Bad news, you've discovered gunpowder

[Jonathan]

LATEST NEWS 2017-02-24 is that this post and this thread seem to be obsolete: today's patch (to version 1.0.0.110 of the game) promises what seems a good fix for the problem, though I haven't tested it yet.

Whenever I discover gunpowder, I look around for nitre and quite often find that I have none anywhere within reach, and this tends to mean that I suddenly can't build any military unit that's any use, apart from crossbowmen. The legions that I was happily building before (being Roman) are suddenly unavailable, although they'd still be useful, and there's nothing to replace them with, especially if I have no horses as well as no nitre.

People don't forget how to build old tech. They choose to stop building it whenever they find they can build something better. If lack of some basic resource stops them from building new tech, they go on building the old tech, as long as it still works well enough to be worth building.

I suggest that we shouldn't lose access to technology A until we're actually able to build technology B.

As a possible alternative, provide more nitre resources, so that having no access to it becomes really unusual instead of quite common.

Given the fairly incompetent opposition in the single-player game, I can survive without either of these changes, but it just pisses me off to find that the discovery of gunpowder has stopped me from producing the old units without enabling me to build the new ones. It shouldn't happen.

The best I can do is to build up a stock of legions as a precaution before discovering gunpowder, but that's a workaround rather than a solution. And it's a costly workaround: building more legions than I need at the time is a waste of production and maintenance money.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

'Nitre' is an excellent example of Things That Are Wrong with Civ VI. In fact, it is a Trifecta of things that are wrong, because is is:
Bad (Game Design)
Bad History
Totally Unnecessary

First, no Game should, by Design, cut you off from building units and progressing Because you have discovered a 'new' Technology. This turns the game on its head - your Best Play, in many cases, is to Not discover Gunpowder!

Second, Nitre is not a finite resource that must be 'discovered' - it is a natural product of organic decomposition, found in just about any compost pile. In no case that I am aware of in 50 years of studying military history did anyone have any problem manufacturing gunpowder because they couldn't find the ingredients. Historically, the imposition of a Nitre limitation is ridiculous.

Third, it is Totally Unnecessary. If the Game Designer decided for some reason that the number of gunpowder units must be limited (again, historically never due to lack of gunpowder), then jacking up the cost or, better yet, the Maintenance Cost of the units would do it much better, and be defendable historically: unlike all previous human-powdered weapons, the firearm-equipped unit requires continuous supply of gunpowder and ammunition to be effective: a cost that is New to the armies employing them. Having a Maintenance Cost per unit 2 or 3 times what went before will make any player think twice before embarking on a massive army of gunpowder-users unless he has also built up his economy...

 

[MaximusPlatypus]

I think the resource used was saltpeter in Civ (3?) which is essentially the same thing as "nitre". I guess it kind of makes sense gameplay-wise to have an initial cost to producing large gunpowder armies, and I think the third paragraph in Boris' post above is a good suggestion. Or perhaps civs should have to produce a project or building "Nitre plant" or something.


But yes I agree with OP that eliminating the ability to produce the old unit is just dumb.

 

[Jonathan]

unlike all previous human-powered weapons, the firearm-equipped unit requires continuous supply of gunpowder and ammunition to be effective

Thanks for your comments, which I generally agree with. I quibble slightly about the supply of ammo: archers also require a continuous supply of arrows, although this tends to be overlooked in fiction, in which they sometimes seem to have an endless supply that never needs replenishing!

 

[TomKQT]

This sometimes leads to very crazy situations. You are building a catapult and research metal casting. But you don't have any niter. Suddenly, the catapult production stops, you get nothing back for the wasted time and you are completely cut off from siege weapons. This must be the worst gameplay desing ever
"Sorry my lord, we already know how to make those new shiny bombards, they are so great, we simply cannot build the old-shool catapults anymore. Yea, pitty, we don't have niter so we actually cannot make any bombards. But, eh..."

