Armies

[Txurce]

I'm not communicating this very well at all, am I!

Let me put it another way, maybe this will be less confusing:

2/1 = 4/2 = 2

Left:

• Each oil deposit gives 2 oil.
• Tanks require 1 oil.
• One deposit available.
• Can build two tanks.

Right:

• Each oil deposit gives 4 oil.
• Tanks require 2 oil.
• One deposit available.
• Can build two tanks.

Tanks would not be affected and their relative strength vs mech infantry wouldn't change, because the two situations are identical.

I got a laugh out of this because the "just enough additional oil for tanks and planes/ships to balance" seemed clear to me. This seems worth trying.

I think we discussed the idea of a pre-battleship back in the ironclad discussion. I like the idea, too.

 

[alpaca]

A third option is to require a certain level of experience for upgrades, something I considered at one point, though didn't implement because it's more of a "hard cap" instead of the "soft cap" of money.

Yeah, doesn't feel so great to me, either. It's also hideously vicious toward the AI

 

[Ahriman]

I'm not communicating this very well at all, am I!

Let me put it another way, maybe this will be less confusing:

2/1 = 4/2 = 2

Left:
Each oil deposit gives 2 oil.
Tanks require 1 oil.
One deposit available.
Can build two tanks.
Right:
Each oil deposit gives 4 oil.
Tanks require 2 oil.
One deposit available.
Can build two tanks.

Tanks would not be affected and their relative strength vs mech infantry wouldn't change, because the two situations are identical.

You're communicating fine, I just disagree with you.

In situation "Left", the opportunity cost of 1 tank is 1 aircraft or battleship.
If you have 2 resources, you can get 4 oil, for 4 of any combination.

In situation "Right", the opportunity cost of 1 tank is 2 aircraft or battleship.
If you have 2 resources, you can get 4 tank tanks, or 8 aircraft/battleships.
I think aircraft are slightly weak atm, but that isn't an inherent problem, its just an issue of tweaking strength/cost values.
I don't see any inherent reason why there shouldn't be a 1:1 tradeoff between aircraft and tanks.

The simple argument "aircraft are support units, tanks aren't" doesn't really work, because its perfectly possible for support units to be incredibly powerful - like artillery in Civ5, or bombers in Civ4.


Think of it this way: with 1 oil resource, I can either get a tank over a MechInf, or I can get a bomber over an artillery unit. This is the kind of tradeoff that we want to be roughly equal in value. In your "right" scenario, if I go for 1 less tank and use mechinf instead, then I can get *2* more bombers instead of artillery.

The right solution isn't to make oil less important for aircraft and battleships, its to make battleships and aircraft worth the oil.

It's also hideously vicious toward the AI

Yeah, that makes requiring high level units for promotions DOA.

 

[Thalassicus]

Just ignoring any specific numbers for now, the question is would it be fun to be able to support different quantity of units depending on priorities of land, air and sea?

The point is more general. It could be 1 and 2, or 42, doesn't matter.

Since value / cost = cost effectiveness of a unit, if we limit ourselves to only altering the top half, we rule out a lot of possibilities. It also doesn't make sense to rule out resource requirements while still including maintenance... they're both essentially a cost per turn of a finite resource (gold & resources).

The right solution isn't to make oil less important for aircraft and battleships, its to make battleships and aircraft worth the oil.

What suggestions do you have to do so?

 

[Ahriman]

You're continuing to compare to aircraft which is not the point.

Why not? Of course its the point.
If I have oil, I can either use it for tanks or aircraft or battleships.

That strategic tradeoff is what needs to be balanced, along with oil units relative to non-oil units.

In both your "left" and "right" scenarios, aircraft and battleships require 1 oil each, no?

So the tradeoff between aircraft and tanks is different in the two scenarios.

 

[Thalassicus]

In both your "left" and "right" scenarios, aircraft and battleships require 1 oil each, no?

Not necessarily, what I'm trying to get across is the general idea. I'll reword things again... (and yeah I'm a perfectionist and tend to edit posts a lot, sorry about that )

Basically, we agree sea-based artillery shouldn't surpass their land-based counterparts, right? It wouldn't make much sense when looking at real life. This places a limit on how high we can buff the strength of ships.

Since the value per turn of the value/cost equation can't be increased much, why not reduce the cost per turn of sea units compared to their land counterparts? Lower maintenance can help to some degree, but the bigger limiting factor is still the strategic resource requirement. Even if a battleship/missile cruiser cost no money to maintain it'd still be one fewer modern armor, and I'd personally rather have the modern armor since it can capture cities and isn't limited to attacking the first 3 tiles of coastlines (to be fair, 4 with the range promo, or further with missiles on the cruiser).

