Anti-Cav and ZOC

[nzcamel]

People complain that anti-cavalry units in Civ 6 aren't much good. I wonder if allowing their Zone Of Control apply to cavalry, would change that enough to be worth doing?

 

[GunsGermsandSteel]

Personally I would just like to see Spearmen and Pikemen cost less in general so they could be more spammable.

 

[OmegaDestroyer]

I think anti-cav should absolutely be able to lock down cavalry.

 

[oSiyeza]

Personally I would just like to see Spearmen and Pikemen cost less in general so they could be more spammable.

Why no both?

 

[MrRadar]

I just don't see the justification for this, it is not that spearmen can run almost as fast as horses and chase them around interdicting their movement in the vicinity. The whole point is for them to dig their feet into the ground and form a wall of pointy sticks to defeat a charge.

But yes, either make them cheaper, or slightly increase their combat strenght.

 

[fy00sh]

The whole point is for them to dig their feet into the ground and form a wall of pointy sticks to defeat a charge.

TBH this is why I think anticav should apply ZOC to cavalry units. It's harder for them to serve the purpose of a stubborn wall when cavalry can just run right past them, yknow?

That being said, I do think that making them more spammable would also be a potential fix, cos if you have enough of them theres no cracks for cavalry to slip thru in the first place... but i dont like the idea of solving the problem with even more uits to micromanag

 

[Sostratus]

AC suffer from a lot of things, but the mobility of cavalry probably isn’t one of them. AC are a defensive counter to cavalry.

If they were also an offensive counter, there would be no point in mounted units. The mounted units have a mobility advantage but they need to be careful not to end a turn next to any AC, lest they get shredded. So AC can “control the field” by limiting how cav can use mobility in the first place.

 

[MrRadar]

TBH this is why I think anticav should apply ZOC to cavalry units. It's harder for them to serve the purpose of a stubborn wall when cavalry can just run right past them, yknow?

But that’s exactly what cavalry does - it runs past and looks for a breach or a flank or a way to get behind to exploit and charge into a weak spot, and then rout the enemy or be off and far away before opposition can react. You want to defend against it, place enough spears. A long wall of spears between some natural obstacles or at least between your own cavalry.

 

[fy00sh]

Yeah actually thinking about it longer I think anticav having ZOC against cav would probably be too much of an overcorrection, like MrRadar said it'd take away too much from cavalry's niche. I guess I'd vote for lower production cost as the better solution then

 

[acluewithout]

AC suffer from a lot of things, but the mobility of cavalry probably isn’t one of them. AC are a defensive counter to cavalry.

If they were also an offensive counter, there would be no point in mounted units. The mounted units have a mobility advantage but they need to be careful not to end a turn next to any AC, lest they get shredded. So AC can “control the field” by limiting how cav can use mobility in the first place.

What he said.

Giving AC ZOC over Cav is a terrible idea. I know a lot of people ask for it, but it’s just the wrong approach. Indeed, Cav are actually pretty balanced these days. Fast and punchy, but require resources, can’t tackle walls, don’t benefit from eg Oligarchy, and promotions are well balanced. AC have many problems, but are actually quite effective defending against Cav all considered. So, ZOC isn’t needed to nerf Cav or to buff AC.

That said, AC do need a buff because they currently don’t compare well to either Melee or Ranged. AC, like Melee, are designed to be both Defensive and Offensive, with AC seemingly intended to be overall slightly better at defence and worse at offence than Melee. But currently they are just worse or roughly equal to Melee on Defence (except v Cav), and just terrible on Offence because of their ranged weakness and on average lower CS. AC and Ranged are also both meant to be “cheap no resource units”, but currently ranged are just the much better cheap no resource unit v AC, so AC don’t have a use case their either.

Personally, if FXS were going to buff AC, I’d want to see three things.

• Bring AC’s power level up to the default power level for units if that Era.
  
  
• Make AC cheaper (but in a way that’s interesting). As I’ve said, AC are designed to be the “cheap and no resource” combat option. I’d like FXS to lean into that more by having certain infrastructure that boost AC production. Personally, I’ve been playing around with Medieval and Renaissance Walls giving +% production bonuses for AC and Seige (which helps buffing Walls as well), but you also have bonuses from Encampment Buildings or additional Policy Cards or Governors etc. I think linking AC production bonuses to infrastructure or something similar is better than a flat production discount, because it requires more planning and rewards developing infrastructure.

• Rework AC promotions. AC should have a promotion that defends v ranged, so they don’t get chewed up by ranged (and so do have at least some offensive value) and to help nerf ranged a bit more overall. AC should also maybe lose the +1 movement promotion, given Melee have such a better version of the same thing making the AC version underwhelming and not unique.

 

[Aurelesk]

With the gimmicky attribute of the Mandekalu Cavalry and the Bireme about preventing Trader from being plundered, I am almost wishing for the Anti-Cavalry to prevent tiles in his zone of control from being pillaged. This could be a huge, even a broken mechanic if it allows a City-Center to have his 6 adjacent tiles to be immune to pillage if there is a Anti-cavalry unit inside it. But if it helps to prevent an overewarding play to face some slight inconvenience, I am all for it if it is balanced.

