Armies

[lukeloh]

Interesting point about city-states. I did not realize they got extra bonuses above and beyond major-civ AIs, whose type of city I was testing combat odds against.

CS get the same bonuses as major-civ AIs. The main differences here being:
i. Every CS has a Palace (+6) since it is a Capital by default whereas major-civ conquest usually starts against border cities, making city conquest easier.
ii. CS prioritize defensive buildings compared to major-civs. You'll see Walls / Castles go up much faster in a CS compared to major-civ border cities.

This results in an anachronism where it's almost better to DOW a major-civ than a CS. I say "almost" because major-civs have the benefit of multiple city unit production and (usually) better tech. But it does make taking a CS for resources far less attractive than simply settling another city for it. And makes the ROI for "destroy CS" missions in order to curry influence with another CS pretty bad, at least in the earlier eras.

Do you think it would help if the Siege promotion required the first rank of Drill/Shock instead of the second?

Definitely! However if you do this in conjunction with lowering the city defense values you'll only make things easier for the player since the AI won't necessarily pick this promotion and is not as good at unit preservation.

I'd prefer that we tweak the city defense values so that the impact is felt across the board. I think players would still be quite happy to go with Siege as the third promotion given your buff (and the fact that your mod has stronger city defenses than vanilla).

Having the Siege promotion available earlier (30 xp) will also bring back the problem of (human) Horseman city conquest spam. Go level up against barbs and then conquer cities with Str 20.35 Horsemen. (GG + 25%, Siege +40%, Drill or Shock (+20%)).

 

[Thalassicus]

Footmen (the warrior line, ending with mech. inf) has two possible upgrades the role of city attacker, both available starting at barracks+armory, being Cover I and II (up to 50% less damage from bombardment) and Amphibious (removing the 25% and 50% penalty for attacking across river or directly from sea). Since these two promotion lines are already in game and are efficient in what they do, I'm discouraged from suggesting to add further bonuses to this unit line.

Remember Shock and Drill improve both offensive and defensive combat strength against cities. In addition, the Siege promotion is buffed and available earlier in this mod, so this is likely more valuable than Cover I and II. Attack bonuses are necessary to overcome the improved strength of city defensive buildings.

A side note Thalassicus, your upgrade line from Cavalry to Tanks is completely broken when playing Songhai. Modern Armor upgraded from Mandekalu cavalry gets a mere 10% penalty when attacking cities. There's almost no reason for a Songhai player to ever build anything on the warrior line as long as they have access to horses, oil and aluminum.

You're right that Songhai tanks can be quite powerful, though I'm uncertain it's a huge issue since that's so late in the game. Early bonuses are much stronger than late ones. In addition, mobile units cannot receive the +40% vs Cities damage of the Siege promotion. Still, I could obsolete their UU special when upgraded if you feel from your playtesting they've become stronger than Greece or China? (the "overpowered" civs I gauge balance changes against)

Siege and anti-siege unit types

Archer units (Archer, Crossbowman, Chariot Archer, some UUs) are an interesting side-line of standard units. All of them eventually get upgraded into non-ranged units. The general idea behind archery units is to serve in the role of anti-siege or more broadly, anti-units. However in CIV5 and especially in this mod they can also serve as city attack units. This I find very disturbing since it almost completely eliminates the need for siege weaponry, thus obsoleting catapults, trebuchets, wooden ships and even cannons (cannons being performing poorer than Chu-ko-nu, Longbowmen, Camel Archers and Keshiks).

I strongly feel that reducing the city bombardment ability of archery units and boosting the city bombardment abilities of the artillery line should be the proper way of handling the issue of city capture.

Not only would this make it obvious that archery units are designed to defeat units, but it would finally give siege weapons a niche.

Siege units currently have +100% vs cities... I've been concerned increasing it any further would reduce the proportional value of promotions. These are the current strength values against cities (in the average situation of 2 promotions and GG present):

Archer: 13
Catapult: 29
Crossbowman: 26
Trebuchet: 42

Adding Siege II and III promotions to the game is an idea I've considered. What's held me back is it could cause units to be too specialized in a game that relies on significantly fewer units than Civ IV, reducing the flexibility of the player's army. It might also make it a little too easy to take cities again, unless I reduce the power of the existing Siege promotion.

