Couple unit balance concerns

1) Lancers. Are extremely powerful with 37 , first strike, move after attack, and the attack bonus. This represents roughly a +60 point strength improvement in attack value from BNW. They're more expensive, but not twice as much. If they keep the first strike, then they should be about where GEM had them (30). Gunships are in a similar category but the increase is less extreme (I'd say they would be fine around 60-65).

2) Mounted units with move after attack should be reduced about 5%. Tanks can remain high (for comment number 3). Knights should be 23-24, and horsemen should be 15-16. There is less of a hard counter now in CEP than in GEM and they're boosted more than other units. Dragoons could be slightly boosted to about 36-37 (Lancers would still have an anti-dragoon/horse promo?).

3) Later units, and mainline units in general, should be increased at least 5% (in strength and cost). Early game units were reduced in value about 5-15% or in several cases increased. Late game units have ~25% reductions . Cities in the late game continue to increase in value as before, meaning units begin just becoming screens for artillery or line of sight for bombers (Red Fort wonder should be removed, that extra defensive bonus has always been unnecessary. It is trivial to get a city over 100 strength in the late game plus oligarchy bonuses with it in the game).

There should be a stronger reward for late game military dominance in tech, for offence or defence and a greater requirement for actually using units to attack cities or defend them.
Example:
Spears are basically okay at 11 and cheap.
Mech Inf at 50 though is weak.

The problem begins around arques, which are very weak compared to longswords and keeps getting worse later. The garrison calculation could be slightly reduced if a problem is that unit garrisons would be too strong.

I agree with all this, but I think the even bigger problem is that the unit lines still don't make sense. The arquebus needs to be Renaissance era a soldier unit that longswords upgrade to and that upgrades to Industrial era muskets.

The horsemen and knight I would tend to lean to the lower values, mobility and move after attack are such huge advantages that I don't understand why we would even consider having knights be stronger than longswords.

I would drop the anti-cav role for lancers as we did in GEM, the lancer is a weird unit but it makes a bit more sense as a hit and run attacker.
Alternatively, we could eliminate it completely and change the UUs into dragoon or knights replacements.

Red Fort could give some other economy bonus from defensive structures (production?) rather than boosting city defense too high. That even makes some sense, since it was the administrative center of the empire. Might be better rather than removing completely.
There are a number of wonders that need tweaks though. The Kremlin ability is much too narrow.

Lancer still had an anti-dragoon promotion in GEM instead of a general anti-horse promotion. I think that works as they don't upgrade to cavalry. I think they're fine to keep in the game, but they're way overpowered right now. Even reducing them to 30 is a substantial increase in value from BNW. Which is okay in theory but it's too much right now.

I'd be fine with Red Fort providing economic bonuses from defensive buildings instead. Bonuses to defence don't seem warranted at all. Agreed there are a number of tweaks out there.

I would definitely agree with points 1 and 2 to a point. I do think lancers are overall too strong right now. I don't think knights are too powerful, though i think pikes should get an increased antimounted bonus. The 10% for the spear is fine, but by pikes we could raise it to 20% i think.

For point 3, i don't have enough good late game military experience in BNW yet to make call.

EDIT: I changed my mind slightly due to some of my own arguments further down.

For point 3, probably nobody does. I think the units are probably okay against other units (but probably not quite strong enough to be dominant in the ancient tank vs spearman debate, which becomes more of a tank versus lancer debate here), but the bigger question late game is against cities.

The city strength formula is unchanged except for lowering starting strength and higher garrison strength by the mod. City defence buildings are unchanged except for adding more hit points. This means that later game cities can be very powerful, but later game land units were all just reduced by 20-25%. There are only so many units that can besiege a city, so being able to build more of them will not matter if they can't make much of a dent in the city and get obliterated in one turn by the defence and city shot. It effectively places the entire burden on artillery and battleships even more than was already the case. I found that very boring warfare, and one which the AI isn't as good at waging.

Ahriman said:

The horsemen and knight I would tend to lean to the lower values, mobility and move after attack are such huge advantages that I don't understand why we would even consider having knights be stronger than longswords.

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Because at its heart, Civ 5 is about taking cities. Knights for all of their strength aren't the units of choice when taking cities, so they are naturally undervalued.

Currently the 23 strength longsword has a 28.75 strength vs cities (more with the siege promotion, and they can get terrain defense bonuses). A 25 strength knight has a 18.75 strength, a full 10 point difference. So longswords are much stronger than knights when dealing with the most important aspect of civ 5 combat.

To be competitive, knights should dominate open field combat, as they did in real life. So actually with that in mind i think i am going to edit one of my previous posts.

Taking cities is not always the goal of combat though. Civ5 combat is much less oriented to city combat (which was often the entire province of earlier civ combat), which allows units to be useful for non-city attacks. Many wars can be defensive in nature rather than with the intent to crush your foes, filled with counter-offensives. Being able to obliterate the enemy's army in the field before it threatens your city is very valuable. Being able to crush the enemy's army when attacking is also valuable as it prevents such counter-attacks and clears a path toward a target city for your own units.

Being able to do both without being subject to immediate counter-attack when weakened is extremely valuable (hit and run).

Because at its heart, Civ 5 is about taking cities. Knights for all of their strength aren't the units of choice when taking cities, so they are naturally undervalued.

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Knights to destroy your army + trebuchets to take your city work just fine.

If destroying the AI's army is trivial and the only thing that matters is taking cities, then something is drastically wrong with warfare.

Knights in real life were overpowered, but they didn't have the strategic mobility that they have in Civ5, nor the drastically higher survivability from move after attack. And "longswords" didn't really exist; there was very little in the way of super-heavy infantry in late medieval armies. The rich well armed guys were all mounted.