The Anti-cavalry isn't that bad (even it is kind of is). It is just a defense option with limited use. Currently, early production of units and upgrade them is the way to go because the early units have the best power/price ratio and upgading cost by gold is way cheaper than producing later era units, even with the Production cards (that you need to unlock anyway). There is no need to pre-produce anti-cavalry units because it is a waste of Production and Gold that can't be compensated with war spoil (pillage, cities... because that unit is bad at it so it is better to go the Melee / Heavy Cavalry route) and if you need the Anti-Cavalry against a Cavalry invasion, then you can't produce them in time before some cities fall because the production cost is too high.

I don't know why, but power/price drop significantly in the medieval age (about -25%), with production cards harder to grab (you want a Pikeman? you better rush Feudalism!), and you can't really counter a steamrolling civilization that can self-fund his army with Pillage with a cheap upgrade cost. So producing unit in medieval for defense make you face -25% power/price while the invader have a discount upgrade; you can't compete! Being a good early warmonger with little casualty is overrewarding.

To counter this, the power of units shouldn't be that powerful in classical age (more smooth transition: Swordsman are beast), overal production cost of all unit should be way lower from classical to atomic era, but gold cost for upgrade should rise to match at least 80% of the production difference (and not 40% as we currently have, dropping to 20% with the card).

 

[Sostratus]

I don't know why, but power/price drop significantly in the medieval age

I just want to point out that there is no longer any case in the game where a unit of a given class is not more production efficient that the unit that came before it. Including uniques.

However, yes, the surge of early game production costs outstrips city production growth between those two eras, and unit upgrading is extremely cheap.

 

[Aurelesk]

I just want to point out that there is no longer any case in the game where a unit of a given class is not more production efficient that the unit that came before it. Including uniques.

Are you sure about that? Starting from the medieval era units, I do feel the price/power rise back. The only exception might be the Infantry. Here an irrelevant chart done with MSPaint with neither a context nor an explanation. Let's call it the "it is my feeling" chart:


I am probably wrong, as I am not a warmonger myself. But I would like to know more about your point of view. Mine is not defintive (just a "feeling", not even an opinion yet).

 

[Sostratus]

But I would like to know more about your point of view.

Keep in mind I am referring to unit upgrade lines, as in unlocking a new unit is always worthwhile to build them instead of the old one on a production basis. (On a gold basis this isn't necessarily true, and obviously is subject to strategic resource constraints.)
To borrow from myself in a very old post:

Okay, so, that's how unit strengths stack up. But these units also cost production, which certainly comes into play. Let's dig into that now.

I'm repeating what I did in this post . Read it to understand methodology. The gist is that given strength & cost, two units can be compared to determine how efficient an upgraded unit is over its precursor. The important point about strength is that in combat, +X strength means both +Y damage dealt and 1/Y less damage received. So strength confers advantages on two sides of the coin- hence a unit that had +17 strength does double damage and takes half, resulting in 4x the combat effectiveness. "+17 strength, you say? That's what an Army formation gets, but it only costs 3 units for the power of 4?!" Exactly- that's why Zulu is OP and military academies are extremely powerful production structures.

Anyways, let's go back into the land unit lines:



All unique units are compared to their predecessor, but in all cases except the khevsur, the next base unit is compared to the earlier base unit. E.g, tanks are compared to knights and not rough riders.

Note that the "efficiency" is always greater than 1. What this number captures is the idea that if you sent out a large number of unit X and a large, production equivalent mob of unit Y, Y will win if the upgrade from x->y has an efficiency greater than 1.
Pikes happen to be weak units, yes. But they do their job better than spears do even accounting for a nearly 3x cost.
it is 100% true that the medieval era sees the least effective upgrades in the game. But those upgrades are still worthwhile - the actual power you get for cost is still rising all game.

 

[acluewithout]

One thing that impacts the balance between hard building units v upgrades is the lack of unit maintenance costs or limits on how many units you can build.

You can basically build all the units you need in the early game, particularly Melee and Heavy Cav that don’t even have resource costs and minimal or no maintenance.

If unit maintenance hurt more, and or you had a soft or hard limit to how many units you could have that increased over time (initially low but then getting bigger over time)[0], then you’d be disincentivized from (or unable to) build too many units early and then just upgrade them when you need them. You’d instead have to build units as you go along and could over time afford more units or had room for them.

Based on the early China NFP screenshots, it looks like we might get a military focused DLC. So, perhaps we’ll see some mechanics that improve all this stuff, or at least give AC a bit more reason to exist.

[0] The sort of thing I mean is some sort of soft “force” limit type mechanic, where eg your empire’s total population limited how much military you could have. Encampment Buildings, Alliances and Government Tier could maybe increase that number. Unhappiness, disloyalty and or war weariness might reduce it. Some units use up more of your limit, some less (eg maybe AC use up less of your limit). And if you went over the limit, you’d be okay, but maintenance costs would jack up substantially. You could also maybe give the AI a higher limit based on difficulty too.