Unit comparison between Civilization V and VI

[Aurelesk]

Introduction
When playing, I quickly saw that the Archer were crazy good. So I thought: Were they always that good in V? I should compare the units between the two iterations. So I set up some sheet, and put myself to work.

In VI, the combat system changed a little. Not much, but did introduced new mechanics such as:

New Combat Strength formula
It is basically some sort of a logarithmic scale, instead of relative one. Units from a new era tend to have +10 CS instead of +50%. Therefore, if there are 8 eras, CS can go from 20, 30, 40… 80 and 90; instead of 8, 12, 18… 90 and 135. The granularity is better in early age, but worse in later age. The bonuses are no longer additive but multiplicative: having two +100% (×2) would end up having ×3 in V, while having two +17 (roughly equal to ×2) would end up having ×4 in VI. Therefore, stacking bonus in VI is way more potent.
In order to compare the effectiveness of Civ-V's units, I first took the Warrior as reference of a 20 CS, then converted the Strength of units into the new formula. And... everything was off by 5 CS. So I changed with 25 CS as a base, and it worked better. It seems that the Civilization VI's Warrior is weaker but cheaper. Probably changed for balance reason.

Apparently they also raised the Production cost of all units by 50%, then introduced the policies which increased by 50% the production. Which makes sense in retrospective, but only figured out when I was doing my sheets.


Melee class units

In Civilization VI, the Melee class enjoy +5 CS against Anticavalry units.

Units	Era	Production	Strategic	Melee	Move
Warrior (V) Melee	Start	40	-	25	2
Warrior (VI) Melee	Start	40 (=)	-	20 (-5)	2
Swordsman (VI) Melee	Early classical Iron Working	90	Iron	35	2
Swordsman (V) Melee	Late classical Iron Working	75	Iron	39	2
Man-At-Arms (VI) Melee	Early medieval Apprenticeship	160	Iron	45	2
Longswordsman (V) Melee	Late medieval Steel	120	Iron	49	2
Musketman (V) Gunpowder	Early renaissance Gunpowder	150	-	52	2
Musketman (VI) Melee	Early renaissance Gunpowder	240 (+60%)	Niter (!)	55 (+3)	2
Rifleman (V) Gunpowder	Early industrial Rifling	225	-	61	2
Line Infantry (VI) Melee	Early industrial Military Science	360 (+60%)	Niter (!)	65 (+4)	2
Great War Infantry (V) Gunpowder	Early modern Replaceable Parts	320	-	71	2
Infantry (VI) Melee	Early modern Replaceable Parts	430 (+34%)	Oil (!)	75 (+4)	2
Infantry (V) Gunpowder	Late modern Plastics	375	-	79	2
Mechanized Infantry (V) Gunpowder	Early information Mobile Tactics	375	-	85	3
Mechanized Infantry (VI) Melee	Early information Satellites	650 (+73%)	Oil (!)	85 (=)	3

I didn't make the comparison between both Swordsmen, and between Longswordsman & Man-At-Arms as they are half an era short. It seems that the power doesn't increase by +10CC per era, but by +5CS per half era. The distinction is important.

The Warrior in VI is weaker but doesn't cost 50% more. In believe that is why I think the Archer was way better: the Warrior is not as good. I have a hypothesis that they intended to have the Warrior as a 25 CS at 60/65 Production cost, but probably made it a 20 CS at 40 Production for balance reason. The Eagle Warrior is probably based on the old Warrior, as it is 28 CS for 65 Production. Usually, unique units has +3 bonus CS to their counterpart, which align if the Warrior was 25 CS.
Perhaps everything I said is wrong, and the Eagle Warrior is made that way in order to give more longevity to the unit and not be obsolete before it could have been usable?

The Swordsman in VI once was 40 CS. My hypothesis is that they ported the data from Civilization V and either forgot it was an early classical unit and not a late classical unit like in Civilization V, or Iron Working once used to be a late classical tech but moved to early classical but forgot to change the Combat Strength accordingly.

From Musketman, the units are stronger than their counterpart, probably because they require a Strategic resources. The only exception is... the Mechanized Infantry. At first, we could think it is 5CS short... except it is 10CS. There is a reason: the games handle late-game units differently. They have the same idea: make them "ultimate", but took different paths:

• In V, late-game units don't gain as much power between era. In exchange, their production cost doesn't increase. For the same production cost, you will have as much units with a little more Strength. In order to win, you swarm your enemy.
• In VI, the late-game units gain full power between era, but the production will increase not as fast. For the same production cost, you will have a little less units but they are way more powerful. In order to win, you have to update your enemy.

Ranged class units

In Civilization VI, the Ranged class suffers from -17 CS against Cities and Naval units.

Units	Era	Production	Melee	Ranged	Range	Move
Slinger (VI) Ranged	Start	35	5	15	1	2
Archer (V) Archery	Ancient Archery	40	13	22	2	2
Archer (VI) Ranged	Ancient Archery	60 (+50%)	15 (+2)	25 (+3)	2	2
Composite Bowman (V) Archery	Early classical Construction	75	22	33	2	2
Crossbowman (VI) Ranged	Early medieval Machinery	160	30	40	2	2
Crossbowman (V) Archery	Late medieval Machinery	120	38	45	2	2
Gatling Gun (V) Archery	Early industrial Industrialization	225	58	58	1	2
Field Cannon (VI) Ranged	Early industrial Ballistics	330 (+47%)	50 (-8)	60 (+2)	2 (+1)	2
Machine Gun (V) Archery	Late modern Ballistics	350	75	75	1	2
Machine Gun (VI) Ranged	Early atomic Advanced ballistics	540	70	85	2	2
Bazooka (V) Archery	Late information Nuclear Fusion	375	84	84	1	2

The comparison is hard, as the Ranged units has 1 Range in V starting with the Gatling Gun, making them awful. Field Cannon is what Gatling Gun would have been if it had 2 Range in Civilization V. But I proved my point: if the Warrior is 5 CS weaker, the Archer is in comparison 3 CS stronger, making a gap of 8 CS total. So I was right: the Archer is stronger! But not stronger as I thought.


Cavalry class units

The Cavalry has been split into Heavy and Light Cavalry in VI:

• The Heavy Cavalry inherited the Chariot Archer (as Heavy Chariot), the Knight, the Tank and the Modern Armor.
• The Light Cavalry inherited the Horseman, the Cavalry and the Helicopter Gunship from the Anticalvary (as Helicopter).
• The Landship has no equivalent (in truth: the Tank in VI is the Landship in V, and the Tank in V has no equivalent).
• The Giant Death Robot is a standalone unit in VI.

In Civilization V, the Cavalry units have the following abilities:

• Can move after attacking
  • Replaced by "Ignore Zone of Control" in VI.
• No Defensive Terrain bonuses (cannot enjoy +2 CS from Woods or Hills, or Fortifications).
  • It has no equivalence in Civilization VI. Perhaps "Ignore Zone of Control" wasn't as potent to compensate the "Can move after attacking"?
• Cavalry have a -33% penalty attacking cities (roughly: -10CS). It doesn't apply to Armored unit (like Tank).
  • Replaced by their inability of using Battering Ram and Siege Tower.

Units	Era	Production	Strategic	CS	Move	Other Abilities
Chariot Archer (V) Archery	Ancient The Wheel	56	Horses	18 / 31 (2r)	4	Rough Terrain Penalty Cannot move after attack
Heavy Chariot (VI) Heavy Cavalry	Ancient Wheel	65 (+16%)	-	28 (-3)	2	+1 Move on flat terrain
Horseman (V) Mounted	Early classical Horseback Riding	75	Horses	35	4
Horseman (VI) Light Cavalry	Early classical Horseback Riding	80 (+7%)	Horses	36 (+1)	4
Knight (V) Mounted	Late medieval Chivalry	120	Horses	48	4
Knight (VI) Heavy Cavalry	Late medieval Stirrups	220 (+83%)	Iron (!)	50 (+2)	4
Courser (VI) Light Cavalry	Late medieval Castles	200 (+67%)	Horses	46 (-2)	5 (+1)
Cavalry (V) Mounted	Early industrial Military Science	225	Horses	61	4
Cavalry (VI) Light Cavalry	Early industrial Military Science	330 (+46%)	Horses	62 (+1)	5 (+1)
Cuirasser (VI) Heavy Cavalry	Early industrial Ballistics	330 (+46%)	Iron (!)	64 (+3)	4
Landship (V) Armored	Late modern Combustion	350	Oil	75	4
Tank (VI) Heavy Cavalry	Late modern Combustion	480 (+37%)	Oil	85 (+10)	4	+1 Move on flat terrain
Tank (V) Armored	Early atomic Combined Arms	375	Oil	79	5
Helicopter Gunship (V) Helicopter	Late atomic Computers	425	Aluminium	75	6	All tiles cost 1 Move Bonus vs Tank (+100% : +17 CS) Cannot conquer cities
Helicopter (VI) Light Cavalry	Late atomic Synthetic Materials	600 (+40%)	Aluminium	86 (+11)	4 (-2)	All tiles cost 1 Move
Modern Armor (V) Armored	Early information Laser	425	Aluminium	88	5
Modern Armor (VI) Heavy Cavalry	Early information Composites	680 (+60%)	Oil (!)	95 (+7)	4	+1 Move on flat terrain
Giant Death Robot (V) Armored	Late information Nuclear Fusion	425	Uranium	98	5
Giant Death Robot (VI) GDR	Late information Robotics	1500 (+253%)	Uranium (×3)	130 / 120 (3r) (+32)	5	Can attack when embarked -17 CS against cities and naval Capabilities updated with certain techs

The comparison between the Horseman are interesting. I thought I would find the Horseman in VI is too powerful, while in reality it is too cheap and should be around 90 - 110 Production cost. Meanwhile, the Knight is crazy expensive and should be around 180 Production... and it was that cost! Further cementing the idea that they took Civilization V's units and put them in VI with a converted Combat Strength formula and +50% cost.

The comparison works roughly quite well... until the Tank. It is only 37% more costly (instead of the expected 50%), yet have 10 more Combat Strength than expected. It is a real imbalance.

I put the Giant Death Robot as well, as it is in the upgrade path in V, even if the comparison doesn't make sense.


Anticavalry class (or the "what is that upgrade path?!")

I don't know if I want to do that comparison. In V, the units goes land, then mounted, then anti-tank, then helicopter. It seems Firaxis really want Helicopter and Lancer, but don't know how to introduce them in a unit path upgrade.

In VI, the unit path has +10 CS against Anticavalry (roughly +50%) .

Units	Era	Production	Strategic	Melee	Move	Other abilities
Spearman (V) Melee	Ancient Bronze Working	56	-	33	2	Bonus vs Mounted (+50% : +10 CS)
Spearman (VI) Anticavalry	Ancient Bronze Working	65 (+16%)	-	25 (-8)	2
Pikeman (V) Melee	Early medieval Civil Service	90	-	42	2	Bonus vs Mounted (+50% : +10 CS)
Pikeman (VI) Anticavalry	Early medieval Military Tactics	180 (+100%)	-	45 (+3)	2
Lancer (V) Mounted	Late renaissance Metallurgy	185	Horses	53	4	Has Mounted abilities +33% VS Mounted units. (+7 CS)
Pike and Shot (VI) Anticavalry	Late renaissance Metal Casting	250 (+35%)	-	55 (+2)	2
AT Crew (VI) Anticavary	Late modern Chemistry	400	-	75	2
Anti-Tank Gun (V) Gunpowder	Early atomic Combined Arms	300	-	71	2	Bonus vs Tanks (+100% : +17 CS)
Helicopter Gunship (V) Helicopter	Late atomic Computers	425	Aluminium	75	6	All tiles cost 1 Move Bonus vs Tank (+100% : +17 CS) No defensive terrain bonuses Cannot conquer cities
Modern AT (VI) Anticavalry	Early information Composites	580	-	85	2

The comparison is quite weird. The unit line start underwhelming with the Spearman and Pikeman in V, and somehow get really good as the AT-Crew, while in V it goes zigzag with being a Mounted units, no longer applying its bonus against Mounted but only Armored, then finishing as Helicopter than cannot conquer city.

