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

[CivChimp]

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...

 

[Aurelesk]

Modern Armor are not cheaper than Mechanized Infantry. There are respectively at 680 vs 650 Production. I know, this is not gigantic, but this is something.

Here all the units strength and abilities:

Modern era:
Tank: 85 CS, 4 MP, 480 Production, needs Oil, +1 MP (open terrain), ignore ZoC.
Infantry: 75 CS, 2 MP, 430 Production, needs Oil, +5 CS (anticavalry).
AT-Crew: 75 CS, 2 MP, 400 Production, +10 CS (cavalry).

Information era:
Modern Armor: 95 CS, 4 MP, 680 Production, needs Oil, +1 MP (open terrain), ignore ZoC.
Mechanized Infantry: 85 CS, 3 MP, 650 Production, needs Oil, +5 CS (anticavalry).
Modern AT: 85 CS, 3 MP, 580 Production, +10 CS (cavalry).

I believe they went a "cheaper but worst" design for Anticavalry, and a "stronger but costly" design for Heavy Cavalry. Melee units being the normal one. But I agree: Modern Armor are far more mobile and powerful. Heavy Cavalry are matched by Anticavalry, while being 10 CS weaker against everything else like Ranged units. I believe that Heavy Cavalry are too strong by 5 CS.


I would love to see a change about Oil. It would be no longer needed as Strategic Cost, but only for Strategic Maintenance. Furthermore, the Strategic Maintenance would apply only if the unit has attacked, defended or moved during the turn. You could pre-produce a ton of unit and park them, so you will have a standing army without polluting the Earth with Oil consumption. You could wake that Army and rely on your Oil stock to attack your neighborhood in some Blitzkrieg fashion before you run out of it.
I would go even further: split the units into 2 categories:

• Vehicle: They use Oil as Strategic Maintenance. If you run out of Oil, they end up at 1 Movement and a -10 CS penalty.
• Non-Vehicle: They do not use Oil as Strategic Maintenance. Starting a Technology or a Civic (Combustion?), all your non-vehicule units unlock an ability: "Motorization". This ability can be activated at any moment and would take effect next turn until you deactivate it.
  • Motorization: +2 Movement. This unit now consume 1 Oil per turn. If you do not have Oil left, the Motorization ability deactivate automatically.

 

[Buktu]

Modern Armor are not cheaper than Mechanized Infantry.

@CivChimp compared Mech Inf to Tanks not modern armor though.

I would love to see a change about Oil. It would be no longer needed as Strategic Cost, but only for Strategic Maintenance. Furthermore, the Strategic Maintenance would apply only if the unit has attacked, defended or moved during the turn. You could pre-produce a ton of unit and park them, so you will have a standing army without polluting the Earth with Oil consumption. You could wake that Army and rely on your Oil stock to attack your neighborhood in some Blitzkrieg fashion before you run out of it.
I would go even further: split the units into 2 categories:

• Vehicle: They use Oil as Strategic Maintenance. If you run out of Oil, they end up at 1 Movement and a -10 CS penalty.
• Non-Vehicle: They do not use Oil as Strategic Maintenance. Starting a Technology or a Civic (Combustion?), all your non-vehicule units unlock an ability: "Motorization". This ability can be activated at any moment and would take effect next turn until you deactivate it.
  • Motorization: +2 Movement. This unit now consume 1 Oil per turn. If you do not have Oil left, the Motorization ability deactivate automatically.

This is really interesting. You could also add in railroads into this. Units using these would not use oil at all but need coal or power to move that turn.

Another option to make melee more interesting in the late game is to lower/remove their penalty against urban defence (this would maybe also help the ai in later wars). Tanks should suffer in small streets while infantry should have a bonus there imo.

 

[CivChimp]

Good to hear that I'm not the only one who thinks Heavy Cav is OP in the late game

On your point:

Modern Armor are not cheaper than Mechanized Infantry. There are respectively at 680 vs 650 Production. I know, this is not gigantic, but this is something.

I wasn't comparing Modern Armor to Mech. Inf, I was comparing the Tank, in other words:

Modern era:
Tank: 85 CS, 4 MP, 480 Production, needs Oil, +1 MP (open terrain), ignore ZoC.

versus

Mechanized Infantry: 85 CS, 3 MP, 650 Production, needs Oil, +5 CS (anticavalry).

Even in this comparison a Heavy Cav unit from 2 eras back in many ways outperforms a Melee...


I do like your idea of strategic maintenance- if facing low/falling oil stockpiles having to decide how much you want to move your units would definitely add to the depth of combat gameplay.

 

[Uberfrog]

Oil requirement for Infantry makes no sense. There are far too many units competing for oil resources, and as OP has shown, the requirement makes melee units in the modern era and beyond strictly worse than tanks or modern armour.

