[UI] (5-NS) Counterproposal Change Drill Line Bonuses

[DoveCDog]

Original Proposal (https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/5-92-change-drill-line-bonuses.684662/)

Background: Melee units are next to useless when attacking cities. Recently I played a game where I had 5 lvl 2 Jaguars (13 CS vs cities) attack a capitol with a warrior (13CS) and I was only able to do half damage before having to retreat. The problem is the warrior inside the city is able to tank too much damage. Once he fell, the city took a lot of damage, but he took too long to fall.


Current:
Drill
+10% CS
+25% CS vs Cities

City Assault
+33% CS vs Cities
-33% Damage taken vs Cities


Proposal:
All melee units gain a base +33% damage vs city garrisons
All ranged units gain a base -20% damage vs city garrisons

Drill
+10% CS
+20% CS vs Cities
+10% CS vs Fort, Citadel, Chateau, Feitoria, Kasbah garrisons and +10% damage vs city garrisons

City Assault
+40% CS vs Cities
+20% CS vs Fort, Citadel, Chateau garrisons and +20% damage vs city garrisons


Rationale: The current proposal makes melee units better able to tank damage so that they can do token damage against the city instead of just standing there. With this counter-proposal we can give melee units an actual role in city seiges - they will be there to defeat the garrisoned units so that the other ranged and seige units can do more damage. Added bonuses vs forts and fortified units since it makes sense, and also to make drill more worthwhile vs shock.


Clarifications:
(a) Since there is no CS calculation vs garrisons inside cities, there would be a XX% damage boost applied instead of an XX% CS boost.
(b) "fort garrisons" means any unit that is standing on an allied fort that is not pillaged
(c) "gain a base %" would be calculated into the base damage formula. So, drill's proposed +10% bonus would give +13% compared to today's values
(d) "all melee units gain a base +33% dmg" would also apply to mounted. Not to naval
(e) "all ranged units gain a base -20% dmg" would also apply to mounted and naval. Not to seige
(f) A commenter raised a concern about fitting the description in the tooltip. I propose the tooltip to simply read "+10% CS vs City and Fort Garrisons" with the details about all the other improvements explained in the Civopedia page.
(g) Since Feitoria only provides +25% CS defence, Drill 3 would only give +5% CS vs Feitoria

Edit:
Removing Drill +5% bonus vs fortified units. It is too much.
Clarifying Fort Garrison improvements. Changed City Assault to not apply CS boost vs Feitoria and Kasbah as they only provide +25% and +30% CS to defending units.

 

[ma_kuh]

I think you have too many abilities for the Drill promotion. 4 individual (somewhat small) bonuses is a lot for the tooltip, and a lot of complexity for a stem promotion (in my opinion).

It's an interesting direction to extend the vs City bonus to vs Forts and vs Fortified. I'd try just grouping them to start.

I'm on the fence whether it would be better for it to apply to all improvement-based defensive bonuses, or if part of a unique improvement's power can be avoiding Drill bonuses. Doing so would avoid needing to itemize the tiles that are affected, and helps with modmod compatibility if it only works with base improvements by design.

 

[DoveCDog]

I think you have too many abilities for the Drill promotion. 4 individual (somewhat small) bonuses is a lot for the tooltip, and a lot of complexity for a stem promotion (in my opinion).

It's an interesting direction to extend the vs City bonus to vs Forts and vs Fortified. I'd try just grouping them to start.

I'm on the fence whether it would be better for it to apply to all improvement-based defensive bonuses, or if part of a unique improvement's power can be avoiding Drill bonuses. Doing so would avoid needing to itemize the tiles that are affected, and helps with modmod compatibility if it only works with base improvements by design.

Agreed, I will remove the bonus vs fortified. I see some other promotions have 3 points, hope that would be fine.
Don't want to give +15% vs forts because forts only give +50% defence, don't want them to give negative defence vs drill + city assault

 

[Rosete]

Mele units are very good at taking cities actually. They took close to 0 damage from cities as is. They also importantly occupy space, to protect and draw fire away from your ranged/siege units. With multiple mele units surrounding a city you can easily out healed city bombardment. I don't think mele units need a buff, you shouldn't be able to take down cities with only mele units anyway. I think ideally siege units should be a hard requirement to do meaningful damage to a city.
If this goes through there's not much stopping me from rushing spears and crushing everything in my way.