My suggestion is that all archers are being given the -50% attack penalty of tanks, but with Siege I being available without requirements. An archer coming out of a barracks+armory would still be able to get get Siege II (+50% vs cities), thus eliminating the -50% penalty, but would be highly specialized.

In turn, artillery pieces (catapults, trebuchets, cannons, artillery, rocket artillery) should have Siege I, II and III enabled without requirements, with Siege II opening up Range and with Siege III opening up Logistics.

Thus, an Archer unit with maxed out promos will have a +25% extra damage versus cities, while a Catapult will have +85% damage (+10%+25%+25%+25%) versus cities.

This way, players would be inclinded to use archery units for their original purpose (anti-unit role) and leave the artillery units to do the city bombardment. In cases of dire need (or massive lack of iron) archery units can still serve as siege units but would be much less efficient.

As cannons enter the scene they start replacing both archery units and trebuchets, but again, different promotions on cannons will ensure they all have different roles. As things stand now, since getting terrain promotions to open up Siege I is mandatory, all my cannons perform exceptionally well against units (especially since I stick to Rough terrain bonuses for artillery). This shouldn't be the case.

Does this include the -20% cannon and -25% artillery damage vs units of this mod? I've found that although these can do decently well against riflemen, since they have less strength than riflemen's 25 they're not quite the annihilate-everything units they used to be. It becomes much more necessary to protect them effectively, especially against UUs. Still, I could move the Siege promotion up for siege like I did for melee.

 

[Bibor]

Thalassicus, excuse me for being a complete moron. I never actually checked if you boosted the siege and archery units already. Let me get back to you once I do my homework.

EDIT: Okay, I just loaded my game with Babylon. City Walls give 10, Walls of Babylon give 15. I'm not sure this is intentional, since you mention regular (non-UB) Walls giving 15

I realize now that you took another approach to fixing the unit issues and that's to boost city defenses and add special huge bonuses to artillery units. I'll test it further but I think a 30 city when Catapults are available is a good measure.

 

[Thalassicus]

It's alright, there's so much information to read I usually skim over stuff too.

You've got it right. Lukeloh suggested the defensive bonuses at 10/20/30 for walls/castle/military off some testing he did, so this is what they're currently set to. The details in the first post should now be accurate. I thought I'd updated the 'details' section but must have forgotten to hit the save button or something.

-----------------------------

My goal is to ensure every unit has a valuable place in a balanced, combined-arms force, which is much more interesting and fun than horseman spam. Basically I'm conceptualizing four roles that exist in the game:

• Siege - safely beating down a city
• Capture - taking weakened cities
• Field - killing armies
• Ranged support - useful for crowded armies, slow terrain, or weakening technologically superior enemies

The unit classes are listed by my goals for primary, then secondary role.

• Siege units - Siege, Support
• Footsoldiers - Capture, Field
• Mobile - Field, Capture
• Archers - Support, Siege

In vanilla it seems more like this:

• Siege units - Support, Field
• Footsoldiers - Same roles as, but weaker than Mobile (until Riflemen)
• Mobile - Field, Siege, Capture
• Archers - Not really cost-effective for anything.

This is the first time I've really articulated my ideas "on paper," so I apologize if the changes up till now have been confusing. Hopefully now that I've worked out a clear, concise goal it'll be easier to understand.

In addition to the above roles, there's also miscellaneous other roles like naval or counter (pikemen), but overall these 4 categories seem to fit the jobs of most combat units.

Having the Siege promotion available earlier (30 xp) will also bring back the problem of (human) Horseman city conquest spam. Go level up against barbs and then conquer cities with Str 20.35 Horsemen. (GG + 25%, Siege +40%, Drill or Shock (+20%)).

Mounted units actually can't get the Siege promotion (same as Civ IV). This is a big reason I buffed it.

