Did People Overreact to Losing Units Between Ages?

[Leefizzy]

Got a few games under my belt, but I did notice that I didn't lose that many units if at all between ages.
In most cases, the base 6/8 + generals is more than enough to bring your main army forward to the next phase.
The 1-4 units I do end up losing tends to be the fodder that gets fed into a walled city invasion since no matter how much modifier stacking you do, you're gonna lose a couple units cause of the diety +8, the prod bonus they get and the bad districts where units are gonna get smacked for 80 dmg so you might as well spend some units instead of taking 10-20 more turns on the city playing it safe.
And it needs more fodder if you're smashing into the walls because sometimes the math checks out and feeding units into the walls is worth the 10-20 more turns it was gonna take if you were nursing your units since units had unique promotions pre 7.

Do people spam out way more units than necessary or was it just a thing that sounded and looked bad on paper, but in practice, you don't really lose that many units to the age transition cause they get spent for more time in offensive battles for shorter wars.

 

[Mr Jon of Cheam]

Yes, they did overreact. It just takes some adjustment, it's really not a big deal.

 

[protocol7]

It’s hard to say if they overreacted without knowing how they play. It can be frustrating for example if you get bogged down in a war and the age suddenly goes from 75 to 100% and all your units reset.

 

[Disgustipated]

I don't mind it, but I do get a little annoyed with the repositioning. I like to keep the bulk of my military on settlements that may be threatened in the future. Since units don't have promotions, losing them isn't a big deal.

 

[Human Crouton]

It's not the loss, it's the repositioning. Especially with such a terrible UI that make it difficult to rearrange without hunting for each unit.

 

[Siptah]

It's not the loss, it's the repositioning. Especially with such a terrible UI that make it difficult to rearrange without hunting for each unit.

Yes, there needs to be a unit ledger asap! And an active/potential trade route ledger! And a "which wonders were already" built ledger! And ...

And otherwise, agreed. Losing 4-5 units isn't the end of the world in civ 7, and wars can usually be concluded (even it you hit 100%, there's one more turn to make a peace deal or take that final city). I have to say that I like the risk of going into a late game blitzkrieg - as someone who likes to deal with randomness though, I can see how people that prefer well-though out long term strategies dislike that.

 

[stealth_nsk]

If you're at war you usually have commanders to carry your units around. I don't think it's normal for me to have no more than 1-2 excess units at each point.

 

[evonannoredars]

It's not a big deal, though it would be neat if during the points spending screen there was also a screen to optionally choose where to send commanders and distribute units.

 

[MasterPaw]

I think its might be because people weren't building enough generals?

 

[Taefin]

Based on my own experience, it’s annoying to lose a good fraction of your army the first game when you don’t know how it works. Now I like the system for how it 1) incentivized creating more commanders and 2) gives me something to do at the end of the age, building more commanders or units as needed to maximize the units that transfer.

And to echo what was said above, I love how units are often best viewed as expendable, helped by the fact that promotions were taken off the individual units. If you really crank the difficulty (like I do with my mod), fast attacks with moderate losses are essential, since fighting is all about claiming territory, not killing units.

 

[UWHabs]

I think its might be because people weren't building enough generals?

My first game or two, I didn't get many generals. I wasn't even fighting a lot of wars, so I didn't have many units to carry over.

Last game I had a lot of production, and I fought a bunch, and carried over a lot of armies. Other than them being somewhat scattered across my empire, I had more than enough carry over to the next era to be able to fight a quick war.

I think I might end up trying in that in future games if I'm falling behind. Honestly, if you get that extra commander at the start of the next era, and have it pre-loaded with units, you could surprise a neighbour who has a massive edge in science or tech. Especially if you have an early UU which comes in at the start of the age, you're guaranteed a number of turns being even in tech, and if your opponent didn't have a bunch of commanders, you can easily overrun them before they can get their machine up and running for the age.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

My first game or two, I didn't get many generals. I wasn't even fighting a lot of wars, so I didn't have many units to carry over.

Last game I had a lot of production, and I fought a bunch, and carried over a lot of armies. Other than them being somewhat scattered across my empire, I had more than enough carry over to the next era to be able to fight a quick war.

I think I might end up trying in that in future games if I'm falling behind. Honestly, if you get that extra commander at the start of the next era, and have it pre-loaded with units, you could surprise a neighbour who has a massive edge in science or tech. Especially if you have an early UU which comes in at the start of the age, you're guaranteed a number of turns being even in tech, and if your opponent didn't have a bunch of commanders, you can easily overrun them before they can get their machine up and running for the age.

This in fact is the situation I have noticed in my latest games. Now that I have learned what to expect from the Age Turnover in unit loss/repositioning, it is easy for me to spend the last few turns of the previous Age making certain I have enough Commanders for my Units so that I lose only a trivial number, if any.

That, in turn, gives me a commanding lead over the AI at the start of the next Age, and this is not trivial. First game doing this, my neighbor Xerxes went Mongolia in Exploration, with cities right next to mine and a lingering animus towards me because we had settled so close to each other. Mongolia with only half the units you have is not really a threat, though, so I wiped him off the map in less than 20 turns by simply swarming him. I look back on this now as Unfair Human Advantage, because I have not observed the AI Civs building enough Commanders near end of Age to accomplish the same thing, giving me a near-certain advantage at the beginning of every Age.

