Armies

[alpaca]

I'm actually wondering if rush-buying units should be allowed at all. It kind of promotes some bad play situations like "lure an AI in with low military but 3k gold in the bank" and "build a barracks and armory in exactly one city and buy all your units there." I definitely think it should be a lot more expensive than in vanilla, haven't implemented anything in PWM yet, though.

Obviously, I like maintenance to be based on unit type, but it might be preferable to leave it independent from hammer cost, if only for the reason of giving you another screw for balancing. Having a high maintenance is different from taking a lot of production and in a game where you have little production you would prefer a unit that is produced quickly but costs more gold. Both hammer and gold cost should have some relation to unit performance but I wouldn't tie my hands up without need. If you choose to go for this, you will need to make a few UI adjustments to display ExtraMaintenance, for example in the tooltip.

 

[Txurce]

I can if there's a strong feeling about that, though we were discussing it a few pages back I think.

Warrior - 6 for 40 = 0.15 /
Spearman - 8 for 50 = 0.16 /, and +100% vs mounted units

The question is, with spears buffed to be more cost-effective than warriors all-around, is there really a reason to build warriors once we're in the classical era? That 1 extra strength point gives them significantly better combat odds than before against ancient-era units.

This possible result of the discussion slipped past me unnoticed, believe it or not. Because I do have iron, I intended to upgrade the warrior once I hooked it up, happily paying the increased costs. The issue was strictly timing. I wound up building an archer instead. I would have preferred not to, because on this five-civ continent I have been able to seal off over a quarter of the land mass. In my quarter there are two iron and four horses. I intended to have an army no bigger than that. (Oddly there are 8 CS but no maritimes, either.)

While I thought the goal was to balance my choices rather than limit them, the difference in this case is small enough that there's no need to change this if most people are comfortable with this possibility.

 

[Ahriman]

The exception is workers, which will cost less in proportion to other units, dunno how that will work out.

Easy, workers cost 1 gold per turn.

but it might be preferable to leave it independent from hammer cost, if only for the reason of giving you another screw for balancing

Well, its not like its actually tied to the hammer cost, its just that the hammer cost suggests a good start value for each unit.
I lean towards the idea of having the superior elite strategic resource units have higher maintenance costs, and then buff them slightly more if needed.
* * *

I think rush-buying units with gold should be allowed, but it should be cost-inefficient. If it needs to be more inefficient, so be it, but one of the best things I think about Civ5 is that gold is really useful because you can spend it on lots of stuff.

* * *
I'm still finding the chariot archer with move-after-firing at strength 7 to be too strong.
Its lame that I can hold off a vast enemy army of melee units with just two chariot archers.
Its even worse when the AI is defending inside its territory, because I can move up, shoot a unit, move away, and they won't even chase me when I end turn 3 tiles away.
I can slowly whittle down a defensive army while I focus on expansion and infrastructure.

And then I have hugely experienced guys (because they're shooting every turn for dozens of turns) that I can upgrade to knights - and its not even clear that they are more useful in the short-term by doing so! No other unit is ever better than its upgrade.

I recommend reducing to strength 6, so they're more of a skirmisher weapon than a kill-all-your-stuff weapon. The move after shoot is fun, but too strong in the hands of the human player at the current strength level.

I also think at strength 14 the crossbow is too strong, I'd put it down to 13 at most. Too good vs pikes atm.

* * *

the difference in this case is small enough that there's no need to change this if most people are comfortable with this possibility.

I'm find with building warriors being unavailable in classical era.
I don't think you should be building units with the explicit intention of upgrading them, rather than using as is.

 

[Thalassicus]

@alpaca
Right now I'm experimenting with a +25% purchase cost modifier, same as most first-tier buildings. It basically means the player's not punished for choosing to buy buildings + build units instead of vice versa.

I agree entirely about unit-specific maintenance. The reason I tied it to hammer cost for now is because this only took a few seconds to implement with a few lines of sql, and I was feeling lazy!

Also, yep I noticed the tooltip thing... got that working too. It's nice they still had code to deal with it.


@Txurce
Ahh I see what you mean... warrior in progress got canceled? Yeah that could come as somewhat of a surprise. This is one thing I'm sorta puzzled about... in IV production from the previous unit would transfer to the one who's obsoleting it.

Once players know of that possibility, though, I think the advantage of reducing buy-upgrade spam will outweigh the downside. After all, we can always switch to another tech for a while and come back to Iron Working the turn after production completes.