Between the two Spearmen, there is a whole 8 CS gap... in favor of Civilization V. It truly demonstrates either how good the unit was in V or... how bad it was in VI. In reality, it is both: the unit was quite good in V and really bad in VI. I believe they made the Spearman in VI weaker because the Barbarian Outpost are guarded by them, and the weakened Warrior couldn't deal with it. I would even argue the once +10 CS against Anticavalry was created because of this (now +5 CS). Yet, it isn't +50% more costly but less.
Basically, it is tied on how cheaper but weaker the units are in the Ancient era (except for the Archer which is stronger). Would it be okay to basically increase by 5 CS of all Ancient units, but being costlier? Yet if the Spearman is a 30 CS unit for 90 Production, it wouldn't be fair the early classical units.

The Pikeman is at an odd place. If we compare without context, you might say "wow, Pikeman in VI is underwhelming: the unit is way too expensive. No wonder it is bad". Yet... Pikeman in V are quite good. They are very cheap for its power, and it would still be a good value at 100 - 110 Production. So the point of comparison was biased.
When we compare with Man-at-Arms (a very good unit), the units is as strong (45 CS) but with no Strategic resources. It just cost 20 Production more. Yet, if it costed as much (160 Production), then the Man-at-Arms would have nothing more than a different Promotion table that doesn't enjoy +10CS against Cavalry for an additional 20 Iron cost.

By logic, the Pikeman should be at 40 CS (-5) but costing only 130 Production (-50). In practice, the unit wouldn't be a counter to Cavalry units such as Knight which has 50 CS (well, that Pikeman would be cheaper and easy to swarm with). That is why the Pikeman is at an odd place. Maybe, I should talk about Promotion table inequalities.

Meanwhile, the AT Crew is quite cheap for its power.


Siege class units

The Siege class units in Civilization VI use "Bombard" damage, in order to hit effectively Walls.

In Civilization V, Siege units has the following abilities:

• Bonus vs Cities (+200%), roughly +27 CS.
  • Replaced in VI with Wall mechanic, and higher base CS but suffering from -17 CS against land units (roughly -50%).
  • I would mess the comparison, as there is a 10 CS gap in one end. Should I compare with a 5 CS advantage toward VI?
• No Defensive Bonus (such as Woods, Hills or Fortifications).
• Must Set Up to Ranged Attack
  • Replaced in VI with "can attack with full Movement", then overpatched to "can attack if it has more than its base Movement" (due to being bugged with Great General and Cyrus).
• Limited Visibility Ranged: -1

Unit	Era	Production	Strategic	Melee	Ranged	Range	Move	Other Abilities
Catapult (V) Siege	Early classical Mathematics	75	-	22	25	2	2
Catapult (VI) Siege	Late classical Engineering	120	-	25	35	2	2
Trebuchet (V) Siege	Late medieval Physics	120	-	35	39	2	2
Trebuchet (VI) Siege	Late medieval Military Engineering	200 (+67%)	-	35 (=)	45 (+1*)	2	2
Cannon (V) Siege	Late renaissance Chemistry	185	-	39	48	2	2
Bombard (VI) Siege	Late renaissance Metal Casting	280 (+51%)	Niter (!)	45 (+6)	55 (+2*)	2	2
Artillery (V) Siege	Late industrial Dynamite	320	-	49	56	3	2	Indirect Fire
Artillery (VI) Siege	Early modern Steel	430	Oil (!)	60	80	2 (-1)	2
Rocket Artillery (V) Siege	Late atomic Rocketry	425	Aluminium	68	75	3	2	Indirect Fire No Setup
Rocket Artillery (VI) Siege	Early information Guidance Systems	680	Oil (!)	70	100	3	3	Sight of 3

Siege units are interesting. They follow the +50% Production cost. Yet, they have no policy increasing Siege units production. Why? Please, Firaxis, add policy cards that increase by 50% the production cost of Siege, Support and Recon units. Or maybe makes them cheaper? The Trebuchet might a little too much costly, but not by much.

The units follows the curve really well. As Siege units has +27 CS against cities in VI, while they have -17 CS against land unit in V, I have to compare with a 5 bonus for Ranged Strength for VI. If V has 20 (47 vs Cities), and VI has 25 (42 vs Cities), therefore the average would be the same, with +5/-5 in VI.

But I guess they find out the cities are way sturdier in VI, because Artillery and Rocket Artillery has +10 CS bonus, which tie V to deal as much damage against cities, but it would have +10 CS against everything else. Probably to deal with Urban Walls.


Conclusion

It astonished me to find out that both games are very close in the power they gave to the units. Yet, the few oddities can be actual non solved problematic in VI.

They made the units to cost 50% more, but introduced policies that increase Production by 50%. Yet, Recon and Siege units don't have those policy cards while being as costly as the other units.

Early units don't follow the +50% cost rule. The Warrior has the same cost, but is made weaker by 5 CS. All Ancient units are kind of in this situation... except the Archer. Not only it follows the higher production rule exactly, but it is also a little stronger that its counterpart. Therefore the Archer is dominating the Ancient era (yeah! I proved that Archer are more potent in VI than V!).

Civilization V also had units that Civilization VI doesn't have. For example: the Composite Bowman. Maybe one the reasons the Archer is that strong is because a "normal power" Archer couldn't compete with the Horseman and Swordsman units. They also have the Bazooka, which give the Ranged units a representative in the Information era, something we don't have in VI. Maybe the game should have those units to fill some gaps.

Some units are only half an era apart, like the Longswordsman vs Musketman, the Great War Infantry vs Infantry, or the Landship vs Tank. I can understand why for Longswordsman vs Musketman, as it is the change to Gunpowder units which don't need Strategic Resources. But for the other two, I think it is nice flavor-wise (distinction between WWI and WWII), but doesn't bring as much gameplay-wise.

Back the Ancient era problem: I believe most of units attacking in Melee in the Ancient era are made bad because the Barbarian starts with them and use them. If the Spearman was made stronger, our starting Warrior couldn't beat them. I believe that what was once the +10 CS vs Anticavalry on the Melee Class was just a tool to give the players a way to deal with Barbarian Outpost which end up having the whole Anticavalry class being bad. It was later reduced to +5 CS.

As the Slinger is the rubbish Ranged unit that can upgrade to the Archer in the Ancient era, should the Warrior be or have a rubbish Melee unit that can upgrade from/into in the Ancient era as well? Same thing for the Spearman?

• Melee
  • Brute (start): 20 CS for 40 Production (→160 Gold)
  • Warrior (Bronze Working?): 28 CS for 75 Production (→ 300 Gold)
• Ranged
  • Slinger (start): 5/15 CS (=), 1 Range (=) for 35 Production (=) (140 Gold)
  • Archer (Archery): 15/25 CS (=), 2 Range (=) for 75 Production (+15) (240 → 300 Gold).
• Anticavalry
  • Hunter (start): 20 CS for 40 Production (160 Gold)
    • Barbarian Outpost would be guarded by Hunters until someone unlock Bronze Working, making them more manageable.
  • Spearman (Bronze Working): 28 CS (+3) for 75 Production (+10) (260 → 300 Gold)
• Heavy Cavalry
  • Heavy Chariot (Wheel): 28 CS (=) for 75 Production (+10) (260 → 300 Gold).
    • Maybe, in order to give it utility, it should have 3 Movement but requires 5 or 10 Horses

The Horseman is another unit that doesn't follow the formula, as it costs almost the same yet being even more powerful. It shows in the game as well. The game designers even had to create Barbarian Horseman to circumvent the problem! Yet, in V, the Horseman has roughly the same power.
What should be done? Nothing? Increase its cost to ~120? Reduce its power to ~30? Or something in between like ~33 CS and ~100 Production?

Lastly, the late era units are diverging quite far from Civilization V's philosophy. In both games, the units have a better Power over Price ratio than the previous eras. The divergence comes from how they did it: in V the Price is almost the same and the Power is somewhat increased. In VI, the ratio is kept the same but both Power and Price are increased, the Power more than the Price.

Yet, even by taking the new philosophy in account, late-game units are quite a mess. The most notable is the Tank, which is as powerful as the Mechanized Infantry, both consuming Oil, yet the Tank is available earlier and is cheaper. Perhaps they took inspiration from Civilization V's Tank (unlocked later), instead of the Landship?
Arguably, some units distance themselves from that ratio: the AT-Crew is perhaps too cheap for its power, while the Modern Armor is perhaps too strong for its price.


And you?
Do you think it is relevant to look back in Civilization V to know where Civilization VI is going? Is there something that V have that you want in VI, or instead wouldn't want at all?

It took too much time to write this, and I didn't even talk about Naval and Air units, and don't talk about Promotion table which is also worth a discussion!

 

[vorlon_mi]

First, thanks for the detailed analysis. Very complete, very careful, very thorough.

I'm especially drawn to the trajectories for certain units, in terms of their gameplay, as distinct from the discussions in other threads about historical accuracy. As much as I like the touch points to real world history, both V and VI are games and need to be viewed through that lens. It's instructive to see where certain unique units are buffed / improved compared with the unit they replace. The differences include both cost changes and combat strength changes.

Lastly, the engineer in me would observe that when you have two points, you can draw a line through them. What units will be present in Civ7? Will the relationships among different units follow the trends you have documented between Civ5 and Civ6? Or will the developers use what they've learned from these two games to strike a new balance point, to set a new trend line?

 

[Aurelesk]

Lastly, the engineer in me would observe that when you have two points, you can draw a line through them. What units will be present in Civ7? Will the relationships among different units follow the trends you have documented between Civ5 and Civ6? Or will the developers use what they've learned from these two games to strike a new balance point, to set a new trend line?

When Civilization VI was released, the unit path upgrade was slimmer. It was basically:
Melee: Warrior → Swordsman → Musketman → Infantry → Mechanized Infantry.
Ranged: Slinger → Archer → Crossbowman → Field Cannon → Machine Gun (it already had everything!)
Recon: Scout → Ranger
Anticavalry: Spearman → Pikeman → AT Crew → Modern AT
Heavy Cavalry: Heavy Chariot → Knight → Tank → Modern Armor
Light Cavalry: Horseman → Cavalry → Helicopter
Siege: Catapult → Bombard → Artillery → Rocket Artillery
Apart for Field Cannon (kind of a Gatling Gun replacement), they all came from Civilization V. Bombard and Cannon are too similar to be considered as two different things.

So I expect a rather slim upgrade path. I wonder if they would go for all classes at once but slim, or instead have fewer but more complete classes (remove the Light Cavalry and the Bomber class), and add them in new extensions?

