[GS] Cross-Bows and Medieval War

[acluewithout]

Is anyone else find the AI is Bee-Lining Cross-Bows, and then the Cross-Bows are just chewing up their armies?

 

[Architect]

Yes and it was glorious. In one Deity game I was sure an early rush was going to destroy the evil Canadians but no. I move into the meat of his empire and 5 crossbows appear ready to chew my army to shreds. I peaced out at that point because I would have lost way to many units to sustain the push.

 

[Jkchart]

Is anyone else find the AI is Bee-Lining Cross-Bows, and then the Cross-Bows are just chewing up their armies?

Crossbows and Knights. If there's a runaway AI in Science, the game gets that much harder in the mid section, and i welcome having a challenge finally.

That being said, Aggressive Science civs become your mortal fear half the time.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Works both ways, though: whenever I ever got to Crossbows first in a game, no matter how the game was going up to that point (I play a lot of games trying to stay out of wars for one reason or the other) I am tempted to go On A Rampage because, at least temporarily, nothing can stop me.

Which I find interesting, because, to my knowledge, there is no medieval battle (at least in Europe) where Crossbows were decisive. Even English longbows only had three good battles: it was the advent of pike formations that caused major changes in armies, armor, tactics, and battles after the beginning of the 14th century. In China, where crossbows were the preferred ranged weapon even for mounted troops after the 5th century BCE, they were decisive only at the start, where one side had them and the other didn't. After that, decisions in battle came from bad morale on one side, being outnumbered, or somebody bringing in Barbarian mounted archers, lancers, or both, or fielding their own heavy cavalry (the Tang Dynasty, for instance, based their victories on a force of 1000 heavily-armored mounted lancers out of armies of 30,000 to 80,000 men: now There's a Decisive Force!).

Funny, there have been several threads on the Imbalance of the Anti-Cavalry line, including pikes, but very little discussion on the imbalance of Crossbows and other ranged weapons in general. The historical fact is, ranged weapons and their users were usually charged, scattered or massacred in a battle unless they were well-protected by their own heavy troops and/or obstacles - as was the case at the 'longbow victories' of Crecy, Poiters and Agincourt.

 

[kaspergm]

Which I find interesting, because, to my knowledge, there is no medieval battle (at least in Europe) where Crossbows were decisive.

Funny, there have been several threads on the Imbalance of the Anti-Cavalry line, including pikes, but very little discussion on the imbalance of Crossbows and other ranged weapons in general. The historical fact is, ranged weapons and their users were usually charged, scattered or massacred in a battle unless they were well-protected by their own heavy troops and/or obstacles - as was the case at the 'longbow victories' of Crecy, Poiters and Agincourt.

I agree, ranged seems overpowered and Crossbows in particular feel like they do massive damage by the time they come around yet are not easy to kill. But that's just my 5 cents.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I agree, ranged seems overpowered and Crossbows in particular feel like they do massive damage by the time they come around yet are not easy to kill. But that's just my 5 cents.

One simple solution that was suggested (not by me) back in Civ V days, when the Overpowered Ranged Unit first raised its Head, was to simply reduce the combat factors of the Ranged Units so that they were extremely vulnerable to counterattack by enemy melee/close combat units. @Sostratus could doubtless tell us exactly what factors would make Slingers, Archers and Crossbowmen Easy Meat if you weren't very careful with them. Of course, the 1UPT system of Civ coupled with lack of ZOC at the start of the game means that, outside of cities or careful terrain choice, there is really no way to protect ranged units until later, so that using archers or (especially) slingers could become essentially a 'one shot each' proposition. This is not really inaccurate based on History (there's a reason the Classical Greeks and Romans were contemptuous of archery - Legionary swordsmen or Greek Hoplites could run them down before they got off more than a shot or two each, and against heavy wooden shields those shots were rarely effective) but it's more problematical from a Game Play perspective - why bother having or building units in the game that are only going to be effective Inside a city or fort, if at all?

 

[Victoria]

Yep mentioned in a few threads, xbows on defence, not attack, try and draw them out. Regardless they are nasty and best dealt with by care. I am finding often the AI is at Xbow before me (deity) but not field artillery.

 

[Sostratus]

@Sostratus could doubtless tell us exactly what factors would make Slingers, Archers and Crossbowmen Easy Meat if you weren't very careful with them.