 

[Txurce]

I'm find with building warriors being unavailable in classical era.
I don't think you should be building units with the explicit intention of upgrading them, rather than using as is.

* * *
I'm still finding the chariot archer with move-after-firing at strength 7 to be too strong.

I also think at strength 14 the crossbow is too strong, I'd put it down to 13 at most. Too good vs pikes atm.

Like I said, I'm okay with effectively making warriors obsolete with IW. But we will all be building units that we intend to upgrade, and in my particular example I'm not building a swordsman only because the iron wasn't yet hooked up.

I raised the point about chariots a long time ago, and agree that they still seem OP. I was playing with Egypt a few days ago, and had chariots with siege doing steady damage to cities, the getting out of range.

 

[Txurce]

@Txurce
Ahh I see what you mean... warrior in progress got canceled? Yeah that could come as somewhat of a surprise. This is one thing I'm sorta puzzled about... in IV production from the previous unit would transfer to the one who's obsoleting it.

Once players know of that possibility, though, I think the advantage of reducing buy-upgrade spam will outweigh the downside. After all, we can always switch to another tech for a while and come back to Iron Working the turn after production completes.

No, I meant that I had IW researched but my worker had yet to hook up the iron. It was just one of those timing things where I was caught between two stools. But the more I think about it, the more I see that in essence I wanted to build a unit that I had made obsolete. So no worries!

 

[Ahriman]

Right now I'm experimenting with a +25% purchase cost modifier, same as most first-tier buildings.

Btw: I suggest that in the changes description you put "+25% gold purchase cost for units", not "Military units now have approximately the same purchase cost modifier as tier 1 buildings (like barracks and walls)."
People don't know what the latter means.

 

[Thalassicus]

Basically what I'm trying to get across is we aren't penalized for choosing one of these methods over the other anymore, giving us more flexibility in our build options:

• Build units, purchase buildings
• Purchase units, build buildings

I just need to find a good way to explain that in few words.

If a hypothetical low-tier building costs X or Y to purchase, a unit of X will now also take Y to buy (on average... there are exceptions).

The reason I worded it the way I did is it makes this intention more clear, since it might not be obvious a 25% increase in unit purchasing brings it to the same level as early buildings.

 

[Ahriman]

Then say both:
"Military units have a +25% gold purchase cost, which brings them roughly in line with purchase costs for tier 1 buildings (gold:hammer ratios)."

 

[alpaca]

The problem is actually not early units but late units. Buying units usually yields a better return than buildings because timing is more essential for units. Also, unit maintenance is higher than building maintenance later on, so saving the maintenance to buy the unit when you need it is a good option.

I'm experimenting with purchasing right now. In particular, I'm trying what happens when the exponent is removed and each hammer costs a fixed amount of gold (a higher amount for units). For me, it's not much fun that the early buildings are so horribly inefficient to purchase compared to high-tier buildings, although I can see the rationale of helping large cities instead of new-founded ones.

 

[Thalassicus]

True about units vs buildings, though since most late-game buildings do lack a purchase modifier, from a pure efficiency standpoint units will cost 25% more per hammer than buildings of tier 2 or higher (bank/temple/etc). As you point out this doesn't affect tier-1 buildings bought in the late game though. I do agree buying units in general is more valuable, which is why I originally set it to an average of 50%. It feels justified to me, though ended up being a little too high since I think it swung things too far the other way.

I'm starting to feel 40% might be about right... more expensive per hammer than most buildings, but only modestly so (Monument's a notable exception at a 40% mod already).

 

[Thalassicus]

I think someone suggested it before, but what would yall think of a Courthouse that costs more up-front at a reduced maintenance fee? I don't really care one way or another on this topic, so I'm looking to see which might feel more fun for everyone... low down payment with high APR or vice versa.

I've also been trying to see if there's an effective way to add a penalty to razing. It's not easy since it's impossible to give buildings a negative happiness value.

 

[Ahriman]

but what would yall think of a Courthouse that costs more up-front at a reduced maintenance fee? I don't really care one way or another on this topic

I'm with you, I don't care much one way or the other, but I can see how people might prefer the higher upfront/lower maintenance.

One thing that would slow conquest down in general, make razing more painful, and be less annoying in general (especially for recapturing your own cities) would be if city capture didn't butcher half the population.
This really annoys me, and its ahistoric; plenty of towns changed hands back and forth several times without apocalyptic destruction; such destruction occurred, certainly, but it was the exception rather than the rule.

