mounted unit and the gunship only get a flanking attack against certain siege units (see civilopedia).

King of Town said:

Before flanking killed cat's and treb's I never built horseback units really. If I didn't have metal then sure I did, but otherwise I just stayed with my regular units. Horsemen get no bonus against anything except catapults which you had to wait until the stack was all the way gone before you could attack with them. Let's use the era with knights, macemen x-bows and pikemen for instance. A stack of x-bows,macemen and pikes will kill anything that attacks it, and if the macemen have city raider they can take cities. Where do knights fit in at all? Now that they can destroy cat's I make a fort close to a contentious border, and put a maceman or two to fight off pikes and then a stack of knights to destroy the enmies stacks of cat's and treb's. Sure they can pillage but if a pikeman is promoted at all properly he can take a knight out like 80%+ of the time.

Click to expand...

Mounted units are now best for their flanking attack, but there are other uses:

1) They can be good stack defenders: The knight is the best defender (of its era) against crossbowmen, the cavalry is the best defender (of its era) against grenadiers, the horsearcher is the best defender against axemen (the chariot the best attacker against axemen).

2) They can attack pillagers inside your territory and retreat back into your cities before your unit can get counter attacked (the next turn) because of their high movement.

3) When inside enemy territory with your stack, you often encounter stack of enemy units or lone enemy units. It can be handy to have a unit that can attack out of your stack, destroy the enemy unit and retreat back into the safety of the stack before the enemy may move.


By the way, I like the addition of the flank attack. It finally gives armies a way to defeat siege units. But the number of siege units that are going to be hit by a flank attack should not be infinite. There should be some limit.

ViterboKnight said:

Well, mounted units are excellent anti-archer units, because are the only units that can be immune to first strikes. I always give Flanking 2 to my mounted units, and then Cover.

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I doubt that you give Cover to your mounted units, because it's not avaible to mounted units.

even if you could give them cover, a city raiding swordsman or maceman is better than that against a city bound archer, which is where you would find them. For how expensive horse units are they should be better than they were. Flanking does this.

Say_my_name said:

I doubt that you give Cover to your mounted units, because it's not avaible to mounted units.

Click to expand...

Yes, sorry, confusing with the other anti-archer unit that I prefer, Oromo warrior!
Anyway, mounted units with Flanking 2 are still an excellent way to oppose to archers.

Underdawg said:

I just tested it in the world builder:

It is just as it was before, flanking damage only occurs if the cavalry unit wins the fight or withdraws, essentially survives. Flanking damage does not occur if the cavalry unit dies.

Click to expand...

This is the exactly why it is the collateral damage from siege units that is the only overpowered thing in the game. It will make collateral damage to any units in the defending stack (except siege units themselves) wether or not the attack was successful. Basically this is a mind numbing tactic, taking or loosing a city is only a matter of how many siege units are in the attacking stack. It is incredible how they can do considerable collateral damage even when they attack with very low strength due to a previous attack. Now, I wouldn't really complain for a strategic option that's been offered to counter the devastation of these units...
I so much miss the siege units in Civ3 >_<

I think Flanking is a great addition.

We were complaining before about the best strategy being a huge stack of doom. Now, when Firaxis gives us a method to counter the huge stack of doom and encourage smaller stacks of units, we complain that it is overpowered because we are used to our huge stacks of doom.

Siege units used to be overpowered, then underpowered, and now they may be "just right". Just don't stack all your siege units together.

Also flank doesn't work when you attack city. I think it's fine, otherwise you haven't any chance when you have stack of doom with all paper/scissors/rock.