Ranged units have really been dressed down from civ5, which is, good and i think the way they are balanced is quite efficient. Generally, if a melee (direct attack) unit of an era is strength X, the ranged unit will be X-5 , X-15.
What this means is if a melee unit attacks someone with the same strength, he usually deals ~30 damage. If the ranged contemporary attacks him, the barrage will inflict ~25 damage. However, if the brave melee unit attacks the ranged unit directly, he will deal about 55 damage to those cowardly poltroons. Of course, there is no point in the game where melee and ranged get an upgrade at the same time, so you will virtually never see this play out.
I think ranged units dying in 2 hits while melee can slug it for 3 (and dying in theory to ranged fire in 4) is a good enough system.

The only real breakdown is ranged don't incur counter attack damage, and multiple ranged units can hit a target from safety if a smaller melee force guards them. Oh, and the change in movement rules really screws melee units (even fast ones) because 2 tiles of range is 2 tiles on the map (at least with elevation) but that's not 2 movement. In really rough terrain you can have tiles that take 3MP to cross, so even a 5 unit like a courser might be unable to traverse the distance to get to an xbow. We all know ranged units really punch above their weight in human hands.

I agree, ranged seems overpowered and Crossbows in particular feel like they do massive damage by the time they come around yet are not easy to kill. But that's just my 5 cents.

At the very start of the game Archers are actually harder to kill than xbows are. Archers can be gotten at the same time as chariots and spears. 25 vs 15 is still a clobbering, but its only 10 points difference when its "normally" 15.
Again, the very discrete nature of the upgrade system means that we go from 35 as our classical anchor point (which admittedly is only swords, horses, and catapults) to a crossbow. No one has pikes, which are anomalously weak, and knights come a bit later and need time to train. I guess there's coursers, which are an ideal xbow counter given how absurdly fast they are.
So you have a weird period of the tech tree where xbows show up to fight swordsmen, are hitting them for +5 (dealing 37ish instead of 25!,) and taking hits at -5 (taking 37ish instead of 55.)

If there was a 45 medieval unit to upgrade into like a longsword or a boosted pikeman players would probably feel differently, although the tech tree itself is largely to blame: machinery is perhaps the easiest medieval tech to get. It has a trivial eureka (3 archers) and only needs iron working (which you got for swords) and engineering (a very useful tech and overlaps with wheel->heavy cav line) where Military tactics gives you weak pikes, requires math branch of the tree; castles has a civics requirement and needs construction; stirrups requires feudalism eureka and knights need to be built if you didn't make chariots. (If you made chariots you have the wheel which means machinery is almost there.) Also castles/stirrups are more expensive techs to start with. The tech tree practically begs you to xbow rush. If all the military units of an era unlocked at once it would be a different story. Coursers should really rip xbows apart between 5 move and the aptly named coursers promotion, but they are sooo hard to rush.

 

[kaspergm]

I agree with your analysis, problem comes when you try to do a swordman rush, and suddenly opponent upgrades into crossbows. 36 CS swords attacking into 30 CS crossbows is not super hot, when they hit you back with 40 RS without suffering retaliation, and possibly even more with promotions. One or two crossbows with the garrison promotion hiding in a town or encampment can be really nasty.

I agree ranged is probably less OP in 6 than in 5, but I still feel they give too much damage. Given that you don't retaliate and can hide them in city (with easy +10 promotion), I'd rather see them do less damage. I also miss one of the mods from Civ5 days that applied collateral damage to garrison unit when city was attacked, just because it's a bit cheesy that a garrison archer is completely immune to any hostile attacks.

 

[Sostratus]

I agree with your analysis, problem comes when you try to do a swordman rush, and suddenly opponent upgrades into crossbows. 36 CS swords attacking into 30 CS crossbows is not super hot, when they hit you back with 40 RS without suffering retaliation, and possibly even more with promotions. One or two crossbows with the garrison promotion hiding in a town or encampment can be really nasty.

I find the timing etc of how units upgrade to be such an interesting balance problem. It reminds me of digital circuit design... I do hope in the future they can really commit to digging into combat balance somehow. Like looking at high level multiplayer etc and seeing where the issues are. I love the work they are doing right now, but it seems like they shy away from combat and focus on some of the more economic matters.