 

[Leyrann]

This sometimes leads to very crazy situations. You are building a catapult and research metal casting. But you don't have any niter. Suddenly, the catapult production stops, you get nothing back for the wasted time and you are completely cut off from siege weapons. This must be the worst gameplay desing ever
"Sorry my lord, we already know how to make those new shiny bombards, they are so great, we simply cannot build the old-shool catapults anymore. Yea, pitty, we don't have niter so we actually cannot make any bombards. But, eh..."

More like "Sorry, my lord, but we got this new technology, which makes catapults look useless in comparision, so no catapults anymore. Why we don't bulid these cannons? They need a resource that we don't know anything about and can't find, but still, they're just so much better than catapults, so no useless catapults."

 

[Jarms48]

An interesting source of Nitre could be a religious belief, churches would often collect urine from the privy and turn it into potassium nitrate (nitre) and sell it off to make gun powder - as saltpetre mines in Europe were quite rare. It might sound gross but it's something that actually happened.

 

[VeronicaCardican]

I think the reason to ban old units is that it's so cheap to upgrade them with the half cost policy that building archers and upgrading them to crossbowmen is way better than either producing crossbowmen or buying a crossbow units with gold.

If the ban only took effect as soon as I had access to the new resource, I'd likely exploit that by deliberately postponing the new mine till I have all the old units out that I want to upgrade later.

However, I still think that the situation as is, is bad for the reasons stated above.

Instead I'd suggest to make units available purely by tech but hit them with a severe penalty if resources are missing. So without nitre you'd be building bombards at the full cost of bombards but the combat strength of a catapult. Old units would still become unavailable as they do now.

 

[RealAntithesis]

Yep, Civ 6 seems full of these funny situations. The other example is with tanks upgrading to modern tanks. Modern tanks make normal tanks obsolete (so no more tanks) but you can't build modern tanks if you don't have uranium, which you don't know about if you haven't researched nuclear fission, and if you have researched nuclear fission, you still won't be able to make any modern tanks if your territory just doesn't have any uranium anyway. So no tanks at all.

 

[UWHabs]

I think the reason to ban old units is that it's so cheap to upgrade them with the half cost policy that building archers and upgrading them to crossbowmen is way better than either producing crossbowmen or buying a crossbow units with gold.

If the ban only took effect as soon as I had access to the new resource, I'd likely exploit that by deliberately postponing the new mine till I have all the old units out that I want to upgrade later.

However, I still think that the situation as is, is bad for the reasons stated above.

Instead I'd suggest to make units available purely by tech but hit them with a severe penalty if resources are missing. So without nitre you'd be building bombards at the full cost of bombards but the combat strength of a catapult. Old units would still become unavailable as they do now.

I think this makes the most sense. Make it so that no unit is ever locked out from being built, but if you don't have the resource, the unit cannot heal and has a -17 combat penalty, for example. Then you just need to adjust the AI to make sure they don't build a legion of units without the resource.

 

[steve_indy]

This aspect is broken and needs a fix. There are many, just a couple of possible ones: any units built on old tech after the new tech is available be "legacy" units that cannot be upgraded, or no new units under the new tech can be built until the player intentionally declares the old unit "obsolete," at which point no old tech units can be built. Either of those would fix the current problem and prevent an upgrade exploit.

 

[Jonathan]

I think the reason to ban old units is that it's so cheap to upgrade them with the half cost policy that building archers and upgrading them to crossbowmen is way better than either producing crossbowmen or buying a crossbow units with gold.

If there's a problem because units are so cheap to upgrade, the simple answer is to stop making them so cheap to upgrade.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

If there's a problem because units are so cheap to upgrade, the simple answer is to stop making them so cheap to upgrade.

Another of the myriad Civ VI Design Bungles, but in all honesty, the 'Upgrades' haven't made a lot of sense in Civ games since at least Civ V and probably earlier (it's been too many years since I played Civ IV to remember the upgrades in it).

What exactly does it mean in the game to 'upgrade' a unit?
There are very few ships that can be 'upgraded' - a galley is a very different construction from a sailing ship like a Caravel, and no Caravel hull could begin to carry the weight of an Ironclad!
If a ground unit is 'upgraded' it almost always means completely re-equipping and retraining the unit: Swordsmen to Musketmen means the men have to learn completely new skills, and the only thing the unit might keep from its earlier version is a Pride of Unit (Morale) and maybe some discipline.

