Do you think current unit upgrade paths are fine?

[Boris Gudenuf]

As a military historian who has written and lectured on topics as different as Alexander the Great's Army's Drill Manual, the tactical differences between British, French and Swedish infantry in 1705, and the Deficiencies of the German Tiger tank of WWII, I can say that Civ VI's Unit Selections and Upgrade Paths Suck Like a Starving Leech

First, they have distinctions (Melee - AntiCavalry - Ranged) that are increasingly artificial as the game goes on, they have artificial 'requirements' for Upgrading or building units, and, finally, they have neither incremental Upgrades nor Any Upgrades for some entire classes of units for a looooong time.

First, let's take Spearmen/Pikemen: the Basic Units/Weapons of the majority of civilized and semi-civilized armies in the Ancient, Classical, and Medieval Eras. Firaxis seems to have been distracted by the evidence of the Roman Legion: the ONLY unit of primarily swordsmen in the World prior to the early Tercio, and even that unit only had a minority of swordsmen ('sword and buckler men', to be exact) in a majority of pikemen and an increasing percentage of men with firearms. Spearmen are not anti-cavalry, they are Cheap to raise, train, and maintain. Men can learn to use a spear on a part-time basis and still be effective - see the Greek Hoplite Phalanx of amateur citizens or the northern European Shield Wall of, basically, farmers with shields and metal-pointed sticks.

Swords are more flexible and allow more flexible formations in a variety of terrain, but they require a lot of practice - professionals, in other words, which are either some set of militant Aristocrats who pay for themselves (Celts), or a Standing Army that costs lots and lots of coin (Romans).

Spearmen, then, should be Cheap to produce, Swordsmen gain the current bonus against them only in forest or rainforest or hills, but Swordsmen are more expensive and have about 4 x the Maintenance Cost of Spearmen.

Mounted Troops have two basic purposes: smash the enemy with the weight of the horse and weapons of the rider, or use the mobility of the horse to stay away from the enemy and Mess With Him from a distance. That's your Heavy versus Light Cavalry distinction in a nutshell, but the Light Cavalry all tend to be for
Reconnaissance (Scouts)
Raids
Pursuit
Whenever they get too full of themselves and start charging the enemy, they also start getting heavier and end up just like all the other 'Heavy' Cavalry.

So, for the 'Pure' Cavalry, you have One Type: Heavy 'Battle' Cavalry. Starts with a Chariot which may or may not have a range factor (Egyptians) but most will be Melee units (Hittites, Chinese, Celts), changing to Horsemen in the Classical Era, Knights in Medieval, Cuirassiers in Renaissance, Cavalry in Industrial, Tanks in Modern, Modern Armor in late Atomic.

The 'Scout' line should have a third Upgrade Path: Mounted. You can build or upgrade scouts to Light Cavalry in the Classical Era, which can become Dragoons in the Renaissance Era, Armored Cars in the Industrial Era (late) and Helicopters in the Atomic Era. All these Mounted Units (Uniques like Cossacks go in here, too) would use the Mounted Scout Promotions, and would as a rule be the fastest units in their Eras, but with Melee Factors not quite good enough to go 'toe-to-toe' with that era's infantry/Melee units.

ALL gunpowder units have a Range Factor, but many of them are also tactically expected to attack and 'close with and destroy the enemy' (to quote the US Army Infantry School). BUT the original gunpowder-firing individual troops had almost no melee factor at all: the matchlock musket was a clumsy 15 - 20 pound club and their only other weapon was a cheap sword that they were very rarely trained to use. Musketmen, then, are in game terms Support Units, to be 'protected' by someone else while they fire (Pike and Shot). The Fusilier, carrying the flintlock musket and socket bayonet, was the first 'universal infantry' - able to fire, charge, and defend against cavalry all by himself. The black powder rifle did not appreciably change this, because black powder smoke makes the extra range almost useless: you can't see a target more than 100 meters away after the first few volleys fill the air with smoke.

