Bazooka discussion

The Bazooka name is a clear example of the rule of cool. In essence, it's just a continuation of the ranged line, nothing more. So yeah, that's it, complain or walk, but they ain't gonna change it. ;)
 
Killlbray said:
Seriously, sometimes I don't upgrade Xbows because it's more of a demotion than an actual promotion, especially for a city defense. I can use a xbows to damage invading units from behind my city, but with a gatling I cannot, I'd need to move it in front when it will likely be slaughtered.
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Really?

I'd much rather have a unit with double the combat strength that defends just as well as it attacks. I think better positioning of your gatling guns is in order.
 
gunnergoz said:
The point of a 1-hex ranged unit is that it can attack without having to leave the defensive position it has. Melee units, once victorious, must advance into the enemy's hex and potentially expose themselves to enemy counter-attacks. This is actually pretty important if you are defending a city from multiple attackers who could gang up on your exposed defender once he was in the open.
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But you still need melee anyway, you can't conquer a city without melee.

So rather than having 2 melee 2 gatling and 2 artilleries, I'd rather have 2 melee and 4 artilleries. The 4 artilleries can work a lot better together to kill targets.

And for defensive purposes, you don't even want to attack with your frontline units. You should fortify to further reduce the damage.
 
Killlbray said:
But you still need melee anyway, you can't conquer a city without melee.

So rather than having 2 melee 2 gatling and 2 artilleries, I'd rather have 2 melee and 4 artilleries. The 4 artilleries can work a lot better together to kill targets.

And for defensive purposes, you don't even want to attack with your frontline units. You should fortify to further reduce the damage.
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Correct, melee is the offensive unit and range-1 ranged are defensive units, particularly useful in city defense. I'd not attack a city with 1-range ranged units (i.e. bazookas) because they cannot follow up a victory by immediately advancing into the city hex.

I think you misread my OP on the subject. I was pointing out the usefulness of 1-range ranged units in the defensive, not offensive. They can attack the attackers attacking a city, without exposing themselves by advancing out of the city following a victory. I can't explain it plainer than that without resorting to a puppet show. :D
 
gunnergoz said:
I think you misread my OP on the subject. I was pointing out the usefulness of 1-range ranged units in the defensive, not offensive. They can attack the attackers attacking a city, without exposing themselves by advancing out of the city following a victory. I can't explain it plainer than that without resorting to a puppet show. :D
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i dun get it pls post puppet show.
 
gunnergoz said:
The point of a 1-hex ranged unit is that it can attack without having to leave the defensive position it has. Melee units, once victorious, must advance into the enemy's hex and potentially expose themselves to enemy counter-attacks. This is actually pretty important if you are defending a city from multiple attackers who could gang up on your exposed defender once he was in the open. At the same time, keeping the range to 1 prevents the unit from being used as plain artillery.
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This.
 
The range line is messed up. It already was a stupid idea to make gatling/machine guns upgrade from Crossbowmen. But now suddenly my machine guns upgrade into a different WWII unit in the era after it and they upgrade into unit that is first to take down tanks?

I much rather see Skirmishers/Light Infantry for the next few upgrades on crossbowmen in later eras. Then have it end around the time GWI's enter the field since Artillery/Planes will be much more effective for range warfare. Just make it so the the promotions convert over.

The Gatling/Machine gun can be a new type of defensive unit that lays down suppression fire and requires set up (Sorry but Gatling guns moving along a road and firing upon me in the same turn looks terrible). Add a early machine gun in between(BNW shows it in the cutscene) and push back the machine gun a little bit so it can be stronger and remain effective to the end game.

Like it or not, the range line doesn't need to carry all the way to the end game when you have both aircraft/artillery that can do it much better.
 
The way I see it is that because we have mech infantry, represented by a vehicle, having a AT missile launcher or "bazooka" makes sense as it counters the tank line and the mech infantry representation. Personally I'd want to see either a javelin or mortar teams but it's still good to see the range line doesn't end early anymore.
 
I understand the desire to continue the range line properly, but the unit they picked to represent this is a real head scratcher. A Bazooka (really, the model looks more like a Panzerschreck) is a short-range, strictly anti-tank, relatively inaccurate weapon. It was designed for one thing, disabling armored vehicles, and that is really the only thing it did well. A Bazooka is completely ineffective against troops; its battlefield role doesn't even remotely resemble that of a Gatling gun or machine gun, and as far as technology goes, it should come out at around the same point as machine guns and infantry, not well after it.

I guess part of the issue might be the fact that some of the machine guns used in WWII are actually still in use today (e.g., the M2 Browning HMG), and many newer models are largely based on their WWII counterparts (e.g., the Rheinmetall MG3); the effectiveness of a WWII-era machine gun hasn't really changed much over the years, which makes it difficult to really come up with a proper upgrade unit. Still, I can think of far better options than a weapon that is completely unrelated and is actually no more advanced than the machine guns it is meant to replace (in fact, Bazookas themselves are obsolete now, while WWII-era machine gun technology is not). One idea would be the M134 Minigun, which is basically an extremely rapid fire machinegun. Or they could have gone the sci-fi route and come up with something in the same vein as GDRs and X-Com Squads. In my view, just about anything would have made more sense than a Bazooka.
 
