Late Game War Tedium Discussion

[4CV]

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[cidk2000]

1 Unit per tile is the issue here, I admit as a old school player playing civ 2 and going to civ 5 .. by "stacking units" that id not applied the new tactics and still dont after all these years...

I dont think the AI is the problem here per say its the feeling that the ai keeps replacing units too fast ive been in Renaissance to industial wars with equal footing on AI and cant win em see my other posts as complaints i recently played a settler game where i was 12-15 techs ahead and wiped out the AI with ease. My Empire building is too good but my warfare is poor and cant compete even at chieftian if all equal.

Ive been in late game wars with the ai slightly ahead ive had an advantage of air power for a few turns but as soon as they get any air defenses or planes even crop dusters they hit my heavy bombers with relative ease and destroy them on half health so i stop using air units until ive cleared an area.

AI Empire building is poor later on but combat is on another level, id say a hard limit on units would be advantageous but autocracy+ imperialism vs industry+order vs freedom+rationalism. Autotracy has say a limit of 80 units vs order 60 vs freedom 60 does defending have an advantage here baring in mind 20 units over the cap especially if they have high xp. I suppose industry could be a counter to how quickly units would be sent to the meat grinder and freedom/rationalism advantage could be a few techs ahead and "buy" units to defend but Autotracy wins for me with the 20 unit limit advantage and high xp (possibly for bieng in wars a lot)

Could defenders get better bonuses if not chosen any military policy? theres himenji castle/shoshones ability, defender of the faith etc but do these actually help vs a 20 unit advantage? ive been in a ultra defensive war against two sides and its a slog and both sides have taken military policies (one took all 3 Honor, fealty,Imperiialism,And autorcracy) and i had a 5 - 6 tech advantage and still lost and had the defensive (red castle, himenji castle, defender of the faith etc)

bottom line i do believe the problem is 1 unit per tile and the late game unit supply! but really cant offer any solutions as i struggle with combat myself

 

[Stalker0]

I dont think the AI is the problem here per say its the feeling that the ai keeps replacing units too fast ive been in Renaissance to industial wars with equal footing on AI and cant win em see my other posts as complaints

So warring with a competitive AI involves 3 "phases"

1) Dealing with their main army, which will often be at their supply cap.
2) The AI will use its large gold resources from bonuses to rebuy units as others die. So it takes a bit to exhaust this reserve.
3) The AI will continue to generate units. Since the AI's bonuses allow it to build buildings very quickly (and so the AI often runs out of things to build), this allows them to switch their industry towards more unit production, again leading to teh a 3rd wave.

So its common in high difficulty level warfare to setup kill boxes for the AI to crash against. And its a seemingly never ending wave, and wave it does often feel like. You will get a surge of units,than another surge, and often a third surge. And then suddenly....almost like magic, the AI becomes exhausted and the units practically vanish. You go from barely being able to move forward to just steamrolling through cities.

Now we can (and have in the past) made reductions to the AI bonus to reduce this behavior. But unfortunately whenever we do, we immediately get complaints from people that warfare becomes too easy....because warfare becomes too easy. As smart as we have made the AI, it is still not a match for the human in tactical thinking, and without its hordes really has nothing to beat the human with. Or we have given the AI a similar "defensivE" mindset to a human, but that leads to boring turtle games where everyone sits back and defends, no one can break the stalemate.

There is an option to deal with that, but it would be very radical. We need to remove the "defensive invulnerability" of the current game, where it is quite possible to war without losing a single unit is a person is skilled. That means things like:

• Cutting unit hp probably in half, so that units are likely to die on the field and can't be saved.
  • This is the most important part, the whole point is that you cannot have a system that lets units survive continuously in the main battle. Units need to die easily and often to really break the current style.
• Reducing fort/citadel bonuses
• Likely heavily reducing the damage melee units take when they attack, to promote aggression rather than passive positioning.
• Ranged units pretty much die if a melee unit touches them, no more tanking a few hits.

You do that and then wars truly become attrition based. People should expect to be replenishing units constantly. Getting high level promoted units becomes a really special thing, and a rare thing that doesn't happen very often. Its all possible, but it would make Civ5's combat look unrecognizable. Are we ready to make that kind of change?

 

[stii]

I think you could do it without changing it for everyone. If deity had +50% combat strength for all AI units and the same amount of units as a player it would probably be harder than it is now. Your units would be in real danger like you want.

 

[CppMaster]

Cutting unit hp probably in half, so that units are likely to die on the field and can't be saved.

• This is the most important part, the whole point is that you cannot have a system that lets units survive continuously in the main battle. Units need to die easily and often to really break the current style.

Or just remove healing.

 

[cidk2000]

Or just remove healing.

What about healing in city only and you have to have barracks for melee/ranged seaport for navy airport for airunits and anti air ( think it might be too complicated )

 

[stii]

Or just remove healing.

