No 1UPT

[Gorbles]

Oh, I forgot to mention Promotions. They're actually more problematic in CiV than the watered-down versions in BE, given the easy +damage on plains / hills in the early game. It further allows for effective ranged harass unless all targeted melee units go for ranged cover and Medic promotions. Which is turn means they're minimising their damage potential by not taking effective +damage promotions (though having an least one Medic per group is handy, of course).

 

[Galgus]

Civ 5 combat is much better when using a mod lowering ranged unit combat strength.

It keeps the players on their toes a bit knowing that the AI could go through an archer swarm like cardboard if they aren't protected by melee units.

On a similar note, it appropriately rewards the player for maneuvering to attack a ranged unit.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Civ 5 combat is much better when using a mod lowering ranged unit combat strength.

It keeps the players on their toes a bit knowing that the AI could go through an archer swarm like cardboard if they aren't protected by melee units.

On a similar note, it appropriately rewards the player for maneuvering to attack a ranged unit.

That was one thing BE did very, very right, ranged units had much weaker combat strength.

If you are going to have 1UPT, range is a major advantage and should be handled as such.

Of course it is also a big problem for the AI, and that is a serious limitation of it (harder to brute force a combat advantage.)

 

[Galgus]

Yes, which is why I recommend the Combat Balance Mod in the Steam Workshop to fix that part of Civ 5.

In my opinion the game is also better when melee units don't take damage attacking cities, but that is more controversial.

The combination of those two things makes melee units properly viable, in my opinion.

 

[Gorbles]

I'd go further, sorry - it makes ranged units somewhat redundant. Why invest in ranged units to attack Cities? Melee units tend to have better movement and higher Strength (in both CiV and BE).

 

[Galgus]

There are limited slots around a city for melee units, and a full encirclement is often not practical.

This means that ranged units can bombard behind them while additional melee units would be awkwardly scrambling into position.
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And why should ranged units be particularly good against cities?

An all melee army should be able to conquer even the largest cities, if they are not guarded by a decent army.
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In unit combat ranged units would still have the huge advantage of damaging units without taking damage, which with some protection from melee units makes them an excellent tide turner.

Ranged units guarded by melee units is, and should be, a formidable army to confront.

 

[Ryika]

Melee Units should not be the main force to attack cities, Siege Units should be - that's what they're there for. Melee Units are there to protect them, not to do the damage.

My rough changes:
- Fix the City Strength Curve
- Give Melee Units a Cover Ability, so they can properly block even in City Range
- Give normal Ranged Units a Combat Penalty against Cities
- Give Siege Units 3 Range by default and a Cover Ability, lower their Combat Strength by a lot, but increase their Anti-City-Modifier to make up for that

That way all units have their use.
- Melee Units block and are the main force to push into an enemy army
- Ranged Units give Fire Support to help the Melee Units (but are inefficient against cities)
- Siege Units directly attack the City (but are inefficient against Units)
- Cavalry Units try to flank and break the formation (by exposing Ranged and Siege Units)
- Air Units try to directly kill Siege Units (or Intercept to prevent the enemy from doing that)

 

[Galgus]

Wars should be about Armies, not cities.

Cities should not be able to single-handedly hold off melee unit armies, and Siege Units are plenty useful in normal unit combat anyway.

That said, I wouldn't mind it if cities received a significant health buff alongside bombardment nerfs and a removal of damage to attacking melee units.

That way players would have plenty of time to rescue large cities from a siege before it falls.

There is nothing gained in requiring a specific composition against cities: if one army can overwhelm the other, it should overwhelm the cities as well.

Perhaps we could see a return of Citadel-esq defensive improvements, though.

 

[Ryika]

Wars should be about Armies, not cities.

[...]

There is nothing gained in requiring a specific composition against cities: if one army can overwhelm the other, it should overwhelm the cities as well

Why? *some more words so the forum let's me send this message*

 

[Galgus]

It's a preference thing really, and I vastly prefer wars to be about clashes of armies rather than tedious sieges.
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I'm fine with good defender advantages, but I greatly prefer them to be ones that work with an army rather than ones that allow defense with a skeleton crew.

Increased healing and combat bonuses in friendly lands as well as the ability to reinforce troops quicker than the invader are good examples of such mechanics.

From Civ 5, Citadel defensive bonuses and damage on a tile that can be razed if not defended also works decently.

I'm fine with cities having high amounts of health so that they do not fall instantly, but fundamentally I think that a strong army should need to be countered by an army of similar strength.
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Those word limits are annoying.