Okay, this could go on for pages, so let me summarize:

Scouts: Include a Mounted Promo line, can Upgrade to Light Cavalry (Classical), Dragoons (Renaissance), Armored Cars (Industrial Era), and Helicopters (Atomic Era)

Melee: Now incorporates both the 'Melee' and 'Anti-Cavalry' artificial definitions:
Upgrade Path: Warrior - Spearman OR Swordsman - Pikeman OR Man-at-Arms - Pike and Shot* - Fusilier* - Infantry* - Mechanized Infantry*

Cavalry: "Battle Cavalry" Only, primarily Melee Units: Heavy Chariot - Horseman - Knight - Cuirassier - Cavalry - Tank - Modern Armor

Ranged: Slinger - Archer - Crossbow - Cannon - Artillery - Rocket Artillery

Siege: Battering Ram - Tower - Catapult - Bombard - Siege Train (Industrial)
NOTE: These are all 'Support' Units, in that they have almost NO factor against units that can move faster than a Wall, and virtually no defensive factor other than the side arms carried by their crews

* = unit that has a Range Factor as well as a Melee factor, possibly among the lines of the Civ V Zulu 'Fire Before Melee' mechanism.

Many of the ridiculous and artificial units in the game now should be special incremental Upgrades or Promotions for units: Machine-guns add Range Factor to Infantry, for instance, and Antitank Guns/Rockets/Missiles would be an Anti-Mounted Upgrade Line for Melee Units (or Helicopters = Promote to Gunships)

Of course, to make these Upgrades really work, we also have to massively Improve the current Abomination of a Tech Tree, but that's for another thread entirely...

 

[Disgustipated]

My main issue is I would like more units, and I hate seeing obsolete units on the board. So middle option for me. I'm not going to say the entire system is crap, it just needs more work.

But please Firaixs, do something about the AT crew problem.

 

[kaspergm]

(...) Okay, this could go on for pages, so let me summarize:

Scouts: Include a Mounted Promo line, can Upgrade to Light Cavalry (Classical), Dragoons (Renaissance), Armored Cars (Industrial Era), and Helicopters (Atomic Era)

Melee: Now incorporates both the 'Melee' and 'Anti-Cavalry' artificial definitions:
Upgrade Path: Warrior - Spearman OR Swordsman - Pikeman OR Man-at-Arms - Pike and Shot* - Fusilier* - Infantry* - Mechanized Infantry*

Cavalry: "Battle Cavalry" Only, primarily Melee Units: Heavy Chariot - Horseman - Knight - Cuirassier - Cavalry - Tank - Modern Armor

Ranged: Slinger - Archer - Crossbow - Cannon - Artillery - Rocket Artillery

Siege: Battering Ram - Tower - Catapult - Bombard - Siege Train (Industrial)
NOTE: These are all 'Support' Units, in that they have almost NO factor against units that can move faster than a Wall, and virtually no defensive factor other than the side arms carried by their crews

* = unit that has a Range Factor as well as a Melee factor, possibly among the lines of the Civ V Zulu 'Fire Before Melee' mechanism.

Many of the ridiculous and artificial units in the game now should be special incremental Upgrades or Promotions for units: Machine-guns add Range Factor to Infantry, for instance, and Antitank Guns/Rockets/Missiles would be an Anti-Mounted Upgrade Line for Melee Units (or Helicopters = Promote to Gunships)

Of course, to make these Upgrades really work, we also have to massively Improve the current Abomination of a Tech Tree, but that's for another thread entirely...

I was going to throw a "gameplay trumps realism" comment after reading the first part of your post, but I have to say, this system actually really would work as I see it. When that's said, from a gameplay point of view, I don't think the current system is that bad.

 

[ggalindo001]

My main issue is I would like more units, and I hate seeing obsolete units on the board. So middle option for me. I'm not going to say the entire system is crap, it just needs more work.

But please Firaixs, do something about the AT crew problem.

This. PLEASE fix the AT crew beeline. Somehow, bazookas before anything motorized feels out of sorts.

I have enjoyed using MOAR units mod -- I think that feels about right in terms of upgrade paths and filling in the large gaps. The current upgrade set of units reminds me of a board game, where the options are simplified from a practical standpoint (don't want to mould so many different types of units, etc.). Naturally adding some for R&F will help -- but I don't want the devs to go too far. Here is hoping that Deliverator does a quick version of MOAR for R&F.

I absolutely don't want to go back Civ 3/4 (and some of the Mods for them) where there were 12 different kinds of spearmen and 200 different fighters to choose from. Trebs, something between muskets and infantry, pike and shot, all make sense to me.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I was going to throw a "gameplay trumps realism" comment after reading the first part of your post, but I have to say, this system actually really would work as I see it. When that's said, from a gameplay point of view, I don't think the current system is that bad.