This is the root cause of the issue. Having a unit take 75% damage then back up and heal is so much different to having it die.

 

[Diomedes_]

@Stalker0 I don't think you really even need to go to those sort of extremes to change combat for the better. Milder versions of the changes you talked about would definitely still be improvements in my eyes.

• Remove the extra HP to Riflemen/Infantry from Entrenchments and DFPs. Compensate with slightly higher base CS. This keeps some of their defensive strength to ranged units while still making them more vulnerable to tanks and also generally reorienting them towards offense.
• Remove the ranged defense from Armor Plating and replace it with a more offense-oriented promo, maybe like Overrun or something like what the Spanish Armada gets, i.e. get +X CS when fighting at above Y HP (could be full health or like 75 HP). This preserves armor units' offensive capabilities as it gives them a strong initial push, but it greatly nerfs their defensive capabilities.
• Adjust the CS/RCS ratio on ranged units. Increase RCS by like 5-10% but decrease CS by like 15%. I think siege units should almost always die when attacked by melee units, or at least lose over half their HP. Archer/gun units should be able to soak at least one hit.

As we were kind of talking about on discord earlier, I'm definitely starting to think that time to kill could be one of our better tools to make late game combat better, as adjusting it really only involves changing a couple numbers. Of course a supply and unit scaling overhaul would be nice as well, but those are so much more involved and intrusive than just changing unit interactions through small CS and promotion changes.

 

[FinMc]

@Stalker0 I don't think you really even need to go to those sort of extremes to change combat for the better. Milder versions of the changes you talked about would definitely still be improvements in my eyes.

• Remove the extra HP to Riflemen/Infantry from Entrenchments and DFPs. Compensate with slightly higher base CS. This keeps some of their defensive strength to ranged units while still making them more vulnerable to tanks and also generally reorienting them towards offense.
• Remove the ranged defense from Armor Plating and replace it with a more offense-oriented promo, maybe like Overrun or something like what the Spanish Armada gets, i.e. get +X CS when fighting at above Y HP (could be full health or like 75 HP). This preserves armor units' offensive capabilities as it gives them a strong initial push, but it greatly nerfs their defensive capabilities.
• Adjust the CS/RCS ratio on ranged units. Increase RCS by like 5-10% but decrease CS by like 15%. I think siege units should almost always die when attacked by melee units, or at least lose over half their HP. Archer/gun units should be able to soak at least one hit.

As we were kind of talking about on discord earlier, I'm definitely starting to think that time to kill could be one of our better tools to make late game combat better, as adjusting it really only involves changing a couple numbers. Of course a supply and unit scaling overhaul would be nice as well, but those are so much more involved and intrusive than just changing unit interactions through small CS and promotion changes.

These are excellent suggestions.

1) Remove extra HP > yes absolutely, increasing TTK is a great idea.
2) Making armor plating give a stronger push that weakens with damage is incredibly in line with having tanks as a "line breaker" unit while also not having them be a "kill everything all of the time" unit as they are now.
3) I think siege units should be able to survive a melee hit from a non-elite solider, albeit barely, a ranged+melee hit is death, also a cavalry hit killing it feels fair. Ranged I agree should be able to take a melee hit, having elite ranged units is key to winning high-difficulty battles and losing a logistics crossbow because it got one-tapped by a sneaky pikeman would feel terrible.

 

[Stalker0]

I think you could do it without changing it for everyone. If deity had +50% combat strength for all AI units and the same amount of units as a player it would probably be harder than it is now. Your units would be in real danger like you want.

wouldn't be near enough. The thing si the damage formula really doesn't scale all that fast. big change to cs only triggers a small increase in damage. If you want units actually dying (and you do if you really want to remove the human advantage over the AI)...you really have to go to work.

 

[azum4roll]

I'm playing version 3.0.4 and a screenshot from it. I don't know if there were any changes.

Religious buildings give me +10% food. There is also a monopoly on olives, which provides another 10% of the food. Each city has frequent WLTKDs, which adds up to another 15% (I might be confusing) population growth. There is a food caravan going to every city in my empire, except Yekaterinburg.

The spread of religion by missionaries provides food for the capital. I often complete CSs quests about trade caravans.
Hanoi receives 1 caravan, Yekaterinburg is far away on the island and independently obtains food. Without the caravan, Hanoi would be smaller than Yekaterinburg.

31+29+26+27+30+22+25=190 citizens, without a captured and burned city, which gives +163 supply. Tech level -159.

By comparison, CSs have between 15 and 18 citizens.
Japan has 32 citizens in the coastal city, which is more than my capital. Although my empire has many food bonuses.
If we reduce food bonuses and population growth bonuses, I would expect around 17 citizens without caravans and up to 23 citizens with caravans in non-capital cities.