Dux1 said:
I understand the desire to continue the range line properly, but the unit they picked to represent this is a real head scratcher. A Bazooka (really, the model looks more like a Panzerschreck) is a short-range, strictly anti-tank, relatively inaccurate weapon. It was designed for one thing, disabling armored vehicles, and that is really the only thing it did well. A Bazooka is completely ineffective against troops; its battlefield role doesn't even remotely resemble that of a Gatling gun or machine gun, and as far as technology goes, it should come out at around the same point as machine guns and infantry, not well after it.

I guess part of the issue might be the fact that some of the machine guns used in WWII are actually still in use today (e.g., the M2 Browning HMG), and many newer models are largely based on their WWII counterparts (e.g., the Rheinmetall MG3); the effectiveness of a WWII-era machine gun hasn't really changed much over the years, which makes it difficult to really come up with a proper upgrade unit. Still, I can think of far better options than a weapon that is completely unrelated and is actually no more advanced than the machine guns it is meant to replace (in fact, Bazookas themselves are obsolete now, while WWII-era machine gun technology is not). One idea would be the M134 Minigun, which is basically an extremely rapid fire machinegun. Or they could have gone the sci-fi route and come up with something in the same vein as GDRs and X-Com Squads. In my view, just about anything would have made more sense than a Bazooka.
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While I agree with much of your post, I strongly disagree with the premise that "A Bazooka is completely ineffective against troops." Exposed individuals, perhaps - you don't shoot a bazooka at a solitary soldier in the open. OTOH, There are many historical incidents that I've read of regarding the use of bazookas against crewed weapons positions, as bunker busters and for destruction of ordinary dwellings. While not, strictly speaking, anti-personnel weapons, the bazooka's shaped charge going off anywhere near exposed troops is going to cause some serious wounds. So even the humble bazooka was good against a variety of targets and not simply for AT work - and it's successors, e.g. LAW, are still used in much the same way today.
 
gunnergoz said:
While I agree with much of your post, I strongly disagree with the premise that "A Bazooka is completely ineffective against troops." Exposed individuals, perhaps - you don't shoot a bazooka at a solitary soldier in the open. OTOH, There are many historical incidents that I've read of regarding the use of bazookas against crewed weapons positions, as bunker busters and for destruction of ordinary dwellings. While not, strictly speaking, anti-personnel weapons, the bazooka's shaped charge going off anywhere near exposed troops is going to cause some serious wounds. So even the humble bazooka was good against a variety of targets and not simply for AT work - and it's successors, e.g. LAW, are still used in much the same way today.
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It is true that Bazookas and similar anti-tank weapons of the era could have been (and were) used against infantry fortifications effectively. Modern versions of these weapons are even more effective in this role, particularly with the advent of thermobaric munitions designed precisely for this sort of "bunker busting." That said, this rather specialized anti-personnel (really more accurately described as anti-fortification) role is very different from and in no way replaces the role of a machine gun, and this is one of the primary reasons why I find it quite odd that Bazooka was chosen as an upgrade for it.

I suppose it could be argued that the idea here is ranged versatility against all targets, but really, the Bazooka didn't have that, and it had far less range than a machine gun. It might have been interesting, though, if the Bazooka was made into a unit that was effective against armor or fortified infantry while receiving a penalty against non-fortified infantry. That would have added some interesting flavor to the unit, I think, perhaps removing some of the sting from its flagrant historical misplacement. ;)
 
Let's face it...us history and military grogs are always going to scoff at this sort of whimsical and ahistorical assignment of names and images that game designers are routinely making. It is not going to spoil the game for me, particularly since so much can be modded.

My beef is more with the logic of how the Civ V team originally broke down melee units. My preference would have been for two "houses" of ground melee combat units: dismounted, and mounted (the latter first on horseback, later on vehicles.) Then two categories of primary function: anti-dismounted and anti-mounted. So in each historical era, you could have four possible combinations: 1. dismounted/anti-dismounted (warriors); 2. dismounted/anti-mounted (spear); 3. mounted/anti-dismounted (horse); and 4. mounted/anti-mounted (horse but eventually lancers.) For most of history, there are examples of each type of unit to choose from, with many local and cultural variations and abilities.

The modern "bazooka" unit in BNW would be the culmination of the dismounted/anti-mounted line.

This melee series, of course, would be entirely separate from what I call the tactical ranged unit line, which begins with slings and such and moves on to different types of bowmen and eventually becomes things like heavy machine guns/light autocannon. These are all range 2 units, on the front line but not useful in melee.

Finally, there is the heavy ranged line, which starts with weapons like catapults, progresses to better catapults and finally to gunpowder cannons that evolve into modern tube artillery and finally into guided and unguided missile units like Katyushas and modern MLRS systems. Ranges on these units would generally be 2 and higher in later eras. They are mainly siege units and interdiction weapons, very weak if melee'd.

If Sid had consulted me, that's what I would have told him to do. Good luck with that fantasy. :)
 
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