Armies

[Txurce]

The status quo isn't good!
Happy?
I have seen many complaints that people feel that knights and particularly cavalry are underpowered relative to longswords and most particularly (resourceless!) riflemen.


I don't find this that relevant. There are rarely roads that come into play on the front line of a fight; roads are relevant strategically, but they seldom apply tactically for melee units (they do often apply tactically for ranged units, particularly artillery, but the road doesn't need to be as close to use this). And roads do nothing in enemy territory.


Longswords are currently more useful than knights, whereas swordsmen are not necessarily more useful than horsemen.


Lancer issue should be fixed separately, for example giving them a bonus when attacking.


Siege units are not underpowered. They're fantastic vs cities (as they should be), and they're still a bit too good vs units in the field.


I think I may have been unclear. I was intending primarily to criticize the AI's relative lack of cavalry.


This statement makes no sense to me. If pikes counter mounted units, and there are more mounted units around, then pikes are more useful, and so its more worth building pikes.
The issue with pikes was never about whether or not they are good enough vs mounted units, its whether being good vs mounted units was a valuable enough role.
If all you're saying is that changing knights doesn't literally directly affect how good a pikeman is vs a mounted unit, thats correct, but I think irrelevant.

Most of the complaints about knights and cavalry faded out after the last set of mod revisions. In fact, I think there have been none in a long time until yesterday.

You don't have to find roads relevant. Thal does.

I find swordsmen about as useful as longswordsmen - very useful.

Making lancers stronger is a watery solution in my opinion. And they are obviously part of any dialogue about same-era mounted units.

I never said siege units are UP. I responded to you saying pikes would serve as a nerf to siege units by saying that siege units had only just been buffed, and don't need any sort of nerf (specifically the one you mentioned).

I said buffing knights makes pikemen theoretically more useful to the AI, but has nothing to do with inherent strength or weakness. For example, consider MP, or the AI playing vs Mongols, Songhai, Spain, Ottomans, Siam, Arabia. The distinction seems useful to me; it doesn't have to be for you.

 

[Ahriman]

Most of the complaints about knights and cavalry faded out after the last set of mod revisions.

Perhaps I have missed some revisions; what changes have been made to knights and cavalry, relative to vanilla?
The main change has been in making horses more rare.

In fact, I think there have been none in a long time until yesterday.

I think people in general prefer not to keep complaining about the same things. I would take silence as a form of politeness, rather than of agreement.

said buffing knights makes pikemen theoretically more useful to the AI, but has nothing to do with inherent strength or weakness

Buffing knights makes pikemen practically more useful to a human player, which is definitely related to a player's decision about whether the player should build them or not.

 

[Joneill]

You might be right and there might be no issue, or maybe the Elephant should get a small cost decrease if we boosted knights.

I think I'm tending to lean towards boosting knights to move 4 while slightly reducing their strength (to 17?), and then leaving elephants as they are.

Yes, elephants are sort of odd since they are closer to longswords than knights in terms of role. Increasing their moves would change that a bit, but also push them into overpowered territory imo. I like that they are rather unique, the siamese player gives up the siege harassing ability of knights but gains a juggernaut that will dominate all the way to rifling.

Perhaps I have missed some revisions; what changes have been made to knights and cavalry, relative to vanilla?
The main change has been in making horses more rare.

Knights and Cavalry come earlier now techwise, so they should appear on the battlefield at about the same time as their footmen-counterparts.

 

[Txurce]

Perhaps I have missed some revisions; what changes have been made to knights and cavalry, relative to vanilla?
The main change has been in making horses more rare.


I think people in general prefer not to keep complaining about the same things. I would take silence as a form of politeness, rather than of agreement.


Buffing knights makes pikemen practically more useful to a human player, which is definitely related to a player's decision about whether the player should build them or not.

1. Earlier and more attractive tech-tree availability, for sure. I also think they aren't as nerfed vs cities.

2. Then why are you complaining now?

3. Not if the AI isn't building knights.

 

[Ahriman]

1. Earlier and more attractive tech-tree availability, for sure

I think this is something that people barely notice, as we discussed above.

2. Then why are you complaining now?

Because you declared that the fact that people weren't complaining meant that everything was fine.

3. Not if the AI isn't building knights.

As I said before, I would support a boost to knights if and only if the AI could be encouraged to build them more.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=10223142&postcount=671

Anyway, I think I've made my point and am probably becoming annoying again, so I will leave this for now.

 

[Sneaks]

One thing you need to keep in mind with the Knight argument (and really it is a more general game issue) is that every time you add movement points to a unit, you add a lot of time to AI processing. An ugly truth about this game is that the engine simply does not handle this well.

 

[Thalassicus]

Sounds good to me, although you might consider doing the same for swordsmen/horsemen. I think that rounding the maintenance costs has a negative effect for those classical units, since they are just over the 75 hammer mark. And this early in the game, going from 1 gold per unit to 2 is a noticeable effect - which the power of those units does not really reflect.

That seems reasonable enough. Maintenance is explicitly displayed on each unit type, so it's not as if anyone has to do complicated calculations in their head or something.

@Txurce
Ahriman isn't complaining at all, I asked for feedback on medieval units so he's giving his opinion on the subject, which is a good thing.