Well, just before "let me summarize" I realized that I was about to go into a multi-page essay on Tactics Through the Ages, so I stopped before I went completely Off Topic...

I suspect the current system in Civ VI came about something like this:
1. We got too many units in Civ V
2. Too many units in Civ V lost all their Promotions when they Upgraded because they switched Categories of Units. Let's not do that again.
3. We need some kind of stacking back. How about 'Support Units' that can't really do anything by themselves, but can add things to regular units?
4. While we're at it, let's simplify the Tech Tree, and make a separate Civics Tree to handle all the Social Stuff. With a smaller Tech Tree, maybe nobody will notice how few units they've got to play with...

I agree completely with the first three, and I agree that in those respects, Civ VI is a big improvement over Civ V - but that's a long, long way from saying that the Civ VI system is Good - just a little more adequate, is as far as I'd go.

As long as they don't recognize the real historical relationship between the various kinds of weapons and units, and keep including units that were NEVER separate on a Civ scale (bazookas, machine-guns) and require spurious Resources to Upgrade units (Nitre, which occurs naturally in every compost pile) they've got a long way to go...

One last thing: I think the game would be mightily improved if they separated Promotions into Upgrades and Experience and changed the current Upgrade into Replace. That is, when you get a completely new unit you are really replacing the old unit with a whole new bunch of equipment. weapons, tactics, etc. When you change a unit incrementally, it's either because some of the weapons and equipment got changed, OR the leaders and followers in the unit learned a new 'trick', technique, or tactic.

For instance, Scout unit does a lot of scouting, he learns how to move better in X terrain: that's Experience.
Bunch of Spearmen get bronze-faced shields, bronze helmeted and breastplates, they're still Spearmen, but now they are much more dangerous (Melee Factor Increase) - that's an Upgrade (of equipment). That same bunch of Spearmen turns in their spears and gets Pikes, and that's a Replacement Unit, because Pikes do Not use exactly the same tactics as spears.

Graphically, the basic Spearmen could be shown in stiff leather tunics with wooden or leather shields, then change to bright bronze shields and chest covering, without the basic graphic figure changing - that's an Upgrade. Replace it with a Pike unit - whole new graphic. Learn, say, better tactics against cavalry or chariots - that's Experience, and requires no new Graphic.

In other words, "Incremental Upgrades" if done right, could tremendously enhance the game: something that the specific category Promotions starts to do now, but I don't think takes it far enough...

 

[Krajzen]

As a military historian who has written and lectured on topics as different as Alexander the Great's Army's Drill Manual, the tactical differences between British, French and Swedish infantry in 1705, and the Deficiencies of the German Tiger tank of WWII, I can say that Civ VI's Unit Selections and Upgrade Paths Suck Like a Starving Leech

First, they have distinctions (Melee - AntiCavalry - Ranged) that are increasingly artificial as the game goes on, they have artificial 'requirements' for Upgrading or building units, and, finally, they have neither incremental Upgrades nor Any Upgrades for some entire classes of units for a looooong time.

First, let's take Spearmen/Pikemen: the Basic Units/Weapons of the majority of civilized and semi-civilized armies in the Ancient, Classical, and Medieval Eras. Firaxis seems to have been distracted by the evidence of the Roman Legion: the ONLY unit of primarily swordsmen in the World prior to the early Tercio, and even that unit only had a minority of swordsmen ('sword and buckler men', to be exact) in a majority of pikemen and an increasing percentage of men with firearms. Spearmen are not anti-cavalry, they are Cheap to raise, train, and maintain. Men can learn to use a spear on a part-time basis and still be effective - see the Greek Hoplite Phalanx of amateur citizens or the northern European Shield Wall of, basically, farmers with shields and metal-pointed sticks.

Swords are more flexible and allow more flexible formations in a variety of terrain, but they require a lot of practice - professionals, in other words, which are either some set of militant Aristocrats who pay for themselves (Celts), or a Standing Army that costs lots and lots of coin (Romans).

Spearmen, then, should be Cheap to produce, Swordsmen gain the current bonus against them only in forest or rainforest or hills, but Swordsmen are more expensive and have about 4 x the Maintenance Cost of Spearmen.