With the expansions, they added new units. Some echoed with previous units in all but names: Man-at-Arms vs Longswordsman, Line Infantry vs Rifleman, or Spec Ops vs Paratrooper. But they also introduced new units, like Skirmisher, Cuirasser and the Courser. I rather want to see Pike and Shot as a new unit. It might replace the Lancer in the upgrade path, it isn't similar in both gameplay and in history.

They also left out some units, like the Composite Bowman, the Bazooka, the Landship (basically: Great War Tank), the Great War Infantry, the Great War Bomber, the Galleass or... the XCOM Squad. They really wanted to represent both WWI and WWII.

Perhaps we will have those units sooner or later. The Landship could be repurposed as Light Tank (or Recon Tank) to fill the Light Cavalry void in Modern era. The Great War Bomber could be introduced as Dive Bomber, a rubbish Bomber. The Galleass could also be reintroduced as the Cog, mid-point between Quadrireme and Frigate. Which would probably need a new Naval Melee unit to be able to counter that. Galley already have higher Strength to deal with Quadrireme, so perhaps Trireme at Shipbuilding could mitigate it, and reduce the power gap before Caravel.

They could also introduce new units, such as Halberdier as mid-point between Pikeman and Pike and Shot (or either replace the Pike and Shot, or make them unlocked later at... Rifling for example). Perhaps the Cataphract as a classical Knight could be introduced . Or the Explorer, a Recon unit made to explore the New World. Or the Cruiser / Dreadnought naval units, as a Coal-powered early Battleship (with Battleship being the modern Oil variation). But mostly: Torpedo Boat. I always found funny to have Destroyer which were initially created to deal with Torpedo Boat, yet not having them in the game. Plus, it would link Privateer to Submarine more smoothly: I must admit I found quick amusing to imagine a Pirate crew suddenly boarding a Submarine as their new ship.

They could also introduce new lines, like Ranged Cavalry with Chariot Archer, Horse Archer and... perhaps Dragoons. So that we would have two Ranged class, one geared toward defense, and the other toward offense. Alas, the Ranged Cavalry didn't survive to the present day warfare (well, Tank are Ranged Cavalry). They could fuse with the Fighter class, which isn't the most logical in real life, but gameplay-wise could make sense. Or they could split the actual Ranged line into two, one geared toward defensive Ballistic (Gatling Gun and Machine Gun), and the other more offense (Field Cannon, Mortar, Bazooka), and giving the latter for Ranged Cavalry.

In all... I also wanted to add some graph to better see the Power over Price of the units.

For the price, I assume that Civilization VI's units were always trained with the Production cards. For the power of Ranged unit, I took the average between Melee and Ranged, and added 5 to be on par with other casses. It really shows:

• How Horseman and Tank stick out. Arguably, the AT-Crew as well. The Archer also a little bit.
• How Spearman and the Warrior suffers from the "cheaper but weaker" syndrome, making the Archer shining more.
• How the late-game units are a mess, due to both bad balance and different philosophy in V and VI for late-game units (V: a little more Power for same price, VI: more Power for a little increased price).

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

When VI was released, one of the first things noticed was that all upgrades were, roughly, 2 Eras apart. This was obviously because of the problems in V when a unit could barely be built before it was obsolete and needed upgrading.

But, people kept complaining about 'missing' units, like the 'longswordsman' and similar in-betweeners, so they started adding them (note that, as far as I know, no unit was Removed from the original Civ VI unit list, all the changes were additions of new units in between existing units)

And so for the past year or two, VI has the same problem V had: units that have another unit on their upgrade path less than an Era plus away get obsoleted before you can get them built and shuffle them to the frontier to get into a fight. Added to the existing problem of late game/Era units that rarely get used because the game is over before the last Era or three, and a relatively large percentage of the units in Civ VI rarely get used at all. That's essentially a waste of all the graphic and design work that went into them, not to mention a source of frustration when you go to the trouble of accumulating the Iron necessary to build a bunch of Swordsmen and then discover that less than a dozen turns after you'e fielded them it's time to upgrade them to Men-at-Arms. This is particularly annoying when the units you went to all the trouble of building are your Civ's Unique Unit - like Roman Legions. I can't remember the time I fought a war playing as Rome in Civ VI and actually ended the war with the Legions I started it with - invariably any more I've started upgrading them to MaA before the enemy is finished off. Sic transit legionae.

IF they keep the same or similar mechanics for building Units, moving them into combat and resolving battles and wars in Civ VII, they will have the same basic problem: wars take too long compared to the time required to build units and move them into combat, to resolve combats (1UPT means not only combat spread all over the map, it also means eliminating a unit frequently takes several turns, so that wars between Civs last for Eras, not Years or Turns) so that almost all military actions are long, drawn out affairs compared to the Era and century progression. In a nutshell, Alexander's conquests in the game would take centuries and easily last until well into the Medieval or Renaissance - they'd be completed only by Toynbee's postulated Alexander XXIII!

I suggest the answer is not to fiddle with the units and upgrades, but to speed up the process of forming/building units in the first place. The hoary old Civ mechanic of accumulating 'production' to build one unit at a time in each city over several turns means that each unit can take, in game terms, centuries to produce. Before you even put your hand on your mouse to move it, the unit is already several turns on the way to obsolescence, and after moving X tiles across the map to the enemy, you barely have time for a turn or two of combat before it's Time To Upgrade. In a Civ game, by the time Alexander's army trekked to India they would have been facing Crossbowmen . . .

I suggest this is all argument for:
1. One Turn production of Units. The limitation on this should not be a time-consuming accumulation of 'production', but some kind of other Resource limitation: population, Civic, Social, Political, etc. A possible start would be not accumulating 'Strategic' resources, but simply having access to them in some quantity without which you cannot build that type of unit at all. As in, you have access to iron through trade, mining, or whatever and you canbuild a swordsman every turn in the city. NO access, and you have to build something else. No waiting to accumulate X amounts of iron, especially in the pre-gunpowder eera when a few tons of iron could equip and entire Legion from head to foot.
2. One Turn resolution of battles. This, of course, will probably also require retiring the 1UPT so that entire armies can win or lose without requiring centuries to reach a conclusion. So be it.
3. A new mechanic for movement. Perhaps variable movement rates deending on whether the unit is in 'friendly' territory compared to marching into the Unknown or enemy territory: you can mass the army at the border, but as soon as you cross that border, Friction starts to slow everything down. This would speed up getting into combat Before Obsolescence. Combine it with some kind of Supply Penalty for sitting a bunch of units in one place too long: it gets pretty expensive to feed thousands of men and animas who are just standing around looking menacing but not doing anything to feed themselves on the enemy's crops, and you wont be able to mass everybody at the border and wait until you are ready to invade - too expensive until the last Eras of the game.

Just thoughts, but a point to remember is that units and their combat factors are only part of the overall Combat Resolution mechanics in the game, and probably not the part that most needs major revisions.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

When VI was released, one of the first things noticed was that all upgrades were, roughly, 2 Eras apart. This was obviously because of the problems in V when a unit could barely be built before it was obsolete and needed upgrading.

But, people kept complaining about 'missing' units, like the 'longswordsman' and similar in-betweeners, so they started adding them (note that, as far as I know, no unit was Removed from the original Civ VI unit list, all the changes were additions of new units in between existing units)

And so for the past year or two, VI has the same problem V had: units that have another unit on their upgrade path less than an Era plus away get obsoleted before you can get them built and shuffle them to the frontier to get into a fight. Added to the existing problem of late game/Era units that rarely get used because the game is over before the last Era or three, and a relatively large percentage of the units in Civ VI rarely get used at all. That's essentially a waste of all the graphic and design work that went into them, not to mention a source of frustration when you go to the trouble of accumulating the Iron necessary to build a bunch of Swordsmen and then discover that less than a dozen turns after you'e fielded them it's time to upgrade them to Men-at-Arms. This is particularly annoying when the units you went to all the trouble of building are your Civ's Unique Unit - like Roman Legions. I can't remember the time I fought a war playing as Rome in Civ VI and actually ended the war with the Legions I started it with - invariably any more I've started upgrading them to MaA before the enemy is finished off. Sic transit legionae.

Considering they have a separate Civics tree, I wonder if moving some units to that tree would solve the issue, especially if some civs were good at producing science too quickly?
I do think the civics tree was underutilized when it came to units and I think moving the Men-At-Arms to something like Feudalism, would work. Other civics that could be used is Mercenaries, because I can't believe there isn't a unit unlocked by it.

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

When VI was released, one of the first things noticed was that all upgrades were, roughly, 2 Eras apart. This was obviously because of the problems in V when a unit could barely be built before it was obsolete and needed upgrading.

But, people kept complaining about 'missing' units, like the 'longswordsman' and similar in-betweeners, so they started adding them (note that, as far as I know, no unit was Removed from the original Civ VI unit list, all the changes were additions of new units in between existing units)

And so for the past year or two, VI has the same problem V had: units that have another unit on their upgrade path less than an Era plus away get obsoleted before you can get them built and shuffle them to the frontier to get into a fight. Added to the existing problem of late game/Era units that rarely get used because the game is over before the last Era or three, and a relatively large percentage of the units in Civ VI rarely get used at all. That's essentially a waste of all the graphic and design work that went into them, not to mention a source of frustration when you go to the trouble of accumulating the Iron necessary to build a bunch of Swordsmen and then discover that less than a dozen turns after you'e fielded them it's time to upgrade them to Men-at-Arms. This is particularly annoying when the units you went to all the trouble of building are your Civ's Unique Unit - like Roman Legions. I can't remember the time I fought a war playing as Rome in Civ VI and actually ended the war with the Legions I started it with - invariably any more I've started upgrading them to MaA before the enemy is finished off. Sic transit legionae.

IF they keep the same or similar mechanics for building Units, moving them into combat and resolving battles and wars in Civ VII, they will have the same basic problem: wars take too long compared to the time required to build units and move them into combat, to resolve combats (1UPT means not only combat spread all over the map, it also means eliminating a unit frequently takes several turns, so that wars between Civs last for Eras, not Years or Turns) so that almost all military actions are long, drawn out affairs compared to the Era and century progression. In a nutshell, Alexander's conquests in the game would take centuries and easily last until well into the Medieval or Renaissance - they'd be completed only by Toynbee's postulated Alexander XXIII!

I suggest the answer is not to fiddle with the units and upgrades, but to speed up the process of forming/building units in the first place. The hoary old Civ mechanic of accumulating 'production' to build one unit at a time in each city over several turns means that each unit can take, in game terms, centuries to produce. Before you even put your hand on your mouse to move it, the unit is already several turns on the way to obsolescence, and after moving X tiles across the map to the enemy, you barely have time for a turn or two of combat before it's Time To Upgrade. In a Civ game, by the time Alexander's army trekked to India they would have been facing Crossbowmen . . .