Historically (which is always my default argument as long as we are playing a game supposedly based on history and not fantasy) units that got entirely new equipment required almost the same amount of training and familiarization as a unit formed and trained from scratch with the new equipment, even or especially when the old eqiuipment required more specialized skills: a crossbow is much easier to aim and use than a longbow, or 'self' bow, but after spending literally years learning to use a regular bow all those old techniques have to be Unlearned.
- And don't even get me started on the difference between Pike drills and antitank rocket crew drills!

Realistically (and probably better in game design terms, too) an Upgrade should cost only slightly less than building a new unit, and any promotions the unit had relating to its weaponry should probably be lost, or possibly the unit should lose one promotion at random.

On the other hand, units still equipped with 'old' weapons when new ones are available (as in, the men still have spears when other units in the army are sporting pikes) will tend to feel much less confident in themselves and their armament. Perhaps all Un-upgraded units in your army should have a combat penalty once you have built a unit with the 'new' weapons? That would certainly encourage Upgrading while making the Upgrade cost near-equal to the Build cost would keep Upgrading from being a cheap and 'gamey' way to build up an army.

 

[Captain Potato]

I've always thought the way aluminium is handled is a bit dodgy. The cost of that material is about the difficulty of extracting it rather than its rarity (it's the most abundant metal on earth).

Not got much more to add but I agree with Veronica's suggestion.

 

[Leyrann]

I apologize for not taking a historic standpoint here, but there's very clear reasons for upgrading units. In real life, people live some 60 years and then die. In this game however, the unit that you build in 3000 BC stays with you forever, unless it dies in battle. So, to avoid units becoming useless after a while and just having them hang around costing maintenance and (in V and VI) taking up space is just weird in gameplay terms. Not being able to upgrade them (or upgrading being as costly as purchasing/building a new unit) would mean you'll just have to disband them or turn them into cannon fodder.

On top of that, experience takes some time to accumulate, and losing that to a unit being obsolete just feels bad. Even if a unit would have a lifespan of 100 turns (which would be 2.5 millenia early in the game and still 100 years late in the game), it would just suck if it'd gotten several promotions, is now some 50% stronger than a fresh unit of the same kind, and now it dies because of age or obsoleteness or whatever.

It's just a topic where gameplay is more important than realism because realism sometimes just sucks if you put it into a game. Just like the Medieval Era is a step up from the Classical Era. That's because it sucks if you are doing well and then get dragged down into a dark hole because that happened to the real world.

 

[TomKQT]

It's just a topic where gameplay is more important than realism because realism sometimes just sucks if you put it into a game.

I completely agree with you. If units couldnt be upgrated or if the upgrate cost the same as building a new unit while also losing the promotions, it would be very bad gameplay-wise. And not realistic either, because an archer really will not live for 1000 years. Sure, we can say that it is many generations of soldiers in one military unit, but hey - every new young soldir would also require training... So, if we want realism, units should lose promotions every 30 years maybe? So like every turn? Or just get rid of promotions completely then, because they are useless suddenly.
Seriously, people, dont try to use realism as arguments for everything.

 

[Jonathan]

I completely agree with you. If units couldnt be upgrated or if the upgrate cost the same as building a new unit while also losing the promotions, it would be very bad gameplay-wise. And not realistic either, because an archer really will not live for 1000 years. Sure, we can say that it is many generations of soldiers in one military unit, but hey - every new young soldir would also require training... So, if we want realism, units should lose promotions every 30 years maybe? So like every turn? Or just get rid of promotions completely then, because they are useless suddenly.
Seriously, people, dont try to use realism as arguments for everything.

Seriously, I wouldn't use realism as an argument for everything. But the criticism of upgrades in this thread was originally for gameplay reasons!

And I don't think anyone has suggested removing the capability to upgrade. The proposal is to make upgrades more expensive than they currently are (how much more expensive is a moot point), and perhaps for the upgraded unit to lose one promotion in the process. I think this would be good for the game as well as somewhat more realistic.

