Why have melee been allowed to be so bad for so long?

[Unresolved]

Or you know, you could just send in 6 CB's, 1 warrior and rotate the CB's out. Easy and takes the capital unless you didn't clear the units out first. Not to mention it'll be easier to defend with 6 ranged units. Melee units are by no means 'required' to do anything besides capturing cities in this game. Two melee units can rotate the damage from a city. I've never needed more than 2 melee units until Deity where I needed 3-4 and twice as many ranged units.

 

[LanguishViking]

Melee units are consumables, the ranged units are the ones you need to exp up.

Ranged units are way op in general in this game. In general the only use for melee units is the coup de grace when taking cities. In addition to the extra strange we players see them survive for ages running up exp like mad and never dying.

I'm pretty sure this can't be modded, but if I could I'd change it so that no unit can be reduced to less than 50% strength with ranged attacks and return to the old civ system where the unit defends the city and killing the unit takes the city.

 

[Elric445]

Melee being bad? I'm afraid to tell you that if you don't have melee yourself, then those siege units and ranged units are vulnerable to attacks by melee.

 

[MerchantCo]

@Elric: Exactly. Ranged units are weak against melee.

 

[mistermoo33]

Good players don't let their ranged units get killed by melee. Mounted units, sure, it's hard to see them coming, but if you're regularly losing ranged armies to melee armies you're just a bad player. The fact that one or two fortified melee units protects your ranged units with a ZoC is a granted, but again, as Unresolved said you don't need more than that.

Again, there is a reason high level multiplayer games always see mass crossbow strategies.

 

[Falconiano]

Melees should be given one more movement in my opinion, and the option to get anti-ranged promotions from the start.
That way you are forced to bring your own melees too.

 

[mistermoo33]

I feel I should clarify which melee units I think need a lot of help, and which are fine.

The two units that need the most help are swordsmen and longswordsmen. Spearman and pikeman are fine where they are. Let's delve into the reasons for this.

1. Swordsman and Longswordsman require iron, Spearman and Pikemen do not.
2. Spearman and Pikemen require very little tech investment, while Swordsmen and Longswordsmen require ironworking and steel, respectively. Civil Service is a solid tech in its own right since it improves your freshwater farms. Perhaps even more importantly, you'll unlock CS anyway on the road to Education, one of the most important techs in the game. Unlocking Swordsman and Longswordsmen have a big opportunity cost as far as developing the infrastructure of your empire and accelerating your tech progression; Unlocking Spearman has little opportunity cost, and unlocking Pikemen has almost none.
3. Spearman and Pikemen are able to fill the same role that Swordsmen and Longswordsmen do. They both can fortify in a hill/forest next to a city, exerting a ZoC and waiting for the city to drop to almost 0 health so they can cap it. The extra combat strength of SM and LSM doesn't really come into play here. All 4 melee units generally have to fortify next to the city because if they choose to attack it, you risk having them sniped and then having no melee units left. If you build a lot of melee to counteract the risk of losing all your melee, the city siege either takes longer (if you don't attack with your melee) or becomes much costlier (since melee units lose hp each time they attack, while ranged do not).
4. Spearmen and Pikemen have the added utility of being able to devastate mounted units. Their effective combat strength against these units is 16.5 and 24, respectively.
5. Spearmen require 56 hammers to SM's 75. Pikemen require 90 hammers to LSM's 120.

Literally the only thing that the iron-requiring units have over their cheaper, conveniently-unlocked, horse-killing, role-stealing cousins is a few measly combat points.

Furthermore, Musketmen are in an okay spot. Not good, because they're melee, but not horrible. Why?

1. They require no strategic resources.
2. The 2-range equivalent to Musketmen are Cannons, which can only be unlocked after teching to Musketmen in the first place. Comparatively, CBs and XBs can be teched to with more economical tech paths than SM and LSM, respectively. In fact, CBs are 1-tier lower than SMs, while XBs's tech requires 3 less than LSM's (XB requires engineering, LSM requires engineering + Bronzeworking, Ironworking, Metal Casting). Further, and more obviously, cannon's require a set-up while CB and XB do not, meaning Cannons can not kite.
3. They are not outshined by the anti-cavalry of the era, because Lancer's simply can not fortify under a city to exert ZoC + wait for cap.

