Armies

[Thalassicus]

From earlier in this thread:

Feb 11, 2011, 05:01 PM
The primary reason spearmen were buffed is to give civs without iron a realistic chance at defending themselves. Either in this thread or the combined one I pointed out swordsmen one-hit-kill 7 spears on open terrain, with just a great general (no promotions). 8 spears shifts it more into 2-hit kill territory, giving iron-deprived civs a fighting chance.

Spears are good on rough terrain but the defender can't pick the terrain of their start location. If a city has open terrain on even a single side it's the one-hit-kill scenario. Horsemen are not a viable defensive unit since they 1) receive no defensive bonuses and 2) have a hard counter.

It's okay with me that a later-tech, more expensive unit obsoletes an earlier and cheaper one. Warriors are still important in the early game, and retain their value of Iron is nearby for upgrades.

The Aztec civ is already considered very fun, I don't think it needs a buff:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=413025

My todo list always has way more stuff than I have time for, so I focus on leaders that are underwhelming.

I've been considering making Maori a Swordsman replacement, though I feel the Polynesian civ as a whole is already quite fun and powerful. The Moai are also getting a buff in the next official patch. I'm normally a domination player yet I won three exciting cultural victories with Polynesia.

 

[Txurce]

I've been considering making Maori a Swordsman replacement, though I feel the Polynesian civ as a whole is already quite fun and powerful. The Moai are also getting a buff in the next official patch. I'm normally a domination player yet I won three exciting cultural victories with Polynesia.

I agree that Polynesia is already quite powerful. The Maori are the weakest of their traits... and should probably remain that way!

 

[Thalassicus]

I actually consider them very strong since their -10% aura sticks around for the whole game. It's somewhat weaker now that the AI gets more promotions, due to the nature of additive modifiers, but the civ is getting buffed anyway.

 

[Freindly Fire]

Thal I was wondering your thoughts on adding a mechanic to allow units to gain exp over time? it would allow peaceful players the opportunity to have strong units will out warring, idea being that older units would have spent time training and refining tactics as opposed to sitting in the hex with their thumbs up their bums.

 

[Thalassicus]

Perhaps for garrisoned units? Oligarchy could have an effect where garrisoned units gain 1 XP every N turns. 1 per 5 would be the same as participating in a battle every 25 turns, for example.

 

[SlightlyMad]

That's an extremely interesting idea. Would it be possible for it to only work in forts, citadels, and cities?

 

[Thalassicus]

I'd normally avoid buffing forts/citadels, but in the next patch Firaxis is supposedly going to program the AI to recognize their existence. Because of this I'll probably be reconsidering their balance now to make them a more important part of the game. It'd be very easy to sweep through all units every N turns, check if units are fortified in a city/fort/citadel, and if so give them XP.

 

[SlightlyMad]

Yeah, I would have just said forts & citadels, but I figure adding cities too will mean the AI can benefit from it, since as far as I can tell they always like to park units in their cities. How about making this into an honor tree policy? That would make taking Honor not feel like such a waste if you don't end up getting into any big wars.

edit: Oh, you already mentioned tying it to Oligarchy; good idea

 

[Txurce]

It's pretty easy to imagine building a highly promoted peacetime strike force by starting early with a barracks, four warriors, barb training, garrisoning, upgrading, and then going to war in, say, the Renaissance with killer longswords. I question having a kickass army by playing builder - especially when the only requirement is literally sitting in one of my four cities. As usual, I like not being able to do one thing as well as another, because of choices the game forces me to make.

 

[SlightlyMad]

Well, if it's in the honor tree, a builder isn't going to see the effect without sacrificing other more useful policies, so it's still a trade-off and therefore strategically interesting.

 

[Txurce]

Well, if it's in the honor tree, a builder isn't going to see the effect without sacrificing other more useful policies, so it's still a trade-off and therefore strategically interesting.

I agree. In fact, I think it would be a nice addition to the Honor tree. I was referring to Thal considering including it in Oligarchy.

 

[Thalassicus]

Honor's "Military Caste" policy is very useful now even if we don't enter any wars. I normally move an escort with settlers when founding a city, so when that escort is garrisoned the city immediately gets 21. It's like an instant Monument that also mitigates the -per-city cost. Even if you don't start many cities, the effects are still useful. I placed it early in the tree so builders have easy access to it.

 

[Txurce]

Honor's "Military Caste" policy is very useful now even if we don't enter any wars. I normally move an escort with settlers when founding a city, so when that escort is garrisoned the city immediately gets 21. It's like an instant Monument that also mitigates the -per-city cost. Even if you don't start many cities, the effects are still useful. I placed it early in the tree so builders have easy access to it.

I don't think this negates my proposing that the XP buff belongs in the Honor tree, but -

That is a great tip about "Military Caste"!

I also benefited from your tutorial on policy costs.

 

[Txurce]

I've been meaning to bring up that the barbs post-Mentos' mod haven't seemed that aggressive. More importantly, they don't seem to have terrain advantages based on where they're spawned (I think) and friendly units still get the 10% bonus vs the barbs.

