The hidden penalty of the Swordsman Upgrade

Many players are just salivating over the thought of upgrading swordsmen to medieval infantry and then to guerillas. Put a quick assessment of this new feature may show that it has a downside.

Upgrade sequences in Civ3 are hardcoded to make the old unit obsolete when an upgrade unit is defined. This can be good in some cases but in the big picture it can really limit the game whne it comes to what the game is really about: decision choices.

The limit comes in when you begin to understand how production output from your cities balances against the number of shields required to build any unit. Most of the newer players and players that seem to be trapped at the lower difficulty levels may not have paid much attention to this yet.

The production of shields in your cities tends to follow some step functions over time where you find that your most productive cities will max out a certain production level until you get another tech that enables a growth step or a production enhancement.

Typical cities with population of 12 on grassland and with lots of mines with railroads will max out production in the 28 to 32 shields range. With a factory the same cities hit the 38 to 44 range and with Hydro plants from Hoover they can jump to the 50 to 65 range.

You generally can't change the per turn production of your cities up and down to match what you want to build so you end up stuck trying to match the units to the production capability. On lower difficulties you don't care much about this but on the higher levels shield waste will eat your lunch and drink your beer.

Obsolete units like swordsmen, explorers, and longbowmen have filled a very important niche in the game because if you look at the the bottom of the build queue these are the cheap things you can build in your outlying cities to perform support roles (military police, scouting, pillaging, coup-de-grace, iraqi style defense, etc.).

The upgrade path in PTW eliminates the 30 shield unit build point without providing a compensating modern age unit like a policeman or some other unit. Yes you get the more expensive and more powerful medieval infantry or the guerrilla, but if you just need a quick load of MPs, now you have just taken a 25% or a 100% cost increase.

Prior to PTW, the black hole of unit production spanned from 41 shields up to 80 shields when cruise missles were not in play. Now this black hole has been shifted to potentially make the range below 40 shields (20x2 or 10x4) almost worthless.

You can further see these impacts of waste and shield loss in the game if you look at the average cost that you spend on building infantry or tanks. Rarely if almost never does an infantryman cost you 90 shields. If you build that infantryman in a 40 shield city he will cost you the same exact number of turns and shields as a Modern Armor.

I just raise this issue because adding upgrades without providing compensating support units just tends to make the game increasingly one dimensional. This does not imply that swordsmen should not have an upgrade, its just that the black hole of functional units costing less than 80 shields needs to be recognized and addressed before any more upgrades are implemented without considering greater gameplay issues. Modern civs need low cost intermediate units that do unique support things that allow the civilization to have depth and to reinforce that this game is a decision game and not just "my truck has bigger tires than your truck."

cracker...I completely agree with the disadvantage you are talking about. However, in my mind that 30-shield swordsman in the Modern era is walking the thin line between neat strategy and program flaw.

Let's face, swordsmen should become obsolete and you shouldn't have them in the modern era. Having any 30 shield unit in the modern era isn't consistent with the increase in building cost over the eras either. Costs go up in relation to size and technology advancement.

I think it is a strategy sacrifice in the name of realism.

Sir Jethro,

Realism is not enhanced by gameplay that only includes the ability to build frontline military units. For every infantryman that exists in a modern military there are 30 or 40 support units that put him in a combat role.

Yes, swordsmen as the frontline offensive military units should upgrade and progress, but eliminating the military police, sheriffs, gendarms, and bobbies that evolve to fill in the the roles that open up below them in the hierarchy just forfeits a dimension that should evelove in the game as play advances. History and realism are full of valid examples where the frontline military units never enter a city or town except to conquer and move on.

The missing element here is loosing sight of how to keep players interested in the civilization managemnet and decision issues instead of just screaming through the unit upgrade tree without concern for the support complexity that should evolve.

If all that mattered in this game was modern armor, then it would be named "Sid Meier's: Civ3 Play with your Tanks".

Cracker:

I understand where you are coming from, but I have to agree with SirJethro that swordsmen in the modern age are patently ridiculous.

As far as having units devoted to "police, sheriffs, gendarms, and bobbies that evolve to fill in the the roles that open up below them" I have to disagree. All those roles that you are describing are civilian roles, and as such, are not worthy of 'unit' status. They are already included in the civilian population of the cities. Military roles are filled by 'units' because that is how the military is organized, unlike civilians. When an Infantry unit is put in a city to increase happiness, it is not that they are filling the role of civilian police. Far from it. Those Infantry are the Army, sent in to impose martial law and defend the citizens.

History is indeed full of examples where the frontline military units never enter a city or town except to conquer and move on. But history is also full of examples of military garrisoning at the threat of attack, or to quell a rebellious citizenry. In Civ, you can choose to run your empire any way that you want: You can leave your core cities without military units in them, and only fortify your borders. But if you choose to fortify every single city in your empire with a military unit, then what you are doing is not unrealistic, and has historical precedent.

