[Vote] (2-51) Make Unit Promotions Weaker Proposals

[Recursive]

Moderator Action: To provide voters with more choices, I have split the "make unit promotions weaker" proposals into two categories: weakening units / promotions and making upgrades more expensive. The two votes will be tallied separately.

Voting Instructions
Players, please cast your votes in the poll above. Vote "Yea" for every proposal you'd be okay with if it were implemented. Vote "Nay" if you'd be okay if these proposals weren't implemented. You can vote for any number of options.

All votes are public. If you wish, you can discuss your choice(s) in the thread below. You can change your vote as many times as you want until the poll closes.

VP Congress: Session 2, Proposal 51
Discussion Thread: (2-51) Proposal: Units lose XP on upgrade
Proposer: @ilteroi
Sponsor: @Recursive

Proposal Details
Just what it says in the title. Inspired by the "immortal human units vs endless AI unit spam" discussion.

When a unit is upgraded, it loses half of its XP. But it does keep all the promotions. Just needs a longer time to reach the next level.

Obviously the percentage is debatable. But it would make it so that new units can compete with older ones and create an interesting choice where upgrading immediately is not always better.

Edit: typo


VP Congress: Session 2, Proposal 51a
Discussion Thread: (2-51a) Counterproposal: Nerf overpowered promotions
Proposer: @Voremonger
Sponsor: @axatin

Proposal Details
Proposal: No change to XP accumulation but instead nerf those promotions that are overpowered and thus make XP accumulation so strong in the first place. Specifically I propose:

• Range: +1 range, -20% CS -> +1 range but -70% damage when attacking at maximum range.
• Logistics: +1 attack, -30% CS -> +1 attack, second attack deals -50% damage.
• March: Always heal when taking an action -> Always heal at least 5 HP when taking an action (can be increased by medic promotions), heal when pillaging increased from 25 HP to 50 HP. This proposal was amended to no longer increase healing from pillaging.

Rationale: Currently the optimal strategy for humans in terms of warfare revolves around getting units that can abuse a handful of promotions that are frankly overpowered. Nerfing those promotions would promote more diverse military strategies and discourage players from farming XP until they get superunits. Making all units lose XP upon upgrade seems like a band-aid fix to players with overpowered armies.

The reason why I think the range and logistics promotions should reduce damage instead of combat strength is because large negative modifiers to CS lead to wildly different results depending on other CS modifiers. At for example -80% CS a change of just +-10% base CS would change the effective combat strength by +-50%. So depending on other factors a large reduction in combat strength could either make an attack useless or barely impact it at all. If instead the final damage is reduced by some fixed percentage then the effect is much more consistent. The revised range and logistics promotions should further be implemented as options: there is no malus if the unit is used as per usual but if the extra range/attack is used there is some penalty to damage. The penalty on range should be more severe than on logistics because attacking with +1 range is extremely safe.

March is less overpowered than range and logistics but only because it's more limited in terms of where you can use it effectively. March in owned territory where you get +15 HP per turn is overpowered, otherwise it's fine. In addition to the nerf to regular healing I propose increasing the heal on pillaging because I think healing promotions are most at risk of becoming overpowered in owned territory but I find them to be relatively weak in enemy territory.

NOT PART OF THE PROPOSAL:
Other promotions that I considered:

• Survivalism 3: Recon units are not that strong in terms of combat so I don't think this is a problem. Only exception would be getting a scout from ancient ruins, but I think that's more of an issue of ancient ruins.
• Stalwart: +35% CS when defending is very strong but it's not enough to win you the game. Even at high CS your units will eventually die if they keep eating attacks.
• Air logistics, air repair: I'm fine with air units being strong since there is a hard limit to how many you can deploy at once.

VP Congress: Session 2, Proposal 51b
Discussion Thread: (2-51b) Counterproposal: Add column in Units table to increase XP thresholds for leveling up units (+ Gunsmith building)
Proposer: @azum4roll
Sponsor: @Recursive

Proposal Details
Supplements https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/2-85-proposal-era-scaling-free-exp-for-ai-units.680857/

Problem: humans are too good at keeping early units alive and upgrading them to be super units with lots of high tier promotions, which necessitates the AI to keep up with more unit spam. However, losing XP on upgrade feels bad for unique units and easily makes early veteran units worse than newly made units. It also discourages making near-obsolete units until you reach the upgrade tech.

Proposal:

Add a new column in the Units table to increase XP thresholds for level up.
e.g. a Warrior needs 10, 30, 60, 100, 150 XP to level up, but a Fusilier would need 35, 55, 85, 125, 175 XP instead.
This should solve the problem of upgraded units being too strong, since you have limited time to grind your units to get new promotions before they need to be upgraded.