That said, it's still not advisable to mass musketmen as a strategy (much to the disappointment of America/France) simply because MM, while good for fortifying under a city and creating pressure around it, are not actually good for attacking the city itself, and you'll want as many units as possible attacking the city. Hence, you usually see mass cannons, or even XB + cannon, at this stage in the game to take cities.

After all's said, I think it's clear that SM and LSM at least need a buff, if not MM as well. In retrospect, my suggestion to change the mechanics of melee combat falls flat since you don't want to buff Spearmen/Pikemen, as they admirably fill the role of "defensive/utilitarian melee unit." Perhaps a simple combat boost to SM and LSM really is all that's needed. Alternately, perhaps SM and later units in that upgrade path (LSM, MM, Riflemen, etc) should start with a promotion that reads "+25% damage when attacking other units and cities." My reasoning for this is that Spearmen and Pikemen are largely defensive/utility units, so SM/LSM should be offensive units. Note this promotion wouldn't be available to warriors so as to prevent total cheese with jaguars/maoris/etc, but would indirectly be available to those units by premaking them and later upgrading them.

 

[Matthew.]

Agreed on overall post and laid out well. But to nit-pick:

That said, it's still not advisable to mass musketmen as a strategy (much to the disappointment of America/France) simply because MM, while good for fortifying under a city and creating pressure around it, are not actually good for attacking the city itself, and you'll want as many units as possible attacking the city.

In the games that I end up going a lot of melee and siege (Or more specifically, muskets and cannon) I end up at about a 50/50 ratio. Not for cities, but to keep the field clear of enemy units. Cannon require a bit more protection than the archer line since they cannot move and shoot on the same turn. It almost becomes required for me to have extra muskets on the field to block off enemy units from my siege.

And of course this is another argument why the archer line needs some tweaking: The balance between siege and melee is in a good spot. You aren't going to realistically have an entire army of only cannon, nor is a complete musket army very useful. You need to use both together. In contrast, an entire army of composites or crossbows do just fine.


Also worth mentioning is the Great War Infantry unit. Sucks how only two techs later you get Infantry to replace it, and there is almost no reason at all to not go straight to Infantry, since Research Labs sit on the same tech. The fix has more to do with re-structuring the tech tree though, and nothing to do with the GWI unit itself.

 

[mistermoo33]

Agreed on overall post and laid out well. But to nit-pick:



In the games that I end up going a lot of melee and siege (Or more specifically, muskets and cannon) I end up at about a 50/50 ratio. Not for cities, but to keep the field clear of enemy units. Cannon require a bit more protection than the archer line since they cannot move and shoot on the same turn. It almost becomes required for me to have extra muskets on the field to block off enemy units from my siege.

And of course this is another argument why the archer line needs some tweaking: The balance between siege and melee is in a good spot. You aren't going to realistically have an entire army of only cannon, nor is a complete musket army very useful. You need to use both together. In contrast, an entire army of composites or crossbows do just fine.


Also worth mentioning is the Great War Infantry unit. Sucks how only two techs later you get Infantry to replace it, and there is almost no reason at all to not go straight to Infantry, since Research Labs sit on the same tech. The fix has more to do with re-structuring the tech tree though, and nothing to do with the GWI unit itself.

That's fair. I guess my point for that is that it's still fundamentally about the ranged units (cannons + a few XBs) at that point in the game. You won't be attacking cities with masses of musketmen, but instead playing the game of "how few MM can I get away with for protecting my ranged units + capping when they're done."

Also while I agree there are some silly imbalances later in the game I omitted Riflemen and up as far as balance is concerned since games are decided sooner than later, and also since combat drastically changes with the introduction of flight + lack of 2-range CB/XB equivalents + artillery.

 

[Matthew.]

Don't get me wrong, it is still only like 4 melee still, max Just saying I find them a bit more useful when combining them with siege when compared to something like an army of CB's and a single horse for city cap.

