Archer Promotions

[LaminarFlow]

Archers are a little funky in this game since they start as a ranged unit but eventually upgrade to a melee unit. The attack promotions for archers (barrage and accuracy) are for ranged strength. When they switch from ranged to melee they keep their previous promotions but does it actually help them in combat? I don't think it does and that's kinda weak.

If you have a highly upgraded archer what promotions do you usually give them? In the last game I played I gave a couple of them indirect fire which lets them shoot over obsticles. It was nice because the area I was fighting in was heavily forrested. Then again, its kind of a wasted promotion since shortly after that I teched Rifling. They are a powerful class of units but since they change to melee it inhibits some of their abilities in the late game in my opinion. I found I wasn't upgrading some of crossbowman because it was more beneficial to keep them as a ranged unit. I think logistics is a lot more powerful on a ranged unit since it doesn't lose hit points when it attacks.

 

[aimlessgun]

Yeah, I tend not to upgrade xbows at all. A highly promoted xbow is still deadly vs Rifles and useful vs Infantry, and then by the time Mech Inf come around I just disband the unit, since it is so highly promoted it won't gain many, if any, melee promotions.

 

[Misterboy]

It seems this would be a pretty easy fix for the devs, one way or the other. There have been multiple solutions to this presented on the forums.

Makes you wonder if the devs just don't consider this a problem. Personally I think it's a pretty crappy situation.

 

[The Judgemental]

Agreed i would have thought that i would be done in a patch by now..

The question is should they turn into artillery or rifleman (with ranged promotions converting to the melee ones)
Historically archer, xbows, javelins or slingers were always considered infantry just light infantry

 

[kamex]

I'd suggest upgrading them to Cannons to keep the promotion tree well oiled.

I've noticed that Barrage and Drill are interchangeable... always have been. Can be checked with the combat odds. Things like extra range and indirect fire are useless however.

 

[Raethwyn]

I will promote my archers/crossbows with half of them having all open terrain and half having all rough terrain bonuses, but I never upgrade them to rifles. I agree that Logistics is extremely powerful and that it extends the life of the units so it's my goal to get there if I can. After I research Rifling, if I have the Honor policy that gives 1 2 for garrisoned units then I'll keep them around to put in cities until I can replace them with Artillery, at which point the crossbowmen will be disbanded.

I used to have many games in which I never built an archer or crossbowman but with their cost now reduced to match that of Warriors, they have become much more attractive for early defense/attack, often replacing one of my Warriors in the initial build order if I have the Archery tech. It would be nice if their ranged promotions converted to the appropriate melee promotions since, if I recall correctly, one of the features pointed out when Civ 5 was released was the fact that each of your units is important, and it would not be uncommon for your initial Warrior to survive throughout the entire game. Sadly this is not the case for early ranged units.

 

[Camikaze]

If you can get logistics for your archery units, then they'll remain useful for a longer period of time after they'd be otherwise obsolete. Even if they can only deal one damage with each attack, logistics will mean they can do two damage per turn, which is reasonable enough to keep them around. When you consider that you've got other promotions to get them to that stage, the damage done will often be higher.

 

[TheSorcerer]

Personally I think the best solution would be to introduce renaissance and industrial era upgrades for crossbowmen that stand in the spirit of infantry ranged combat. Mortar squads would fit nicely for the industrial era. However, I do not see anything that would suite that in the rennaisance era.

 

[Raethwyn]

This is slightly off topic, but when thinking back to some older Civ games I recalled that in one you could disband a unit within a city and be reimbursed a portion of the unit's original production cost, which would be applied to the current build project. I think it would be cool if you could do this, but the reimbursed production would only apply itself toward building Units and not Buildings. This could represent a retraining of personnel into a new combat role and would be an alternative to the gold you are reimbursed when disbanding units currently. Just an idea for consideration since we were discussing what to do with obsolete units.

 

[Strategist83]

I hadn't even contemplated the possibility of having archer units upgrade into siege units (Cannons) but now that I think about it I think it's actually a great idea. Not only is this really easy to implement for the developers (rather than introducing new units and whatnot) - it also would be good for balancing. Since everything else becomes Rifleman, Cannons tend to be what there is shortage of.

I don't think a modern ranged unit is necessarily a good idea - I somewhat like the concept of the entire 'nature of war' changing with the advent of rifles. Simply making archers become Cannons seems an elegant and easy solution.

 

[Silverfuturist]

With the new patch the Babylonian Bowman rush is so powerful, those Bowmen get upgraded into crossbows and by the time thet are "obsolete" the crossbows that survive have logistics, extra range and indirect fire... 2 hp off any enemy unit from 3 tiles away shooting over anything... those never become obsolete!

