Armies

[Mentos]

Have Stealth Bombers' lack of promotions still given no attention yet since many months?

What a shame, Thal. Fixes first, balancing later!

Seriously, I just tried them for the first time too because my sessions never lasted that long or didn't start in modern eras.
Was almost shocking to discover now that this bug has been known from start and hasn't been fixed by Firaxis yet?

 

[Thalassicus]

I looked into it a few months ago and could find no know reason why stealth bombers might have no promotions. There's nothing in the XML files that might indicate it, everything points towards them working properly for promotions. It's some internal c++ bug Firaxis has never fixed.

 

[Mentos]

I’ve found out what’s causing the promotion bug at Stealth Bomber:

Any higher value than 90 in EvasionChange breaks its promotion gain.

Yeah, it's somehow a coding bug we have no way to fix it for ourselves but at least we can do a workaround:

	<UnitPromotions>
		<Update>
			<Where Type="PROMOTION_EVASION_II"/>
			<Set EvasionChange="90"/>
		</Update>
	</UnitPromotions>

 

[Mentos]

I don't know if this intended but Ironclads (still) have the "City Siege" promotion with -50% Land and Sea Unit penalty while Frigates and other later ships have "Naval Siege" with only -50% Land Unit penalty.

I hope it's an oversight because Ironclads have become too weak against other ships this way.
Looks like I have to copy your new "Naval Siege" promotion over to my Barbarians! mod, otherwise my poor friends on their cutters get too easily cookiecut by those pesky (Coastguard) Destroyers later.

PS: Guided Missiles also got "City Siege", hence unnecessarily weak vs. ships. Dunno but those missiles are just made for big targets like ships, aren't they?

 

[truetom]

Nice find, Menthos, hope it gets fixed.

 

[truetom]

Well, clearing cache didn't work, so I'll have to stay away from this social policy. It would be handy to have it.

Tech Diffusion mod was the problem. Switched it off, even loaded my savegame and can play on after selecting a great person.

 

[Thalassicus]

@Mentos
Thank you for the bug reports, I'll fix the city siege and evasion problems.

 

[Mentos]

Why has the enemy unit a difference in combat strength when I target the ship with my city and with my own ship?
My own unit's combat strength calculation shouldn't matter. It's both a Ranged Attack but with such a strange combat strength reduction of the defender between naval vs. naval unit.
Barbarian or Civ naval units don't matter, they have the same low strength when I target them, no matter how strong or weak my own attacking unit is.
This way, it's no suprise why enemy ships gets so easily sunk.

What secret penalty is involved there?
Playing on Prince level there.

 

[DeAnno]

I've noticed the same thing on Emperor: I've one-shot Galleys with unpromoted Triremes and usually Tri vs Tri battles only last two shots. I see the same lowered ship defenses when targeting.

 

[Mentos]

Ah, damn. I just found out why in GlobalDefines.xml:

		<Row Name="NAVAL_COMBAT_DEFENDER_STRENGTH_MULTIPLIER">
			<Value>40</Value>
		</Row>

Is that penalty really necessary? What do you think?

I personally enjoy every battle, no matter if on land or sea. Especially naval units have trouble to recover their HP back without supply promotion.
I'm going to remove that penalty and see how it works out.

 

[Txurce]

I've noticed the same thing on Emperor: I've one-shot Galleys with unpromoted Triremes and usually Tri vs Tri battles only last two shots. I see the same lowered ship defenses when targeting.

Naval dogfights took so long that Thal amped up firepower. Galleys and triremes are pretty flimsy, so it figures that they would go down fast. Caravel vs caravels, etc, take longer.

 

[Thalassicus]

I didn't intentionally do anything to make naval battles shorter than before, other than a very small ranged strength increase (~10%). The DEFENDER_STRENGTH_MULTIPLIER was added by Firaxis to speed up naval combat.

However, the "domain" penalty shouldn't be there... which version are you playing with?

 

[Mentos]

I haven't blamed TBC in particular. I was just curious why ships sank so often so easily.

Anyway, I did some test runs with TBC v61 with the NCDSM set to 100 back to normal.
It plays soo much better and doesn't feel so buggy anymore. There is hardly any difference to land-unit combat now. The one-shot behavoir is gone at early- and end-game units; at least with roughly equally experienced units.

The difference between Caravel and Frigate is much more noticeable now setting Caravel to the recon and Frigates to the battle department; the way it should be.

