[Vote] (3-14) Proposal: Assyria's UU no longer obsoletes

Approval Vote for Proposal #14 (instructions below)


  • Total voters
    82
  • Poll closed .
With the Great Wall wonder, there is already a precedent of abilities that obsolete. On the same tech, to boot (Assyrian siege tower obsoletes at gunpowder)

Siege towers' sapper ability stopping at Gunpowder could have been a decent counterproposal. Resolve this issue in the opposite direction. If people want to keep the siege tower around after their sapper ability turns off, they still are mobile medics at least. It would be new code, so it's more complex than just removing a obsoleting tech entirely, but it's something I would have favoured over allowing siege towers to be eternally useful as anti-city weapons.

re: the Khan not having a post-industrial model, that draws an equivalence between two things that are qualitatively very different. Men on horseback carrying a tug is still a standard ceremonial thing in today's modern Mongolian armed forces. A man on horseback in modern day doesn't stand out like a siege tower. Likewise, the combat effect they have, a leadership aura and a siege bonus, are also qualitatively different things, and a Khan providing inspiration and leadership to modern troops on horseback doesn't break immersion like a siege tower still providing a bonus vs cities in the modern era.
 
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re: the Khan not having a model, I think that draws an equivalence between two things that are qualitatively very different. Men on horseback carrying a tug is still a standard ceremonial thing, even with today's modern Mongolian armed forces. A man on horseback in modern day doesn't stand out like a siege tower. Likewise, the combat effect they have, a leadership aura and a siege bonus, are also qualitatively different things, and a Khan providing inspiration and leadership to modern troops on horseback doesn't break immersion like a siege tower still providing a bonus vs cities in the modern era.
Reading this made me change my vote. Assyria is good enough already without relying on something that does break immersion. Not to mention it's not that hard to preserve those siege towers with minimal care.
 
Reading this made me change my vote. Assyria is good enough already without relying on something that does break immersion. Not to mention it's not that hard to preserve those siege towers with minimal care.
Humans may not have a hard time preserving the UU, but the same isn't guaranteed for the AI.

Likewise, the combat effect they have, a leadership aura and a siege bonus, are also qualitatively different things, and a Khan providing inspiration and leadership to modern troops on horseback doesn't break immersion like a siege tower still providing a bonus vs cities in the modern era.
Siege Towers are essentially about ingenious combat engineering, and its promotion is thematically named "Sapper". The tower's model portraits the result of Assyrian ingenuity in this field during Ancient Era, while the promotion can easily represent the ingenuity of their combat engineers; that's why people occasionally suggested a sapper model to this UU on later eras.

Thematically, the tower at least represents a work of combat engineering, staying in line with their field of work. It doesn't have to be taken literally, especially for a civilization that ceased to exist long before the Modern Era (unlike the Mongols); what their modern equivalent would be is left to imagination. Any replacement model for later eras would either use generic looks, or take artistic liberties to represent them.
 
Siege Towers are essentially about ingenious combat engineering, and its promotion is thematically named "Sapper". The tower's model portraits the result of Assyrian ingenuity in this field during Ancient Era, while the promotion can easily represent the ingenuity of their combat engineers; that's why people occasionally suggested a sapper model to this UU on later eras.
the siege tower depicts a large siege tower which is rolled up to a city's curtain walls to help attackers get into the city. It's not invoking the metaphysical idea of combat engineering, or any other mumbo jumbo.
Thematically, the tower at least represents a work of combat engineering, staying in line with their field of work. It doesn't have to be taken literally, especially for a civilization that ceased to exist long before the Modern Era (unlike the Mongols); what their modern equivalent would be is left to imagination. Any replacement model for later eras would either use generic looks, or take artistic liberties to represent them.
Your defense boils down to “use your imagination”, and I’m saying no, that’s not good enough. We don’t have battleships represented by rowboats and tell players it "doesn't have to be taken literally". There is an expected minimum amount of polish and cohesion to proposals and I don't think this makes the cut.

Based on the way this poll is going I expect it will pass anyways, so I'll end this here.
 
Your defense boils down to “use your imagination”, and I’m saying no, that’s not good enough.
By imagination, it means that there isn't a historical basis for a later model, especially if you want the unit's aesthetic to remain uniquely Assyrian. Either you make something generic, or invent something out of nowhere. This figure of speech is not hard to understand.

Anyway, this proposal's point is not to be a mini R.E.D. modpack, it is meant to be a QoL and an AI help. And none of these two points conflict with someone else proposing a model update.
 
I think the two ways to go here are either the UU is fully alive after gunpowder, or fully dead. If people think it should obsolete then it should die all the way and delete itself or something. Letting them stick around at full effectiveness as long as you babysit them well enough is just gamey.

And ultimately just letting them exist is the solution on the table right now.
 
There should be a new column that can dictate whether a promotion can be made obsolete at a certain tech/era. Once you reached the era, that promotion will be removed, rendering the unit to be useless.

This is easy to do for Lua mod, but someone needs to implement it at DLL level.
 
wrong direction here imo: give this unit to all civs then adjust it, will help soften up cities and eliminate the slog that seige can become. I don't understand how making assyria into an odd duck, unlike any other civ with a forever-uu and all kinds of special restrictions as are being discussed, is an improvement. voted nay.

i'd go with a non-uu unit line that starts with battering ram > seige tower > sapper, maybe merging with the existing siege line afterwards. Assyria can have some kind of infantry or cavalry unit as UU
 
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wrong direction here imo: give this unit to all civs then adjust it, will help soften up cities and eliminate the slog that seige can become. I don't understand how making assyria into an odd duck, unlike any other civ with a forever-uu and all kinds of special restrictions as are being discussed, is an improvement. voted nay.

i'd go with a non-uu unit line that starts with battering ram > seige tower > sapper, maybe merging with the existing siege line afterwards. Assyria can have some kind of infantry or cavalry unit as UU
That's also a cool idea. Civ6 have an entire unit support type. Then Assyria should get sth in return.
 
i'd go with a non-uu unit line that starts with battering ram > seige tower > sapper, maybe merging with the existing siege line afterwards. Assyria can have some kind of infantry or cavalry unit as UU
Or give all civs a battering Ram base unit and make the siege tower a unique battering Ram. The battering Ram is just hanging out as a CS unit anyways.