Specific numbers aren't important at this stage. For example, when I first began balancing strategic resources I had deposits at sizes 1 and 3, but ended up with 2 for most.

 

[Ahriman]

If we limit ourselves to only altering the top half, we rule out a lot of possibilities

You can still easily adjust unit hammer cost.
I just don't see any advantage from removing 1:1 resource requirements, which are a nice simple thing that is easy to understand, and are how vanilla works.
Given that its possible to achieve balance without changing this mechanic, I see no particular reason to do so.

What suggestions do you have to buff battleships to equal value as tanks?

I haven't tested your latest stat tweaks for them, but its perfectly possible to have a very durable long-range artillery platform that is incredibly useful (particularly for bombarding cities, out of range of almost everything), unless you're playing on a map where there is very little that is close to the coasts.
In which case, use aircraft instead.

Basically, we agree sea-based artillery shouldn't surpass their land-based counterparts, right? It wouldn't make much sense when looking at real life.

I agree that frigates shouldn't be better than cannon, and that destroyers shouldn't be better than artillery.
I don't agree that *battleships* shouldn't be more powerful than a single artillery unit.
Battleships should be a specialist, heavy naval unit.
Realism isn't a useful guide here, because:
a) We don't know how many ships/how many artillery pieces are represented by a single unit
b) The game isn't really capable of representing the real value of naval units because we don't have super-valuable naval trade routes, so we have to "fudge" a purpose for them by making them ground support troops.
c) We don't want "realistic" battleships, because in the real world battleships were nearly useless.

Since the value per turn of the value/cost equation can't be increased much,

Sure it can, for the specialist units.
And for aircraft, I imagine that a small strength increase could drastically reduce the amount of damage they take from non-AA specialist ground units. The amount of damage they take is my biggest problem with them.
I am slightly worried though that there is no way to make them take less damage without also making them inflict more; I worry that aerial bombardment combines unit strength and ranged attack damage in the same single parameter.

and I'd personally rather have the modern armor since it can capture cities

So what? So can mech-inf - and just as effectively, thanks to the city-attack penalty on modern armor.
If you're using tanks to attack cities, you aren't using them very effectively.
In fact, I'd much rather have a battleship as a support unit for taking cities (which can pound away without taking much damage in return) than a tank.

Specific numbers aren't important at this stage

How so? What you are doing is precisely tweaking specific number values.
How can you do balance without specific numbers?

 

[Thalassicus]

How so? What you are doing is precisely tweaking specific number values.
How can you do balance without specific numbers?

To put it simply, discussing specific numbers isn't a valuable time expenditure if I'm not even sure I'll adopt an idea yet. If I frequently go into finer points of balance over stuff I might not even add, I'd never get anything done!

While one concern is sea vs land balance...

On the topic of air vs land, there's one simple reason I find the concept of lower-value aircraft at lower-cost very appealing: one unit per tile restrictions. Even in vanilla modern-era AIs commonly fill the map with military units as shown in that infamous screenshot. I've seen this happen in all of the dozen or so modern era autoplay test games I've run, and things don't really change much with or without the mod. It's one reason I greatly increased AI priority for missiles and air, because those get around the restriction and completely bypass traditional AI shortcomings of pathfinding and battle lines.

While this is most definitely a case of the tail wagging the dog... without access to the AI code it's difficult to take another approach.

Yes, you might say to reduce production far below vanilla values, but that wouldn't solve the issue. The AI would still try to build X units, it'd just take them longer, and their quantity over quality advantage vs players would be lost since players lose fewer units to attrition. If the problem with modern era AIs is 1upt, the most direct solution I see without a dramatic redesign of the game is to simply increase emphasis on units that won't break 1upt. It has precedent from Civ IV where it was common to have large amounts of air units.

 

[Ahriman]

To put it simply, discussing the finer points of specific numbers isn't a valuable time expenditure if I'm not even sure I'll adopt an idea yet

Well, my perspective is that one can't be sure if one should adopt an idea unless you have a specific proposal of how it should work.
To me, the design question goes: "should I make change X", not "should I make a change of type Y without figuring out the details of how/whether it would actually work."

On the topic of air vs land, there's one simple reason I find the concept of 50% value aircraft at 50% the cost very appealing: one unit per tile restrictions.