As for obsolete units, they make great cannon fodder. Just wheel them up to the closest battle and the enemy will waste attacks destroying them instead of taking hits off your better units.

Obsolete units can also make placeholders to give you a path in a "carpet of doom" CS scenario. I hate it when a CS gifts me a great person and it gets stuck between CS unit spam... I will send over obsolete units and wait for an opening, stick the obsolete unit in the CS tile to create a "bridge" for the great person to walk thru.

 

[flairin]

I've been thinking the same thing about the ranged promotions. Thinking about it, it seems as if the Incan slinger may have the best unique ability of avoiding melee attacks. Is there any similar promotion for ranged units?? I had played england several times and was just dominating with the extra range (+3) plus the promotion of logistics (extra shot).

The Incan unique ability isn't a promotion that can be earned I guess... so could have a crazy powerful crossbowman, more complete. I'm not seeing any cho ku's around with +3 shots... it could be feasible if their unique ability wasn't also a promotion since there is also mobility.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Personally I think the best solution would be to introduce renaissance and industrial era upgrades for crossbowmen that stand in the spirit of infantry ranged combat. Mortar squads would fit nicely for the industrial era. However, I do not see anything that would suite that in the rennaisance era.

As I see it, one of the ideas of Civ 5 military is what you need to constantly rebalance your army to reflect warfare changes. This upgrade works well here. Plus, this solution wouldn't help with other ranged-melee and melee-ranged upgrades.

Moreover, I'd say what the current situation present more strategic choices - whether you want to upgrade, keep or disband your obsolete crossbowmen. So, it have its reasons. But there are 2 counter arguments:
- The current situation strikes keshiks and camel archers.
- It's just not fun to see your cool units become worthless in any choice.

So personally I'm for just converting ranged promotions to appropriate melee ones and vice versa.

 

[PScirocco]

This is very strange, earlier today I was in a game where my elephant archer with 2 ranged rough promotions, when upgraded to cavalry later on, I noticed that the ranged bonus still applies to the cav attack. Going to test it again to double check.

edit: here's a screenshot of a knight (upgraded from elephant archer) with rough terrain RANGED bonus

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Back on topic, a good thing you can do with archers is to get 2 damage promotions then pick up march, that way even when you upgrade them to a melee unit, you'd still get a very good upgrade that would otherwise takes a long time to get.

 

[aimlessgun]

It shows the bonus but does not apply it to the calculated strenght. In the screenshot the knights strength goes from 18 to 41.4, which matches perfectly the bonuses without the "Rough Terrain Ranged Bonus".

18 x (1 + 1 + .2 + .1 ) = 41.4

I'm pretty skeptical about upgrading xbows to cannons. Artillery are already extremely powerful. Having 4 range, double fire artillery immediately might be a little broken.

 

[Tacit_Exit]

This Bugs me too; I wonder if a good solution would be to simply reset promotions and allow re-choosing whenever a ranged unit upgrades to a non-ranged one.

 

[Ciek]

I too am skeptical about upgrading crossbows into cannons, the only way I could possibly see it justified would be to make the cost to upgrade completely outrageous, like 10% or maybe 25% cost to upgrade beyond what it takes to buy a fresh new cannon, it would have to be something you really have invested in with it's upgrades to even be worth the outrageous cost to reformat the unit, otherwise you let your crossbow go obsolete, and THAT is the only way I'd see a crossbow > cannon upgrade be even somewhat balanced.

What I'd much rather see is just a simple ranged terrain bonus converted to it's melee equivalent or vice versa, whereas other upgrades that don't have an equivalent in the other unit type are render useless as they are currently. This would also offset the whole chariot archer and other ranged cavalry issues, granted the chariot archer is now *useful* in the current patch, I still rarely will use it unless it is either my unique unit or upgrades into a Camel Archer or Keshik, but maybe this is all how the developers prefer it, every time new technology comes around you have to adapt, and really I guess I don't mind that either, it's still really annoying losing a scout > archer > 5+promotion Longbowman/god of the bow to "obsolescence" though.

 

[binhthuy71]

This seems easy to fix; just make Rifleman/Infantry/Mech Infantry Ranged units with a range of one tile. Archer/Xbow promos would then carry forward yet the constraints for positioning these units for combat would be unchanged.

 

[civvvv]

This is probably a really dumb question but can someone direct me to the mod or interface option enabled in the picture above that displays luxury and strategic resources as those big circular icons. This would be a godsend for me and I can't find it.

 

[w a i n y]

This is probably a really dumb question but can someone direct me to the mod or interface option enabled in the picture above that displays luxury and strategic resources as those big circular icons. This would be a godsend for me and I can't find it.

Go to the button with a picture of a scroll on it, just to the left of the mini-map (which is in the bottom right corner). There are several options there, including show resources, show tile yields, etc.