[Vote] (6-41) Rework Submarine Promotion Tree + Stats

[azum4roll]

Now that we have ENW integrated, we can finally talk about submarine promotions.

Submarines were only available in late Atomic before, on the same tech as Atomic Bomb and later than Guided Missiles, making them incredibly underused. With the shift to late Modern instead, more players can start using them and know what they do and how they perform. So I think it's time to bring out the balance.

Current stats:
Submarine 40 55 4 2 Sight
Attack Submarine 50 65 5 2 Sight
Nuclear Submarine 60 75 6 3 Sight

Current free promotions:

• Bonus when Attacking (75)
• Major Penalty Attacking Cities (75)
• Is Invisible (Submarine)
• Can See Submarines
• May Enter Ice Tiles

Current promotion tree

Hull I ─────────► Hull II ─────────────► Hull III ──────► Blockade

Wolfpack I ─────► Wolfpack II ─┬─────┬─► Wolfpack III ───┐
                               │     │                   │
                               │     └────┐              │
                               │          │              │
              ┌────────────────┴─► Sentry ├─► Mobility   ├──► Indomitable ───► Logistics
              │                           │              │    Supply
              │                     ┌─────┘              │
              │                     │                    │
Targeting I ──┴─► Targeting II ─────┴──► Targeting III ──┘

It has one unique stem line, one copied from Naval Melee (and maimed), and one copied from Naval Ranged.
Problems:

• Wolfpack outclasses Targeting, so there's no reason to pick the latter.
• The Hull line leads nowhere and doesn't fit with the unit line's role (sneaky ship killer).
• Sentry and Mobility suck in general as pickable promotions. Naval Melee has Navigator that does both in one promotion. Wolfpack I and II also do the same thing respectively, with a +30% attack added on top.
• Logistics on Naval Ranged is considered so overpowered that it had to be moved to the unprecedented T5. Here it's on a unit that can still move after shooting twice.
• The recent change to the Withdraw mechanic gives Wolfpack III a guaranteed withdraw once every turn. It was already hard to chase the invisible unit, and now melee ships need one more move towards enemy base to pin it down.
• Submarines have base 0% bonus against Cities, but the Wolfpack line gives them an extra +90%. They may not be better than Bombardment ships, but more of them can attack on the same turn with move after attacking. Submarines aren't supposed to be good city takers.
• They can see other submarines by default, which makes picking the promotion on Naval Melee pointless.
• Their base stats are low and completely rely on bonus attack combat strength from promotions, making them glass cannons as designed. However, this also dwarfs the impact of pickable promotions - 30% attack is really ~17% if you factor in the innate +75% attack. Not that big of a problem, but could use a slight tweak.

Proposed stats
Submarine 40 60 4 2 Sight
Attack Submarine 50 72 5 2 Sight
Nuclear Submarine 60 85 6 3 Sight

Proposed free promotions

• Bonus when Attacking (75) - renamed to Silent Hunter: +50% Combat Strength when attacking Units.
• Major Penalty Attacking Cities (75)
• Is Invisible (Submarine)
• May Enter Ice Tiles

Proposed promotion tree

                             ┌───► Commerce Raider
                             │
                             ├───► Hunter Killer
                             │
                             ├───► Wolfpack      ┌───► Indomitable
                             │                   │
Torpedo I ──┬──► Torpedo II ─┴───► Torpedo III ──┼───► Predator
            │                                    │
            ├──► Supply                          ├───► Infiltrators
            │                                    │
            └──► Navigator I ───► Navigator II   └───► Periscope Depth