Mounted Troops have two basic purposes: smash the enemy with the weight of the horse and weapons of the rider, or use the mobility of the horse to stay away from the enemy and Mess With Him from a distance. That's your Heavy versus Light Cavalry distinction in a nutshell, but the Light Cavalry all tend to be for
Reconnaissance (Scouts)
Raids
Pursuit
Whenever they get too full of themselves and start charging the enemy, they also start getting heavier and end up just like all the other 'Heavy' Cavalry.

So, for the 'Pure' Cavalry, you have One Type: Heavy 'Battle' Cavalry. Starts with a Chariot which may or may not have a range factor (Egyptians) but most will be Melee units (Hittites, Chinese, Celts), changing to Horsemen in the Classical Era, Knights in Medieval, Cuirassiers in Renaissance, Cavalry in Industrial, Tanks in Modern, Modern Armor in late Atomic.

The 'Scout' line should have a third Upgrade Path: Mounted. You can build or upgrade scouts to Light Cavalry in the Classical Era, which can become Dragoons in the Renaissance Era, Armored Cars in the Industrial Era (late) and Helicopters in the Atomic Era. All these Mounted Units (Uniques like Cossacks go in here, too) would use the Mounted Scout Promotions, and would as a rule be the fastest units in their Eras, but with Melee Factors not quite good enough to go 'toe-to-toe' with that era's infantry/Melee units.

ALL gunpowder units have a Range Factor, but many of them are also tactically expected to attack and 'close with and destroy the enemy' (to quote the US Army Infantry School). BUT the original gunpowder-firing individual troops had almost no melee factor at all: the matchlock musket was a clumsy 15 - 20 pound club and their only other weapon was a cheap sword that they were very rarely trained to use. Musketmen, then, are in game terms Support Units, to be 'protected' by someone else while they fire (Pike and Shot). The Fusilier, carrying the flintlock musket and socket bayonet, was the first 'universal infantry' - able to fire, charge, and defend against cavalry all by himself. The black powder rifle did not appreciably change this, because black powder smoke makes the extra range almost useless: you can't see a target more than 100 meters away after the first few volleys fill the air with smoke.

Okay, this could go on for pages, so let me summarize:

Scouts: Include a Mounted Promo line, can Upgrade to Light Cavalry (Classical), Dragoons (Renaissance), Armored Cars (Industrial Era), and Helicopters (Atomic Era)

Melee: Now incorporates both the 'Melee' and 'Anti-Cavalry' artificial definitions:
Upgrade Path: Warrior - Spearman OR Swordsman - Pikeman OR Man-at-Arms - Pike and Shot* - Fusilier* - Infantry* - Mechanized Infantry*

Cavalry: "Battle Cavalry" Only, primarily Melee Units: Heavy Chariot - Horseman - Knight - Cuirassier - Cavalry - Tank - Modern Armor

Ranged: Slinger - Archer - Crossbow - Cannon - Artillery - Rocket Artillery

Siege: Battering Ram - Tower - Catapult - Bombard - Siege Train (Industrial)
NOTE: These are all 'Support' Units, in that they have almost NO factor against units that can move faster than a Wall, and virtually no defensive factor other than the side arms carried by their crews

* = unit that has a Range Factor as well as a Melee factor, possibly among the lines of the Civ V Zulu 'Fire Before Melee' mechanism.

Many of the ridiculous and artificial units in the game now should be special incremental Upgrades or Promotions for units: Machine-guns add Range Factor to Infantry, for instance, and Antitank Guns/Rockets/Missiles would be an Anti-Mounted Upgrade Line for Melee Units (or Helicopters = Promote to Gunships)

Of course, to make these Upgrades really work, we also have to massively Improve the current Abomination of a Tech Tree, but that's for another thread entirely...

I just wanted to say I love your post.

In fact it is a subject I wanted to write about too (hough less eloquently and with less knowledge).

One of the biggest issues this part od civ has is its misinterpretation of spear. Spear is the basic weapon of humanity everywhere ever. It was independently invented everywhere ever in various forms because it is so basic, simple and useful weapon, so universally easy to made, and so banally easy to use.

In fact, it is crazy how in civ you have to invent spear and bow to begin with, as both weapon are goddamn universal prehistoric hunter gatherer weapons.