23*7=161
161/190=0.8473 , the population would be almost 15% smaller.
0.8473*163=138.1099 would be supply from the number of citizens
163-138=25 this is how many units are obtained from the excess population.

The unit limit would not be 71, but 46.

Perhaps the decrease of unit supply would not be so dramatic. The formula is unknown to me. But the effect must appear.

Spoiler :

View attachment 677667
View attachment 677668

I don't know how many techs you have, but assuming you have 60% tech progress, the divisor of supply from population is 520%, which means you're actually getting only 163/5.2 = 31 supply from population.

 

[stii]

wouldn't be near enough. The thing si the damage formula really doesn't scale all that fast. big change to cs only triggers a small increase in damage. If you want units actually dying (and you do if you really want to remove the human advantage over the AI)...you really have to go to work.

I think you are under selling double CS doesn't double the damage but it isn't that far off, a quick check in game has this

40 ranged combat defence vs

40 RCS - 30 damage
48 RCS - 33 damage
81 RCS - 52 damage
90 RCS - 59 damage

Now units will have lots of buffs so +50% won't give a real +50% but it still seems pretty noticible that increasing CS makes a pretty big difference. And even if 50% isn't enough you could just increase it more.

 

[ma_kuh]

Is it really desirable to have combat system where whoever attacks first wins? That's what it feels like all these suggestions will do: if you hit first, you blow up everything, and if you don't, your army will melt before you get a turn.

Maybe I'm imagining the worst case, but things like melee damage-sponge units actually need to be able to soak up damage or there's no possible way you can have a combat triangle/counter unit design. I think removing the bonus health is the wrong direction, you should want to replace healing with extra health. This way, units can absorb the initial shock of a confrontation, but if you don't immediately shuffle the line and hit back, you'll lose the war of attrition.

Putting it another way: I think the idea of lowering time to kill is good, but it should come from reducing/negating healing, not from reducing max health.

Are there technical challenges with adding more plagues as control effects to the roster? Things like anti-healing, movement-slowing for land units, and a version of Dazed for general use would be welcome additions, if they were feasible.

 

[FinMc]

Is it really desirable to have combat system where whoever attacks first wins? That's what it feels like all these suggestions will do: if you hit first, you blow up everything, and if you don't, your army will melt before you get a turn.

Maybe I'm imagining the worst case, but things like melee damage-sponge units actually need to be able to soak up damage or there's no possible way you can have a combat triangle/counter unit design. I think removing the bonus health is the wrong direction, you should want to replace healing with extra health. This way, units can absorb the initial shock of a confrontation, but if you don't immediately shuffle the line and hit back, you'll lose the war of attrition.

Putting it another way: I think the idea of lowering time to kill is good, but it should come from reducing/negating healing, not from reducing max health.

Are there technical challenges with adding more plagues as control effects to the roster? Things like anti-healing, movement-slowing for land units, and a version of Dazed for general use would be welcome additions, if they were feasible.

Very good point about a "first-hit" meta, that doesn't sound fun.

Nerfing healing seems like a good idea, having it be fairly ineffective unless you're near a city. Although that could be very annoying for micro...

 

[Diomedes_]

Is it really desirable to have combat system where whoever attacks first wins? That's what it feels like all these suggestions will do: if you hit first, you blow up everything, and if you don't, your army will melt before you get a turn.

Maybe I'm imagining the worst case, but things like melee damage-sponge units actually need to be able to soak up damage or there's no possible way you can have a combat triangle/counter unit design. I think removing the bonus health is the wrong direction, you should want to replace healing with extra health. This way, units can absorb the initial shock of a confrontation, but if you don't immediately shuffle the line and hit back, you'll lose the war of attrition.

Putting it another way: I think the idea of lowering time to kill is good, but it should come from reducing/negating healing, not from reducing max health.

Are there technical challenges with adding more plagues as control effects to the roster? Things like anti-healing, movement-slowing for land units, and a version of Dazed for general use would be welcome additions, if they were feasible.

I think that's a valid point, but you're discounting the affect defensive fortifications/geography have. There is a pretty distinct defender's advantage, but given how good units are at defending already I don't think people (myself included) really maximize it through tile improvements and city placement. That being said, Forts are fairly uneven in their strength, which could/should be addressed.

But re: attack-first benefits, I also think you're discounting the position an attacking player puts themselves in after their initial assault. If the defender organized their units correctly, after the attacker kills the first line of melee units, that now should put their now-damaged melee units in range of an entire additional line of ranged units, which then can punish them very hard. Currently ranged units without high XP are really quite weak so attackers aren't as hurt from this, but a TTK reduction that also includes ranged units would change that.

I think addressing healing is a fair idea, but I'm personally really against plague effects. Maybe how ZoC works could be tweaked to make it a bit more punishing, but that's as far as I would personally want to go.