I don't think I understand your argument.
How is 1 unit per tile an argument that aircraft should be less strategic-resource-dependent than tanks?
Are you saying you think the AI uses air units more effectively than it uses ground units? I don't think I have observed that.
Indeed, the AI is pretty good at using highly mobile high-strength ground units.
If anything, its main problem is that it is relatively ineffective at using bombardment units.

t's been one of the bigger complaints in vanilla too, as shown in that infamous screenshot.

Which was made in pre-patch vanilla.
The problem with that screenshot is that the AI should have attacked him long ago and rolled over him with an endless swarm.
The screenshot demonstrated a failure of the AI to launch intercontinental invasions. Its a bit better at that now.

It has precedent from Civ IV, too, where it would be common to have large amounts of air units.

In Civ4 it was also common to see large numbers of tanks.
I don't think there is any precedent for seeing air units outnumber tanks 2:1.

 

[Thalassicus]

Continuing the air unit conversation in a thread dedicated to the topic.

 

[Txurce]

While my main concern is sea vs land balance....

I think you already have basic land vs sea balance, in that all Civ versions are heavily land-focused, and that the AI uses naval units even more poorly than it does land ones. I build all three modern basic naval units whenever I invade another continent, and already find them useful. If I'm playing a builder game, then they're irrelevant, because I have nothing to worry about from the AI.

Balance within the naval subset is another story, and your battleship vs destroyer adjustments are definitely improvements. The battleship is already buffed enough to be of value as coastal artillery. What navies could use is more entertainment value... and that's where adding another unit may be worth breaking your "no new units" rule!

 

[civcivv]

Hi Thalassicus,

This is my personal opinion, but I wanted your thought on it:
French Musketeers come with Gunpowder and have 20 Strength (+25% of Musketmen), making them stronger than Longswordsmen (18), which normally beat Musketmen (16).

In terms of counters, Cannons come a fair bit later and are now weaker against field units, Crossbows do not deal significant amounts of damage, and Knights also have a lower strength than Musketeers.

Given that Muskets cost less Production than Longswordsmen and do not require Strategic Resources (Iron or Horse), they pretty much dominate the battlefield until Rifles, Cavalry and Artillery come along. Due to the nature of all units having high strength by Renaissance, simple modifiers such as Drill (which would have been easily obtained by the Muskets by the time the later units come along) would still make them just as viable without upgrading them to Rifles (and keeping the promotions)

So my thoughts were twofold:
1. Reduce Strength from 20 to 18 (same as Longswordsman) and give them Sentry (increases vision +1, thus higher survivability)
2. Reduce Strength to 16 and give them +1 movement (as per Civ4). I am a bit concerned with giving infantry movement though as at this stage of the game, it would make them just as fast as Knights and their later upgrades as fast as Cavalry. But maybe adding the movement to the unit instead of promotion (no carry-over) would balance it properly.


The other two units I personally changed (and you may agree or not) were:

Cavalry to +1 movement. The rationale being that Horsemen (lightly armored) had 4 moves and Knights (heavy armor) had 3. Cavalry using carbines and no armor would thus be legitimate candidates to have their 4th movement point returned to them. Given that their strength is the same as Riflemen (i.e. they do not have a strength advantage over other units anymore) and weaker than Infantry (Tanks do not come along till much later), this would probably be a good change to consider. Note they still have the city penalty, so they can't be used for mass city zerging with +1 movement either. It would also make them a better counter for Artillery, which fires at range 3.

Lancer to 24 Strength (2 higher than normal, adjust accordingly for Siphai as well). They come later than Knights and before Cavalry. Their main purpose is to counter Knights with their bonus vs Mounted and penalty on defense and against cities. As they upgrade to Anti-Tank eventually (which reduces their movement) and Tanks are not around till after Infantry, they would lose a fair bit of utility against Cavalry in the meantime and would not be worth keeping around otherwise.
With the change, they can beat Cavalry in an attack, but not on defense, and have the same speed as cavalry (as per change above), so would generally be used to attack Cavalry which has already attacked this turn and retreated a bit.

Thanks for hearing me out

 

[Ahriman]

I like Musketeers as they are, they don't feel overpowered.

I think knights and cav do feel slightly underpowered at the moment given that they require a strategic resource, but I'm not sure more movement is the answer; that runs the risk of making the lancer obsolete.
I wonder if cavalry:rifles should be as to knights:muskets.