 

[BelmontHalo]

A while ago I started messing around with the resources to find a setup I liked, but then stopped playing for a while.

I was extremely disappointed with how useless resources seemed to be, especially with Iron becoming obsolete later on and units like the Destroyer and Mech Infantry that didn't even use them. Controlling resources should be a much bigger part of the game.

I was wondering- is the AI programmed to stop building units when it runs out of a resource? I thought about that after I saw all the problems with the carpets of doom. Maybe if all the units required resources, the number of units could be limited a bit by giving the AI a resource % bonus similar to what's in the Autocracy tree. Then they would still be able to rebuild them fast, but won't have as many all at once. Could have more resources used on buildings too.

Maybe they could also be given a discount on purchasing new units at higher difficulties (if they don't get it already). Although maybe not since they always seem to have a ton of extra gold.

I'd like to see every unit require a resource or multiple resources- at least in the mid/late game. I think it could be balanced without too much trouble by adjusting how much you get from each source. Is it difficult to change that? Could then play around with different penalties for not having enough. And also instead of having it apply to all units, limit it to the number of resources you're short * some multiplier and then apply a penalty to that number of units. Maybe even give penalty priority to units that are outside of your borders. No idea if that's possible but thought I'd throw it in there.

I wish there were more types of resources as well. It seemed like it would be tough to add completely new ones and get them distributed around the map.


and- I've noticed the same things with the barbs, but the only bonus i've seen against them is just flanking/adjacent unit until you get to the honor tree.

 

[Thalassicus]

I don't think this negates my proposing that the XP buff belongs in the Honor tree, but -

That is a great tip about "Military Caste"!

I also benefited from your tutorial on policy costs.

I misread the posts just above my last one, didn't realize you were advocating for putting this in the Honor tree.

Oligarchy is rather weak so it's probably better on that policy.

The terrain bonus for barbs had a bug I think I've fixed now. The problem is a bug with the vanilla code that spawns barbarian at camps: SerialEventUnitCreated doesn't happen. This is a rather weird bug and I can't fix it since it's on the c++ side of things, so now I instead check each unit once per turn to see if it's a newly-created barbarian. It's not ideal but should work, and this fix will be in beta build 6.

I redesigned the whole system to analyze everything around the barbarian in a 5-tile radius. It uses whichever terrain type is most abundant to determine the promotion (vegitation, hills, snow, desert). If none are present it default to vegitation, so unless there's a bug in the latest build all barbarians should have a promotion now. This is significantly more likely to get a promotion useful for the barbarian, and is more realistic since it better represents the barbarian's knowledge of the land.


@BelmontHalo
I don't know much about how the AI works, most of that stuff is hidden to us.

I went in an opposite direction with resources by making them scarcer, and therefore more valuable. Armies are composed of a few resource-using units and a bunch of resource-free ones, instead of all resource-using (as in vanilla). I think this is more fun for gameplay as a whole. I'd prefer if issues with AI unit spam are resolved directly instead of hard caps on the number of units we can build.

 

[Txurce]

The barbs with desert power were unfortunately passive, but they gave me a scare! Barbs with terrain buffs have a lot of potential, but watching that one sit and die in its camp reminded me that the Barbs! mod hasn't make them nearly as aggressive as I had expected. Is this what Mentos or anyone else expected?

On a side note, my roommate played a game yesterday with the Ancient Lakes map. The barbs were incredible in that game - I saw them pillage her capital over and over again. I did a reload and played it myself for a while. It was just about impossible to gain traction - ultimately frustrating, but fun for a while. Now playing that with the Germans...

 

[Thalassicus]

Thanks for that feedback. I'll add the barbarians' -25% city attack modifier back in, so they die more when pillaging cities. That should help avoid unwinnable situations like that.

We're unable to change the AI of the barb in the camp - they only move out if they have a "Decisive Victory" on a target in range. So what I did do is change the spawning mechanism. Mentos' mod used to increase the number of barbs that can spawn per camp from 2 to 3, I dropped it back to 2 and instead increased the number of camps spawned by 50%. I've found this gives us a more lively experience.

 

[Txurce]

Thanks for that feedback. I'll add the barbarians' -25% city attack modifier back in, so they die more when pillaging cities. That should help avoid unwinnable situations like that.

We're unable to change the AI of the barb in the camp - they only move out if they have a "Decisive Victory" on a target in range. So what I did do is change the spawning mechanism. Mentos' mod used to increase the number of barbs that can spawn per camp from 2 to 3, I dropped it back to 2 and instead increased the number of camps spawned by 50%. I've found this gives us a more lively experience.

I like the idea of more camps, and it's working out well. Keep in mind that I've only encountered that overwhelming situation in Ancient Lakes. There must be something unusual about the set-up of that game (I do know there are less civs). I've never had my capital attacked playing Continents.

 

[Txurce]

I also like adding a third XP level in tandem with the increase in camps. Both make the game more interesting.