the problem here, is that someone isn't bringing missile rovers to attack cities
which just shows why exactly Battlesuits were OP. Both better than the soldiers they 'replace' AND there wasn't a need for anti-city ranged units.
so yeah. Bring anti-city ranged units when you take on a 40 defense city.
Missile Rovers are still utterly worthless outside of their unique ability to blow-up an opponent's sats... the only reason I'll make any prior to them hovering (and getting good perks that make them not awful) is to clear a path for Orbital Lasers. That's it, and the only reason I'll build them after that is because of the broken Vindicator perk that allows them to carry around an Ambassador for utterly unstoppable firepower and mobility (balance!).
Why are they possibly the worst choice for besieging a city?
Their setup ensures that they must spend a turn inside the city defence-radius without being able to fire a shot - it's not optional, chances are they'll be one-shot by defensive fire before they can contribute anything to the attack.
They're prohibitively expensive, before the patch. And now even more so!
Rangers are better, no setup, cheaper, +30% defence against ranged attacks. The difference in base damage is marginal, and if you consider they can get an extra attack in while artillery would still be setting up, their 'DPS' is, in practical terms, probably greater.
I would literally use anything
other than the artillery in this game to hit cities. Aff4 UUs are dead, and Missile Rovers are still full of suck - and, my cheesy strategy of building like 6 Soldiers and 6 Rangers immediately over every other thing, upgrading to affinity 2 and paying my neighbours a visit, has gotten much much better, since people are probably going to still be building a TD in 2nd city by turn ~50.
If you're the kind of player to get caught-out by something like the so-called 'Battlesuit rush', I've got at least half a dozen bush-whacking military strats that would body you by turn 150 at latest, and the aff4 rush wasn't even the best, since everyone does it after their first game, and if everyone's doing it, then it's back to stalemate.
I would have:
- increased starting STR of vanilla units
- reduced STR bonuses for promotions by at least 50%, maybe more
- Mildly nerfed affinity 4 UUs
- put a modest defensive structure in Pioneering, since apparently researching defensive techs early to defend one's self is just too much for most people too handle (not as though they are miles out of the way). "Why should I dedicate ~20 turns prior to turn 100 to making my empire defensible against basic military units?! Just nerf them into irrelevance instead".