Marksman unit class?

[Hubay]

Hey all, I've mostly been lurking on civfanatics for the last few months, picking up information and trying out different mods. I've really enjoyed CivUP and VE – especially the changes to units and promotions – but there's one thing I'd like to see added. I don't think I've seen anything on the boards quite like what I'm about to suggest, so let me know what you think.

I've noticed people complaining about the upgrade from crossbowman to rifleman, and the general response seems to be "ah, well. deal with it." I get why the game is designed to have rifleman as "melee" attackers, both from a realism and gameplay standpoint, but the promotion still bothers me, especially when I get an awesome crossbowman with range, indirect, and logistics and have to lose all the bonuses if I want him to stay modern.

The simple solution to this problem would be to allow crossbows to respec their promotions upon upgrade, but as promotions allow you to regain health I think this could be abusable.

Instead, I think there should be a "Marksman" unit class – ranged/sniper gunpowder units that upgrade from crossbows. It would add an extra dimension to combat, add realism (modern combat certainly doesn't subdivide all land units into infantry and armor), and hopefully add fun.

Sharpshooter characteristics:

Very strong vs. vanguard, gunpowder, and melee.

Very week vs. armor, siege, cities, and naval (the bonus/penalty could be combined into something called "anti-personnel," along the same lines as "demolish")

Possible bonus of camouflage for modern unit.

Era Progression

The idea is the Marksman would start out in rifling as a "sharpshooter," with a mild bonus/penalty. In real life this would be someone who's skilled with a gun but not necessarily in sniper tactics, which were developed between WWI and WWII (the germans pioneered this with their quality lenses, I believe).

At a technology level similar to Infantry, you get snipers. Both their bonus and penalty would be stronger, because as sniper training progressed you would get a more specialized sniper unit that relies heavily on tactical placement and camouflage.

At the mechanized infantry/modern armor level, we see "tactical sniper." I think this unit should come with a woodsman/recon promotion, or possibly be invisible in rough terrain. After WWII (modern era) is when snipers really became what they are today, and started to use heavy camouflage, spotters, and advanced weaponry.

Obviously, this would require a bit of work, and unfortunately I don't know how to do it. But what do you guys think? Is this something that would be fun to see added to the game?

[Ahriman]

This kind of thing has been considered before, and rejected, correctly IMO.

a) I think it is a good thing for warfare in different eras to be different. In the renaissance industrial era, cannon and then artillery are the ranged units, and naval units. It is a deliberate shift to make this different from medieval and classical warfare with archers, and modern warfare with aircraft.
b) Highly promoted crossbows are already very, very powerful, and they're already easy to get to very high level (especially once they get a second shot) relative to melee units. They don't need to be made more powerful by getting an upgrade.
c) Crossbows are already highly boosted in VEM because their ranged terrain promotion become melee promotions when upgraded to rifles.

[Hubay]

Hmm. Maybe that's just a bug in mine, then. upgrading hasn't changed them. If I can figure it out it'll make this more of a non-issue.

But I still think there's something missing in late rennaisance/industrial. The set-up requirement for seige makes them less viable in a lot of situations, so the majority of warfare (in my experience) seems very melee-focused.

It also bothers me because a lot of the warfare we've seen in the past century has been assymetrical and partisan, and snipers play a strong role in that sort of combat. Obviously CiV shows a very different sort of warfare than our world is willing to commit to (china and the US aren't going head to head anytime soon, yet that's the sort of war we often see in our games), but I would like to see wars the reflect the vietnams and afghanistan's of the world, and not just a perpetual WWII pictched-warfare from industrial-on-out. I think vanguard units are a solid step in that direction, but not enough.

I think the balance issues could be rectified by keeping the unit's base strength very low compared to other industrial/modern units, and have the unit's bonus generate most of the damage. the logic being if you catch a sniper, they're toast, but undetected a sniper can cause a good deal of damage to unprotected targets.

Another solution would be to keep the damage very low, include no combat bonuses at all (or keep them more limited), but include a camo bonus from the get-go. This would relegate the unit to a support-status only, and curb the chance of it becoming OP.

[Thalassicus]

At one point I considered reducing the vs-armor bonus of anti tank guns and making them into 2-tile range artillery, which would make sense as they were basically artillery pieces aimed horizontally. It'd provide an archer-type unit in the late game. However, it's not really needed. The early game has archers and siege, late game has siege and aircraft. It's just a different form of warfare.

As Ahriman mentioned, when ranged or melee units change status upon upgrade, it should swap their promotions with the equivalent type. If that's not working, please start a thread for the topic on the bug report forum.

[Hubay]

Ah, figured it out. Looked a couple of the other common bugs; I'm pretty sure it was because I went into strategic view. Works fine now.

Thanks!