But then, I'm wondering how special cav should be; iron gives 2 tiers of superior units, while horses give 4. So maybe it makes sense that the cavalry unit doesn't have much added advantage.

Another alternative; you could make knights move 4, but give them the movement penalty of chariots (rough terrain costs double).
I imagine its very tough for heavy cavalry to go through swamps, hill country or thick forests.

 

[V. Soma]

Another alternative; you could make knights move 4, but give them the movement penalty of chariots (rough terrain costs double).
I imagine its very tough for heavy cavalry to go through swamps, hill country or thick forests.

This sounds good

 

[Txurce]

I appreciate the argument that horsemen are faster than their subsequent upgrades because they have the advantage of roads, but realism indicates that cavalry should be faster than knights anyway. I am in favor of giving cavalry an extra move, and maybe giving the knights one as well, but with a rough terrain penalty. Lancers need more reason to be used anyway, so raising their strength vs mounted units only shouldn't be a problem.

 

[rhammer640]

Is it possible to change the AI's build preference for naval units like you did with some other land units so they might use them more or at the least have them near their cities for use in defense?

If you did this then i would suggest reducing damage done to ships by ranged land units (non-seige). I hate that ranged units shooting crossbows etc can take out a naval vessal so easily.

This would make it useful to build naval units for use during invasion even if the AI wont use them to attack you it would at least make naval a essential part of the attack because if you didn't then they would bombard your units and make taking AI cities harder and more dynamic

 

[Ahriman]

Lancers need more reason to be used anyway, so raising their strength vs mounted units only shouldn't be a problem.

But this isn't much of a purpose.
The main use for 4-move lancers is that they're much more capable of getting to cannon and artillery units and killing them. And their high movement also makes them good pillagers.
An anti-cav cav unit alone is pretty weak.

s it possible to change the AI's build preference for naval units like you did with some other land units so they might use them more or at the least have them near their cities for use in defense?

I thought the build preference change had already been done to some extent; the problem is that the AI won't actually use them to defend their cities intelligently, they tend to just send them off to get suicided against some enemy city, firing at it or units ineffectually until it is destroyed.
It would take AI changes (which would need more tools than currently available I'm guessing) to get the AI to properly use a navy defensively.

If you did this then i would suggest reducing damage done to ships by ranged land units (non-seige). I hate that ranged units shooting crossbows etc can take out a naval vessal so easily.

I dunno about this, I think its probably important that navies are still somewhat vulnerable to on-land siege units, since naval units are invulnerable to non-ranged land units, and ranged land units are slow to move around and cumbersome relative to the naval units.
Agree that its frustrating how effective crossbows are though.
Still, if the intended counter for a navy is a navy, maybe this could work.

Another possibility (which I'm not terribly fond of, but throwing it out there) would be to have the archer units get a penalty to ships but not the siege units.

 

[rhammer640]

But this isn't much of a purpose.

I thought the build preference change had already been done to some extent; the problem is that the AI won't actually use them to defend their cities intelligently, they tend to just send them off to get suicided against some enemy city, firing at it or units ineffectually until it is destroyed.
It would take AI changes (which would need more tools than currently available I'm guessing) to get the AI to properly use a navy defensively.


I dunno about this, I think its probably important that navies are still somewhat vulnerable to on-land siege units, since naval units are invulnerable to non-ranged land units, and ranged land units are slow to move around and cumbersome relative to the naval units.
Agree that its frustrating how effective crossbows are though.
Still, if the intended counter for a navy is a navy, maybe this could work.

Another possibility (which I'm not terribly fond of, but throwing it out there) would be to have the archer units get a penalty to ships but not the siege units.

I was thinking if naval units could be kept for ai defense the flavor could be even higher, but that would be a matter of balance
hmm, i didn't know they would suicide them...
i was thinking if they kept them close to home it could make conquest more exciting by the need of having naval units during the attack.
Is it possible to change the flavor of AI naval to defense as they don't use them for attack well anyway?'
Also i agree that siege should be good against naval but not normal ranged units.

 

[Ahriman]

I could be wrong here, but I *think* that the flavor values on the units are just used to determine which units the AI will build. So for example a conqueror AI will favor units with a high attack flavor, whereas a defensive/builder AI will favor units with a high defense flavor.

I don't think they have any impact on how the AI uses that unit.

But again, I'm not sure.

 

[Seek]

It's also hideously vicious toward the AI

That's a shame - an experience-based system would make the XP buildings incredibly more valuable.