 

[CivChimp]

Another option to make melee more interesting in the late game is to lower/remove their penalty against urban defence (this would maybe also help the ai in later wars). Tanks should suffer in small streets while infantry should have a bonus there imo.

Agreed, if there were more scenarios where melee outperformed heavy cav it wouldn't be as bad in terms of balance but currently there is literally 1 use case where melee is better than heavy cav and that is fighting anti-cav.

Oil requirement for Infantry makes no sense. There are far too many units competing for oil resources

I can kind of see why the would want to add a strategic resource requirement - having a unit which is stronger than units from prior eras and doesn't have a resource requirement can make it a bit spammable but I'm not sure if Infantry did get overused in games prior to GS. As you said, there are too many other units competing for the same resource which are arguably more consequential to the game - both tanks and artillery would be higher on my priority list and that's not mentioning some of the naval and early air units which also need it.


In terms of general unit balance I would also say that Mech. Infantry is even more broken than Infantry:
At least infantry is stronger than units from Industrial Era so I could see some niche scenarios where I could see getting it first, for example:

Struggling to hold off another Industrial-age Civ attacking me and urgently needing a tanky unit where I can't wait for additional turns to develop the tank (assuming I already have oil or can buy it). Grande Armee card can make it worthwhile with being able to produce Corps at 50% discount.

But for mechanised infantry things do look worse:

• Lightning Warfare card which boost production for Cav comes before Military First
• There is an earlier era unit (tank) which is just as strong in most cases but is also cheaper

 

[slavaskii]

Oil requirement for Infantry makes no sense. There are far too many units competing for oil resources, and as OP has shown, the requirement makes melee units in the modern era and beyond strictly worse than tanks or modern armour.

Yes, I have no idea why this was done either. In Civ V, it made sense to mass-produce infantry if you were low on oil. It actually was quite realistic, like think of how the Soviet Union mobilized millions of men to face the German onslaught. Did those men need oil to defend their homeland? No, that was for the tanks and planes, and it was for this reason that securing the oil fields was so important.

In fact, the oil mechanic for infantry in Civ VI is so ridiculous that I'm always producing AT crews instead. If you're focusing on the top half of the tech tree (which is reasonable for science victory), you're not going to discover oil until late, making flight absolutely useless and AT crews your only rational option. If I had to redo it, I'd throw infantry on the top of the tech tree and remove the oil requirement outright. That would be a huge buff to them and fill a tremendous void.

 

[Vargas1]

The only rationale I can think of is that the promotions for melee are uniformly better than the promotions for heavy cav. Going down either path for melee will give you overall better promotions than any path for heavy cav. That being said, I don't think it makes up for the benefit of greater mobility and avoiding ZOC.

 

[CivChimp]

promotions for melee are uniformly better than the promotions for heavy cav. Going down either path for melee will give you overall better promotions than any path for heavy cav.

I would agree to that in scenarios where melee and heavy cav. are of comparable combat strength but late game combat strength difference of 10 easily offsets any of it.
+7 for Battlecry for attacking melee or ranged units? Yes, but heavy cav. already has +10 on top of melee base strength
+10 for Tortoise to defend against ranged attacks? At best that brings it on par with heavy cav. base CS when defending but L1 Barding promotion adds another +7...
Commando adds +1 movement but HC already has +2 movement points and ZOC benefit.
Amphibious - removes +5 defence modifier but again, base difference is such that a HC attacking across the river is still better off

You can see where I'm going with this - heavy cav. is better at anything that is not to do with fighting anti-cav.
On top of that its worth mentioning that HC's higher mobility and ZOC advantage means they are more likely to survive to take advantage of later promotions...

 

[Pietato]

They need to double the available oil, then make Tanks and Modern Armour consume 3 a turn.

Also a rebalance of gold maintenance is needed. Modern Armour and Modern AT costing the same amount of GPT? Ridiculous.

 

[GinandTonic]

Melee tends to be the legacy unit with the most promotions. Since they become less relevant later in the game it's a good idea to combine them into corps and double up on their promotions. I've never had an all promotions heavy cav, but I've had a bunch of all promotions melee.

 

[Smity2k1]

Melee tends to be the legacy unit with the most promotions. Since they become less relevant later in the game it's a good idea to combine them into corps and double up on their promotions. I've never had an all promotions heavy cav, but I've had a bunch of all promotions melee.

I wonder - should units gain passive experience every turn? Could make the late game more interesting.

 

[Buktu]

I wonder - should units gain passive experience every turn? Could make the late game more interesting.