 

[Thalassicus]

(doublepost)

 

[Bibor]

I confirm that toning down City Walls by 5 indeed works perfectly. For small cities two catapults (or one Trebuchet) are needed to bring down the walls in 3-4 turns. For larger (10+ pop) cities 3 cataputs (or two Trebuchets) are optimal.

Infantry Siege I also works well. A Swordsman with Siege I is slightly less powerful then Vanilla (when changed Walls are taken into consideration) when attacking cities.

However, for melee units I'd make Cover I a level 1 promotion that unlocks Siege I. These units have a hard time surviving counter-attacks as is. Helping them mitigate the bombard damage slightly (25% less dmg) makes sense. Having one melee unit "specialized" in city attack warfare isn't such a terribly bad move. Actually, I do it anyway with regular promotions now (considering your comment on 1UPT limits and how players should not be restricted). Players still have the option not to take it (Siege I being available from other sources as well).

I monitored AI archer attacks on a city with Walls. They took away 1-2 damage, that got easily healed up during the next turn. Then the AI bought in another archer and things started to change. Having 2 or more archers to attack a city with City Walls is a good balance. It is indeed 1 catapult or 2+ archers choice now.

 

[lukeloh]

Mounted units actually can't get the Siege promotion (same as Civ IV). This is a big reason I buffed it.

Mmmm, I didn't know that Good to hear!

I still think you should leave the Siege promotion where it is (after Shock/Drill II) as the AI isn't good at preserving units and/or choosing the right promotions so this change mainly benefits the player.

Whereas using siege (cats/trebs) to take cities is something the AI already knows how to do Ideally the AI should have equal opportunity to take cities without going down the path of specialized promotions. A more even playing field means more challenge from the AI at higher difficulties.

But I don't have a huge issue with this change since it doesn't affect Mounted. Love the mod!

 

[Thalassicus]

@Bibor
It's a good idea regarding cover, makes sense if you want specialized city attackers. It somewhat depends on the terrain... shock is a 30% defensive bonus and drill 15%, so if you're attacking across open terrain shock is most likely better than the 50% cover bonus (since you also get an offensive bonus with shock). If the city's on and surrounded by mostly rough terrain, cover is likely better.

@lukeloh
The way I look at it, an earlier Siege promotion means the AI is more likely to get it, due to the reason you mention (typically low-xp units). All the AI needs to do is have an armory and be running a "I want to attack cities" mode, and the siege promotion is available. Siege also isn't that much more powerful than before, 40% up from 25%, so it doesn't change things too dramatically. In addition, once we have c++ access the AI can be improved directly. I've never really felt the AI is an attacking threat because of how it handles units in the field. Allowing Siege after getting Cover will likely help the AI further in this regard, too, opening up more ways they're likely to have the promotion available.

 

[Walderschmidt]

Dear Thalassicus,

Have you made any changes to submarines? I do not have Civ 5 yet, as I am waiting for the mods to make it better. But in Civ IV it always bugged me when my submarines would get destroyed by battleships, even when submarines were supposed to be the battleship's counter!

Could you make it so that the submarines can only be attacked by destroyers, specialized aircraft, and other submarines?

Also, would you consider giving them a ranged attack and make it so that no one can tell that it was your submarine that fired the shot?

That would be unless you were firing at a submarine or destroyer.

Wald

 

[clearbeard]

Dear Thalassicus,

Have you made any changes to submarines? I do not have Civ 5 yet, as I am waiting for the mods to make it better. But in Civ IV it always bugged me when my submarines would get destroyed by battleships, even when submarines were supposed to be the battleship's counter!

Could you make it so that the submarines can only be attacked by destroyers, specialized aircraft, and other submarines?

Also, would you consider giving them a ranged attack and make it so that no one can tell that it was your submarine that fired the shot?

That would be unless you were firing at a submarine or destroyer.