I suggest this is all argument for:
1. One Turn production of Units. The limitation on this should not be a time-consuming accumulation of 'production', but some kind of other Resource limitation: population, Civic, Social, Political, etc. A possible start would be not accumulating 'Strategic' resources, but simply having access to them in some quantity without which you cannot build that type of unit at all. As in, you have access to iron through trade, mining, or whatever and you canbuild a swordsman every turn in the city. NO access, and you have to build something else. No waiting to accumulate X amounts of iron, especially in the pre-gunpowder eera when a few tons of iron could equip and entire Legion from head to foot.
2. One Turn resolution of battles. This, of course, will probably also require retiring the 1UPT so that entire armies can win or lose without requiring centuries to reach a conclusion. So be it.
3. A new mechanic for movement. Perhaps variable movement rates deending on whether the unit is in 'friendly' territory compared to marching into the Unknown or enemy territory: you can mass the army at the border, but as soon as you cross that border, Friction starts to slow everything down. This would speed up getting into combat Before Obsolescence. Combine it with some kind of Supply Penalty for sitting a bunch of units in one place too long: it gets pretty expensive to feed thousands of men and animas who are just standing around looking menacing but not doing anything to feed themselves on the enemy's crops, and you wont be able to mass everybody at the border and wait until you are ready to invade - too expensive until the last Eras of the game.

Just thoughts, but a point to remember is that units and their combat factors are only part of the overall Combat Resolution mechanics in the game, and probably not the part that most needs major revisions.

1. Personally I'D prefer 'Heroes of Might and Magic' unit recruitment systems but with production points traded for unit numbers.
2. Reform and Reintroduce stacking systems. with the concepts of 'Army' now has leader. (Like HoMM or Total War series). this made this argument possible.
- This means the whole franchise went awry when Panzer General style combat is introduced. it's just off-scale.
3. So what's your mechanics on movements? especially in early eras? 'Warping' inside own territory? (and campaigning systems)
4. With stacking reintroduced. What's your unit lists in the Earlymodern (gunpowder) era? separate pikemen and musketeers/arquebusiers or Tercio Pike and Shotte (And enter the new 'Firepower' class).
5. About Navy evolutions from Ancient to Classical eras. F'xis never seems to make it right. 'Galley' and 'Trireme' is interchangeable and becomes available VERY EARLY in game (within first TEN TURNS even!' in truth 'Galley' (as in Civ 3, 4 and 6) is a basic monoreme (Triakonters even), and came to exists at around 2000 BC (?), while the first polyreme shown up around 600-700 BC. what's your view when it comes to Galley evolutions from simple Triakonters to various Polyremes (and names to use... Trireme or Quinqueremes or just 'Polyremes' ??)

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Considering they have a separate Civics tree, I wonder if moving some units to that tree would solve the issue, especially if some civs were good at producing science too quickly?
I do think the civics tree was underutilized when it came to units and I think moving the Men-At-Arms to something like Feudalism, would work. Other civics that could be used is Mercenaries, because I can't believe there isn't a unit unlocked by it.

The interactions between so many of the Civ VI systems were sadly overlooked and under-appreciated in what could have been done with them.

Specifically with regard to military units and limiting any Infinite Unit Spam, there are a number of limiting factors that leap to mind:

Before modern Naval Academies (Industrial Era) everybody relied on experienced civilian sea captains to provide their Ship's Masters for their navies - nobody formally trained them. So, a simple limit on naval strength would be that you can only build a warship for every sea trade route you have operating, and it will take X turns before you can hire another Master from that trade route. The fact that you can 'build' the warship in a single turn, then, still does not allow you to 'spam' a fleet unless you are already a major commercial sea power (looking at you, English and the Dutch in the Renaissance!)

Some weapons required long experience and practice to be useful: slings, for instance, were carried by just about every shepherd to protect the flocks, and they practiced using them since they were young boys. So, you can only build as many slingers as you have Sheep Resources (pastures)

Swords, likewise, also require constant practice for the troops to remain proficient (there's a reason Roman Legion swordsmen were enlisted for 20 or more years), so you Must pay maintenance, keeping these units around permanently. Cheap Swordsmen come from Heroic Warriors - a Social Policy for your Civ, in which a certain percentage of your population are Warrior Caste that train themselves constantly with swords and other weapons, but contribute nothing else to your economy. Depending on the exact mechanics Civ VII employs, they would be like a percentage of your Specialists that cannot be applied to any building or anything else.

Battleships and Aircraft Carriers required major Industrial Installations to build. In Civ VI terms, they can only be built in Shipyards that are adjacent to an Industrial Zone with a Factory and Power (Historically, in fact, in 1917 there were only 8 countries in the Real World that could build Battleships, and only 3 who had built more than a handful).

Similar 'limitations' independent of technology, natural resources and 'production' can be applied to most of the military units if we want them, so that the Structure of your Civ's economy, social policies, Civics will directly affect what kind of military force you can easily raise. You can always spend more Gold to raise what you want, but all else being equal, you will end up with a much smaller military force that way than by using what your Civilization would 'naturally' provide.

 

[Aurelesk]

I suggest this is all argument for:
1. One Turn production of Units. The limitation on this should not be a time-consuming accumulation of 'production', but some kind of other Resource limitation: population, Civic, Social, Political, etc. A possible start would be not accumulating 'Strategic' resources, but simply having access to them in some quantity without which you cannot build that type of unit at all. As in, you have access to iron through trade, mining, or whatever and you canbuild a swordsman every turn in the city. NO access, and you have to build something else. No waiting to accumulate X amounts of iron, especially in the pre-gunpowder eera when a few tons of iron could equip and entire Legion from head to foot.
2. One Turn resolution of battles. This, of course, will probably also require retiring the 1UPT so that entire armies can win or lose without requiring centuries to reach a conclusion. So be it.
3. A new mechanic for movement. Perhaps variable movement rates deending on whether the unit is in 'friendly' territory compared to marching into the Unknown or enemy territory: you can mass the army at the border, but as soon as you cross that border, Friction starts to slow everything down. This would speed up getting into combat Before Obsolescence. Combine it with some kind of Supply Penalty for sitting a bunch of units in one place too long: it gets pretty expensive to feed thousands of men and animas who are just standing around looking menacing but not doing anything to feed themselves on the enemy's crops, and you wont be able to mass everybody at the border and wait until you are ready to invade - too expensive until the last Eras of the game.

Just thoughts, but a point to remember is that units and their combat factors are only part of the overall Combat Resolution mechanics in the game, and probably not the part that most needs major revisions.

I don't know about your propositions, mainly the 1 unit/turn and 1 turn battle. I have many questions, as I don't find any satisfying limitations for it.

1 unit per turn
Linking it to the Population or Food is a good idea, as Manpower are more significative than actual Production. Yet, having either the biggest metropolis in the world or a town which is basically a campfire somewhere in the desert being able to train much unit per turn sound weird to me. It also means the civilization with the most cities (not the biggest, not the most populous, not the most productive, just with the most "town") would be able to have way more unit per turn than a player who managed to grow fewer but more powerful cities which has more territory, population and production.
So what could be those the limitations?

1. A maintenance system capping the number of units existing at once. Why not, but why? Having a soft cap with Strategic Resource management and your economy is far more thrilling than having a maximum slot you could handle. Sure you could disguise those slots as not having enough "military commanders" to guide those units. Just like Trade Route in 5, and it wasn't fun. Or it could be a dynamic cap (like Trade Route in 6), by counting the number of Encampment or whatever inside your empire to host them. But implementing a hard-cap just because allowing everyone to produce 1 unit per turn ad nauseam would be unbalanced or unfun. Plus: the civilization with most cities (even if bad cities) would be able to reconstitute and reach the cap far quicker than everything else. Which is an ode to the ICS (since Production doesn't matter). Lately, it could be on timer, or limited every X turns. Which sounds very arbitrary and just a way to limit a mechanic which would be too potent without it (therefore: why 1 turn, why not just grant the unit instantly in that case?).
2. "Bad cities" wouldn't be able to train powerful cities. Then why should they partake on the war effort if it is just give 1 underwhelming unit per turn. If the "bad unit" is a unit with a debuff, then I would never want that city to train those units: I would rather want to wait 6 turns to get the real unit, than a half-baked one. If the "bad unit" is a unit from a previous era, then I just need to upgrade it, paying Gold in the process. Which is counterproductive: the whole idea was to remove the Production cost. If it is replaced with a Gold cost with extra step, then why prevent the player to use Production (or something else) and bypass the 1 unit per turn? If the bad unit cannot be upgrade before entering a city which is able to train then, then it add a lot of tediousness in the mix... but would make sense. People will love their oversea colonies to produce bad units that needs to go to the mainland to upgrade into their most advanced version, while being kept very frail in case of surprise attack because they cannot produce or buy powerful units to defend itself.
3. Behavior on Speed setting. Should it be 3 turns on marathon, but having 2 units on Online setting? Then... why is 1 turn perfect for Standard Speed. 1 Scout per turn in the Ancient era? Then 1 Warrior per turn until the cap is met? Should Barbarian behave the same and swarm the map? Wouldn't the mechanic be abused by just swarming the enemy with units just to waste its time, as it would be 1 battle per turn? Or 1 battle per movement?

For point 1, I guess it is the whole "1 thing per turn" being the culprit. It makes the game tedious, basically ruins a lot of things in Civilization VI. When they introduced the "production queue" feature, I was sure we would be able to complete multiples task at once if we have enough production. The overflow mechanic was known and many time source of exploit. And.. nothing: we are still limited to "1 thing per turn", which can be very frustrating when repairing every pillaged districts and buildings.
Which lead to big cities and military training: why shouldn't they be able to produce multiple units per turn?


In short, I am doubtful on the implementation of 1 unit per turn. An ICS (infinite city sprawl) strategy would be able to have more units, so limitation has to be implanted. Either a hard-cap, which is lame. Or keep the Gold and Strategic maintenance so the player has to balance between army and economy (which was crucial: many army disbanded because they weren't paid anymore, while the warmachine stopped because not enough Iron or Oil to produce and to consume). Even then, ICS strategy would still be able to constitue or reconstitute an army faster for no reason. Perhaps, smaller or underdeveloped cities may only train less advanced units as a result, and those units can only be upgrade in another city territory who can train the most advanced one. Which is tedious, and make harder to keep newly settled cities. But I don't see any other solutions in order to limit ICS strategy to snowball military-wise with a 1 unit per turn and per city.


1 turn battle
I might be wrong, but 1-turn battle would end by the elimination of one of the opposing force

Either the battle is instant, checking the Combat Strength of both unit, make the bigger number win with an HP loss, and the defeated unit is removed. But then... it would remove all the skirmishes and battle tactics of weaken an enemy unit, luring them into a weakened position, playing around support and flanking mechanic, using Fortifcation at the advantage. Plus: how would it play against Ranged unit but you cannot retaliate? Should Ranged unit be able to weaker the enemy without defeating them? Or you can always retaliate, making impossible to use Ranged unit while being completely safe in the City-Center.

Or the battle isn't instant, so you go through an instance or something where multiple turns of combat happens in the same turn until a victor is declared, or one side surrender or flee. Yet, if every individual fight has to happen in an instance, playing a single turn of war would take forever. It kind of defeat the idea of making combat faster, since it would make way more slower.
If the number of combat per unit is limited to 1 per turn, then why not swarm the place with a lot of bad units just to slow down progress? Since 1 unit can be created per turn, then you could stall indefinitively. After the ICS, welcome to the Infinite Unit Sprawl, where the enemy cannot capture your city since all tiles is occupied by a Scout (they need to implement a very potent War Weariness mechanic to circumvent that).
Both the 1 unit per turn and 1 turn battle sounds really bad when put together. Maybe I am missing something obvious, but was unable to tell.


May I have more information on how you see both concept behave? So far, I am very doubtful that both mechanic would be fun. I can imagine how the 1 unit per turn could behave, even if I am not a fan. I can imagine the 1 turn battle as well, even if I think it either impoverish gameplay or make warfare way slower. But both at the same time sounds like a very bad cocktail.

