Ethiopia, UU strenght bug

The Ethiopia UU, the replacement for the Rifleman (can't remember the name atm) has a "bonus" +20% combat power when close to the capital. This bonus decreases the farther away from the capital your unit gets. OR so says the description. Actually this bonus decreases until the bonus is 0%...and then starts to go NEGATIVE! I have units of the UU and GWI that I upgraded from the UU losing to pikemen and lancers and knights and musketmen. And losing BIG TIME. Most of the UUs I have have a base attack strength of like 12, and the GWI that were upgraded from the UU have a base attack strength of like 17.

I checked ALL the other conditions. I am at +20 happy, my enemies have no wonder or anything like that that is decreasing my base attack strength. And as further proof, I just bought a GWI (so it was a GWI that WASN'T upgraded from the UU) and he had the correct attack strength. Also, my cannons, gattling guns, and calvery all have the correct attack strength as well.

So is this a bug or is it working as intended? This seems like a MASSIVE handicap (aka, the UU is TERRIBLE) if its WaI. Thoughts?

Well,the idea of this UU is to make Ethiopia better at defending Capital . If I'd change something in this UA,I'd make that the combat strenght reduction wouldn't apply inside friendly territory,neither inside city-state territory . In this way,such UU still becomes useful if Ethiopia founds more cities,while preventing the player from using this UU at offensive . It should be one of the things that deserve some fix in a future patch .

Well, the big issue is that it ruins the upgrade tree. Sure, maybe you make them for defense, as intended, but later upgrade them once or twice and decide your neighbor 50ish tiles away needs a butt whoopin'. You're units upgraded from the UU still have the "bonus" making them totally worthless for anything but base defense. And seeing as how riflemen are useful both on defense and offense, it seems very negative to give the unit a "buff" that makes it not just bad, but completely worthless at offense.

I have no problem with the buff dropping to 0%. That totally makes sense. If that were what happened when you moved them too far away, then all you get for your UU is a Rifleman with drill 1 that costed a tiny bit less. That's not a bad UU, but it's not a great UU either. It becomes a great UU when you use it defensivly, but right now it becomes a completely pointless unit if you need to do any offensive action (even counter attacking).

Basically, if this doesn't get changed, Ethiopia will either be the civ you play when you never ever want to go to war ever, or the civ you play where your war-like aspirations MUST wait until AFTER you get GWI. That just seems like such a pigeonholed Civ, it would be very un-fun to play.

Have you got a save to verify this? (And perhaps a screenshot displaying combat odds that demonstrates it?)

Here are four screen-shots and the save. The Screen Shots were taken on the same turn. I made war with the Incas and waited till there was a unit in view. I then took a screen-shot of my Knights unit bar, and then another with my Knight when I was holding the attack order over the bowman. I did the same 2 screen-shots for the Ethiopian UU. You will see the Knights values are consistent, while the UU's values are HORRIBLY off.


As for the save, I AM using mods, so unless you have the two mods I used, I don't know if it will work or not. But before you blame the mods, it should be noted that all I am using is Simple Spacebar and R.E.D.s Modpack. Both of these make no actual changes to any unit values or anything like that. Simple Spacebar lets you press spacebar to end your turn, and R.E.D.s Modpack changes the graphics for units and unit formations. It is a graphical change only, and changes nothing else about the units except the way they look on screen. R.E.D.s Modpack is available thru the Workshop, but Simple Spacebar is not up there yet. I got it using the old way to mod.

Even if you can't load the save, the screen-shots are pretty self explanatory. I will try to start a completely mod free game tomorrow (using the advanced start options) and see if I can't recreate this. In the meantime, hopefully this is helpful.

Awesome, thanks.

Hi, I noticed the Mehal Sefari had a problem with its strenght in my game. Was quite annoying was struggling alrdy :<
Cant upl a file sadly, exceeds size.

It shows 10 against city and around the same on units.

Same problem here.
I guess it has to do with the 'near capital bonus', since it diminishes the further away from the capital. Maybe they forgot to halt the diminishing effect at 0%, so it actually turns into an unintended hidden penalty if they get far away enough from the capital.
Right now, mine have a combat strength of 3.4 vs barbarian warriors on another continent/island

To test my theory, I declared war against random other civs and city-states, and used one of my Sefari units to gauge it's combat strenght vs cities at different distances from my own capital. Eventually the combat strenght became 1 (yes 'one'). Seems to support my theory at least.

I attached my latest safe in a .rar file.

Rakhsev said:

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Click to expand...

Moderator Action: Merged 2 threads together.

I can confirm this bug with the +30% combat strength "Near Capital Bonus" of the Ethiopian Mehal Sefari. It does indeed go negative and even carries over when the unique unit is upgraded into Great War Infantry.

they must no doubt be terrible as AI then, attempting to invade you with these kind of infantry