Hypothetically if there were no archer units in the game, I wouldn't mind melee. Swords/Lswords are still in a rough spot, but as far as gameplay and mechanics are concerned, the balance of siege, melee, and cavalry is ok. Then archers are thrown into the mix and 1. Take over the role of siege and 2. Make melee's role nothing more than having one or two fortify down to distract an AI that cannot play tactical combat.

 

[Roxlimn]

Pikemen are Strength 16. Longswordsmen are Strength 21. With +50% vs. Mounted, Pikemen are barely better than Longswordmen vs. Mounted on flat terrain defense, and no better on Rough Terrain. I take out Pikemen with Knights. They should be countering Knights, but really, they don't unit/unit basis. They're just cheaper are slightly better than Longswordmen vs. Mounted.

Crossbowmen are Strength 13. A LSM will do a number on one if it catches one. Two will kill a XB sitting on open terrain. With Cover and Cover 2 promos, XB's do limited damage to LSMs. Both those promos are also key for siege unit melee, since the bulk of the damage will be done by ranged siege units anyway. I find XBs bad for taking cities. Trebs perform much better. XBs are good for taking out cheap, unpromoted melee units. They just happen to also be better than melee at direct city attacking.

The problem isn't that they dominate unit combat or that they also do well on siege functions. It's both those and the situation on the tech tree.

Arguably, the LSM is not in as much of a pinch as SM. With Armory and high promos and interactions between units, an LSM could be made to be highly resistant to ranged unit damage - both from cities and ranged units. The SM doesn't really have this option. Samurai are actually quite good units - having Cover 2 and Medic 2 out of the gate means that they can soak up a lot of damage. On the normative middle diff settings, where the game isn't being warped by AI bonuses, an army of pure Samurai can roll through an enemy civ pretty darn fast.

 

[Falconiano]

Don't get me wrong, it is still only like 4 melee still, max Just saying I find them a bit more useful when combining them with siege when compared to something like an army of CB's and a single horse for city cap.

Hypothetically if there were no archer units in the game, I wouldn't mind melee. Swords/Lswords are still in a rough spot, but as far as gameplay and mechanics are concerned, the balance of siege, melee, and cavalry is ok. Then archers are thrown into the mix and 1. Take over the role of siege and 2. Make melee's role nothing more than having one or two fortify down to distract an AI that cannot play tactical combat.

I agree with this.

I still find myself getting at least 5 bows for defensive purpose (or perhaps because my mind is automatically set to "spam archers"), but then I get 3 cats going and a couple solid melees.
Melees stand in front, wounded, so everyone focuses them with Cover 2 and they laugh as they get more promotions.
In the while, cats plow through defenses, get ranks, and the moment I get +1 range I just sit 4 tiles and shoot away, while melees are ready to defend.

It's just SO much more efficient than doing 10 damage with bows and cycle them.
The only issue is that cats come much later than bows, so you don't really have the option to NOT get some bows going.

 

[jango76]

Literally the only thing that the iron-requiring units have over their cheaper, conveniently-unlocked, horse-killing, role-stealing cousins is a few measly combat points.

Besides the fact that combat strength is actually, you know, kinda quite important to the value of a unit, what you've written is "literally" not true.

Swords come in the classical era. You can get IW a lot earlier than CS: count the beakers. True, very few people do that very often in practise, but if you do then you can get a significant military advantage. Yes, it's extremely short lived, and you'd better make the most of it to pay off delayed Education, but it can be very viable in the right circumstances (especially if your first cities aren't on a river, so skipping CS isn't a big loss, or if your civ has a Sword replacement UU).

Secondly, besides being stronger than Pikes ("measly", whatever: Longswords rule the medieval era), they have a much better upgrade path (in both directions, actually: Warriors are cheap to build and cheap to get upgraded). Having a few Lancers around is nice for speed, of course, but usually you really want the bulk of your melee to keep their defensive terrain bonuses. And experienced (and therefore highly promoted) Rifles, say, can be really nasty to take down.

After all's said, I think it's clear that SM and LSM at least need a buff, if not MM as well.

Sorry, but that's not clear. Not clear at all.

 

[stii]

Besides the fact that combat strength is actually, you know, kinda quite important to the value of a unit, what you've written is "literally" not true.