They could gain experience if they are in or next to an Encampment. Every other friendly unit in/around the encampment plus every building in the district increases the ammount of exp both units get. This way encampents get a little buff as well.

 

[MarigoldRan]

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

 

[Pietato]

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

 

[CivChimp]

Melee tends to be the legacy unit with the most promotions. Since they become less relevant later in the game it's a good idea to combine them into corps and double up on their promotions. I've never had an all promotions heavy cav, but I've had a bunch of all promotions melee.

That's the main reason I have any melee in late game armies - mostly a carryover from the earlier eras. Having said that, I do often find myself producing/upgrading to tanks and artillery while still having musketmen (and line infantry post April release) and only upgrading melee units once I have a surplus of oil.

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

I do get the impression that devs wanted to abandon balancing cav/melee/anti-cav/ranged in favour of late game being about air units/nukes and just having a land unit (aka tank/heavy armor) for taking cities. I do like the idea of the nature of combat changing throughout eras but there is a drawback that it affects unit line in earlier eras: for example I'm very unlikely to produce line infantry in Industrial era as I know that their unit line becomes mostly irrelevant in the following eras (granted, there are other reasons to favour cuirassier on to of that such as tech tree positioning and strategic resource usage).

They need to double the available oil, then make Tanks and Modern Armour consume 3 a turn.

I would favour minor changes specific to units involved (buffing infantry by removing oil dependency/debuffing tank/modern armor by bringing it down a bit). I do like the idea of having a limited valuable resource (aka oil) and having to make a choice how to best spend it. The problem is, currently it's not really a choice when one option is better than the other across the board.

I wonder - should units gain passive experience every turn? Could make the late game more interesting.

This would end up rewarding players for just having units and not doing anything with them. I would prefer the current approach where you're rewarded for using the unit and keeping it alive.

 

[jasper]

Whats wrong with it?

If you have oil to spend and they are making anti cav then make infantry.

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.

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.

 

[Evie]

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.

Arguably, the problem is that heavy cav, at least after the heavy chariot, should require two resources (horse/iron for knights, horse/niter for cuirassier, oil and...something (coal I think, to represent steel production) then oil/aluminium), not one, to make it even more prohibitive to maintain in large amounts, but I don't know if the game can handle that.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Whats wrong with it?

If you have oil to spend and they are making anti cav then make infantry.

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.

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.

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?
Also, the requirement is a Fantasy element, and a completely unneccessary one: Taking World War Two and the immediate aftermath (1935 to 1955, roughly) as the relevant equivalent period to Tanks and Infantry, only the USA and Great Britain had completely motorized infantry forces: everybody else used horse-drawn transport for most of their infantry/rifle divisions (German, Italian and Japanese as well as Soviet armies) and even when infantry divisions were motorized, as in the German Army for a tiny fraction of all their infantry, those divisions required less than half the fuel that a panzer division did (in 1941, 220 cubic meters/fill versus 100 cubic meters). Infantry should be the Default unit, which it was in all 'modern' armies ever since before the Napoleonic Wars.

On the other hand, assuming that Contemporary Warfare is all about air power is exactly right, but only if increasing amounts of 'air power' - drones, cruise missiles, satellite comm and recon - are available directly to the ground units. Since Vietnam, the smallest infantry/armor unit could potentially communicate directly with other military assets half a world away, and today an infantry company (well below in-game unit sizes in the Atomic or Information Eras) can be supported by armed drones, aerial reconnaissance vehicles, and satellite communications and recon assets. That is the current and future military trend, not Giant Death Robots.

Finally, 1UPT adds lots of fun tactical interactions that weren't available in the previous Civ Stacks of Doom, but are far, far better represented and modeled in Humankind's tactical battle layout. 1UPT results in battles that are ridiculously out of time and distance scale in the game: beating a single Barbarian Sparman can take 160 years in the Ancient Era, and a battle involving 5 - 8 units on a side can stretch from city to city, whereas all that on a well-designed Tactical Battlefield layout can be done in one turn, on one tile.

 

[Linklite]

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.

Arguably, the problem is that heavy cav, at least after the heavy chariot, should require two resources (horse/iron for knights, horse/niter for cuirassier, oil and...something (coal I think, to represent steel production) then oil/aluminium), not one, to make it even more prohibitive to maintain in large amounts, but I don't know if the game can handle that.

The problem isn't the resource requirement to build, it's the maintenance. No other melee unit requires strategic maintenance, and oil isn't particularly common. If it were just 1 oil to build, I'd be fine with it. The fact that I have to support infantry, cavalry, ships and power stations from oil which can only support three units per source...that's burdensome. I generally just skip that era and just wait for GDRs instead. Still has strategic maintenance, but one unit does everything and it only shares resources with power stations, if I build them.