But no, civ sticks to the awkwardness of having clubs (?) and swords as main infantry weapons.

Ultimately, civ has a big problem of desperately trying to find unit upgrade paths from ancient to modern era fulfilling particular combat roles. This is impossible cuz nature of warfare kept changing.

What do you do with infantry and anticav division once you get to 18th century when historically both converged to infantry with bayonet rifles? What do you do with bow-crossbow vs spear-sword division once firearms arrive? You have to invent increasingly artificial, unelegant and counter immersive means - such as absurdity of kalashnikovs having apparently far smaller range than bows, crossbowmen upgrading to cannons but entirely different from Other Cannons etc.

Its enormous mess and maybe the entire concept of miltary units should be designed from scratch from different angle to avoid countless paradoxes.

 

[kaspergm]

I suspect the current system in Civ VI came about something like this:
1. We got too many units in Civ V
2. Too many units in Civ V lost all their Promotions when they Upgraded because they switched Categories of Units. Let's not do that again.
3. We need some kind of stacking back. How about 'Support Units' that can't really do anything by themselves, but can add things to regular units?
4. While we're at it, let's simplify the Tech Tree, and make a separate Civics Tree to handle all the Social Stuff. With a smaller Tech Tree, maybe nobody will notice how few units they've got to play with...

I agree completely with the first three, and I agree that in those respects, Civ VI is a big improvement over Civ V - but that's a long, long way from saying that the Civ VI system is Good - just a little more adequate, is as far as I'd go.

Not sure I follow you on the "way too many units" part about Civ5. But admittedly, maybe my memory is clouded by the fact that I used some mods that cleaned up the upgrade lines a lot. But I actually really like the Civ5 system the way I played it, it went like:

Melee line: Warrior - Swordman - Longswordsman - Musketman - etc.
Anti-cavalry: Pikeman - Spearman - Tercio - AT Gun - etc.
Ranged: Archer - Comp. Bowman - Crossbowman - Gatlin Gun (range 2) - etc.
Mounted melee: Horseman - Knight - Cavalry - Landship - etc.
Mounted ranged: Chariot Archer - Mounted Bowman - Dragoon - Airship - Helicopter Gunship ... (all of these have range 1)
Siege units: Catapult - Trebuchet - Canon - etc.

Each of these unit lines had their own purpose and advantages - i.e. ranged units had penalties vs. cities, mounted ranged were low melee combat but good as skirmishers (and range 1 prevented them from being OP as Keshiks), mounted melee were strong against melee units and excellent to take down ranged units, but had penalties against cities, melee units had bonus against cities, anti-cavalry had bonus against cavalry. It might not have been historically accurate, but it worked from a gameplay perspective.

 

[Hakan-i Cihan]

Not sure I follow you on the "way too many units" part about Civ5. But admittedly, maybe my memory is clouded by the fact that I used some mods that cleaned up the upgrade lines a lot. But I actually really like the Civ5 system the way I played it, it went like:

Melee line: Warrior - Swordman - Longswordsman - Musketman - etc.
Anti-cavalry: Pikeman - Spearman - Tercio - AT Gun - etc.
Ranged: Archer - Comp. Bowman - Crossbowman - Gatlin Gun (range 2) - etc.
Mounted melee: Horseman - Knight - Cavalry - Landship - etc.
Mounted ranged: Chariot Archer - Mounted Bowman - Dragoon - Airship - Helicopter Gunship ... (all of these have range 1)
Siege units: Catapult - Trebuchet - Canon - etc.

Each of these unit lines had their own purpose and advantages - i.e. ranged units had penalties vs. cities, mounted ranged were low melee combat but good as skirmishers (and range 1 prevented them from being OP as Keshiks), mounted melee were strong against melee units and excellent to take down ranged units, but had penalties against cities, melee units had bonus against cities, anti-cavalry had bonus against cavalry. It might not have been historically accurate, but it worked from a gameplay perspective.

You were probably playing with mods (especially with Community Patch Project/Vox Populi mod) since there is not a real mounted ranged line in Civ 5. But I liked it that way too.

 

[Siptah]

„If they would redesign the units completely, maybe make the selection a bit less based on western history.“ is what comes to mind, but I don‘t have an idea how without make it feel very patchwork-like.