The upped submarines with their "vs Capital Ship" bonus help out to bring down the thoughest ships. Due to Civs being lazy to build ships in general, I could only test this well with my Barbarians! mod.
The camps nicely spawn Submarines at a rampaging speed, so Wolfpacks were swarming all over the oceans bringing down my careless lonely level 3-4 warships.
Inexperienced Destroyers also often won't one-shot Submarines (not the Nuclear ones), so there is still a chance for every ship type to get away.

I still haven't done a game against Civs giving me a serious naval challenge with all end-game capital ship types yet, but I've already made up my mind:

I won't play with this 40% combat strength reduction anymore.

 

[Babri]

I just had an idea. For realism & more diversity in units I would suggest that Knight's could be increased to 20 or they might get bonus like 25% when attacking on grassland/plains. Right now they are not as useful as Horsemen as they have 1 less than horsemen but have the same strength to the swords of their era. Moreover they already suffer against cities & spears so a little buff wont hurt balance.

 

[Txurce]

I just had an idea. For realism & more diversity in units I would suggest that Knight's could be increased to 20 or they might get bonus like 25% when attacking on grassland/plains. Right now they are not as useful as Horsemen as they have 1 less than horsemen but have the same strength to the swords of their era. Moreover they already suffer against cities & spears so a little buff wont hurt balance.

An open-terrain combat bonus feels right.

 

[Stalker0]

I just had an idea. For realism & more diversity in units I would suggest that Knight's could be increased to 20 or they might get bonus like 25% when attacking on grassland/plains. Right now they are not as useful as Horsemen as they have 1 less than horsemen but have the same strength to the swords of their era. Moreover they already suffer against cities & spears so a little buff wont hurt balance.

I have no problems with knights right now myself. They come earlier thanks to quicker chivalry.

They are fast, and can pull back after attacking, which is always a big benefit.

I really don't think they need a buff.

 

[SlightlyMad]

Knights are a little weak, but their place is really as a support unit anyways, not as a front-line combat unit like they've been in some previous Civ games. In their era, you'll be attacking mostly with catapults and longswords. Even if you have no iron, you can very easily beeline for muskets to have a strong front-line unit. Really, if any unit is comparatively useless in the era, it's pikemen. Then again, a buff to knights could indirectly buff the pikemen as well, by making them more useful.

 

[Babri]

I have no problems with knights right now myself. They come earlier thanks to quicker chivalry.

They are fast, and can pull back after attacking, which is always a big benefit.

I really don't think they need a buff.

But as I mentioned, knight has only 3 compared to 4 of horsemen. Also when you compare them to Longswords, they are not that useful.

Knights are a little weak, but their place is really as a support unit anyways, not as a front-line combat unit like they've been in some previous Civ games. In their era, you'll be attacking mostly with catapults and longswords. Even if you have no iron, you can very easily beeline for muskets to have a strong front-line unit. Really, if any unit is comparatively useless in the era, it's pikemen. Then again, a buff to knights could indirectly buff the pikemen as well, by making them more useful.

Agreed. A little buff for Pikemen would be good since there is only 2 difference between spears & pikes right now. A more expensive/iron requiring Knight would be more fun & interesting as well as more accurate historically.

 

[Mentos]

Why was the combat strength of the Spearman increased anyway? It's already powerful enough with the "vs mounted units" extra.
I don't want to see the Pikeman's Combat Strength increased to the level of the Swordsman. A long pike should never rule over a sword in a duel.

The Knights are fine as they are. They are powerful as a Longsword unit but uses otherwise unused Horses instead of Iron which is also needed for ships and siege weapons.
Give Knights the Open Terrain promotions and only use them there for flanking how cavalry was successfully used in history as well. 3 Moves are still enough to attack on the second turn and retreat to safety.

I'd rather do adjustments to production costs first if something seems unbalanced.

 

[Txurce]

The Knights are fine as they are. They are powerful as a Longsword unit but uses otherwise unused Horses instead of Iron which is also needed for ships and siege weapons.

Give Knights the Open Terrain promotions and only use them there for flanking how cavalry was successfully used in history as well. 3 Moves are still enough to attack on the second turn and retreat to safety.

Siege weapons don't require iron, and there's not much overlap between longswords and frigates.

That said, I'm already on record in favor of an open-terrain bonus for them... although all the pre-modern units seem pretty balanced to me. As they should, given the time and discussion invested in balancing them.