I do like point 3, as I had some criticism on the Movement system on 6, so I would welcome a change in this area.

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

Introduction
When playing, I quickly saw that the Archer were crazy good. So I thought: Were they always that good in V? I should compare the units between the two iterations. So I set up some sheet, and put myself to work.

In VI, the combat system changed a little. Not much, but did introduced new mechanics such as:

New Combat Strength formula
It is basically some sort of a logarithmic scale, instead of relative one. Units from a new era tend to have +10 CS instead of +50%. Therefore, if there are 8 eras, CS can go from 20, 30, 40… 80 and 90; instead of 8, 12, 18… 90 and 135. The granularity is better in early age, but worse in later age. The bonuses are no longer additive but multiplicative: having two +100% (×2) would end up having ×3 in V, while having two +17 (roughly equal to ×2) would end up having ×4 in VI. Therefore, stacking bonus in VI is way more potent.
In order to compare the effectiveness of Civ-V's units, I first took the Warrior as reference of a 20 CS, then converted the Strength of units into the new formula. And... everything was off by 5 CS. So I changed with 25 CS as a base, and it worked better. It seems that the Civilization VI's Warrior is weaker but cheaper. Probably changed for balance reason.

Apparently they also raised the Production cost of all units by 50%, then introduced the policies which increased by 50% the production. Which makes sense in retrospective, but only figured out when I was doing my sheets.


Melee class units

In Civilization VI, the Melee class enjoy +5 CS against Anticavalry units.

Units	Era	Production	Strategic	Melee	Move
Warrior (V) Melee	Start	40	-	25	2
Warrior (VI) Melee	Start	40 (=)	-	20 (-5)	2
Swordsman (VI) Melee	Early classical Iron Working	90	Iron	35	2
Swordsman (V) Melee	Late classical Iron Working	75	Iron	39	2
Man-At-Arms (VI) Melee	Early medieval Apprenticeship	160	Iron	45	2
Longswordsman (V) Melee	Late medieval Steel	120	Iron	49	2
Musketman (V) Gunpowder	Early renaissance Gunpowder	150	-	52	2
Musketman (VI) Melee	Early renaissance Gunpowder	240 (+60%)	Niter (!)	55 (+3)	2
Rifleman (V) Gunpowder	Early industrial Rifling	225	-	61	2
Line Infantry (VI) Melee	Early industrial Military Science	360 (+60%)	Niter (!)	65 (+4)	2
Great War Infantry (V) Gunpowder	Early modern Replaceable Parts	320	-	71	2
Infantry (VI) Melee	Early modern Replaceable Parts	430 (+34%)	Oil (!)	75 (+4)	2
Infantry (V) Gunpowder	Late modern Plastics	375	-	79	2
Mechanized Infantry (V) Gunpowder	Early information Mobile Tactics	375	-	85	3
Mechanized Infantry (VI) Melee	Early information Satellites	650 (+73%)	Oil (!)	85 (=)	3

I didn't make the comparison between both Swordsmen, and between Longswordsman & Man-At-Arms as they are half an era short. It seems that the power doesn't increase by +10CC per era, but by +5CS per half era. The distinction is important.

The Warrior in VI is weaker but doesn't cost 50% more. In believe that is why I think the Archer was way better: the Warrior is not as good. I have a hypothesis that they intended to have the Warrior as a 25 CS at 60/65 Production cost, but probably made it a 20 CS at 40 Production for balance reason. The Eagle Warrior is probably based on the old Warrior, as it is 28 CS for 65 Production. Usually, unique units has +3 bonus CS to their counterpart, which align if the Warrior was 25 CS.
Perhaps everything I said is wrong, and the Eagle Warrior is made that way in order to give more longevity to the unit and not be obsolete before it could have been usable?

The Swordsman in VI once was 40 CS. My hypothesis is that they ported the data from Civilization V and either forgot it was an early classical unit and not a late classical unit like in Civilization V, or Iron Working once used to be a late classical tech but moved to early classical but forgot to change the Combat Strength accordingly.

From Musketman, the units are stronger than their counterpart, probably because they require a Strategic resources. The only exception is... the Mechanized Infantry. At first, we could think it is 5CS short... except it is 10CS. There is a reason: the games handle late-game units differently. They have the same idea: make them "ultimate", but took different paths:

• In V, late-game units don't gain as much power between era. In exchange, their production cost doesn't increase. For the same production cost, you will have as much units with a little more Strength. In order to win, you swarm your enemy.
• In VI, the late-game units gain full power between era, but the production will increase not as fast. For the same production cost, you will have a little less units but they are way more powerful. In order to win, you have to update your enemy.

Ranged class units

In Civilization VI, the Ranged class suffers from -17 CS against Cities and Naval units.

Units	Era	Production	Melee	Ranged	Range	Move
Slinger (VI) Ranged	Start	35	5	15	1	2
Archer (V) Archery	Ancient Archery	40	13	22	2	2
Archer (VI) Ranged	Ancient Archery	60 (+50%)	15 (+2)	25 (+3)	2	2
Composite Bowman (V) Archery	Early classical Construction	75	22	33	2	2
Crossbowman (VI) Ranged	Early medieval Machinery	160	30	40	2	2
Crossbowman (V) Archery	Late medieval Machinery	120	38	45	2	2
Gatling Gun (V) Archery	Early industrial Industrialization	225	58	58	1	2
Field Cannon (VI) Ranged	Early industrial Ballistics	330 (+47%)	50 (-8)	60 (+2)	2 (+1)	2
Machine Gun (V) Archery	Late modern Ballistics	350	75	75	1	2
Machine Gun (VI) Ranged	Early atomic Advanced ballistics	540	70	85	2	2
Bazooka (V) Archery	Late information Nuclear Fusion	375	84	84	1	2

The comparison is hard, as the Ranged units has 1 Range in V starting with the Gatling Gun, making them awful. Field Cannon is what Gatling Gun would have been if it had 2 Range in Civilization V. But I proved my point: if the Warrior is 5 CS weaker, the Archer is in comparison 3 CS stronger, making a gap of 8 CS total. So I was right: the Archer is stronger! But not stronger as I thought.


Cavalry class units

The Cavalry has been split into Heavy and Light Cavalry in VI:

• The Heavy Cavalry inherited the Chariot Archer (as Heavy Chariot), the Knight, the Tank and the Modern Armor.
• The Light Cavalry inherited the Horseman, the Cavalry and the Helicopter Gunship from the Anticalvary (as Helicopter).
• The Landship has no equivalent (in truth: the Tank in VI is the Landship in V, and the Tank in V has no equivalent).
• The Giant Death Robot is a standalone unit in VI.

In Civilization V, the Cavalry units have the following abilities:

• Can move after attacking
  • Replaced by "Ignore Zone of Control" in VI.
• No Defensive Terrain bonuses (cannot enjoy +2 CS from Woods or Hills, or Fortifications).
  • It has no equivalence in Civilization VI. Perhaps "Ignore Zone of Control" wasn't as potent to compensate the "Can move after attacking"?
• Cavalry have a -33% penalty attacking cities (roughly: -10CS). It doesn't apply to Armored unit (like Tank).
  • Replaced by their inability of using Battering Ram and Siege Tower.

Units	Era	Production	Strategic	CS	Move	Other Abilities
Chariot Archer (V) Archery	Ancient The Wheel	56	Horses	18 / 31 (2r)	4	Rough Terrain Penalty Cannot move after attack
Heavy Chariot (VI) Heavy Cavalry	Ancient Wheel	65 (+16%)	-	28 (-3)	2	+1 Move on flat terrain
Horseman (V) Mounted	Early classical Horseback Riding	75	Horses	35	4
Horseman (VI) Light Cavalry	Early classical Horseback Riding	80 (+7%)	Horses	36 (+1)	4
Knight (V) Mounted	Late medieval Chivalry	120	Horses	48	4
Knight (VI) Heavy Cavalry	Late medieval Stirrups	220 (+83%)	Iron (!)	50 (+2)	4
Courser (VI) Light Cavalry	Late medieval Castles	200 (+67%)	Horses	46 (-2)	5 (+1)
Cavalry (V) Mounted	Early industrial Military Science	225	Horses	61	4
Cavalry (VI) Light Cavalry	Early industrial Military Science	330 (+46%)	Horses	62 (+1)	5 (+1)
Cuirasser (VI) Heavy Cavalry	Early industrial Ballistics	330 (+46%)	Iron (!)	64 (+3)	4
Landship (V) Armored	Late modern Combustion	350	Oil	75	4
Tank (VI) Heavy Cavalry	Late modern Combustion	480 (+37%)	Oil	85 (+10)	4	+1 Move on flat terrain
Tank (V) Armored	Early atomic Combined Arms	375	Oil	79	5
Helicopter Gunship (V) Helicopter	Late atomic Computers	425	Aluminium	75	6	All tiles cost 1 Move Bonus vs Tank (+100% : +17 CS) Cannot conquer cities
Helicopter (VI) Light Cavalry	Late atomic Synthetic Materials	600 (+40%)	Aluminium	86 (+11)	4 (-2)	All tiles cost 1 Move
Modern Armor (V) Armored	Early information Laser	425	Aluminium	88	5
Modern Armor (VI) Heavy Cavalry	Early information Composites	680 (+60%)	Oil (!)	95 (+7)	4	+1 Move on flat terrain
Giant Death Robot (V) Armored	Late information Nuclear Fusion	425	Uranium	98	5
Giant Death Robot (VI) GDR	Late information Robotics	1500 (+253%)	Uranium (×3)	130 / 120 (3r) (+32)	5	Can attack when embarked -17 CS against cities and naval Capabilities updated with certain techs

The comparison between the Horseman are interesting. I thought I would find the Horseman in VI is too powerful, while in reality it is too cheap and should be around 90 - 110 Production cost. Meanwhile, the Knight is crazy expensive and should be around 180 Production... and it was that cost! Further cementing the idea that they took Civilization V's units and put them in VI with a converted Combat Strength formula and +50% cost.

The comparison works roughly quite well... until the Tank. It is only 37% more costly (instead of the expected 50%), yet have 10 more Combat Strength than expected. It is a real imbalance.

I put the Giant Death Robot as well, as it is in the upgrade path in V, even if the comparison doesn't make sense.


Anticavalry class (or the "what is that upgrade path?!")

I don't know if I want to do that comparison. In V, the units goes land, then mounted, then anti-tank, then helicopter. It seems Firaxis really want Helicopter and Lancer, but don't know how to introduce them in a unit path upgrade.

In VI, the unit path has +10 CS against Anticavalry (roughly +50%) .