I don't necessarily think that's a great way to go. An entirely new siege melee unit class would need a lot more work to fully support, and you would mainly be doing it as justification for a UU replacement, and not out of a genuine need for such a unit in the combat meta. It's not a worthwhile addition.

I don't have a problem with Assyria having a unique combat support unit class as its UU. I understand what this proposal is doing, but it's not a real solution, just a patch job. It's as though there is a hole in our roof, and instead of suggesting we fix the roof, this proposal is to put a bucket on the floor. We're just going to be back here next round.
 
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Or give all civs a battering Ram base unit and make the siege tower a unique battering Ram. The battering Ram is just hanging out as a CS unit anyways.

I don't necessarily think that's a great way to go. An entirely new siege melee unit class would need a lot more work to fully support, and you would mainly be doing it as justification for a UU replacement, and not out of a genuine need for such a unit in the combat meta. It's not a worthwhile addition.
I actually really love this idea, at least on first glance, assuming balanced numbers can be ironed out etc.

Ancient warfare was a much different beast than even the classical era, if we are to believe some of the histories available. We have this somewhat represented in VP, there are war elephants available as an alternative to the more standard horsemen, and there's a time chariots sort of co-exist with skirmishers iirc (I don't tend to use mounted units this early personally, maybe i am misremembering this).

Having a 'melee siege unit', or 'siege support unit', available in the early-game only and later folding into the main siege line, could be a nice addition, and would probably be less to worry about than the 3-unit-line i proposed previously. Is it a better fit as modmod, or congress proposal?
 
The reason is simple: Assyria's UU was originally discussed to be reworked as an unique Great General, just like the Khan, but, at the same time, people wanted each civilization's UU to cover a different unit (i.e. no two unique GGs). The solution was to make it a standalone unit that acts as a pseudo GG instead; it wouldn't be a Great General in name, but it would behave like one.
I see
In that case, a better proposal is to make Siege Tower indeed a unique Great General. Civs having uniques replacing the same unit is certainly not something people take issue with at this time (for example, there are three? unique Swordsman units).
 
I see
In that case, a better proposal is to make Siege Tower indeed a unique Great General. Civs having uniques replacing the same unit is certainly not something people take issue with at this time (for example, there are three? unique Swordsman units).
I suspect people still want to keep UUs on distinct unit types whenever possible. I remember some modmod discussions where people weren't found of another unique GG, since so many modmod civs have one in some form. 34UC adds two (Carthage' Suffet and Zulu's InDuna), JFD Meiji Japan's originally had another (Daimyo) that HungryForFood replaced with a naval unit, and I'm sure they're not the only ones.

Yes, multiple units of the same type do exist, especially for Ancient Era and Medieval. Partially due to how many civs the game has that are iconically represented in these eras. We actually could have more UUs on later eras, but some of the vanilla ones were reworked (e.g. Pracinha into Bandeirantes), or turned into ideology units (Zero and B17). There's a bias to bring UUs into earlier eras, I think, in part due to how powerful late UUs have to be in order to compensate for the long delay.

For Assyria, the problem for the UU being an actual GG is in how do you keep the UU's timing intact. Right now, you can storm a city before walls with a Siege Tower and a few Spearman for very quick gains, and it is very thematic with how Assyria historically had three early centuries of expansion thanks to their innovative siege towers. An unique GG can't pull that off outside adding some new ability to the civ, like "free GG on Military Strategy"; exciting as it may seem, I suspect that's not a good idea.

I don't understand how making assyria into an odd duck, unlike any other civ
Assyria is an odd duck since BNW. The original Siege Tower was a Catapult replacement, trading range for a higher (melee) CS and a GG-like aura (similar to the current Sapper, stronger even) that didn't apply to itself. Nobody is making Assyria an odd duck, we're embracing that they are. :)

And on that, why exactly do people want to make Assyria behave like everyone else in the first place? Their UU is meant to be very distinct since its origins, I don't see why to standardize it with other civs' UUs. They're clearly meant to be an eccentric civ.
 
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Even if you made a unique siege melee unit or made the battering Ram a base unit that does the sapper thing, you would still need to make its ability deactivate/obsolete somehow, or else you would just be reproducing the same problem for everyone.

The two ways forward I see are for siege towers to morph into a new unit model and never obsolete, just so they don’t look weird, or have their sapper ability turn off at gunpowder. I favor the latter, because UUs being a civ bonus that obsoletes is kind of the point of UUs. They have a window of effectiveness, and that’s built into most of them.
 
or have their sapper ability turn off at gunpowder. I favor the latter, because UUs being a civ bonus that obsoletes is kind of the point of UUs. They have a window of effectiveness, and that’s built into most of them.
this would happen when the sapper owner discovers gunpowder? or are we referring to the opponent it faces?

makes sense, feels a little imperfect, but maybe this is the only way after all.

alternatively to disabling the ability, could just make them really easy to kill at some point, ensure they become 1-shots to all ranged and city attacks etc. might be fun to hunt these down rather than have them just fizzle out
 
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