Wald

Submarines, like all Civ 5 naval units, ONLY have a ranged attack. If they are undetected (by nearby destroyers or other subs), I'm pretty sure there's nothing displayed when they attack to indicate their nationality, though the target will know which hex the attack came from. Not 100% sure on the last, as I have never been attacked by an enemy sub, and indeed have never seen the AI build one (along with air units, battleships, carriers, nukes...).

 

[Koxpa]

Thalassicus . Hello.
Ur balance mods are great , but there are some issues.
1st one , Iron reveals with bronze working but u cant use that iron for build catapults ( dunno about frigate or ironclad) so to make catapults(use that Iron) anyway need trade(from AI) or ironworking . Is that normal ?
2ond one , Coal , Coal with mod "Balance - units" not reveals on top panel with other strategic resources, i think couse noone unit in game needs it after Ironclad need Iron with that mod. So it is rather hard to count how many fabrics u may have.

Thanks again for ur mods . And sorry for my bad english, i trying)).

 

[Bibor]

Thalassicus . Hello.
Ur balance mods are great , but there are some issues

He's right. For coal I don't get the announcement (have to find it manually) and it doesn't show on the resources display on top of the screen.

Iron works for me perfectly though, so can't confirm that.

 

[lukeloh]

Coal not appearing on top panel appears to be a bug introduced by 1.00.621. See the Civ5 bug forum for details.

 

[Koxpa]

Mb, but i disabled mod with Units and coal apears again ) mb it is just bug.

 

[MilkmanDan]

Speaking of submarine bugs... they can shoot through land (but not at land units). They have access to the improve land bombardment promotions (... sigh). And they're rendered pretty worthless outside a city because while only destroyers and subs see them, they see them at their FULL sight range. For destroyers that's not uncommon to have it at 7+. Then, once spotted they can be attacked by any other unit that can hit that tile, like fighters, bombers, etc.

Not that the AI could use it effectively currently, but would be nice if the subs had access to a promotion line that reduced their visibility to other units. Start at -2 and work up to -4. So the destroyer with 7 sight range would only be able to spot a -4 promoted sub at 3 hexes away. Though, if the AI could be made to build subs and value these promotions it could make their navies at least a bit more interesting to fight as running into range of 2 unspotted subs can wreck at least one of your ships.

 

[jacyp]

Thalassicus, I have a sugestion, if it can be done:

I think weird the way city sieges work right now. I'm using your mod and, with castles in renaissance, my cities has almost 60 , so as my enemies'.

The issue there's no unit that can take a city anymore at this point of the game. The most powerful unit of the late renaissance is rifleman with 25 . Every unit I try to throw against a city will just die without doing any damage, most of the times.

I think what you've attempted to acomplish is to make siege units more important, but if you've played any game of the total war series, or if you've read any book set on medieval period, you'll know that even though it's more dificult to take a walled fortified city without siege weapons, it's not only possible but was also common.

One thing is to make siege weapons more important. Another, completely different thing, is to make them indispensable. Hell, I don't even defend my cities anymore, I just let the AI wonder around them cos I guess they are not programed to make suicide atacks.

Even when a city is completely bombarded, it can kill or badly damage an attacker that isn't strong enough.

So, my sugestion, if possible, is to substitute the city HP for the city . Instead of harming HP with each attack, the damage goes straigh to , wearing off a city over time with each attack. After all, historically, with a few "exceptional exceptions" (yes, they are that special), once a city is besieged, it's only a matter of time before they fall: the time they try to buy is the time for reinforcements to arrive. No reinforcements, bye bye city.

So I think about siege mechanics that don't utilize solely the siege weapons, although make them important when you want to blitzkrieg another civ or don't have much troops to spare:

- Walls, Castles and Military Bases not only improves , but also imposes a penalty to attackers on their cities. This penalty is minor to infantry and major do cavalry.

- Instead of HP and , the city will have only that takes the damage.