Yes, knights should dominate field combat.... but they don't need to be higher strength to do this, they dominate with flanking bonuses, mobility, positioning, move after attack.

Think of it this way: imagine a 2 move strength 23 unit. The longsword is basically that unit with a city attack promotion. The knight is that unit with 2 movement promotions and a move after attack promotion, a strength promotion, and then the city attack penalty. So basically the longsword has 1 free promotion, the knight has 3 net free promotions.

Longswords have to spend a lot of time walking places (1 tile per turn through rough terrain) and getting shot at before they get a chance to attack. Knights don't have that problem.

The city strength formula is unchanged except for lowering starting strength and higher garrison strength by the mod. City defence buildings are unchanged except for adding more hit points. This means that later game cities can be very powerful, but later game land units were all just reduced by 20-25%. There are only so many units that can besiege a city, so being able to build more of them will not matter if they can't make much of a dent in the city and get obliterated in one turn by the defence and city shot. It effectively places the entire burden on artillery and battleships even more than was already the case.

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Agree with all this. Melee units need to be good vs cities, it needs to be harder to blow them up with ranged attacks.

Taking cities is not always the goal of combat though. Civ5 combat is much less oriented to city combat (which was often the entire province of earlier civ combat), which allows units to be useful for non-city attacks. Many wars can be defensive in nature rather than with the intent to crush your foes, filled with counter-offensives. Being able to obliterate the enemy's army in the field before it threatens your city is very valuable. Being able to crush the enemy's army when attacking is also valuable as it prevents such counter-attacks and clears a path toward a target city for your own units.

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Agree with all this too. Annihilating your enemy's army is a really useful way to weaken them and force them to spend production rebuilding their army.
Plus you can get some nice gold from pillaging.
And IIRC you get minimal warmonger diplomatic penalties if you don't take cities. If I attack you and just wipe out your army and pillage your stuff, it will make you pissed at me in the long term, but most other people won't care unless they had a DoF with you.

mystikx21 said:

Taking cities is not always the goal of combat though. Civ5 combat is much less oriented to city combat (which was often the entire province of earlier civ combat)

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I'll disagree here. Civ IV to me was less geared toward city combat because of cottages. High end towns were very lucrative to pillage, and didn't grow back very fast. You could wreck an enemy forces economy through pillaging and get a huge bankroll yourself. Civ V that effect is much weaker.

Now I'm not saying that combat is just about city capture, but I think we can all agree it is one of most critical components.

Ahriman said:

If destroying the AI's army is trivial and the only thing that matters is taking cities, then something is drastically wrong with warfare.

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I wouldn't say destroying an enemy's army is trivial, but its not the core goal of most wars either. I'm going to war to take the other guys stuff. If i can blow up his army to do it fine, if i can ignore his army and take his stuff i'll do it.

Longswords do pretty well in the open field as well. They are not knights for sure, but they hold their own just fine. But once at the city walls, longswords are much better than knights.

I wouldn't say destroying an enemy's army is trivial, but its not the core goal of most wars either.

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This is a playstyle choice.

At high difficulties a key part of Civ used to be (it seems like it isn't anymore, as there are more mechanics to stop runaway civs?) launching pre-emptive wars on the frontrunner just to destroy their stuff so as to stop them from achieving runaway status.

You could also get very nice surrender terms (all their gold, luxuries) by just destroying their army even if you ignored their cities - much better than in Civ4.

Pillage wars are even easier in Civ5 because of the healing effect from pillaging and because you can take out trade routes.

Longswords don't really do anything that can't be achieved with trebuchets, but knights do a lot of things that can't be achieved well by anything else.

Ahriman said:

This is a playstyle choice.

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Fair enough, i have decided to try a few games of pillage wars in civ 5 to see if it will change my mind.

Thanks for bringing this up. I adjusted these things for the next version.

Armies

• -12% skirmisher units (lancers and helicopters).
• -5% mobile units (horse, knight, etc).
• Fully defended cities have 50% more strength than same-era units (like unmodded BNW) (late eras were too high).

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Here's my analysis of city strength. I included my calculations on a new "City Strength" tab of CEP_Armies_Cities for the next version so you can look at details later.

Looks good. The main concern on late units was the city strength. Whichever was easier to adjust (late units or cities).

I'd still be concerned about mainline units starting at arques, and late armor, but those are small concerns. The lancer/gunship and late-game cities were the biggies.

Yeah, the city thing was a simple change to 1 number, which took less time than rebalancing multiple units. I'm starting to get work done on adapting the Leaders stuff to BNW, so I don't want to get sidetracked. We can go back and adjust unit balance later. Our discussions about armies and navies can last a really long time!

I think knights should have 3 movement with a bit more strength than LS & more expensive. Also all horse/tank units should get a new promotion replacing drill which gives them bonus against wounded units & flanking boosts. Knights fighting effectively in rough terrain doesn't make much sense. LS should have the edge over them when fighting in forests while horse units are better for attacking heavily flanked units, attacking wounded units etc.

Knights don't get defensive effects (at least I don't think they do, GEM gave this effect too and I haven't checked CEP). Just the effects of terrain promotions and the negative penalties on flat ground defending, so longswords should be about as good in forests at least.

We already had a long and emotional discussion about 3 knights, and AFAIK the majority didn't like them.

Tomice said:

We already had a long and emotional discussion about 3 knights, and AFAIK the majority didn't like them.

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Agreed, what makes them feel interestingly different from melee units is their mobility; it's good to keep that as their specialization.

A couple of questions here:

1. Is it right that stealth bombers, and jet fighters require 2 alliminum resource. The CEA_start adds them, but base BNW already require them?

2. The unit changes for 3.34 helped a bit, but I am still not sure why the gun infantry line- musket to infantry seem, on paper at least, to be so weak.