 

[DavDarkelf]

There is a simple solution, although very difficult to implement.

• Make the cost of upgrading equal to the cost of the new Unit.
• Move the redundancy of a unit type to be one higher than now. For example allow you to build Slingers and Archers but as soon as you unlock Machinery stop allowing you to build Slingers

This would require rewriting all of the units in game and would be completely incompatible with all other Mods that add units.

 

[VeronicaCardican]

If there's a problem because units are so cheap to upgrade, the simple answer is to stop making them so cheap to upgrade.

There is a simple solution, although very difficult to implement.

• Make the cost of upgrading equal to the cost of the new Unit.[snip]

For the most part, the upgrade system is just fine. Upgrading for the price of a full fresh unit seems over the top.

The point is that a unit's production cost scales roughly along the same line as the production capability of my core cities. While the cost in gears may be double that of the inferior unit, the production times are about the same for the time they are built. So I have spent 6 rounds building a slinger in my capital and training an archer will also take six turns.

Paying a modest sum to keep my 6 turns worth of earliest game production relevant in the current era seems fine. What's not fine is keeping on producing slingers at the now improved rate of production and then upgrading them as I see fit.

Therefore I assume that obsolete units have to become unbuildable or unupgradable as soon as technology has advanced sufficiently.

Increasing the upgrade cost to solve the problem would take away the legitimate use of the upgrade function alltogether.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Thanks for your comments, which I generally agree with. I quibble slightly about the supply of ammo: archers also require a continuous supply of arrows, although this tends to be overlooked in fiction, in which they sometimes seem to have an endless supply that never needs replenishing!

True, but arrows do not require gathering sulphur and saltpeter, manufacturing charcoal, mixing them in proper proportion, and transporting the result while keeping it both dry and away from any flames, and also digging, refining, and casting lead bullets. Arrows, javelins, sling shot all require replenishment, but the provision of supplies for 'gunpowder' units was a whole order of magnitude greater.

One example of how much more expensive armies got when gunpowder weapons (especially, artillery) were added to the mx is that simultaneously with the invention and spread of artillery and primitive muskets in Europe, international banking was invented by folks like the Fuggers and Rothschilds, and Kings immediately started borrowing previously-unheard-of sums from them to finance military campaigns. This was no coincidence.

Second, I would never argue that realism is the basis for everything in a game, but when a system in the game is not working, as in the Upgrade system/mechanism in Civ VI, the historical reality is at least a better place to start looking for answers than SWAG (Scientific Wild-A** Guesswork).

In the case of Upgrades, the game is combining Continuity of Promotions on an over-extended Timescale with the Game Situation of giving the Gamer a reason to keep units around and upgrade or promote them instead of building all new units every time Tech advances.

Unfortunately, as in so many other things, the game was never properly play tested to find the proper balance e between Upgrade and Building Costs, or to address the Resource/Upgrade problem.
I agree with the suggestion of making it possible to build new units without the 'required' Resource, but I'd suggest that the penalty for the new unit would be that the Build and Maintenance Costs would be increased: this would represent the 'extra' cost of smuggling, stealing, or 'working around' the required resources.
I would also suggest that without the required Resource, an older unit could still be Upgraded, but with increased cost and Maintenance Cost, so that, yes, you are not Drastically penalized because the only source of Nitre is half a continent away in the territory of your Sworn Enemy, but a massive army of the new type units is going to be very, very difficult to produce and maintain.

No Game Design decision should so penalize the gamer that he gets to a point less than 1/3 of the way through the game when he either has to radically change how he is playing the game (I'm A Bad Warmonger - whoops. I can't build any Melee units, better start playing for a Culture Victory!) or quit in disgust.

And, just to re-visit the 'realism' issue, very few military units ever really went completely obsolete: spear-armed infantry in 1879 massacred a rifle-armed force (Zulus versus British) and a bunch of slingers shot a bunch of Longbowmen to pieces (Basques versus mercenary English) BUT these are exceptions to the rule!