Defending your city..

[Larsenex]

So we can place units in the city and in our walled encampment.
All other Districts do not get any help and thus would need to have a unit sitting on the tile to prevent pillaging.
Seems like putting some units on or in outlier districts just to protect them from Barbarians seems like a pretty good idea.

Thoughts?

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

I think that placing a few mounted units around your borders would suffice against Barbarians. Just track down and kill any barbarian scouts before they can return to camp.

The Walled city center and Encampments are more for defending against aggressive neighbors.

 

[Felis Renidens]

I think a lot depends on geography and threat. Basically it should be best to keep the enemy outside your territory when possible. Placing the encampment to slow the enemy is another thing (it has Zone of Control). Having a unit on the most valuable district and one that can move to the most threatened one can also help. But if you have unit for every district I'd say - move them to the border or better - to the barbarian camp (unless there are other threats)

 

[Larsenex]

Choke points. I am really looking to see how the map generation is. A glorious mountain pass blocked by an encampment.

 

[Thormodr]

Choke points. I am really looking to see how the map generation is. A glorious mountain pass blocked by an encampment.

That glorious mountain pass could make for a great campus/science district.

 

[stealth_nsk]

It depends on the map and so on. Also, city with walls gets ranged attack AND encampment seem to get it as well. This could be really helpful.

 

[Larsenex]

Thormdr, yes but suppose it was ^^^^encampment^^^^
----- eco district -----
--------City Center --------

Oh man the fun I can have with that.... the formatting wont let me put the eco and city text UNDER the encampent but you get the idea.

 

[Thormodr]

Thormdr, yes but suppose it was ^^^^encampment^^^^
----- eco district -----
--------City Center --------

Oh man the fun I can have with that.... the formatting wont let me put the eco and city text UNDER the encampent but you get the idea.

Yeah, I know what you mean. Could potentially set up your own Thermopylae. Hopefully with better results.

 

[Dunkah]

Just hope the AI has the ware-with-all to be able to lay siege to such a choke point.

Looking forward to it anyways!

 

[4N4C0ND4]

I think that placing a few mounted units around your borders would suffice against Barbarians. Just track down and kill any barbarian scouts before they can return to camp.

Can you develop that? Barb send scout and if they come back, they mount a full invasion?
Would love to see that, but implementing that could have funny results I'm sure

 

[Carver]

Just hope the AI has the ware-with-all to be able to lay siege to such a choke point.

Looking forward to it anyways!

I think the use of support units will assist the AI's combat execution. The AI can more easily understand to keep certain units stacked with one another; it's a lot harder for the AI to move, say, siege and melee units around the map without letting a human pick them off.

 

[AriochIV]

Can you develop that? Barb send scout and if they come back, they mount a full invasion?
Would love to see that, but implementing that could have funny results I'm sure

This is Ed Beach's description:

“Barbarians can generate scouts now. You may have seen some of those around. If you leave a camp around long enough, it generates a scout. The scout explores the map just like you do. But what it’s looking for is targets. If a scout comes up to the outskirts of your city, that means he knows you’re there, and he’s going back to his camp to tell his buddies that they have a target. It’s important to watch that. You can know, ‘OK, if the scout came from four turns away, it’ll take him four turns to go home and five or six more to build an army.’ But eventually, 10 or 15 turns down the line, that scout reporting back is going to be bad news for you. You can prepare for that, though. You can see the scout and have some fast forces block him from getting home. He’s not that strong. It’s more strategic. They’re not just randomly wandering guys like the barbarians of the past. They’re a bit more intelligent. When they come back, they come back with a collection of both ranged and melee units. They can give you a hard time.”

 

[redwings1340]

This will probably make horse units and pillaging strategies a lot more viable now, and make war a lot more strategic. I think that's one of the best features of civ VI, you no longer need to take a city to cripple an empire. The mongols can run in to a city, burn down every district before you can react, and move on, all the while building up more of an army while crippling your production. Their initial attack might not be enough to kill you, and might not even be able to kill your army in a straight up fight initially, but you'll have a really difficult time fighting back with slower units. Once your empire is burning, it will also take a long time to get it back and productive, because you need to rebuild builders once the enemy army moves away.

I'm imagining a classical era war between the mongols and Rome, where Rome sends its army out to take a Mongol city, succeeds, only to find that their entire empire has burned down while their army was away. The slow army gets trapped, and is slowly harassed and killed off by a suddenly more productive mongol empire which creates more and more units, only for the mongols to eventually take back their city and walk over Rome. That type of war didn't really happen in civ V.