Wolfpack I, II, III - renamed to Torpedo I, II, III: +30% Combat Strength when attacking Units.
This and Silent Hunter use the UnitPromotions_Domains table like Targeting, so doesn't work on Cities.
Extra +1 Sight, +1 Move and Withdraw are all moved elsewhere.
Press Gangs - renamed to Commerce Raider: Pillaging costs no Movement and fully heals this Unit.
This is the same promotion as the one on Naval Melee. Pillaging fits Submarine as the Skirmisher of the Sea.
Hunter Killer: +50% Combat Strength VS Submarines. Can see Submarines.
Pick this if you want it to be a dedicated submarine hunter, instead of using a melee ship for this role. Putting it on a Nuclear Submarine has the plus side of having +1 base sight.
Wolfpack: +30% Combat Strength per Adjacent Friendly Submarine when attacking.
Similar to Encirclement, stronger but requires adjacent submarines rather than any ship.
Periscope Depth: +40% Combat Strength when defending against all Ranged Attacks. Withdraw from the first Melee Attack each turn if possible.
This is the defensive promotion. Normally you won't want one on submarines, but there may be one time when you want your heavily promoted submarine to survive. The withdraw is moved here.
Predator: Heal 15 HP after defeating an Enemy Unit. Ignore Zone of Control.
Good at picking off low HP ships that hide behind enemy units.
Navigator I, II: same as the Naval Melee version
+1 Sight and +1 Move are moved here.
Supply: can heal anywhere, +5 more HP when healing
Every ship has this.
Infiltrators: +15% Combat Strength Outside Friendly Territory. +15% Combat Strength when attacking Wounded Units. +10% Combat Strength if not adjacent to any Friendly Unit.
The counterpart of Wolfpack. Pick this for your lone wolf submarines.
Indomitable: +25% Combat Strength when defending. Immune to the Boarded effect from Naval Melee Units.
This makes your submarine survive a melee attack and have a chance to still run, if for some reason you think one withdraw isn't enough.

Need sponsor for new promotion icons. If there's none, I'll have to use the extra icons from the Promotion Icons mod (already in VP), which may not be as fitting.

Complex Proposal: Database + Artwork Changes

 

[Stalker0]

Lets dig in.

There are 2 rationales for this I want to pick at:

• Mobility "Sucks": On most naval units I would agree, however mobility on the new subs I have found very useful, when you have bigger sub fleets that extra mobility is actually quite useful. Conversely, I don't think subs should get all that extra sight. At the end of the day, melee ships are your spotters, and should remain so.
• They shouldn't be city takers: I think this is the biggest debate point:

Thematically I get that its a little weird for subs to be attacking cities and doing big damage, but we have to respect that some of the main uses for subs (especially picking off merchant supply ships as seen in WW2) is just not modeled very well in the game. Ultimately naval units are niche by default....if you are now making this a unit that can only effect other ships, its even more niche....too much imo. I can respect a bit of a nerf to city hits, but this is waaaaaay too much (you can see it in the math below if you would like to look).

My recommended updates:

• Return Mobility: I think its the one unit I actually think is good for this promo, and subs don't need nav.
• Torpedo: +30% to units AND cities (aka full attack again).

for a comparison lets see how the stats look when we consider these options:

Subs with WPIII (Current) vs Sub with TorpIII (proposed) vs Sub with TorpIII (Stalker0 adjustment).

vs units: 145.75 vs 144 vs 144
vs cities: 104.5 vs 15 vs 69

And now to give it some better grounding, in my current game I am literally playing right now with subs, the city I am facing has 101 CS. So damage wise this is:
30.5 dmg vs 1.66 dmg (yes that's how low it is) vs 23.5 dmg


So overall my adjust is still a solid nerf to subs, but now puts them at a low but workable damage to cities, rather than so low I won't even bother.

 

[gwennog]

Need sponsor for new promotion icons. If there's none, I'll have to use the extra icons from the Promotion Icons mod (already in VP), which may not be as fitting.

If the proposal passes, with pleasure.

 

[ma_kuh]

I was thinking of trying to extend the "submarine" line further back in the tech tree, actually. It's tangentially related to this rework, but I also wasn't going to propose it for this congress without having played with the new system.

The short summary is I think that there's a space for "anti-ship" ships to exist as a stand-alone unit with its own promotions. Submarine definitely falls in this category, but it would also be a way to bring back privateers, and I would even make the argument you could have galleys be part of the line.

So you'd have a triad of naval vessels: "subs" (horseman/skirmisher style units) / "ranged" (also doubles as siege) / "melee".

Anyway, I wanted to throw that out there because I'd evaluate these promotions with this goal in mind. Subs are anti-ship vessels, and giving them "piracy" style promotions is in line with their commerce-raiding and supply-line cutting roles in history. Other ships also did this in earlier eras.

 

[Stalker0]

The short summary is I think that there's a space for "anti-ship" ships to exist as a stand-alone unit with its own promotions.

This is what melee ships do, that is literally their role for most of the game.