 

[Ryika]

Well, if it's a preference thing then there isn't much of an argument to be head - that's perfect to become a mod (and I know it already has), but I don't think it would be a good thing to put it into the game, because it's rather one-dimensional, makes siege-units practically useless and allows you to just roll over people.

Although I think the space issue is once again rather limiting here - imagine we had a grid where small armies could move into enemy territory and occupy/plunder tiles for profit without being attacked by cities, then we'd have a much more interesting mix of army vs. army- and siege battles. Currently every Civ vs. Civ Battle is a Siege Battle because there isn't any room for or profit gained from non-siege battles.

 

[Galgus]

I agree that preferences cannot be argued on purely objective terms, but much of game design is an appeal to different preferences.

Defender advantages should exist to keep the better army from systematically rolling over another, but I think they can be focused on advantages that work with, and not without, the defending army.

Siege units as designed currently seem useful for simple ranged bombardment - each of them does something the affinity equivalent Ranger unit cannot as of now.
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Maybe its just the Marathon speed, but Plundering never seems to give any significant reward - certainly not enough to break even on the units.

I think it would be interesting to see plunder become more rewarding and players occupying resources - like camping on an enemy's Firaxite tile to gain access to it.

It would be fun to simply raid enemy tiles, likely in a hit and run fashion, and force them to either pay for peace, hunt down the raiders, or take the fight to the raider's cities.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

It would probably be easier if they removed the cities ranged attack entirely but caused ANY unit that attacked them to take damage (so Siege units could set up in peace...unlike when they are attacking a mobile army, and Pillaging would be a bigger problem/strategy)

 

[Ryika]

It would probably be easier if they removed the cities ranged attack entirely but caused ANY unit that attacked them to take damage (so Siege units could set up in peace...unlike when they are attacking a mobile army, and Pillaging would be a bigger problem/strategy)

Could work, but then you'd need to add another form of Defender's advantage.

 

[Galgus]

I don't think units taking damage on attack is a good mechanic, since it makes cities too self-defending.

Defender's advantages are better when they are geared around supporting an army rather than making taking undefended cities needlessly tedious and cumbersome.

 

[Ryika]

You still need an army to defend yourself, passive city damage alone will never kill an army, because people can just fortify and heal.

 

[poom3619]

I prefer undefended city to be undefended. It should need to be saved by decent army. Fortification should delay it's fall but shouldn't be able to lift the siege by itself.

I like Endless Legend approach where city's HP will be lower every turn when enemy is adjacent to it and will fall when it's out of HP.

 

[Galgus]

I agree, though I'm fine with high health for cities to ensure noone's capital is going down quickly.

 

[nimling]

One other solution to 1UPT is to get rid of tiles, at least for unit movement. This would also get around the strategic problems of a spherical world map w/ hexes (mainly because such a map is mathematically impossible without creating imbalances). Cities would still have "tiles" to work corresponding to the land around them, if you retain the Civ concept of 1 citizen working 1 tile (something which I find kind of bizarre, but is an accepted convenition in the series).

City defenses ought to be tough if people took the leaf technologies to get them. It's a pretty big tech sacrifice to get that defense when it would be truly overpowering and spend production building them. If anything, cities are far too weak in Civ5 and BE, given how hard it is to stop ranged units from bombarding them in one round.

The best city defense needs to be viable against late game units, given that there's no natural progression as with civ5. The third-tier promotion units are usually sufficient against CC cities, or cities that took defense perimeters + whatever the other thing was, and brute-forcing a strong city is possible with decent production. The fourth-tier units have gamebreaking abilities that render city defenses quite moot and by that point field armies can get so huge that a city alone can't do much.
What is a problem is that AI doesn't tech or prioritize city defenses, and the AI has no idea how to operate a field army (with 1UPT or MUPT).

All weak cities do is further limit strategy. In Civ5, try seeing how long a hill/castle city holds out against a human player's assault without a relief army - the answer is "not very long at all". BE makes this possible in the early game, but in the early game going for defensive leaf techs means not getting stuff that boosts your economy and it doesn't help you take other cities directly (though it does mean that you're not obligated to pull back a significant force if attacked - not that strategic planning is really rewarded by 1UPT, due to the constraints on army composition.

I haven't played enough BE multiplayer but if it's like Civ5, siege is really hard to use in MP games due to clickspamming.

 

[Galgus]

Aside being sort of cool thematically, I don't see any real gains from a perfectly spherical world.

Cities that require an army to defend them promote wars focused on armies rather than fortifications: requiring a siege make-up and marginalizing melee units with damage on attack limits strategy.