- Every fortified infantry unit next to an enemy city is "besieging" her. A unit besieging a city deals 2 of damage each round to that city. Notice that this way, to besiege a city will only become necessary when it should: after she gets walls. Before that, without penalty for attacking the city and without wall's bonus, there will be no need of besieging a city. Legions fortifying shouldn't take any damage from city attacks, due to their nature of making good fortifications on their own. The rationale behind it is the morale drop of a continualy besieged city and cuts on suplies that the besiegers do. So, in time and without external reinforcements a city will be so tired that will give up her strengh and will be an easy target.

- Siege weapons must do at least 3 or 4 damage to make them worth it, so balance accordingly. They will be important, but not indispensable.

This way Cavalries will dominate only the open fields, like real life (I'm very annoyed with the promotions they can get to fight well in rough terrain, this is madness, but that's for another topic), and not city taking. This way infantry will be valued, the cities won't be taken quickly if well defended and sieges will be brought to real life.

The major problem I see right now is:

- I don't know if the can take damage.
- I definitly know that it's impossible to tweak the AI right now to know how to deal with this.

But anyway, just my thoughts. Share your comments about my idea. Maybe a doable middle term can atract you.

Cheers.

 

[Thalassicus]

@Walderschmidt
I've rarely had games last to the modern era and the AI handles navies poorly, so I haven't done any work balancing modern ships.


@Koxpa
I'll investigate the iron thing.

I have an idea for how to solve the coal issue. I can probably create a "dummy" unit that isn't buildable and doesn't show up anywhere, but uses coal, just so the game knows it's used for something. I've been thinking about this ever since I noticed changing Ironclad's resource requirement makes coal vanish... just haven't gotten around to it yet.


@MilkmanDan
I'm not sure it's possible to block access to the land bombardment promotions, but I'll investigate. As for sight range... I don't think it's possible (with current tools) to create a promotion that reduces chance of being spotted, but I probably CAN give Submarines some sort of damage evasion promotion.


@jacyp
I started a test map in the Renaissance era trying to reproduce this situation. From left to right are castle+walls, walls, and no defenses. The combat odds of a rifleman vs the strongest city can be seen. Riflemen can be 46.25 vs cities right out of the box (with GG and armory). Even without a GG (as show below), the Rifleman estimates 5 damage vs the city's 3. A human player would obviously have much higher promoted units and a GG, but I'm leaving those out since AI's don't have those available.

You do have an excellent point that siege units like cannon should be useful but not required. Unless I'm overlooking something though (am I ??)... melee units alone are still very viable at taking cities. The rifleman deals 5 damage, while a cannon only deals 4. Melee units typically still take cities faster. The disadvantage is they also take take damage themselves, so it somewhat balances out. You can choose between a faster and costlier attack, or a slower and safer one.

Also note these are 20-population cities... smaller cities will have slightly lower strength, and capitals or hilltops will have slightly more.

I wish I could make it so damaged cities have lower combat strength, but unfortunately I couldn't find anything modifying that in GlobalDefines.xml.

I could try reducing the city strength bonuses from population/tech/etc. That would help reduce strength while still making defensive buildings valuable (the goal of the building changes). The vanilla values are listed below. I wish we could know what the actual formulas are... there's so many variables it's hard to determine which would be the best ones to adjust.

<Row Name="CITY_STRENGTH_DEFAULT">
  <Value>600</Value>
</Row>
<Row Name="CITY_STRENGTH_POPULATION_CHANGE">
  <Value>25</Value>
</Row>
<Row Name="CITY_STRENGTH_UNIT_DIVISOR">
  <Value>500</Value>
</Row>
<Row Name="CITY_STRENGTH_TECH_BASE">
  <Value>5</Value>
</Row>
<Row Name="CITY_STRENGTH_TECH_EXPONENT">
  <Value>1.8</Value>
</Row>
<Row Name="CITY_STRENGTH_TECH_MULTIPLIER">
  <Value>2</Value>
</Row>
<Row Name="CITY_STRENGTH_HILL_MOD">
  <Value>15</Value>
</Row>
<Row Name="CITY_ATTACKING_DAMAGE_MOD">
  <Value>50</Value>
</Row>
<Row Name="ATTACKING_CITY_MELEE_DAMAGE_MOD">
  <Value>100</Value>
</Row>
<Row Name="CITY_ATTACK_RANGE">
  <Value>2</Value>
</Row>
<Row Name="CAN_CITY_USE_INDIRECT_FIRE">
  <Value>1</Value>
</Row>
<Row Name="CITY_RANGED_ATTACK_STRENGTH_MULTIPLIER">
  <Value>50</Value>
</Row>
<Row Name="MIN_CITY_STRIKE_DAMAGE">
  <Value>1</Value>
</Row>
<Row Name="CITY_CAPTURE_DAMAGE_PERCENT">
  <Value>50</Value>
</Row>