I agree ranged is probably less OP in 6 than in 5, but I still feel they give too much damage. Given that you don't retaliate and can hide them in city (with easy +10 promotion), I'd rather see them do less damage. I also miss one of the mods from Civ5 days that applied collateral damage to garrison unit when city was attacked, just because it's a bit cheesy that a garrison archer is completely immune to any hostile attacks

I do wish FXS could cut the legacy garrison system - before civ5 when cities were not units on the map, a garrison unit was just a unit fighting on the city tile - but at this point, i think our city/fortification/walls/encampment system is well evolved enough to let us wholly commit to it.
I know you were in a thread a while back where i mentioned the idea of just having wall upgrades literally define the city defense like a unit. EG any city with medieval walls has 40/45 or something.
But anyways, perhaps we could integrate garrisons into this by saying a garrisoned unit just boosts the city stats. For example, a melee unit grants +5 to the fortification defense, a ranged unit garrisoning grants +5 to the city strike. (You could even vary this bonus by unit class!)
Easy enough. It would be a lot easier to have cities and garrisons handled in a formulaic, static manner than the wacky thing we have now where an xbow behind medieval walls might as well have a gatling gun. At least the fortification stage (blue bar.) I don't care if you have tanks in the town square, it doesn't make the stone walls any more resilient to artillery strikes.

 

[acluewithout]

I've had quite a few Sword rushes lately smashed by xbows. Particularly bad if I've captured a City State, and get a Medieval emergency.

Overall, I'm really liking it, and generally like the balance of ranged v melee. It's tough with Swords because you can't upgrade them to a Medieval unit, but to me that somewhat balances how easy it is to get to xbows.

It feels somewhat flavourful having so many xbows in the Medieval Era. Better than just running around with Warriors. It's very strong for the AI too, because it means they can field a strong unit even if they don't have resources.

I'm having to plan wars much more carefully. Get some Friendships to either stop Military Emergencies or at least take the sting out of them. Suzerain local CS so no one Levy's me. Be way more realistic about how long Swords will stay relevant, and maybe transition to Knights earlier.

Pity we don't have a Medieval Siege and Anti-Cav aren't better, particularly Pikes. Still. Xbow xbow xbow is a better place for the game to be.

I find the timing etc of how units upgrade to be such an interesting balance problem. It reminds me of digital circuit design... I do hope in the future they can really commit to digging into combat balance somehow. Like looking at high level multiplayer etc and seeing where the issues are. I love the work they are doing right now, but it seems like they shy away from combat and focus on some of the more economic matters.


I do wish FXS could cut the legacy garrison system - before civ5 when cities were not units on the map, a garrison unit was just a unit fighting on the city tile - but at this point, i think our city/fortification/walls/encampment system is well evolved enough to let us wholly commit to it.
I know you were in a thread a while back where i mentioned the idea of just having wall upgrades literally define the city defense like a unit. EG any city with medieval walls has 40/45 or something.
But anyways, perhaps we could integrate garrisons into this by saying a garrisoned unit just boosts the city stats. For example, a melee unit grants +5 to the fortification defense, a ranged unit garrisoning grants +5 to the city strike. (You could even vary this bonus by unit class!)
Easy enough. It would be a lot easier to have cities and garrisons handled in a formulaic, static manner than the wacky thing we have now where an xbow behind medieval walls might as well have a gatling gun. At least the fortification stage (blue bar.) I don't care if you have tanks in the town square, it doesn't make the stone walls any more resilient to artillery strikes.

Hear hear for unit balancing.

I like the mechanic of having Garrisoned units. But the system could be more transparent. The mechanics based around your strongest unit are not transparent for most players. I think it would be better if there was a base strength and ranged strength determined by Walls + Palace, with certain Techs buffing that, and then a Garrisoned unit just provided a flat bonus. But the current system works fine once you get your head around it.

 

[Depravo]

I like the improved challenge. Felt sure I had Montezuma beaten with my invincible phalanx wall, then up pop 3 Crossbows and I'm suing for peace.

Therefore I'm entering the Industrial Era in the bottom three instead of the top three and actually have a fight on my hands.

 

[Lily_Lancer]

Good defensive units that come at T35~40 Online speed.

Note that such an early unit breaks most of your fantasies of rushing a neighbor with archer and heavy chariot.

Not very good in attack, a crossbow and a wall can take down a crossbow in 1 turn. However crossbows can deal very little damage to walls, So cannot face towards walled encampments.