On the subject of tech availability, the total knights vs longswords tech ratio was reduced -38%, which I think is a rather dramatic change considering how deep in the tech tree they are. The cumulative cost of all the techs leading up to each unit was shifted so both of them are nearly equal (knights were 75% more expensive, now 10% more). Even if people don't notice it at first that's a rather big buff to accessibility.

In addition, some things in the Knight line were buffed... Aqueducts and the Baths were moved from the Longsword to Knight prereq chain, and Chivalry has become the best medieval tech to do an era jump to the renaissance.

Basically what I've been gradually shifting is beeline potential. I'm curious how effective a Knight push would be now, with the powerful techs it unlocks along the way like Civil Service.

That said, I'm certainly open to more ways to balance the units, which is why I'm asking for suggestions. There's a lot of good ideas going around and it's just a matter of finding something that would create a nicely unified gameplan for the medieval-renaissance period (similar to what we've accomplished for ancient-classical).

 

[Seek]

Chivalry has become the best medieval tech to do an era jump to the renaissance.

This worries me, actually - but I'll withhold judgment until I play a couple of games.

 

[Ahriman]

One thing you need to keep in mind with the Knight argument (and really it is a more general game issue) is that every time you add movement points to a unit, you add a lot of time to AI processing. An ugly truth about this game is that the engine simply does not handle this well.

True, but at least this isn't as much of an issue as long as the AI still doesn't build many cavalry units....

 

[SSgtDuke]

I think people in general prefer not to keep complaining about the same things. I would take silence as a form of politeness, rather than of agreement.

This is true at least for me (most of the time). I suggested bumping knights and cavalry up to 4 movement points a week or two ago (more of an agreement with others who have suggested this before me). I know Thal is very observant of all the conversations here and has good reason for not immediately implementing everything that is suggested. So until he specifically brings up this issue or I repeatedly find it a significant problem in-game, I didn't plan to say much more about it.

 

[Thalassicus]

The reason for delays is just a matter of prioritizing things with limited time.

I also often leave things as-is for a while after making a change, to see how the change works out and if further edits are necessary.

 

[Thalassicus]

Would people like if Lancers were highly mobile light cavalry for scouting, flanking, pillaging, and countering cannon or other mounted units?

Some possibilities are...

• Recon combat class
• Ignore Terrain promotion
• +50% vs Mounted Units
• +50% vs Siege Units
• Adjusted and

 

[SSgtDuke]

I think lancers would be about right with an additional movement point (lancer 5, sipahi 6) and an attack bonus on open terrain (maybe another 15 or 20% on top of the default 10% bonus). Ignoring terrain doesn't feel right.

 

[Thalassicus]

The reason I'm resisting extra base movement is the AI doesn't handle it well. It's decently good at predicting moves from units with 2 or 3, but calculating all possible destinations for units with 5 and 1upt quickly becomes infeasible if there's many of that unit around. It's one reason why the AI is poor at naval combat. Reducing terrain costs without actually increasing movement speed is one possible way around this.

In addition, my idea is to somehow create a mid-game scouting unit that has a purpose, unlike regular scouts. It might be possible to do that while also giving lancers a distinctive role.

 

[Txurce]

That's too bad, because light cavalry = speed. I would then tilt toward recon and lower price, or earlier availability. For me the main thing is to differentiate them from cavalry, which is why I shy away from giving them more attack strength against anything.

 

[Thalassicus]

They do have 4 while Cavalry are 3, so the speed thing is there.

Whether or not they get the terrain promotion isn't as important as the first point in the idea, though. Recon classification is a possibility that might have some significant balance advantages, since it gives them a totally different role and promotion set to work with. I did something similar with Paratroopers, and just want to see if anyone can think of a reason to not rebalance Lancers as recon cavalry.

 

[Sneaks]

For lancers, I would do a few things:

1. Add a big 'ol attack bonus to em. If lancers charge at any other unit of the era, it should win in a landslide
2. Add a big 'ol defense penalty to em.

Basically, I view lancers to units what siege is to cities. Their high attack value is mitigated by their glass cannon nature.

 

[Txurce]

They do have 4 while Cavalry are 3, so the speed thing is there.

Whether or not they get the terrain promotion isn't as important as the first point in the idea, though. Recon classification is a possibility that might have some significant balance advantages, since it gives them a totally different role and promotion set to work with. I did something similar with Paratroopers, and just want to see if anyone can think of a reason to not rebalance Lancers as recon cavalry.

This works for me. So does some version of Sneaks' proposal, if they are made super-fragile.

 

[Thalassicus]

Lancers do have a 50% defense penalty so it's difficult to make it much bigger. Ahriman's proposal was to give them the same 25% attack bonus Janissaries have.

There's been lots of ideas about lancers. There's also the issue of the lack of useful scouting units, which is why I'm considering possibilities to solve both problems at once. If scouts are given more long-term value somehow they'd be the ancient/classical recon unit, and Paratroopers are already the industrial/modern recon unit. We're just missing something in the middle. One idea I had was to reinstate the classic Explorer unit from earlier versions of Civilization, but I do prefer working with existing Civ 5 units and buildings whenever possible, like the Lancer. This would provide an upgrade path of Scout -> Lancer -> Paratrooper.

 

[Sneaks]

I really dislike the idea of Lancers as recon, both from a realism and game perspective. Unlike paratroopers, lancers were never historically used as recon. What they were was a specialized assault troop that sucked vs. cavalry and sucked in close combat.

That being said, I really like the glass cannon approach for the unit to give it a niche that works well with the other units of the era.