[GS] April Patch Late Game Land Unit Balance: Why Buff Tank & Modern Armor?

[Evie]

False. Mech Infantry also requires oil, and is also maintenance based (very logically in that case)

All late game resources (coal, oil, aluminum, uranium) are maintenance based. It has issues, but the problem is not an infantry or mech infantry issue. It's with the overall resource system.

 

[Linklite]

False. Mech Infantry also requires oil, and is also maintenance based (very logically in that case)

All late game resources (coal, oil, aluminum, uranium) are maintenance based. It has issues, but the problem is not an infantry or mech infantry issue. It's with the overall resource system.

What precisely did I say that was false? Yes, I was including mechanised infantry in with infantry because it's a chore to write out and it was implied anyway.

 

[Evie]

By that standard, no heavy cav unit except tanks require oil or maintenance. I'm just arbitrarily using "tank" to mean all kind of tanks rather than just the unit with that name.

Anyway, the point is, all modern resources use the maintenance system. Infantry are no exception, and skewing words to oaint them as one is silky.

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

Hi Forum,

While most of the discussions of the April update have been focused on Civ-specific changes, I wanted to ask about a particular change which left me scratching my head:
Why buff Tank (80->85) and Modern Armour (90->95)? Or let me paraphrase - why have such a big disparity (10 CS) between Melee and Heavy Cav? (as that was already there between Infrantry and Tank).

I'm talking from game balance standpoint as here we have 2 units which compete for the same strategic resource (oil) but one is superior to other in pretty much every way.

To illustrate the point we can compare a Modern Era Unit - Tank vs. an Information Era Unit - Mechanised Infantry. Even in this comparison tank is coming out on top the way I see it - it has the same CS, is available a lot earlier and is cheaper, has more Movement Points and on top of that Ignores ZOC. Pretty much the only time I would pick Melee units in Modern Era or later, when going to war, is if the opponent spams AT/Modern AT.

I'm not bothered about questions such as 'how things work in real world' but I think when a unit is superior than another, same era unit, at pretty much everything this makes the game less varied... Hence my question - am I missing/misunderstanding something about late game land units which would justify this disparity?

The way I would prefer it is for them not buffing Heavy Cav like they did or to remove strategic resource requirements from Melee cause currently it doesn't feel like Melee but rather Anti-Anti-Cav...

I'm not particularly happy with beefing up. Actually i have DIFFERENT idea and it lies in modding.
To the topic. The reasons why Tanks and Modern Armor are buffed (+5 strenghts) is because the inclusion of Line Infantry unit as Melee. F'xis team became less and less interested in Civ6 as we speak and they became less dedicated now. Actually they should work more on new unit classes. but if it's not their doctrine rightnow. there are reasons why Line Inf has a strenght of 70 rather than 60 or 62.....

To be able to fight Cavalry, and Cuirassiers 'on equal terms' without having to make a set of new tag classes and promo classes to fit with different warfare and different units and denying Antitank spears thing

This affects anything after that. Now every combat units past Line Inf are all have +5 strenghts so to make unit upgrades relevances.

 

[Linklite]

By that standard, no heavy cav unit except tanks require oil or maintenance. I'm just arbitrarily using "tank" to mean all kind of tanks rather than just the unit with that name.

Anyway, the point is, all modern resources use the maintenance system. Infantry are no exception, and skewing words to oaint them as one is silky.

Except, as the entire point of this thread points out, cavalry outclasses infantry. I'm fine with them giving the tanks a resource maintenance as a debuff so I have a reason to build infantry and not tanks. It also makes more sense in that infantry can get out and walk, tanks are stuck without oil. It's silly silly pretend what's being said is.without basis when the motivation has already been pointed out.

 

[jasper]

What's wrong with it in a word: Bad Design.

First, because we can compare Oil Cav with Oil Infantry: the 'cav' is a better unit with regard to mobility and combat factor for the same resource. Guess which one will not be built by anyone watching his Resource requirements?

Like i said, id be very curious to see actual results in fights beyond 1v1 oil cav vs oil infantry.

If the enemy army composition is 50 50 ranged and anti cav are you still going to produce heavy cav?

 

[Linklite]

Like i said, id be very curious to see actual results in fights beyond 1v1 oil cav vs oil infantry.

If the enemy army composition is 50 50 ranged and anti cav are you still going to produce heavy cav?

Personally, unless they're going nuts with anti cav, I'd always go for tanks. They're cheaper, faster to manoeuvre and they can be easily withdrawn so I can cycle without a problem if I need to. I generally just use legacy infantry for garrison duty. Generally throughout the game, if I have access to horses I'll use cavalry over infantry. It's just that in the final few eras it becomes a pretty hard rule that I won't use infantry. Cavalry is just much more efficient - with roads, cavalry can cover much more territory than infantry, so I need fewer of them.

 

[CivChimp]

Im not saying they cant give infantry a little something. But you cant just compare oil cav with oil infantry. Oil cav still have their role to play so any boost could reasonably help them fulfill it You cant deny a boost to oil cav just because its unfair to oil inf. Civ6 has a rock paper scissor relationship so you have to consider that whole.