Units	Era	Production	Strategic	Melee	Move	Other abilities
Spearman (V) Melee	Ancient Bronze Working	56	-	33	2	Bonus vs Mounted (+50% : +10 CS)
Spearman (VI) Anticavalry	Ancient Bronze Working	65 (+16%)	-	25 (-8)	2
Pikeman (V) Melee	Early medieval Civil Service	90	-	42	2	Bonus vs Mounted (+50% : +10 CS)
Pikeman (VI) Anticavalry	Early medieval Military Tactics	180 (+100%)	-	45 (+3)	2
Lancer (V) Mounted	Late renaissance Metallurgy	185	Horses	53	4	Has Mounted abilities +33% VS Mounted units. (+7 CS)
Pike and Shot (VI) Anticavalry	Late renaissance Metal Casting	250 (+35%)	-	55 (+2)	2
AT Crew (VI) Anticavary	Late modern Chemistry	400	-	75	2
Anti-Tank Gun (V) Gunpowder	Early atomic Combined Arms	300	-	71	2	Bonus vs Tanks (+100% : +17 CS)
Helicopter Gunship (V) Helicopter	Late atomic Computers	425	Aluminium	75	6	All tiles cost 1 Move Bonus vs Tank (+100% : +17 CS) No defensive terrain bonuses Cannot conquer cities
Modern AT (VI) Anticavalry	Early information Composites	580	-	85	2

The comparison is quite weird. The unit line start underwhelming with the Spearman and Pikeman in V, and somehow get really good as the AT-Crew, while in V it goes zigzag with being a Mounted units, no longer applying its bonus against Mounted but only Armored, then finishing as Helicopter than cannot conquer city.

Between the two Spearmen, there is a whole 8 CS gap... in favor of Civilization V. It truly demonstrates either how good the unit was in V or... how bad it was in VI. In reality, it is both: the unit was quite good in V and really bad in VI. I believe they made the Spearman in VI weaker because the Barbarian Outpost are guarded by them, and the weakened Warrior couldn't deal with it. I would even argue the once +10 CS against Anticavalry was created because of this (now +5 CS). Yet, it isn't +50% more costly but less.
Basically, it is tied on how cheaper but weaker the units are in the Ancient era (except for the Archer which is stronger). Would it be okay to basically increase by 5 CS of all Ancient units, but being costlier? Yet if the Spearman is a 30 CS unit for 90 Production, it wouldn't be fair the early classical units.

The Pikeman is at an odd place. If we compare without context, you might say "wow, Pikeman in VI is underwhelming: the unit is way too expensive. No wonder it is bad". Yet... Pikeman in V are quite good. They are very cheap for its power, and it would still be a good value at 100 - 110 Production. So the point of comparison was biased.
When we compare with Man-at-Arms (a very good unit), the units is as strong (45 CS) but with no Strategic resources. It just cost 20 Production more. Yet, if it costed as much (160 Production), then the Man-at-Arms would have nothing more than a different Promotion table that doesn't enjoy +10CS against Cavalry for an additional 20 Iron cost.

By logic, the Pikeman should be at 40 CS (-5) but costing only 130 Production (-50). In practice, the unit wouldn't be a counter to Cavalry units such as Knight which has 50 CS (well, that Pikeman would be cheaper and easy to swarm with). That is why the Pikeman is at an odd place. Maybe, I should talk about Promotion table inequalities.

Meanwhile, the AT Crew is quite cheap for its power.


Siege class units

The Siege class units in Civilization VI use "Bombard" damage, in order to hit effectively Walls.

In Civilization V, Siege units has the following abilities:

• Bonus vs Cities (+200%), roughly +27 CS.
  • Replaced in VI with Wall mechanic, and higher base CS but suffering from -17 CS against land units (roughly -50%).
  • I would mess the comparison, as there is a 10 CS gap in one end. Should I compare with a 5 CS advantage toward VI?
• No Defensive Bonus (such as Woods, Hills or Fortifications).
• Must Set Up to Ranged Attack
  • Replaced in VI with "can attack with full Movement", then overpatched to "can attack if it has more than its base Movement" (due to being bugged with Great General and Cyrus).
• Limited Visibility Ranged: -1

Unit	Era	Production	Strategic	Melee	Ranged	Range	Move	Other Abilities
Catapult (V) Siege	Early classical Mathematics	75	-	22	25	2	2
Catapult (VI) Siege	Late classical Engineering	120	-	25	35	2	2
Trebuchet (V) Siege	Late medieval Physics	120	-	35	39	2	2
Trebuchet (VI) Siege	Late medieval Military Engineering	200 (+67%)	-	35 (=)	45 (+1*)	2	2
Cannon (V) Siege	Late renaissance Chemistry	185	-	39	48	2	2
Bombard (VI) Siege	Late renaissance Metal Casting	280 (+51%)	Niter (!)	45 (+6)	55 (+2*)	2	2
Artillery (V) Siege	Late industrial Dynamite	320	-	49	56	3	2	Indirect Fire
Artillery (VI) Siege	Early modern Steel	430	Oil (!)	60	80	2 (-1)	2
Rocket Artillery (V) Siege	Late atomic Rocketry	425	Aluminium	68	75	3	2	Indirect Fire No Setup
Rocket Artillery (VI) Siege	Early information Guidance Systems	680	Oil (!)	70	100	3	3	Sight of 3

Siege units are interesting. They follow the +50% Production cost. Yet, they have no policy increasing Siege units production. Why? Please, Firaxis, add policy cards that increase by 50% the production cost of Siege, Support and Recon units. Or maybe makes them cheaper? The Trebuchet might a little too much costly, but not by much.

The units follows the curve really well. As Siege units has +27 CS against cities in VI, while they have -17 CS against land unit in V, I have to compare with a 5 bonus for Ranged Strength for VI. If V has 20 (47 vs Cities), and VI has 25 (42 vs Cities), therefore the average would be the same, with +5/-5 in VI.

But I guess they find out the cities are way sturdier in VI, because Artillery and Rocket Artillery has +10 CS bonus, which tie V to deal as much damage against cities, but it would have +10 CS against everything else. Probably to deal with Urban Walls.


Conclusion

It astonished me to find out that both games are very close in the power they gave to the units. Yet, the few oddities can be actual non solved problematic in VI.

They made the units to cost 50% more, but introduced policies that increase Production by 50%. Yet, Recon and Siege units don't have those policy cards while being as costly as the other units.

Early units don't follow the +50% cost rule. The Warrior has the same cost, but is made weaker by 5 CS. All Ancient units are kind of in this situation... except the Archer. Not only it follows the higher production rule exactly, but it is also a little stronger that its counterpart. Therefore the Archer is dominating the Ancient era (yeah! I proved that Archer are more potent in VI than V!).

Civilization V also had units that Civilization VI doesn't have. For example: the Composite Bowman. Maybe one the reasons the Archer is that strong is because a "normal power" Archer couldn't compete with the Horseman and Swordsman units. They also have the Bazooka, which give the Ranged units a representative in the Information era, something we don't have in VI. Maybe the game should have those units to fill some gaps.

Some units are only half an era apart, like the Longswordsman vs Musketman, the Great War Infantry vs Infantry, or the Landship vs Tank. I can understand why for Longswordsman vs Musketman, as it is the change to Gunpowder units which don't need Strategic Resources. But for the other two, I think it is nice flavor-wise (distinction between WWI and WWII), but doesn't bring as much gameplay-wise.

Back the Ancient era problem: I believe most of units attacking in Melee in the Ancient era are made bad because the Barbarian starts with them and use them. If the Spearman was made stronger, our starting Warrior couldn't beat them. I believe that what was once the +10 CS vs Anticavalry on the Melee Class was just a tool to give the players a way to deal with Barbarian Outpost which end up having the whole Anticavalry class being bad. It was later reduced to +5 CS.

As the Slinger is the rubbish Ranged unit that can upgrade to the Archer in the Ancient era, should the Warrior be or have a rubbish Melee unit that can upgrade from/into in the Ancient era as well? Same thing for the Spearman?

• Melee
  • Brute (start): 20 CS for 40 Production (→160 Gold)
  • Warrior (Bronze Working?): 28 CS for 75 Production (→ 300 Gold)
• Ranged
  • Slinger (start): 5/15 CS (=), 1 Range (=) for 35 Production (=) (140 Gold)
  • Archer (Archery): 15/25 CS (=), 2 Range (=) for 75 Production (+15) (240 → 300 Gold).
• Anticavalry
  • Hunter (start): 20 CS for 40 Production (160 Gold)
    • Barbarian Outpost would be guarded by Hunters until someone unlock Bronze Working, making them more manageable.
  • Spearman (Bronze Working): 28 CS (+3) for 75 Production (+10) (260 → 300 Gold)
• Heavy Cavalry
  • Heavy Chariot (Wheel): 28 CS (=) for 75 Production (+10) (260 → 300 Gold).
    • Maybe, in order to give it utility, it should have 3 Movement but requires 5 or 10 Horses

The Horseman is another unit that doesn't follow the formula, as it costs almost the same yet being even more powerful. It shows in the game as well. The game designers even had to create Barbarian Horseman to circumvent the problem! Yet, in V, the Horseman has roughly the same power.
What should be done? Nothing? Increase its cost to ~120? Reduce its power to ~30? Or something in between like ~33 CS and ~100 Production?

Lastly, the late era units are diverging quite far from Civilization V's philosophy. In both games, the units have a better Power over Price ratio than the previous eras. The divergence comes from how they did it: in V the Price is almost the same and the Power is somewhat increased. In VI, the ratio is kept the same but both Power and Price are increased, the Power more than the Price.

Yet, even by taking the new philosophy in account, late-game units are quite a mess. The most notable is the Tank, which is as powerful as the Mechanized Infantry, both consuming Oil, yet the Tank is available earlier and is cheaper. Perhaps they took inspiration from Civilization V's Tank (unlocked later), instead of the Landship?
Arguably, some units distance themselves from that ratio: the AT-Crew is perhaps too cheap for its power, while the Modern Armor is perhaps too strong for its price.


And you?
Do you think it is relevant to look back in Civilization V to know where Civilization VI is going? Is there something that V have that you want in VI, or instead wouldn't want at all?

It took too much time to write this, and I didn't even talk about Naval and Air units, and don't talk about Promotion table which is also worth a discussion!

Note that Civ5 Unit classification did make more sense than Civ6.
Either way 1UPT is ill suited for this franchise.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

Very nice summary, these posts are definitely interesting and what the community can use more of.

I have dabbled a bit (although nowhere near your thoroughness) in these costs and strengths as well, and one problem I have with the transition from V to VI, is how Firaxis completely broke the costs of nearly everything. Not just units, but also buildings and wonders.
The problem with the cost balance in V vs VI, is that VI has innately higher base values in terms of tile yields, and these differences keep growing as civ VI adds even more power on top of yields.
And tile yields are only one small part of the problem, the problem keeps increasing as the power of everything from districts, district buildings, trade routes and other bonuses skyrocket the further you get into the eras, creating a compounding effect.
This is a huge problem for the flow of the late game, because at this point all sorts of yields (regardless where they are from) have compounded so hard that the last eras fly by within a couple tens of turns, before the game is won.
Contrast this to the ancient to medieval eras (before you snowball too hard as a player), and you often find that half the game (in terms of turns played) is spent in the ancient to medieval/renaissance era (3-4 eras), while last 6 eras just fly by, especially from the modern era and out (heck, you can even win the game while your are in the industrial/modern era and the game is globally still in the renaissance era).

An example just from the early game:
2 food 2 production tiles are almost unheard of in civ V, and are incredibly powerful if you ever start near something like that.
The best tile in general to start near in civ V is Salt, because it is 2 food 1 production 1 gold, and can be improved with a mine to 2 food 2 production 1 gold - and this requires an inmprovement (mine).
In civ VI, 2 food 2 production (or 3f1p, or 1f3p, both being 4 yield tiles) are so common that not starting near them can be considered rather unlucky.
And you can further improve those to even more silly yields.
In civ V, you had to get a builder early and build farms, because they were the only reliable food source early on, and a farm on grassland is a measly 3-4 food.
Contrast this to a marsh, which by default is a 3 food tile in civ VI, and the contrast becomes ridiculous, because tiny increases like these matter a lot in the early game.
Later on we get stupid adjacencies, envoys buffing buildings globally, techs boosting base yields, overpowered cards, and its no wonder the late game just flies past so fast that you almost dont notice it anymore before you win.