 

[Stalker0]

Proposal:
All melee units gain a base +33% damage vs city garrisons
All ranged units gain a base -20% damage vs city garrisons

Drill
+10% CS
+20% CS vs Cities
+10% CS vs city and fort garrisons

City Assault
+40% CS vs Cities
+20% CS vs city and fort garrisons

MAGI: So we need to clarify this a bit. There is no such thing as "CS vs City garrisons" when your attacking a city.

Your damage is determined by your CS vs the city, and then the garrison takes a portion of that damage (seems to be normally 5 per shot but I have seen a few cases where its higher, I'm not sure what triggers that myself).


My assumption is that perhaps you want to shift some of the damage from teh city to the garrison?

@DoveCDog

 

[DoveCDog]

Mele units are very good at taking cities actually. They took close to 0 damage from cities as is. They also importantly occupy space, to protect and draw fire away from your ranged/siege units. With multiple mele units surrounding a city you can easily out healed city bombardment. I don't think mele units need a buff, you shouldn't be able to take down cities with only mele units anyway. I think ideally siege units should be a hard requirement to do meaningful damage to a city.
If this goes through there's not much stopping me from rushing spears and crushing everything in my way.

Maybe it's because I've been playing too much Civ 2 recently, but I really disagree with this. Siege units should be helpful (especially later in the game when they are available), but if the city has only 1 defending unit, 5 melee units should be able to take it without a sweat. Especially 5 unique units.

 

[DoveCDog]

MAGI: So we need to clarify this a bit. There is no such thing as "CS vs City garrisons" when your attacking a city.

Your damage is determined by your CS vs the city, and then the garrison takes a portion of that damage (seems to be normally 5 per shot but I have seen a few cases where its higher, I'm not sure what triggers that myself).


My assumption is that perhaps you want to shift some of the damage from teh city to the garrison?

@DoveCDog

Yes, essentially what I am proposing is the amount of damage the unit takes would go up by 33% for the first point.

 

[Stalker0]

Yes, essentially what I am proposing is the amount of damage the unit takes would go up by 33% for the first point.

Ok so you want the city to take the same amount of damage, and the garrison to take more?

aka

Drill
+10% CS
+20% CS vs Cities, forts, and citadels
City Garrisons take +10% more damage

something like that?

 

[DoveCDog]

Ok so you want the city to take the same amount of damage, and the garrison to take more?

aka

Drill
+10% CS
+20% CS vs Cities, forts, and citadels
City Garrisons take +10% more damage

something like that?

Exactly. I'll edit the post
EDIT: actually not exactly, I only propose 10% extra vs forts, not 20%

 

[azum4roll]

(b) "fort garrisons" means any unit that is standing on an allied fort, citadel, feitoria, chateau, etc... that is not pillaged

They're not in the same group, unless you include all improvements that have a defense bonus, which is a harsh nerf to Shoshone with their Encampment's low +15% defense.

 

[DoveCDog]

They're not in the same group, unless you include all improvements that have a defense bonus, which is a harsh nerf to Shoshone with their Encampment's low +15% defense.

Thanks for pointing it out, I will edit to exclude Encampments. It doesn't make much sense for them anyway.
Based on the wiki the Kasbah with +30% is the only other applicable improvement, will mention it explicitly.

 

[Rekk]

seems to be normally 5 per shot but I have seen a few cases where its higher, I'm not sure what triggers that myself

The garrison takes a fraction of the damage meant for the city, based on the relative difference between the Garrison's health and the city's health. In general, city health has scaled so high that it hits what I think is the minimum of 5.

 

[pineappledan]

We don't have code that supports giving bonuses vs units that are on top of specific improvements. Sounds like an expensive check for each combat, but I don't know.

new code for dealing extra damage to garrisoned units too.

I disagree that melee units are in such a bad spot that they need 2 new abilities to deal with cities/tile defense. The original proposal is simple number changes

 

[Hinin]

The Proposal has Failed due to a Lack of Sponsorship. It is thus locked and moved to the appropriate subforum.