 

[nzcamel]

I can definitely appreciate what the OP is saying in terms of not enough units. Then I normally play on marathon, so the gaps between upgrades can be significant. Having said that...I have come to appreciate the more simplified upgrade path with the alternating era's. I think that is quite clever. So I am setting aside my ideal which is waaaay more upgrades and units. The only compromise I'd like to see is one more upgrade stuck in around the renaissance-ish (or wherever an extra unit fits into each category best). The Pike n Shot is a great example of this, but I'm really not sure why they didn't add another unit at the same time in between the knight and tank, which to me is the most glaring break down in unit immersion in the game.

If they want to retain the alternate era's, I don't mind if they slot in another era or two to accomplish that with more units; which may be easier to do if they were to add some new techs and civics in another expansion.

However, I would agree that the cavalry lines are basically missing an entire generation. If you combine the cavalry lines and check their strengths, you go 28-35-48-62-80-82-90. Basically, the gap between knights and cavalry is too big. If I was redoing things, I think I would add a Cuirassier as a new light cavalry at 52-ish strength. I'd also agree that there needs to be more differences between light and heavy cavalry. Maybe just bringing back the combat penalty against cities for light cavalry? Or giving the heavy cav a combat penalty in rough terrain.

But otherwise, overall I think it works well enough.

I like what you suggest re distinguishing the two lines more UWHabs.

As a military historian who has written and lectured on topics as different as Alexander the Great's Army's Drill Manual, the tactical differences between British, French and Swedish infantry in 1705, and the Deficiencies of the German Tiger tank of WWII, I can say that Civ VI's Unit Selections and Upgrade Paths Suck Like a Starving Leech

First, they have distinctions (Melee - AntiCavalry - Ranged) that are increasingly artificial as the game goes on, they have artificial 'requirements' for Upgrading or building units, and, finally, they have neither incremental Upgrades nor Any Upgrades for some entire classes of units for a looooong time.

First, let's take Spearmen/Pikemen: the Basic Units/Weapons of the majority of civilized and semi-civilized armies in the Ancient, Classical, and Medieval Eras. Firaxis seems to have been distracted by the evidence of the Roman Legion: the ONLY unit of primarily swordsmen in the World prior to the early Tercio, and even that unit only had a minority of swordsmen ('sword and buckler men', to be exact) in a majority of pikemen and an increasing percentage of men with firearms. Spearmen are not anti-cavalry, they are Cheap to raise, train, and maintain. Men can learn to use a spear on a part-time basis and still be effective - see the Greek Hoplite Phalanx of amateur citizens or the northern European Shield Wall of, basically, farmers with shields and metal-pointed sticks.

Swords are more flexible and allow more flexible formations in a variety of terrain, but they require a lot of practice - professionals, in other words, which are either some set of militant Aristocrats who pay for themselves (Celts), or a Standing Army that costs lots and lots of coin (Romans).

Spearmen, then, should be Cheap to produce, Swordsmen gain the current bonus against them only in forest or rainforest or hills, but Swordsmen are more expensive and have about 4 x the Maintenance Cost of Spearmen.

Mounted Troops have two basic purposes: smash the enemy with the weight of the horse and weapons of the rider, or use the mobility of the horse to stay away from the enemy and Mess With Him from a distance. That's your Heavy versus Light Cavalry distinction in a nutshell, but the Light Cavalry all tend to be for
Reconnaissance (Scouts)
Raids
Pursuit
Whenever they get too full of themselves and start charging the enemy, they also start getting heavier and end up just like all the other 'Heavy' Cavalry.

So, for the 'Pure' Cavalry, you have One Type: Heavy 'Battle' Cavalry. Starts with a Chariot which may or may not have a range factor (Egyptians) but most will be Melee units (Hittites, Chinese, Celts), changing to Horsemen in the Classical Era, Knights in Medieval, Cuirassiers in Renaissance, Cavalry in Industrial, Tanks in Modern, Modern Armor in late Atomic.

The 'Scout' line should have a third Upgrade Path: Mounted. You can build or upgrade scouts to Light Cavalry in the Classical Era, which can become Dragoons in the Renaissance Era, Armored Cars in the Industrial Era (late) and Helicopters in the Atomic Era. All these Mounted Units (Uniques like Cossacks go in here, too) would use the Mounted Scout Promotions, and would as a rule be the fastest units in their Eras, but with Melee Factors not quite good enough to go 'toe-to-toe' with that era's infantry/Melee units.