 

[Canadian Bluebeer]

Not so much losing them, as having them clumped up in really stupid places.
All my defensive forces (generally ranged) are moved/gone.

The really annoying part, is every else gets a jump up on tech and gets a certain number of units.
(including the ones that didn't have any units before)

 

[AriochIV]

You can avoid the loss of most of your units through having enough commanders, but that just underscores the fact that it's an unnecessary mechanic to begin with. The whole reason for reducing your army at the Age reset is as part of a rubber-band mechanic to try to keep the player from steamrolling, but if you can largely avoid this reduction by having an EVEN BIGGER ARMY (e.g., enough commanders), then that completely defeats the purpose of having the mechanic in the first place. And you will always lose your siege units, and since there are no naval commander in Antiquity you will always lose any naval units.

Having things you built arbitrarily taken away from you always feels bad, and it's compounded by the problem that there are bunch of units that are only available right at the end of an Age, so it feels doubly bad to rush to hit a late-Age technology so you can build a tier 3 unit only to have it deleted a few turns later. The fact that it's being done for no particular reason (as it doesn't accomplish the objective for which it was implemented) is not a sign of good game design. People dislike this mechanic for good reason, but mainly I think it's just one aspect of the Age Reset system that they generally dislike.

 

[stealth_nsk]

You can avoid the loss of most of your units through having enough commanders, but that just underscores the fact that it's an unnecessary mechanic to begin with. The whole reason for reducing your army at the Age reset is as part of a rubber-band mechanic to try to keep the player from steamrolling, but if you can largely avoid this reduction by having an EVEN BIGGER ARMY (e.g., enough commanders), then that completely defeats the purpose of having the mechanic in the first place.

I totally agree here, this thing definitely doesn't work. I see several potential options, but can't say any of them is great:
1. Just save all units, but teleport them back to homeland. Probably remove siege ones and in antiquity naval. That's an improvement over current situation as, one one hand, not only player will be able to save units, on the other hand it will not add additional snowballing effects (i.e. starting exploration with large fleet or siege to start conquering more actively). However, it would still allow snowballing.
2. Go other direction, limiting the amount of units which could be saved by commanders, i.e. no more than 8 from antiquity to exploration. It would limit the player, but also would cause more annoyance as more units will be lost.
Some other in between or more extreme options.

 

[Maiq]

No. It is a stupid mechanic. I love having to rebuild all my siege too, so much fun.

 

[Jkchart]

I don't mind it, but I do get a little annoyed with the repositioning. I like to keep the bulk of my military on settlements that may be threatened in the future. Since units don't have promotions, losing them isn't a big deal.

Yeah I wish we got to position them ourselves because the logic that the game uses to select where they go is really…weird

 

[stealth_nsk]

After thinking a bit, I believe the best solution is to just totally decouple unit saving from commanders. Yes, it would decrease commander role, but would reasonably limit snowballing. For example:

From antiquity to exploration up to 12 units are saved - ranged, melee and cavalry, in this order. Saved units are put in settlements first (in order of building), if some units remain, they are put into commanders, if units still remain, they are put near capital.

From exploration to modern the number could be, for example, 20, with ranged, melee, cavalry and naval units saved with the same rules.

--

Speaking siege units, I think it's part of the game balance for each era. Attackers have to deal with obsolete fortifications until related tech is researched and fortifications are built, so it makes sense to not use actual siege units also until related tech is researched and those units are built.

 

[Leefizzy]

From what I just noticed, Generals get put inside the closest city upon age transition.
Or maybe it's the city borders that determine it, had garrison generals scattered all over the place because of the plague and my double conquest generals got put into the same city together, right outside the enemy's biggest city, where they were at when the age ended and the garrison generals are inside the proper cities they were supposed to be at.
Dunno what order the regular units get distributed though, but this could mean you can keep the pressure on them if you manage to ferry generals to the correct city before the transition.

Even more swarming if you had lvl 2 logi generals to do this with.

 

[UWHabs]

After thinking a bit, I believe the best solution is to just totally decouple unit saving from commanders. Yes, it would decrease commander role, but would reasonably limit snowballing. For example:

From antiquity to exploration up to 12 units are saved - ranged, melee and cavalry, in this order. Saved units are put in settlements first (in order of building), if some units remain, they are put into commanders, if units still remain, they are put near capital.

From exploration to modern the number could be, for example, 20, with ranged, melee, cavalry and naval units saved with the same rules.

--

Speaking siege units, I think it's part of the game balance for each era. Attackers have to deal with obsolete fortifications until related tech is researched and fortifications are built, so it makes sense to not use actual siege units also until related tech is researched and those units are built.

I think I would prefer that. It's not really fair that in some cases you can bring forward like 20 units, and in other cases you only get like 6 or 8.

The other option would be that the number of units you get are scaled based on your military points. So you get like 8 + 2x the number of military legacies you complete. If you go 3/3, then you get up to 14 units. If you add up over the course of the game, that might also help the modern era - if you only went 2/3 in the ancient era and 2/3 in the exploration, then you have 4 points of units to start the modern era. I wouldn't even hate if the other legacies had similar default bonuses. The attribute points are nice, but sometimes you do get to the age transition and it like "I spend all that effort, and all I get is +2 happiness on the capital"