All free XP sources from military buildings are increased to make newly trained units have similar number of starting promotions as they currently have. Military Academy is moved back to Replaceable Parts as the latest building to give XP for the last 3 eras. The Gunsmith building (taken from Enlightenment Era mod) will patch the large XP gap between Armory and Military Academy.

In this model, a Warrior with 65 XP upgraded to Fusilier will still have 3 promotions, but will take an extra 60 XP to reach the next level up. On the other hand, a newly trained Fusilier also starts with 65 XP, but only takes 20 more XP to reach the next level up and be on par with the veteran unit.

New building: Gunsmith
Unlocks at Metallurgy
600
Never Capture
Maintenance: 4
+2 Science
+25 XP for all Units
Increases the Military Unit Supply Cap by 1
-1 Unhappiness from and Distress

Armory change:
+25 XP for all Units instead of +20

Military Academy change:
Unlocks at Replaceable Parts
1800
+40 XP for all Units instead of +25

Colonialism change:
Also boosts Gunsmith

Units will have level up threshold increased based on their unlock tech tier.

Tech Tier	XP threshold increase	Free XP available	Free promotions available
Early Ancient	0	0	0
Late Ancient - Classical	0	15	1
Early Medieval	5	40	2
Late Medieval	5	40	2
Early Renaissance	10	40	2
Late Renaissance	20	65	2
Early Industrial	25	65	2
Late Industrial	30	65	2
Early Modern	40	105	3
Late Modern - Information	45	105	3

VP Congress: Session 2, Proposal 51c
Discussion Thread: (2-51c) Counterproposal: Increase the gold cost of upgrading units by 50%
Proposer: @Siddorm
Sponsor: @axatin

Proposal Details
In my opinion, the gold cost of upgrading units is much too low in relation to the benefits (since upgrades are instantaneous and promotions are inherited). Upgrading currently almost always feels like a no-brainer; hence my proposal.
Amended on December 13th: Originally this proposal was "double the gold cost of upgrading units". However, after careful consideration of the comments related to this proposal, and in light of the possibility that various other proposals might pass, I have decided to amend this proposal to an gold cost increase of 50% instead. This thread title has been amended accordingly.

Clarification: Current base cost for unit upgrades is equal to the Production cost difference between the upgraded unit and the current unit. So, if the current unit costs 20 Production and the upgrade costs 60 Production, the current upgrade cost will be 40 Gold, and the increased upgrade cost would be 60 Gold.

Clarification (December 21st): This (counter)-proposal is different to the original proposal and all of the other counter-proposals because it focuses solely on the gold cost of upgrading units. Nothing would change except that the gold cost of upgrading each unit would be 50% higher than it currently is.


VP Congress: Session 2, Proposal 51d
Discussion Thread: (2-51d) Counterproposal: Make gold cost of upgrading units based on level
Proposer: @ma_kuh
Sponsor: @axatin

Proposal Details
Rationale:
The original proposal aims to curb high powered units from earlier eras overshadowing new units from later eras. It does so by applying a broad 50% multiplier to all unit upgrades. This proposal seeks to target the problem group with these cost adjustments: highly promoted units.

Proposal:
Increase gold cost of upgrading a unit by 10% per level. (This increase stacks additively with other modifiers, e.g. Imperialism.)
Clarification: Each level above level 1. Level 2 = 10%, level 3 = 20%, etc.

Consideration:
Pathfinders level up really fast. This change would make it more expensive to upgrade them to scouts, further increasing the divide between getting an Ancient Ruins weapon upgraded Scout or not.


VP Congress: Session 2, Proposal 51e
Discussion Thread: (2-51e) Counterproposal: Units get -10% CS for each upgrade
Proposer: @axatin
Sponsor: @axatin

Proposal Details
Proposal: Each time a unit is upgraded, it gets a 10% CS malus.

Rationale: The problem of "immortal" human units needs to be addressed, but I think the OP would just lead to the players waiting with upgrading their units until logistics/range is reached, which is a gamey behavior. Following an idea by @balparmak , this proposal would prevent this and it would make it necessary to constantly build new units because the old ones would get weaker over time.

 

[pineappledan]

Don't want any of this.

All of these proposals except maybe the upgrade cost increase are just about punishing players for doing well. What's the fun in that?

 

[ma_kuh]

I agree, I think the issues these try to tackle are fixed with different solutions. The gold cost increase is truing up the cost in gold for the effective value in hammers for units, it's a good change.

 

[pineappledan]

The across the board, +50% increase could conceivably raise the cost of pre-building and then upgrading/declaring war in 1 turn with a modernized army. It wasn’t proposed in that context, and it’s not adequately discussed if people think that’s a problem.

Even so, I think that’s the only one of these proposals that might improve the game, and it’s not even aimed right.

 

[Rekk]

it’s not even aimed right.

