Archery units city attack nerf?

A promotion that carries -% attack against city for archery units?

  • Yes, weak against city is good implementation for archery units

    Votes: 71 55.9%
  • No, archery units are as they are right now

    Votes: 41 32.3%
  • I have another idea

    Votes: 15 11.8%

  • Total voters
    127

EEE_BOY

Deity
Joined
Jan 13, 2007
Messages
3,148
Location
NZ
In the new patch, gold per turn to friendly AI cash ratio got fixed, tourism got improved, which I found all of them went in the good direction.

But the archery units have been used in both offence and defence since G&K for early war, so would it be great that they should carry a promotion that has minus % when attack cities like the horse units? This way, seige units are more valuable and important to bring into the offensive war, and archery units should be used mainly as support units to kill other units.

What do you think?
 
In the new patch, gold per turn to friendly AI cash ratio got fixed, tourism got improved, which I found all of them went in the good direction.

But the archery units have been used in both offence and defence since G&K for early war, so would it be great that they should carry a promotion that has minus % when attack cities like the horse units? This way, seige units are more valuable and important to bring into the offensive war, and archery units should be used mainly as support units to kill other units.

What do you think?

No. Early siege units are crap. They cost too much, get no cover from terrain and easily destroyed. And latter, when canons are available, we get 1hex gatlings. What i need is buffs, not more nerfs, since earlier wars are already pointless.
 
No. Early siege units are crap. They cost too much, get no cover from terrain and easily destroyed. And latter, when canons are available, we get 1hex gatlings. What i need is buffs, not more nerfs, since earlier wars are already pointless.

True, but I would suggest do BOTH, i.e. make ranged units weaker vs cities and buff siege units to make them more resilient.

As things stand most players rarely bother with siege units (at least until artillery) for the reasons you state. If they were a bit more relevant it would add another dimension to the game, making us think about what units to buy/build rather than just bosh out a load of archers.
 
I see no reason for siege units get no terrain bonus. I'd agree for archery nerf only in case siege units would get buffed.
 
Archer units had a city attack penalty before G&K. It worked fine but then was removed.
 
Keep Archers as they are but I have a suggestion to buff siege units.

Give siege units the ability to damage any defender in a city. While Archers can only decrease the hp of the city, Siege Units can attack both the City and any defending unit in it. This will hopefully make early siege units more viable.
 
Keep Archers as they are but I have a suggestion to buff siege units.

Give siege units the ability to damage any defender in a city. While Archers can only decrease the hp of the city, Siege Units can attack both the City and any defending unit in it. This will hopefully make early siege units more viable.

Unit in a city can regenerate 25 hp a turn, it will either be useless or overpowered.
Simplest solution - make siege units stronger against city(and maybe ranged) attacks like tarans and siege towers.
 
Yea it shouldnt be early game you bring a token melee unit to sweep in after archers bring it down to 0. Mele should be relevent to the siege as well.
 
Unit in a city can regenerate 25 hp a turn, it will either be useless or overpowered.
Simplest solution - make siege units stronger against city(and maybe ranged) attacks like tarans and siege towers.

That's only if they heal which means they give up an opportunity to attack you. Think of it as suppression fire. One of the deadly combos have always been a city garrisoned by an archer. In fact, i thought of another idea. Siege units can temporarily debuff the defense value of the city for that turn. i.e the First Siege unit to attack the city erodes the defense value by say 15% and subsequent siege attacks have smaller marginal benefits. In a way, this is historical and also reduces the painful city attack. Defensive buildings like walls can reduce the effect of this "debuff"
 
I agree on seige units needing a buff. For me war basically has to stop during medeival and renaissance eras as a city with a ranged unit can kill a seige unit in a single turn easily.
 
I'm starting to think the solution to all of this would be to reduce city combat strength but increase city hitpoints.
So melee units do not get crushed that hard without even dealing much dmg to a city and ranged units would need longer to tear down a city.
 
Agreed. When attacking cities the "unit" with by far the biggest punch is the city. Artillery vs. Riflemen is ridiculous, it does about 1 pixel worth of damage on the health bar.
 
I'm starting to think the solution to all of this would be to reduce city combat strength but increase city hitpoints.
So melee units do not get crushed that hard without even dealing much dmg to a city and ranged units would need longer to tear down a city.

This seems like a simple, yet ingenious solution. Get on it, Firaxis!
 
I think city health is fine. Cities should be hard to take. I think they are a little to easy to take with 4-5 archers and 1 melee unit.
 
I've always been baffled as to why cities can 'shoot' at all. At least they should only be able to shoot 1 tile away, and with drastically reduced power. If the Turks had remained camped outside of Constantinople in 1453, how long do you think it would have taken the defenders to shoot all of them with their cannons? Exactly. To compensate, you could nerf Archers as suggested. Also make it so that when you attack with a melee unit, it doesn't lose 90% of its hp to take a sliver of the city's hp; that's ridiculous and makes melee useless for city attacks (other than the final coup de grace). I'd make it so they still only take a little hp off the city, but take far less damage to themselves.

I suppose it is this way because cities are immobile, unkillable 'units' so the shortcomings of the AI are masked better when you give the cities more power. But ideally the battles should be between armies, and cities should be the prize for decimating the opposing forces... Not these silly laser towers of doom shooting from 300 miles away and vaporizing whole units with fresh hp! :crazyeye:
 
True, but I would suggest do BOTH, i.e. make ranged units weaker vs cities and buff siege units to make them more resilient.

Yeah, this is probably the best bet. Ranged units should be good at attacking cities, but not so good like they are now (as currently there's no need to build siege units unit at least Cannons and sometimes Artillery.) Give ranged units that -33% combat penalty versus cities and siege units perhaps an automatic Cover I (which would require some rebalancing of the Siege Tower and Battering Ram, of course.)
I personally would also like to see city-based combat be revamped to something similar to the way it is in the ACW scenario, where cities have a weak ranged attack and practically no defense unless there's a unit stationed in the city.
 
Reading this thread makes me really hope that Firaxis releases one more patch to fix war, especially early war. Civ V / BNW is a really great game which they've spent a great amount of time on, but they need to do something to balance war to make early wars more fun, more viable, and with a better balance of troops.
 
all siege units should start with 3 range. indirect fire could still come at artillery,though. this way on open terrain it's better to bring siege units, while it's still more useful to bring archers on hilly and forested cities.
 
Archers, Comp Bowmen, Crossbowmen should only have a range of 1. That is my suggestion.
 
Top Bottom