I'd much rather see city capture reduce city size by 1, or maybe 2, than halving.

The impacts of this would be:
a) A captured city is more valuable in the long term. This is the one risk to making this change. But maybe if you accompanied it with more short-term costs (eg longer unrest period), it would be ok.
b) The captured city would add a larger happiness penalty whether puppeted or annexed, slowing the rate at which you can take cities.
c) Razing would take longer, and be more painful in terms of happiness.

 

[Thalassicus]

Good idea! I'll see what I can do... checking...

The XML only allows percentage settings, but it would be VERY easy for me to add a fixed population loss in the same code handling partisans. I'll do so now.


...on a side note it's so much easier to navigate between mods with everything assimilated into one modbuddy project, I shoulda done this weeks ago.

 

[Txurce]

I think someone suggested it before, but what would yall think of a Courthouse that costs more up-front at a reduced maintenance fee? I don't really care one way or another on this topic, so I'm looking to see which might feel more fun for everyone... low down payment with high APR or vice versa.

If asked to choose, I would go with the higher APR - but it's a toss-up.

 

[Seek]

Re Warrior Obsolescence: I think another thing to bear in mind is that occasionally the difference in or between warriors and spearmen might mean the difference between life and death so early in the game.

Re City Capture: I'd stick with a percentage here, but lower it to 15% or 25% - a drop of one or two pop can quickly become meaningless.

 

[alpaca]

True about units vs buildings, though since most late-game buildings do lack a purchase modifier, from a pure efficiency standpoint units will cost 25% more per hammer than buildings of tier 2 or higher (bank/temple/etc). As you point out this doesn't affect tier-1 buildings bought in the late game though. I do agree buying units in general is more valuable, which is why I originally set it to an average of 50%. It feels justified to me, though ended up being a little too high since I think it swung things too far the other way.

I'm starting to feel 40% might be about right... more expensive per hammer than most buildings, but only modestly so (Monument's a notable exception at a 40% mod already).

For me personally, unit purchasing should be only a desperate last-ditch measure. In such a situation, it doesn't even matter if units are twice as inefficient as buildings - if I have the money, I buy them, if not, screw me. Not saying that is something you should necessarily implement, just my 2ct. It also goes better with the AI because it bases many an analysis on standing army.

 

[Thalassicus]

@Seek
While true, it is the most direct buff to annex/puppet and nerf to razing we can achieve. Razing will take up to twice as long, and annexed/puppeted cities will be up to twice as good. If this is too big a difference we can always fiddle with the numbers later.


@alpaca
That's the way I feel about it as well. I see several advantages of a high purchase cost:

• AI naturally keeps a large standing army and low gold surplus, so changes to purchase costs should mostly affect the human player.
• With low costs, a human can stock up thousands of gold and goad an AI into declaring war, then buy an instant army. Higher purchase costs mitigates this exploit.
• There's a precedent from Civ IV where we'd keep some excess gold around to deal with "events." A sudden invasion and the need to buy forces is just as much an event as any. Requiring a little more gold on hand to deal with it wouldn't be unprecedented.

 

[Mentos]

Two suggestions (Combat v18):

1. You updated the UNIT_SPEARMAN Type what doesn't affect the Barbarian spearman. Rather update the Class like what you did with the UNITCLASS_ARCHER what Barbarian archers also includes.

2. The Great Generals' horses aren't donkeys and have trouble catching up with other mounted units. A increase from 2 to 3 can't hurt.

Thanks for your great work so far!

 

[Tomice]

Option: Each unit type has a fixed maintenance cost, possibly equal to /100.

Sounds like a good idea! The fact that each costed the same maintainance made price/production time differences more irrelevant than they should be. This should buff cheaper units.

I think someone suggested it before, but what would yall think of a Courthouse that costs more up-front at a reduced maintenance fee?

It was my suggestion, and I'd prefer no maintainance cost at all (very low maintainance would be insignificant anyway, so we could just drop it).

REASON: An annexed city is forever weaker than a newly built one, which has a strong psychological effect IMO. Even if 3-4 upkeep might not matter much later on, even if we'd lose more if we rebuild the city, even if it's in the right place, I find myself wanting a fresh, stain-less city. Psychologically, I'd rather accept a long time of blocked production than a city that has a stain forever.
In terms of realism it'd also be better if ancient conflicts are forgotten at some point.