I've said it a 1000 times, this game needs more military units. PTW was a severe disappointment in this regard. 2 new units?! You have to be joking.....

Just a thought, but why not introduce a "National Guard" unit that is based on the infantry but only has 2 hitpoints and is very cheap to build? If it cost, say, 50 or 60 shields, would that fill the gap you are describing sufficiently? It would be essentially the same as a conscript, but built with shields instead of taken from the population.

Originally posted by Sparrowhawk
Just a thought, but why not introduce a "National Guard" unit that is based on the infantry but only has 2 hitpoints and is very cheap to build? If it cost, say, 50 or 60 shields, would that fill the gap you are describing sufficiently? It would be essentially the same as a conscript, but built with shields instead of taken from the population.

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Very good idea. Maybe they could be "super-MPs" that make two citizens happy, although that is arguable. They could also be weaker than Infantry...but wait...aren't we basically talking about a Guerilla? How much do Guerillas cost? About 60 shields, right?

CG

No. Guerrillas cost 90 shields and start with 3 hitpoints. A 90 shield unit does not fit the bill.

You can further see these impacts of waste and shield loss in the game if you look at the average cost that you spend on building infantry or tanks. Rarely if almost never does an infantryman cost you 90 shields. If you build that infantryman in a 40 shield city he will cost you the same exact number of turns and shields as a Modern Armor.

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I don't think I ever built a swordsman in the modern age, maybe not even the industral age. If I need Military Police or emergency defenders that late in the game, I would use the 'draft' anyway.

I'd like more units though, more in this case would be better and more flexability would be available to the different styles of play.

Yes, there should be more units (but the real problem of units and combat in general is that it's too simple, but that's not the point here). I think that you're all pretty much right. The real problem with what cracker is describing is that extra shields don't carry over. I mean, if a city is building a batallion (or whatever) of 100 tanks (what we call a "unit"). If the city produces 80 shields/turn, ie 80 tanks a year for example, then, in 1 year, they've made 80 and in the next year, they make tanks until march and then (because they've reached 100), they all sit down and wait until december 31st! I mean, that's completely ridiculous. And that's exactly what happens in the game.

Don't get me wrong, I don't want 599 shields carry overs when you miss a wonder but there should be a small carry over maximum (say 30-40) to eliminate some of the micro-management.

Preletarian,

More military units are needed in this game like more pudding in a preschool. If these units are just more of teh same abilities they only evidence catering to the lowest common denominator:

Lefthanded swordsman
Righthanded swordsman
Two handed swordsman
Swordsman with a mace
swordsman that spits and throws sand in your face before he hacks you.

They would all look cool, but as long as the just provide permutations of the same combat system then we already have that.

I am not to much interested in more units that I can create, steal, borrow on my own if I can't introduce some new element of strategic choice and thoughtful decision making. (they all bleed the same so far)

yea for realism sake i dont mind not being able to build swordman in late game

originally posted by cracker
More military units are needed in this game like more pudding in a preschool.

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Come on! You can't seriously argue that that there's too much pudding in preschoool, cracker!

Seriously though - informative as per usual Cracker. In this case, I too am going to have to side with those who claim the updates add realism, like SirJethro:

Let's face, swordsmen should become obsolete and you shouldn't have them in the modern era. Having any 30 shield unit in the modern era isn't consistent with the increase in building cost over the eras either. Costs go up in relation to size and technology advancement.

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I agree with you that having a broad spectrum of choice adds depth to a strategic game, however, a common obstacle in said game play is - in fact - the LACK of choice. Limited options are simply one more foe for the advanced Civ player to overcome.

What>?

I agree with Cracker's position (which seems to be the unpopular position in this thread). The game is missing a late age low cost garrison unit. Sparrohawk suggested a NationalGuard Unit being a low HP (probably very low A/D as well) but cheap unit to fill the void.

The ideal situation would be not to have swordsmen in the modern age and to have this garrison unit as well.

However lacking the garrison unit, having swordsmen are the next best thing. I don't want to have to use my expensive front line troops to hold newly captured cities. If I did, my advance would come to a halt the moment I captured my first large city. In this situation you just have to look at the swordsmen as having modernized to something else. For me this is how I look at the game, a swordsman is only a true swordsman around the time that you discover that tech. Later on, he is a poorly trained group equipped cheap rifles.

Till now I haven't fooled around with adding any units to my games. But after reading Cracker's post and realize how this will effect my gameplay style, I may just have to do that when I get PTW.

Cracker, your expertise and attention to detail amazes me! Also, I must say that you did an excellent job on your lessons that are in the War Academy. Keep up the good work! I learned a lot from this post alone!