 

[Thormodr]

This will probably make horse units and pillaging strategies a lot more viable now, and make war a lot more strategic. I think that's one of the best features of civ VI, you no longer need to take a city to cripple an empire. The mongols can run in to a city, burn down every district before you can react, and move on, all the while building up more of an army while crippling your production. Their initial attack might not be enough to kill you, and might not even be able to kill your army in a straight up fight initially, but you'll have a really difficult time fighting back with slower units. Once your empire is burning, it will also take a long time to get it back and productive, because you need to rebuild builders once the enemy army moves away.

I'm imagining a classical era war between the mongols and Rome, where Rome sends its army out to take a Mongol city, succeeds, only to find that their entire empire has burned down while their army was away. The slow army gets trapped, and is slowly harassed and killed off by a suddenly more productive mongol empire which creates more and more units, only for the mongols to eventually take back their city and walk over Rome. That type of war didn't really happen in civ V.

You've made my day. As the Mongols are my favourite Civ, I look forward to this kind of gameplay.

 

[Larsenex]

Was it me or were horses just not used after they nerfed them?

I would love to see the early ages be 'horse' dominated as they really were at that time

 

[AriochIV]

Was it me or were horses just not used after they nerfed them?

I would love to see the early ages be 'horse' dominated as they really were at that time

The inability of mounted units to benefit from cover or fortification made them vulnerable to ranged fire and of limited use in city sieges, which is unfortunately 90% of combat in Civ V. I tended to ignore mounted units after the Classical era, up to and including tanks, as most of my mounted units would be dead by that time.

I'm not sure how to make them more relevant in Civ VI without making them overpowered. Perhaps the increased restrictions on movement will make faster units more important.

 

[dexters]

Mounted was great in stack warfare because they can always retreat after attacking. You can just move a stack of those around and it would wreck havoc on the AI defensive stacks while you can always retreat yours to heal while the AI rarely did so. This made them almost broken. With 1UPT, they can't all move back to the same tile so there are limits to their usefulness.

Sadly, I've never rarely heard of mounted units taking a city, so giving them bonuses around that wouldn't make sense.

I think enhancing their mobility in the open field would be best. Something along the lines of 'charge' promotion that allows a mounted/panzer/tank units to move through squares occupied by friendly units without incurring a movement point cost.

This way, they can move through army formations, attack, and move back to their starting position.

 

[redwings1340]

I feel like the biggest way to counter mounted units in civ VI will be to set up choke points with military encampments if possible that they'd need to get around, or try to use terrain to your advantage. Settling in an open plains or grassland next to a warmonger with horses (I mean, in general too) is probably just a bad idea.

 

[Roxlimn]

A sort of power in CivV can make this more viable: pillage.

Three stipulations are necessary to make horse units viable as harassment and pillage troops:

1. They must be nearly invulnerable to missile fire. They're going to take a lot of fire from cities so they have to be pretty much invulnerable to missile fire to be of any use. This might also make them great on the field as "anti-missile" troops - a hard counter to focus-firing archers.

2. They have to be able to pillage without using movement. There's a lot of hexes to cover and a few horse troops have to be able to manage it quickly enough to matter.

3. Normal horse must be somewhat or greatly disadvantaged in attacking cities and encampments. Of course, Spearmen line units will make mincemeat out of them, but there's little incentive to build infantry if horse units will be just straight up better all the time. Some horse units in some eras for some Civilizations can be just straight up melee unit replacements, if it fits the Civ.

 

[stealth_nsk]

The inability of mounted units to benefit from cover or fortification made them vulnerable to ranged fire and of limited use in city sieges, which is unfortunately 90% of combat in Civ V. I tended to ignore mounted units after the Classical era, up to and including tanks, as most of my mounted units would be dead by that time.

I'm not sure how to make them more relevant in Civ VI without making them overpowered. Perhaps the increased restrictions on movement will make faster units more important.

I have a feeling new movement cost mechanic will benefit units with more movement. And if developers will be able to make district pillage mechanic work, this will be a huge reason for mounted units.

Other possible areas there they could shine are:
- If the amount of units is restricted as they could quickly move from one part of empire to another.
- If resources are restricted, as mounted units use horses not used by other strong units.
- If there's some mechanic for attacking units from behind, this could be utilized by mounted units easier.