As far as the combat triangle goes, honestly there isn't really one in the game post-medieval. Pikeman/Knight/Crossbowman is about as perfect as the triangle gets, but even then its quite imperfect as the units have such different absolute strengths. As for the late game, I don't really think there is or even should be a triangle, however nice it would be. The distinctions between units should be more about mobility vs. tankiness, damage against cities vs. units, performance in different geographies, etc... This should be accomplished through distinct unit types (meaning the Tank and Infantry lines need to be further differentiated) but also through promotions. I know we've been messing with the melee and ranged unit promotions for a while now, but I would be in favor of changing them further. Shock and Drill just don't feel different enough, and I think it would be better if melee infantry and mounted/armor units had separate promo lines. Maybe shock gives +5% CS and +10% CS while attacking, Drill gives +5% CS and +10% CS while defending, and mounted/armor instead get a choice between attacking strength and flanking+mobility for their initial promos.

 

[Stalker0]

Removing battlefield healing is an interesting idea (or perhaps just remove medic II as a promotion). Healing is definitely a human favored activity since we optimize it a lot better. Now would it actually remove the defensive kill zone juggarnaut?....probably not enough on its own but with some other adjustments (mainly to citadels) it might work.

The other issue is if you crack the defensive nut....I don't know if Tall is actually viable anymore. Tall depends on an "unassailable" defensive position so that its 30 supply can hold up against 60....but if we weaken that (which is the only way to actually create some attrition in war), than I don't know how Tall doesn't just get run over.

 

[ma_kuh]

If you snipe the opponent's front line on the first turn, then they snipe your frontline on their first turn, turn two you get to kill their backline, and they don't have a response. In the extreme case, this is how an alpha-strike meta would play out. And that's not saying anything about mounted/armor units being able to crash in, get a kill, and retreat without significant losses. But this is where terrain and ZOC management starts to come into play.

Tall depends on an "unassailable" defensive position so that its 30 supply can hold up against 60....but if we weaken that (which is the only way to actually create some attrition in war), than I don't know how Tall doesn't just get run over.

Well if you only had healing within your borders or beside a Medic, then Tall defensive positions would still have an edge against aggressors, and the mini-game would become picking out the opposing Medics so they can't remain on the offensive. Analogous to cutting supply lines.

In terms of "solving" the kill zone meta, that's more of an AI problem I think. And I don't claim it's just an easy fix, but what would you as a player do if there was a kill zone established against you? You might pick up some siege weapons with indirect fire and try to poke out the defender, never moving forward until you had complete control of the area. You wouldn't just rush units into the grinder, so why should the AI? The absence of indirect fire in the earlier/mid game would then be the problem, to which I would say giving Trebuchets indirect fire, (to be lost on cannons but regained later), is an elegant solution.

 

[usadefcon1]

Removing battlefield healing is an interesting idea (or perhaps just remove medic II as a promotion). Healing is definitely a human favored activity since we optimize it a lot better.

In my game I've set Medic I to unlock with Civil Service and Medic II to unlock with Biology. I find it works thematically and as a way of restricting it.

 

[alchx]

You can only give the Medic promo to recon units. These units are best suited for this role - high mobility, not very often involved in combat due to relative weakness (although Commandos are strong). In addition, recons need regeneration.

Ideal medics in enemy territory, as they are able to run to their troops through rivers and forests, ignoring the enemy’s ZoC. Paratroopers are generally able to parachute to the right place if they are kept on the territories of friendly city-states.

At the same time, they can be used as a bonus for a flank attack, standing on the side of the enemy and then running away.

The March promo can be toned down. This will force to create recons more often and use them more actively on the fronts, periodically accompanying wounded units.

Haven't followed the latest updates to the promo for recons, but previously they were vulnerable to long-range fire and aircraft.

 

[Stalker0]

In terms of "solving" the kill zone meta, that's more of an AI problem I think. And I don't claim it's just an easy fix, but what would you as a player do if there was a kill zone established against you? You might pick up some siege weapons with indirect fire and try to poke out the defender, never moving forward until you had complete control of the area. You wouldn't just rush units into the grinder, so why should the AI? The absence of indirect fire in the earlier/mid game would then be the problem, to which I would say giving Trebuchets indirect fire, (to be lost on cannons but regained later), is an elegant solution.

We did something similar to this once....and it was boring as heck. We can make the AI defensively focused...which means no one ever attacks (because technically civ 5's defensive mechanics are so super that from a pure game theory standpoint, attacking is often "stupid").

the simple truth is a human can devise a position position with citadels, medics, and roads where they the enemy cannot kill the unit in the citadel in 1 turn, and the human just rotates the unit out. In other words, the position is invincible. I have done it plenty of times