 

[ma_kuh]

But piratessssss

Naval (mostly melee) ships have so many promotions its kind of ridiculous. It's just a shotgun of effects. Am I the only one bothered by that?

 

[Stalker0]

But piratessssss

they're called barbs

In seriousness, I feel well equipped to speak on this because we have done a lot of naval reworks over the years. We have tried new lines, new promotions, new xyz. But it always comes down to this:

Civ 5 is not a naval game.... the multitude of nuances that exist in real world navies just do not exist in the game. At the end of the day, the land is what is important. so its difficult to give navies a true niche.

Over many many years (and a lot of iterations, too many to count) we have gotten things to this place:

1) Melee: Anti-ship, fleet spotters, and ship guardians (with an anti-city subniche with proper promotions).
2) Ranged: Anti-land, anti-city, secondary role of anti-ship.

In effect, I only "want" to build ranged ships. In my perfect dream world, I would have nothing but ranged ships, I would dominante the land, and cackle muhaha at my enemies. However, melee ships are SO strong against ranged, that any ranged fleet that goes against a melee one gets crushed. And so now you have a balance, how many melee units do I need to protect my ranged ships, because too few and my fleet starts to die, but too many and my fleet sits their plinking at land units and cities and not actually projecting a lot of force. Its a strategic balance that requires paying good attention to your unit balancing, and scouting to know how big a melee force your enemy is bringing.

And that's working, both lines have a clear use, and both lines get good attention. We already have some overlap with subs in the late game, and it can be argued if subs are even needed at all, but we all love subs so they are in the game. Frankly though, we really don't need any more lines, it is hard enough to justify the niches we have sometimes, and just shoehorning in another line inevitably means one of the existing lines has to take a hit so that the new line can get value. We don't need to do that, what we have works.

 

[ma_kuh]

they're called barbs

Give naval melee barbarians the boarding promotion and then I'll be convinced.

I appreciate the detailed explanation, thank you.

 

[adan_eslavo]

Quite an interesting idea. Lots of new promotions and good use of existing ones. I like that there's one stem unlike in the other classes.
So Can See Submarines will now be only on Destroyers, right?

New unique promotions: Hunter Killer, Wolfpack, Periscope Depth, Predator
Reworked promotions: Wolfpack (Torpedo) I-III
Renamed promotions: Press Gangs (Commerce Raider)
Reused promotions: Indomitable, Infiltrators, Navigator I-II, Supply

Am I right? I'm just noting this for myself

 

[FinMc]

But piratessssss

Naval (mostly melee) ships have so many promotions its kind of ridiculous. It's just a shotgun of effects. Am I the only one bothered by that?

It is crazy how many promotions there are and juggling which ship has which promotion is so annoying I just stack them all with hp promos then attack% promos and move on with my life.

Naval is too niche a corner of the game to waste brain-CPU cycles making specialized ships with promotions.

 

[Tekamthi]

some of the main uses for subs (especially picking off merchant supply ships as seen in WW2) is just not modeled very well in the game.

Are there ways we can improve this aspect?

say a submarine parked in enemy waters nerfs all adjacent water-tile yields or something? possible? desireable?

 

[ma_kuh]

It already blocks the tiles from being worked. Unless invisible units somehow don't apply to that?

 

[Tekamthi]

It already blocks the tiles from being worked. Unless invisible units somehow don't apply to that?

i forget how this works, i thought it was just the immediate plot they're in

 

[azum4roll]

I sponsor the database changes. @gwennog should be willing to make the promotion icons.

 

[gwennog]

I sponsor the database changes. @gwennog should be willing to make the promotion icons.

OK for me.

 

[Stalker0]

I’ll re note that the nerf to cities is far too much imo, so much it might as well not exist.

Math showed above

 

[azum4roll]

I'd have removed the city attack completely if it wasn't a way to gain XP.

 

[Rekk]

I'd have removed the city attack completely if it wasn't a way to gain XP.

It's even default civ V behavior.

 

[dostillevi]

My recommended updates:

• Return Mobility: I think its the one unit I actually think is good for this promo, and subs don't need nav.
• Torpedo: +30% to units AND cities (aka full attack again).

I tend to agree, but I don't think this is enough to oppose the proposal. The re-work is needed. Maybe these can be proposed next congress?

I'd also rename "Commerce Raider" to just "Raider". Sounds too clunky.