What do you mean by this?

The entire aim is to make the player choose which units it will upgrade (the most promoted ones), and which ones to disband in favour of building new ones (the least promoted ones).

 

[pineappledan]

But the proposal and the conversation surrounding it were not tabled to delay or raise the cost of rush strats, which is where this change would have its largest effect.

The Actual effect of the change might be positive, but it’s not what the congress intended, or thought they were voting on. The proposal to add % cost based on level addresses gets around this potential to penalize rush strays by making a tax on upgrading only the ones worth upgrading, which you will pay because better units are fun. This is a tax on fun. Why would I vote for that?

 

[Rekk]

The Actual effect of the change might be positive, but it’s not what the congress intended, or thought they were voting on.

It's not the fault of the original proposal that the counterproposals ran off to try and solve a completely different 'problem'.

 

[pineappledan]

they never sought to fix or punish rush strats; that’s just what the proposal mainly does. So maybe it’s a Trojan horse. I don’t think it’s intentional, which is why I say it was poorly aimed.

The “problem” these proposals set out to fix is that upgrading units is fun and they want it to suck more. Then a proposal to deter prebuild/upgrade-rushing accidentally got proposed too.

 

[Rekk]

Building units is also fun and humans don't do enough of it. It provides a hell of a lot more interaction and decision-making than yet another building.

 

[Legen]

The rationale that kept appearing is that humans are so good at keeping units alive that the AI is at a disadvantage, and the proposals intent to even things for the AI by making it painful to keep experienced units alive. Also, that there is no tradeoff in upgrading units, so most of these proposals want to make it painful to upgrade units to add interesting decisions.

I agree with neither; I disagree on the first rationale in that you should probably play at a higher difficulty if you're finding it so easy (have fun fighting 24 CS knights at Classical era), and I disagree on the second rationale in that I do think there is a tradeoff.

Gold spent on upgrading units is gold not spent on investing in buildings and wonders, and I had many situations in which I had to decide in favor of my economic development over upgrading my units. And upgrading units can be particularly cost inefficient when unique units are involved; upgrading them tends to add relatively little for the same cost of upgrading the generic unit they replace. Moreover, upgrading them can come at a loss somewhere else, like UUs that don't require a strategic resource (e.g. Mohawk Warrior), a good promotion lost on upgrade (e.g. Legion), or a worse base stat on upgrade (e.g. Bandeirantes going from 4 movement to 3 on upgrade, slowing down the yields from Flag Bearer and its usefulness as a pillager).

The only proposal I find reasonable is the one that wants to nerf Range, Barrage and March, since you can make a case of these promotions in particular being too strong. For the rest, I vote nay.

 

[Stalker0]

I hope this entire thread dies in the fire, no's for everything!

 

[Siddorm]

my proposal is not just about the inheritance of XP and promotions, it is also about things like:

• pre-building units, moving them to convenient places on your territory and then upgrading them immediately and (in my view) cheaply; and
• upgrading numerous units in the same turn.

This one's for you @pineappledan.

 

[ma_kuh]

I initially saw the cost increase as taxing the player just for being able to retain troops as well. However, after seeing the production cost formula for upgrading a unit, I came around to thinking that the cost is indeed too low. Just from a pure values point of view, it makes no sense to have the overall cost of a unit be lower if it comes from an earlier era. To be clear, I don't think it should be more expensive either; it should cost the same. The +50% change splits the difference and I think it's a step in the right direction.

 

[Siddorm]

I began by browsing through my recent save files on the turns when I had upgraded my units, and asking myself "if upgrades would cost 20%, 50%, 100%, or 150% more, would the benefits of upgrading be in balance with the cost"? Despite the fact that my answers to this question varied depending on the example that I looked at, my overall evaluation was that "100% more" was generally my best answer to this question. Hence, I originally decided to propose a 100% cost increase. I then browsed through all of the proposals that existed at that time to determine whether my proposal was in conflict with (or overlapped with) any other proposals; I thus decided to make "100% cost increase" a new proposal (not a counter-proposal).
I then chose to write a broad and general rationale because my view was that upgrading was a no-brainer in various situations. For example:

• if I had units with lots of promotions and XP, upgrading them was a no-brainer;
• if I had insufficiently many units, and I got attacked, my response was to: buy some time, build some units, save some gold, get the required tech, move my units to where they were best placed, and then go pling, pling, pling and upgrade every eligible unit on the same turn.

After making my proposal, I read all of the comments related to it and I saw that others did not share my view. Since my proposal had been based solely on my evaluation of my own games, I realized that I did not have sufficiently good evidence for proposing such a large change as 100%, so I changed my proposal to a "50% increase" instead. Another reason for this change was the possibility that other (at that time, separate) proposals such as this and this might pass.