My point with this is that I believe, like you, that firaxis more or less copied costs from civ V, but then forgot to take into account how the rest of the changes to the game impact that.
I absolutely hate how the late game is nonexistent in civ VI once you get good enough to abuse these things consistently, as the late game is often quite fun, and something I miss from civ V.

 

[Aurelesk]

I absolutely hate how the late game is nonexistent in civ VI once you get good enough to abuse these things consistently, as the late game is often quite fun, and something I miss from civ V.

As district's cost scale with progress, I wonder how much the players adapted to it. By trying to overexpand in the early eras, either by crippling yourself with ton of Settlers (mitigated with Magnus) or putting all your Production into military or both, the early game is slowed down significantly.
But since all cities are starting to grow and develop at the same time, thanks to vast Population and the cheaper districts, all yields are surging simultaneously and allow us to zoom through the later eras.

Which is not the case when we are boxed in a corner: the early-game is faster due to early development, but the late-game feels very sluggish due to having a small empire. Sometimes, we can manage to have a late-game conquering spree if we were lucky to have Horses (Cavalry), Niter (Line Infantry), or sometimes going Naval (Caravel / Frigate), so we can rush those technologies and have our revenge. Corps helps a lot too. The time window goes from "very short" to "non-existant" as big empires are in theory underdeveloped in early era. Technically, we would have better Pillage rewards due to our better progress. But in practice, big empires are not really underdeveloped, tend to catch-up fast and become too powerful to be taken out. By the way: why are the Pillage rewards don't scale with the target's progress? Wouldn't it make more sense, and prevent to prey on weaker civilizations or City-States as cash-grab, and try more against more advanced opponent? Shouldn't pillage be less free and kind of punished by Grievance, something like 2 per tile improvement, and 5 per building / districts?

I will do a couple of run by trying to limit myself into a 5 cities empire and see how the late-game feels under this situation. Maybe I am bad, and not able to push small empires enough in order to zoom through the late-game with ease. Yet, I am convinced that one reason the late-game is going too fast is because we just adapted to the game mechanics (Early progress punish wide development and new settlement, barely no limitation toward expanding except Amenity management, with no malusses such as "yield lost to coordination management").

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

The interactions between so many of the Civ VI systems were sadly overlooked and under-appreciated in what could have been done with them.

Specifically with regard to military units and limiting any Infinite Unit Spam, there are a number of limiting factors that leap to mind:

Before modern Naval Academies (Industrial Era) everybody relied on experienced civilian sea captains to provide their Ship's Masters for their navies - nobody formally trained them. So, a simple limit on naval strength would be that you can only build a warship for every sea trade route you have operating, and it will take X turns before you can hire another Master from that trade route. The fact that you can 'build' the warship in a single turn, then, still does not allow you to 'spam' a fleet unless you are already a major commercial sea power (looking at you, English and the Dutch in the Renaissance!)

Some weapons required long experience and practice to be useful: slings, for instance, were carried by just about every shepherd to protect the flocks, and they practiced using them since they were young boys. So, you can only build as many slingers as you have Sheep Resources (pastures)

Swords, likewise, also require constant practice for the troops to remain proficient (there's a reason Roman Legion swordsmen were enlisted for 20 or more years), so you Must pay maintenance, keeping these units around permanently. Cheap Swordsmen come from Heroic Warriors - a Social Policy for your Civ, in which a certain percentage of your population are Warrior Caste that train themselves constantly with swords and other weapons, but contribute nothing else to your economy. Depending on the exact mechanics Civ VII employs, they would be like a percentage of your Specialists that cannot be applied to any building or anything else.

Battleships and Aircraft Carriers required major Industrial Installations to build. In Civ VI terms, they can only be built in Shipyards that are adjacent to an Industrial Zone with a Factory and Power (Historically, in fact, in 1917 there were only 8 countries in the Real World that could build Battleships, and only 3 who had built more than a handful).

Similar 'limitations' independent of technology, natural resources and 'production' can be applied to most of the military units if we want them, so that the Structure of your Civ's economy, social policies, Civics will directly affect what kind of military force you can easily raise. You can always spend more Gold to raise what you want, but all else being equal, you will end up with a much smaller military force that way than by using what your Civilization would 'naturally' provide.

Interesting proposals, but I feel like some of these examples would be too limiting.
For example, slingers are often the first line of defense against early game barbarians and would be detrimental to some players if they had no access to it because of no sheep. I would propose in those instances that maybe pastures could give some sort of bonus production towards slingers, or extra XP, to at least reflect the historical interactions between the two.

If we went by historical accuracy for all units, I could only imagine the horror of being unable to hard build knights. Instead you have to upgrade a horseman with at least a level 2 promotion, and have a religion established, and have to have at least 3 farms adjacent to each other for each knight. And that's not even mentioning the requirement of iron and horses.

 

[Civinator]

Interesting thread to read.

IF they keep the same or similar mechanics for building Units, moving them into combat and resolving battles and wars in Civ VII, they will have the same basic problem: wars take too long compared to the time required to build units and move them into combat, to resolve combats (1UPT means not only combat spread all over the map, it also means eliminating a unit frequently takes several turns, so that wars between Civs last for Eras, not Years or Turns) so that almost all military actions are long, drawn out affairs compared to the Era and century progression.

In my eyes this shows, how dis harmonized with the game play the 1UPT settings of combat in Civ 5 and 6 really are. If there should be a progress in having fun with combat in a civ game, in my eyes it would be much better to return to Civ 1 - Civ 4 and start improving combat on the base of Civ 3 and 4 (so the problem of that dis harmony of combat and game play in my eyes started with the battle promotions in Civ 4). Per example Civ 3 has some interesting options to fight against stacks of doom: One option that was unfortunately called "Stealth Attack" but allows to pick out defined units out of a stack for attacking, so the tactics to throw all kinds of units on a monster stack for the best defense becomes irrelevant, and one option that never made it into Civ 3 and its official expansions, called charm attack, a bombardment that halves every second unit in a stack in its defense value during the current battle.

To compare only the units of Civ 5 and 6 and to draw a line pointing to the units of Civ 7 in my eyes is the best way to a further decline of the Civ series.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

As district's cost scale with progress, I wonder how much the players adapted to it. By trying to overexpand in the early eras, either by crippling yourself with ton of Settlers (mitigated with Magnus) or putting all your Production into military or both, the early game is slowed down significantly.

The thing is, the early game isn't really slowed down much at all.
There are so many mechanics in place to circumvent this, and in some niche cases you can even get ahead in raw yields early by expanding rather than developing your core.
Some examples here really showcase how little you are set back early on:

• Monumentality. Some decent faith income and you can spew out settlers and builders like no tomorrow, for no real opportunity cost at all (classical era faith income really only competes with missionaries at that point).
• Ancestral Hall + Magnus. The mechanic here is simple - settle a city, and use Magnus to chop that city right up to speed.
• Faith buying districts with Moksha.
• Work ethic with the right pantheon + crusade. A small temporary sacrifice, which you recoup almost immediately (production wise), and snowball hard off of (crusade acts like an extra military tech level, and is usually enough to take out your nearest neighbour for more free cities that tend to be developed already). Heck, you can even be greedy and build Classical era wonders with this belief, while simultaneously faith buying settlers if you also secured Monumentality.
• There is generally less of a drawback population wise from spamming settlers than people make it out to be. Due to generally high food yields in civ 6 (even from unimproved land), the limiting factor here is usually housing, which you get little of in the early game. Meaning that once you get to around 5 population, you are hitting a population wall anyway, and getting below this (5-1=4) you no longer face the growth penalty and grow right back up after finishing the settler. Meaning that the second Magnus promotion (provision) is usually a waste of a governor slot.

My point is, apart from the ancient era which is a bit slow (especially on harder difficulties where you lag behind by default), the game has introduced so many new mechanics that drastically cut down on any drawbacks from settling wide. And indeed, those start to kick in real hard around the Renaissance, but not only because you settle wide. You also get stupid increases in yields (which do get multiplied by number of cities), and the costs in science, culture, faith and production don't end up making much sense past that point in the game.

I understand that firaxis might have overlooked how all those features affected the game initially, but I do wish that costs would be dramatically scaled up past the Renaissance, in order to slow down the (virtually nonexistent) late game.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Interesting proposals, but I feel like some of these examples would be too limiting.
For example, slingers are often the first line of defense against early game barbarians and would be detrimental to some players if they had no access to it because of no sheep. I would propose in those instances that maybe pastures could give some sort of bonus production towards slingers, or extra XP, to at least reflect the historical interactions between the two.

If we went by historical accuracy for all units, I could only imagine the horror of being unable to hard build knights. Instead you have to upgrade a horseman with at least a level 2 promotion, and have a religion established, and have to have at least 3 farms adjacent to each other for each knight. And that's not even mentioning the requirement of iron and horses.

Interesting. I've never had slingers be the first line of defense against anything - they are just too fragile, and a single attack by even a Barbarian spearman reduces them to a dangerously low level.

I should have prefaced the whole thing by pointing out that this assumes that the rigid Barbarian - Tribal Hut distinction No Longer Applies. The 'Barbarian' settlements should be only about 1/3 Hostile (current Barbarian mode), 1/3 Neutral (they go Barbarian only if you annoy them enough) and 1/3 Friendly (take the place of the current Tribal Huts but usually don't disappear instantly).

Also, this assumes that almost any Civ will have access to Amateur Defenders: the ability to levy a mass of civilians bringing their own weapons for a limited time to defend the city and its surroundings. The default early type would be Warriors, representing people with weighted clubs or maces, short-range throwing weapons like javelins, or short spears but no regular formation hat would make them Anti-Cavalry weapons. You could only keep these people 'under arms' for a short time, because as long as they are standing around looking Fierce they are not harvesting crops, building Harbors, hunting, fishing, or doing anything else useful. IF you are unlucky or annoying enough to have a steady stream of barbarian raids, hen you will have to invest in an early Professional Army, but slingers would still not be your best bet, it would be Armored Warriors with early bronze weapons or Spearmen with metal-tipped spears drilled to hold regular formations to stand off cavalry and impetuous attackers of all kinds. IF these are provided by a Warrior Caste or 'aristocracy', then they would come from a Social Policy like Comitatus or Heroic Warriors as much as any Technological advance.

Also, as has been discussed in this Forum often, the rigid requirement for specialized resources for units, especially in any Pre-Industrial settings, is simply mis-placed. Bronze might have been much more expensive because of the scarcity of the tin-copper combination (they were rarely found in the same place) but that just meant only the 'aristocratic' part of the population could afford it, not that it was completely unavailable. As I have remarked many times, 50 tons of iron ore would equip an entire Roman Legion from head to foot with armor and weapons: the limitation was not in getting the raw resource, but in having the Workshops to render it into armor and weapons.