Swords come in the classical era. You can get IW a lot earlier than CS: count the beakers. True, very few people do that very often in practise, but if you do then you can get a significant military advantage. Yes, it's extremely short lived, and you'd better make the most of it to pay off delayed Education, but it can be very viable in the right circumstances (especially if your first cities aren't on a river, so skipping CS isn't a big loss, or if your civ has a Sword replacement UU).

Secondly, besides being stronger than Pikes ("measly", whatever: Longswords rule the medieval era), they have a much better upgrade path (in both directions, actually: Warriors are cheap to build and cheap to get upgraded). Having a few Lancers around is nice for speed, of course, but usually you really want the bulk of your melee to keep their defensive terrain bonuses. And experienced (and therefore highly promoted) Rifles, say, can be really nasty to take down.



Sorry, but that's not clear. Not clear at all.

You kind of admitted they suck in your post. You said people could but they don't. Why is that?

The obvious reason is they suck. Ranged units have a fundamental advantage over melee, people might well willing to tech to a powerful ranged unit they aren't willing to do so for a melee one.

 

[Altisma]

I think melee units are just fine. The enemy cities/units focus fire on melee units, so if you're up against a strong city and don't have advanced or many melee units, all of them will die and you won't be able to capture the city. The firing-1-tile away nerf is unneeded since otherwise it won't even get a chance to fire before melee units destroy it (they can stay 1 tile out of range and then strike). There's a reason no sane human would ever build a Gatling gun or machine gun.

Melee units, on the other hand, always have the highest combat strength of their respective eras. They also have a promotion specializing in taking cities. I can't really explain why they're so good; there's not really a definite reason - but on the battlefield, an army with 33% ranged/33% siege/33% melee will almost win a battle against an army made 25% melee, 50% ranged, and 25% siege.

Multiplayer. You have never experienced the power of range units against you have you?

 

[knighterrant81]

Ranged are clearly better. Iron used to be required for success in the early/mid game, now you don't really need to pay attention to Iron until you get Frigates.

The fact that the accepted strategy for melee use is "get as few as possible to protect your ranged units, then spam ranged units" just shows that the balance is wrong. A truly balanced game would favor builing a balanced amount of different unit types in a good army: ranged, melee, cavalry, siege. As it is, it kind of breaks down like this:

Ancient/Classical:

- Ranged for city defense/unit killing
- One or two Siege units (unless you're Assyria) to support your ranged while attacking cities
- Cavalry aren't very useful because of the easy availability of Spearmen and weakness vs. Cities

Medieval:

Basically the same as Ancient/Classical, although Trebuchets are a bit more viable than Catapults were (easier tech access, crossbows are kind of off on their own, at least that's been my experience)
Cavalry are again almost completely worthless thanks to Pikes, which are available even to non-warmongers pretty early thanks to tech location.

Renaissance:

Ranged dominance fades a bit, and favors Siege (Cannons). From now on, Siege basically takes the place of Ranged, and Gunpowder units are just as much fodder as Melee ever were. Cavalry still aren't any good, even though you don't see the Pike equivalent around, because they can't attack cities, and aren't that dominant versus enemy units. The incredible uselessness of units like the Gatling gun shows how much the 2 tile attack range is a big part of the problem.

Plus, by now, you've got a big army of mostly Siege, backed up by Muskets (both much more easily teched to than Cavalry)

Industrial:

Yeah, Artillery aren't as good when not attacking cities, but they have 3 range and indirect fire. You need a bit more Riflemen than you needed melee before, but basically doing the same thing - being linebackers for the quarterback, that is, Artillery.

Modern:

3 range, indirect fire AND no setup? Air is also not so great on the offense (still pretty nice for defense), because they lose health when attacking, just like melee. Mech Inf are great, but still nothing compared to Rocket Artillery. Armor is a novelty instead of the game changer it was historically.

Basically, the problem is most pronounced in the Ancient/Classical eras, because Archers/Composite Bows are so cheap and accessible, and being able to deal damage without receiving damage is so strong. The problem compounds itself in later stages of the game because of how promotions work.