 

[Perkus]

Coal with mod "Balance - units" not reveals on top panel with other strategic resources, i think 'cause no one unit in game needs it after Ironclad need Coal with that mod.

Wow, that's brilliant, it looks like you're right! I can't believe that game is actually checking all units to see what resources they use and marking only those as strategic. I guess that's why I couldn't find any table that sets that attribute - it's done on the fly.
I couldn't figure out what was causing this when it was pointed out in only happens with mods! It's interesting that they don't consider buildings "strategic", though (factory still uses it). By their definition, Coal is in fact no longer a strategic resource with this mod!

I hope Thal. can find some trick like a dummy unit to make this go away.

 

[jacyp]

@jacyp
I started a test map in the Renaissance era trying to reproduce this situation. From left to right are castle+walls, walls, and no defenses. The combat odds of a rifleman vs the strongest city can be seen. Riflemen can be 46.25 vs cities right out of the box (with GG and armory). Even without a GG (as show below), the Rifleman estimates 5 damage vs the city's 3. A human player would obviously have much higher promoted units and a GG, but I'm leaving those out since AI's don't have those available.

You do have an excellent point that siege units like cannon should be useful but not required. Unless I'm overlooking something though (am I ??)... melee units alone are still very viable at taking cities. The rifleman deals 5 damage, while a cannon only deals 4. Melee units typically still take cities faster. The disadvantage is they also take take damage themselves, so it somewhat balances out. You can choose between a faster and costlier attack, or a slower and safer one.

Also note these are 20-population cities... smaller cities will have slightly lower strength, and capitals or hilltops will have slightly more.

I wish I could make it so damaged cities have lower combat strength, but unfortunately I couldn't find anything modifying that in GlobalDefines.xml.

I could try reducing the city strength bonuses from population/tech/etc. That would help reduce strength while still making defensive buildings valuable (the goal of the building changes). The vanilla values are listed below. I wish we could know what the actual formulas are... there's so many variables it's hard to determine which would be the best ones to adjust.

I think you've posted images, but they aren't showing here.

I've started another game, I think I had older version of your mod or conflicting mods with active city defense (I didn't do the trick with the file as you taught). So I've uninstalled all mods I had and instaled just your full pack of balance to see how things will turn up. I think castles were giving me +30 at my other save, which is wrong according to your documentation of the mod.

But even so, Thalassicus, castles can be made in Medieval era. I don't think that comparing just to the best unit of the Renaissance (one era above, enabled by the most expensive tech of the era and just one tech before Industrial) is a good way to seek balance. Knights, longswordsman and lancers are the most logical choice for this test.

But it's 5 AM here in Brazil and I'll leave that to you

I've got to sleep!

By the way, it's a real shame indeed that so many calculations and variables in this game remains a mistery, you're not the first "mod'er" I see complaining about it. Fireaxis did a good job releasing tools to easy your jobs, but there remains some flaws. Let's hope that in time we'll get what we want.

Cheers and thanks for the reply.

 

[jwallstone]

On the issue of submarines with promotions against land units, that's because the designers got lazy and just gave it the same combat class, naval, as the other sea units. The available upgrades are determined by combat class.

I actually created a mod to change this. I've attached this.

Instead of bonuses vs land, I gave it the Survivalism series, since it sort of fits in with the idea of self-reliant covert subs roaming around vs enemies that would be stronger if they could see it.

Please feel free to use. You can double check if I've included all the necessary promotions.