'Knights' by the way, are the classic Social Order Unit. Until very, very late, no government 'built' Knights, they simply called them up when needed from a segment of the population that provided its own horses, weapons and armor - all of which were so expensive that they had to be provided with large swaths of land to support themselves and their equipment. This, in essence, is the Feudal System. It's advantage is that Knights don't cost you, the King/Emperor/Grand Nagus anything. The downside is that they take many tiles of territory out of production because all of their production of food, resources, etc are going into the Knights' Castles that provide (my proposal in game terms) one Knight Each. - And the Knights, as units, are Amateurs: they can only be kept around for a limited time before they have to get back to running their Estates, don't accrue any promotions or Upgrades by themselves, and so, if the whole things is balanced right in game terms, you will quickly find it more efficient to replace them with hired Mercenary Knights that are Professionals, can be kept around as long as you can afford them, get promoted, get Upgraded, and are generally more useful.

It is no historical accident that the rise of Mercenary armies in the late Medieval Era replacing the original Feudal arrays coincided with the rise of the international banking families to loan money to the monarchs that were suddenly spending a massive amount of Gold to keep their armies armying. Social Policy, Banking and other factors are just as important or more so than the simple Stirrup, Horseback Riding and Iron/Steel working to provide 'Knights'.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Interesting. I've never had slingers be the first line of defense against anything - they are just too fragile, and a single attack by even a Barbarian spearman reduces them to a dangerously low level.

I should have clarified in terms of putting them in your cities and defending them, especially if your warriors are away and you don't have archers yet. I also find it easier and quicker to build a slinger and then upgrade into an archer, instead of building one.

I should have prefaced the whole thing by pointing out that this assumes that the rigid Barbarian - Tribal Hut distinction No Longer Applies. The 'Barbarian' settlements should be only about 1/3 Hostile (current Barbarian mode), 1/3 Neutral (they go Barbarian only if you annoy them enough) and 1/3 Friendly (take the place of the current Tribal Huts but usually don't disappear instantly).

I'm hoping this is a base game feature for Civ 7.

 

[Disgustipated]

And so for the past year or two, VI has the same problem V had: units that have another unit on their upgrade path less than an Era plus away get obsoleted before you can get them built and shuffle them to the frontier to get into a fight. Added to the existing problem of late game/Era units that rarely get used because the game is over before the last Era or three, and a relatively large percentage of the units in Civ VI rarely get used at all. That's essentially a waste of all the graphic and design work that went into them, not to mention a source of frustration when you go to the trouble of accumulating the Iron necessary to build a bunch of Swordsmen and then discover that less than a dozen turns after you'e fielded them it's time to upgrade them to Men-at-Arms. This is particularly annoying when the units you went to all the trouble of building are your Civ's Unique Unit - like Roman Legions. I can't remember the time I fought a war playing as Rome in Civ VI and actually ended the war with the Legions I started it with - invariably any more I've started upgrading them to MaA before the enemy is finished off. Sic transit legionae.

<--- Normally plays marathon mode. Not a problem for me. Okay it does sometimes take hundreds of years to build a unit. No one really wants the infinite unit spam of Civ5, so my proposal is hard caps on military size. Or at least heavy maintenance once you get to a certain point. Otherwise units should be able to be built faster.

Like I said, one reason I play marathon is so my units can see some action. But there are still some problems. Including the aforementioned swordsmen to man at arms path is too quick. Especially for barbarians (even worse if Babylon is in the game). I'm actually playing a game right now as America- Franklin Roosevelt, and the P51 really gets no use. Jet fighters come soon after it. Not that I'm in any wars right now, I was just concerned about even being able to build one.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I don't know about your propositions, mainly the 1 unit/turn and 1 turn battle. I have many questions, as I don't find any satisfying limitations for it.

1 unit per turn
Linking it to the Population or Food is a good idea, as Manpower are more significative than actual Production. Yet, having either the biggest metropolis in the world or a town which is basically a campfire somewhere in the desert being able to train much unit per turn sound weird to me. It also means the civilization with the most cities (not the biggest, not the most populous, not the most productive, just with the most "town") would be able to have way more unit per turn than a player who managed to grow fewer but more powerful cities which has more territory, population and production.
So what could be those the limitations?

1. A maintenance system capping the number of units existing at once. Why not, but why? Having a soft cap with Strategic Resource management and your economy is far more thrilling than having a maximum slot you could handle. Sure you could disguise those slots as not having enough "military commanders" to guide those units. Just like Trade Route in 5, and it wasn't fun. Or it could be a dynamic cap (like Trade Route in 6), by counting the number of Encampment or whatever inside your empire to host them. But implementing a hard-cap just because allowing everyone to produce 1 unit per turn ad nauseam would be unbalanced or unfun. Plus: the civilization with most cities (even if bad cities) would be able to reconstitute and reach the cap far quicker than everything else. Which is an ode to the ICS (since Production doesn't matter). Lately, it could be on timer, or limited every X turns. Which sounds very arbitrary and just a way to limit a mechanic which would be too potent without it (therefore: why 1 turn, why not just grant the unit instantly in that case?).
2. "Bad cities" wouldn't be able to train powerful cities. Then why should they partake on the war effort if it is just give 1 underwhelming unit per turn. If the "bad unit" is a unit with a debuff, then I would never want that city to train those units: I would rather want to wait 6 turns to get the real unit, than a half-baked one. If the "bad unit" is a unit from a previous era, then I just need to upgrade it, paying Gold in the process. Which is counterproductive: the whole idea was to remove the Production cost. If it is replaced with a Gold cost with extra step, then why prevent the player to use Production (or something else) and bypass the 1 unit per turn? If the bad unit cannot be upgrade before entering a city which is able to train then, then it add a lot of tediousness in the mix... but would make sense. People will love their oversea colonies to produce bad units that needs to go to the mainland to upgrade into their most advanced version, while being kept very frail in case of surprise attack because they cannot produce or buy powerful units to defend itself.
3. Behavior on Speed setting. Should it be 3 turns on marathon, but having 2 units on Online setting? Then... why is 1 turn perfect for Standard Speed. 1 Scout per turn in the Ancient era? Then 1 Warrior per turn until the cap is met? Should Barbarian behave the same and swarm the map? Wouldn't the mechanic be abused by just swarming the enemy with units just to waste its time, as it would be 1 battle per turn? Or 1 battle per movement?

For point 1, I guess it is the whole "1 thing per turn" being the culprit. It makes the game tedious, basically ruins a lot of things in Civilization VI. When they introduced the "production queue" feature, I was sure we would be able to complete multiples task at once if we have enough production. The overflow mechanic was known and many time source of exploit. And.. nothing: we are still limited to "1 thing per turn", which can be very frustrating when repairing every pillaged districts and buildings.
Which lead to big cities and military training: why shouldn't they be able to produce multiple units per turn?


In short, I am doubtful on the implementation of 1 unit per turn. An ICS (infinite city sprawl) strategy would be able to have more units, so limitation has to be implanted. Either a hard-cap, which is lame. Or keep the Gold and Strategic maintenance so the player has to balance between army and economy (which was crucial: many army disbanded because they weren't paid anymore, while the warmachine stopped because not enough Iron or Oil to produce and to consume). Even then, ICS strategy would still be able to constitue or reconstitute an army faster for no reason. Perhaps, smaller or underdeveloped cities may only train less advanced units as a result, and those units can only be upgrade in another city territory who can train the most advanced one. Which is tedious, and make harder to keep newly settled cities. But I don't see any other solutions in order to limit ICS strategy to snowball military-wise with a 1 unit per turn and per city.


1 turn battle
I might be wrong, but 1-turn battle would end by the elimination of one of the opposing force

Either the battle is instant, checking the Combat Strength of both unit, make the bigger number win with an HP loss, and the defeated unit is removed. But then... it would remove all the skirmishes and battle tactics of weaken an enemy unit, luring them into a weakened position, playing around support and flanking mechanic, using Fortifcation at the advantage. Plus: how would it play against Ranged unit but you cannot retaliate? Should Ranged unit be able to weaker the enemy without defeating them? Or you can always retaliate, making impossible to use Ranged unit while being completely safe in the City-Center.

Or the battle isn't instant, so you go through an instance or something where multiple turns of combat happens in the same turn until a victor is declared, or one side surrender or flee. Yet, if every individual fight has to happen in an instance, playing a single turn of war would take forever. It kind of defeat the idea of making combat faster, since it would make way more slower.
If the number of combat per unit is limited to 1 per turn, then why not swarm the place with a lot of bad units just to slow down progress? Since 1 unit can be created per turn, then you could stall indefinitively. After the ICS, welcome to the Infinite Unit Sprawl, where the enemy cannot capture your city since all tiles is occupied by a Scout (they need to implement a very potent War Weariness mechanic to circumvent that).
Both the 1 unit per turn and 1 turn battle sounds really bad when put together. Maybe I am missing something obvious, but was unable to tell.


May I have more information on how you see both concept behave? So far, I am very doubtful that both mechanic would be fun. I can imagine how the 1 unit per turn could behave, even if I am not a fan. I can imagine the 1 turn battle as well, even if I think it either impoverish gameplay or make warfare way slower. But both at the same time sounds like a very bad cocktail.

I do like point 3, as I had some criticism on the Movement system on 6, so I would welcome a change in this area.

You generate a bunch of straw man arguments hat are simply not valid.

First, the One Turn acquisition of units. Getting more than one unit per city per turn would depend on the capabilities of the city: I never said that All Cities would be equal, which is a silly idea given that one of the most basic mechanics in the game since Civ 1 has been building up individual cities through the ages. Barracks, Stables or their equivalent structures in military areas, total population, the composition of the population (if any are allocated to working as Specialists, turning them into warriors means spending a long time getting that Specialist expertise back and may not be worth it except in an emergency) Social Policies that reserve military duty to only certain elements ("Warrior Aristocracy" or "Comitatus" both spring to mind) , even such Civ VI elements as Loyalty - the old What if you give a War and nobody comes? question.

Not sure what you are referring to with 'good' or 'bad' units. There should be units that are hard to acquire, because of your Civ structure even more than any Technological level you've reached. The great example would be Horse Archers, hat no city-based Civilization ever managed to raise: riding and firing a bow while riding are two skills hat require a great deal of time to master, as well as a great deal of space to practice in and a great many horses to provide for the numbers to make units. Armies that did get horse archers were either horse-riding pastorals in which virtually every adult male rode from when he was a child and defended the herds with a bow constantly, Other civilizations (notably China, Rome, and Byzantium) who used horse archers got them by hiring them from their pastoral 'barbarian' neighbors.

The other great - but so far not in Civ - distinction among military units is Expense. Some units are cheap to get and cheap to keep: spearmen were the basic infantry for 1000s of years because they were relatively cheap: call up a percentage of the population to bring their own pears and shields, send them home when done (or before the harvest, whichever came first). Armored swordsmen, on the other hand, required more expensive tools to fight with and required continuous practice to stay proficient with the more flexible swordsmanship - which is why the Roman Empire enlisted legionary swordsmen for 20 or more years, provided their arms and armor, and paid them regularly - and why keeping 50 legions around nearly bankrupted the Roman Empire: hey were man for man many times more epxensive than a simple spearman 'call up'!

As for the 1 turn battle, I fully agree that a simple bland 'die roll' to apply the result to an entire stack is unsatisfying in the extreme. I never proposed it.
What I do propose is here: Combat System for Civ VII

Because I don't think the game scale is consistent with you, the Grand God-King of the entire Civ, running around directing skirmishers or archers in a single battle - and taking, in the Classical or Medieval Eras, a century or more to complete that battle and get a resolution to it.