Yes, you can compare them, in this game melee and heavy cav fill very similar roles. Rock-paper-scissors relations is skewed in favour of heavy cav in the late game. If we take Modern Era:
AT Crew: 75 strength
Infantry: 75 strength
Tank: 85 strength

Tank fights anti-cav on equal terms and smashes the infantry. But aside from matching AT Crew in strength it carries a massive advantage in mobility.
This relationship is balanced better in some other eras: post April patch the medieval era has anti-cav +5 over heavy cav, heavy cav +5 over melee and melee +5 over anti-cav.

A better comparison might be anti cav + oil inf verses oil cav + archer. That would still be pretty tough since 1upt adds a lot of fun geographical factors that complainers dont include.

I don't see this as much of a comparison: tank & ranged combination will wipe out anti-cav and infantry. If you check out multiplayer games you'll see that late game land warfare (starting from Industrial Era) consists of a swarms of heavy cav+ranged+siege, there is a reason for that.

All melee line units require a resource after the warrior (iron for sword and man at arms, niter for musketeer and line infantry, oil for infantry and mech infantry). It seems to be a deliberate design choice - they heaviest infantry unit require a resource, where the anticav, ranged and scout line don't. Oil may not be ideal for infantry, but limiting the number of infantry you can have via resource seems to be deliberate design, so another resource would probably need found instead.

Agreed and I don't have a problem with the design choice: developers have deliberately set it up in a way that you need strategic resources to conduct offensive warfare.

To the topic. The reasons why Tanks and Modern Armor are buffed (+5 strenghts) is because the inclusion of Line Infantry unit as Melee. F'xis team became less and less interested in Civ6 as we speak and they became less dedicated now. Actually they should work more on new unit classes. but if it's not their doctrine rightnow. there are reasons why Line Inf has a strenght of 70 rather than 60 or 62.....

How does inclusion of Line Infantry justify buffing heavy cav? Pre-April patch tank was 80, line infantry is 65 (not 70) and was already overshadowed by its heavy cavalry counterpart. Addition of line infantry merely meant that the melee line could at least stay relevant in industrial age...

If the enemy army composition is 50 50 ranged and anti cav are you still going to produce heavy cav?

I never said that one needs to exclusively stick to heavy cav. Heavy cav + ranged is my default composition and if we pitch that against anti-cav + ranged it will be a one sided affair.
As @Linklite said in his post above - there may be some niche scenarios like opponent going too heavy on anti-cav where you may want some infantry but as a general rule cav is straight up better in the late game

 

[Pietato]

Helicopters also suck and use up a critical resource.

And then we have the scout line, which dies from being sneezed at.

 

[CivChimp]

Helicopters also suck and use up a critical resource.

Agreed, I haven't used the helicopters all that much due to fighters/bombers being higher on my aluminium priority list. They did receive a slight boost in CS in the April patch, I'll need to see if it makes makes their case more compelling...

And then we have the scout line, which dies from being sneezed at.

Indeed. The main reason I've brought the melee/heavy cav balance up is that they've made some changes which improve the balance (increasing infantry and AT CS by 5 etc.) but then offset some of it by further boosting heavy cav and I was trying to understand if there was a particular reason for it which I wasn't seeing.
But yes, totally agree with you, there are other cases such as you've mentioned and tbh I'm not sure what they need to do to make late game scout viable/worthwhile. I do remember seeing an interesting suggestion that they could provide a CS boost to nearby units similar to diplomatic visibility boost.

 

[Kotofei]

It doesn't matter. Late game is all about air. Then nukes and Death Robots.

This. By the time you get Modern Armor, bombers/jet bombers/rocket artillery should be doing all the work anyway. And like the bro above me said, just go get some uranium and a GDR.

And the maintenance cost is "realistic." Modern armies consume stupid amounts of resources in general.

 

[Sostratus]

It’s sad to see. I had done many computations in 2019 on what the units should be at- I think in almost all cases except the tank and modern armor they were relatively on the nose.

There was no reason to make changes to infantry and AT crew if they just bumped up tanks too. I promise you, +5CS is more than sufficient for heavy cavalry. Anyone who’s ever used a Roman legion knows that.

They were so close to perfection...

The only other one I think they goofed on was how missile cruisers and nuclear subs ended up.

 

[CivChimp]

And the maintenance cost is "realistic." Modern armies consume stupid amounts of resources in general.

No complaints about strategic unit cost per se, my issue is that an unit lacks in value relative to the cost. My motivation for removing the resource requirement/or buffing the unit was purely gameplay based and not to do with realism.

There was no reason to make changes to infantry and AT crew if they just bumped up tanks too. I promise you, +5CS is more than sufficient for heavy cavalry. Anyone who’s ever used a Roman legion knows that.

I think the only benefit from doing this is that it widens the gap between Infantry & AT vs. previous era units. This helped AT in particular who doesn't have any good promotions (at least not the early ones, can't remember if their L3 terrain-based promotion helps in that regard) to boost ranged defence and fell easy prey to field cannons pre patch.