The problems:

I feel like the balance is a bit better from the Renaissance on - you still need a lot of Gunpowder units to get your Cannons/Artillery etc up to the enemy city. But the Ancient/Classical eras are the most important eras for winning, so it is still a problem.

- 2 tile (later 3 for Siege) attack range is too strong (Gatling Guns, etc. aren't nearly as dominant).
- The ability to deal damage without receiving it is an incredible advantage (Air units are only so-so because they don't have this advantage).
- Cavalry units are even worse off than melee.
- Iron just isn't worth the investment. Poor Rome and Japan, such good vanilla civs, now, not so hot.

It has been better in BNW, perhaps because you simply can't afford to spam enough Ranged units until later in the game when your economy has taken off. I've been using Spearmen much more now (they line up well with Zulu and Assyria early warmongering). Warmongering in general is a weak strategy in BNW though.

 

[Callonia]

Ok guys, melee units used to have city raider promotions. It was one of things carried over from civ 4.

It got removed because it made cities too easy to conquer. Declare war and have a bunch of rapid melee units with city raiders charge across the border and slam into those frontier cities and take them down fast.

If you install vanilla civ 5 unpatched, i think the promo is still there. And there is 3 ranks of city raiders. 1/2/3. a melee unit with rank 3 city raider could just knock like 75% of the city's hp off with one hit or oneshot it if there's a disparity in tech advantage.

And panzers used to be able to conquer cities with just one panzer.

How you say?

Well make sure that panzer have blitz promo then have it park next to city and wait for next turn so it can have all six or 8 movements it can use and attack city repeatedly until the city run out of hp. I took massive amount of cities with blitz/cityraider promoted panzers.

I could just dow on five AIs at once and send out all my panzers and crush them all at same time. I have done this at least once panzers with city raiders/blitz promo = broken and cities cry when they see them show up. That was in vanilla civ 5 xD

 

[knighterrant81]

Ok guys, melee units used to have city raider promotions. It was one of things carried over from civ 4.

It got removed because it made cities too easy to conquer. Declare war and have a bunch of rapid melee units with city raiders charge across the border and slam into those frontier cities and take them down fast.

If you install vanilla civ 5 unpatched, i think the promo is still there. And there is 3 ranks of city raiders. 1/2/3. a melee unit with rank 3 city raider could just knock like 75% of the city's hp off with one hit or oneshot it if there's a disparity in tech advantage.

And panzers used to be able to conquer cities with just one panzer.

How you say?

Well make sure that panzer have blitz promo then have it park next to city and wait for next turn so it can have all six or 8 movements it can use and attack city repeatedly until the city run out of hp. I took massive amount of cities with blitz/cityraider promoted panzers.

I could just dow on five AIs at once and send out all my panzers and crush them all at same time. I have done this at least once panzers with city raiders/blitz promo = broken and cities cry when they see them show up. That was in vanilla civ 5 xD

Yep, and now you can gather up a 5-6 CBs and single handedly switch from defending your own cities, destroying an enemy army in the process, and then take his cities. Ranged are just as OP as melee used to be. The solution is not to make one or the other overpowered. Its to make them balanced. And they are not balanced. Its not a huge thing, but it would be nice to be able to play Rome or Japan without hating yourself again.

 

[Roxlimn]

I perceive that the core of the problem is not so much how OP CBs are but how effective they are in defense, particularly at high diff settings when the AI gets so many units. This requires a lot of FF and gives out promos to ranged like it was candy. Using the same units to attack isn't optimal so much as simply using what you already have.

 

[Zezima]

I think ranged could be better balanced if one of two changes was made:

Tone down the damage done on defense. If a melee unit makes it in range of a ranged unit, the ranged unit should do at most 50% damage on defense. Once the melee unit has closed in it has the advantage.

Give cavalry-based units an inherent +% damage modifier against range-based units. It doesn't have to be a lot, but enough to make them more of a threat. I believe flanking and formation breaking is what these units are for to begin with. Just like most have their -33% vs cities, they could get +33% vs. range just as well.

This would make ranged units more fragile and less beneficial in up close combat, which would require players to put more effort into protecting them. In addition, it also makes melee units a more viable choice in taking down enemy ranged units.