ALL gunpowder units have a Range Factor, but many of them are also tactically expected to attack and 'close with and destroy the enemy' (to quote the US Army Infantry School). BUT the original gunpowder-firing individual troops had almost no melee factor at all: the matchlock musket was a clumsy 15 - 20 pound club and their only other weapon was a cheap sword that they were very rarely trained to use. Musketmen, then, are in game terms Support Units, to be 'protected' by someone else while they fire (Pike and Shot). The Fusilier, carrying the flintlock musket and socket bayonet, was the first 'universal infantry' - able to fire, charge, and defend against cavalry all by himself. The black powder rifle did not appreciably change this, because black powder smoke makes the extra range almost useless: you can't see a target more than 100 meters away after the first few volleys fill the air with smoke.

Okay, this could go on for pages, so let me summarize:

Scouts: Include a Mounted Promo line, can Upgrade to Light Cavalry (Classical), Dragoons (Renaissance), Armored Cars (Industrial Era), and Helicopters (Atomic Era)

Melee: Now incorporates both the 'Melee' and 'Anti-Cavalry' artificial definitions:
Upgrade Path: Warrior - Spearman OR Swordsman - Pikeman OR Man-at-Arms - Pike and Shot* - Fusilier* - Infantry* - Mechanized Infantry*

Cavalry: "Battle Cavalry" Only, primarily Melee Units: Heavy Chariot - Horseman - Knight - Cuirassier - Cavalry - Tank - Modern Armor

Ranged: Slinger - Archer - Crossbow - Cannon - Artillery - Rocket Artillery

Siege: Battering Ram - Tower - Catapult - Bombard - Siege Train (Industrial)
NOTE: These are all 'Support' Units, in that they have almost NO factor against units that can move faster than a Wall, and virtually no defensive factor other than the side arms carried by their crews

* = unit that has a Range Factor as well as a Melee factor, possibly among the lines of the Civ V Zulu 'Fire Before Melee' mechanism.

Many of the ridiculous and artificial units in the game now should be special incremental Upgrades or Promotions for units: Machine-guns add Range Factor to Infantry, for instance, and Antitank Guns/Rockets/Missiles would be an Anti-Mounted Upgrade Line for Melee Units (or Helicopters = Promote to Gunships)

Of course, to make these Upgrades really work, we also have to massively Improve the current Abomination of a Tech Tree, but that's for another thread entirely...

Well, just before "let me summarize" I realized that I was about to go into a multi-page essay on Tactics Through the Ages, so I stopped before I went completely Off Topic...

I suspect the current system in Civ VI came about something like this:
1. We got too many units in Civ V
2. Too many units in Civ V lost all their Promotions when they Upgraded because they switched Categories of Units. Let's not do that again.
3. We need some kind of stacking back. How about 'Support Units' that can't really do anything by themselves, but can add things to regular units?
4. While we're at it, let's simplify the Tech Tree, and make a separate Civics Tree to handle all the Social Stuff. With a smaller Tech Tree, maybe nobody will notice how few units they've got to play with...

I agree completely with the first three, and I agree that in those respects, Civ VI is a big improvement over Civ V - but that's a long, long way from saying that the Civ VI system is Good - just a little more adequate, is as far as I'd go.

As long as they don't recognize the real historical relationship between the various kinds of weapons and units, and keep including units that were NEVER separate on a Civ scale (bazookas, machine-guns) and require spurious Resources to Upgrade units (Nitre, which occurs naturally in every compost pile) they've got a long way to go...

One last thing: I think the game would be mightily improved if they separated Promotions into Upgrades and Experience and changed the current Upgrade into Replace. That is, when you get a completely new unit you are really replacing the old unit with a whole new bunch of equipment. weapons, tactics, etc. When you change a unit incrementally, it's either because some of the weapons and equipment got changed, OR the leaders and followers in the unit learned a new 'trick', technique, or tactic.

For instance, Scout unit does a lot of scouting, he learns how to move better in X terrain: that's Experience.
Bunch of Spearmen get bronze-faced shields, bronze helmeted and breastplates, they're still Spearmen, but now they are much more dangerous (Melee Factor Increase) - that's an Upgrade (of equipment). That same bunch of Spearmen turns in their spears and gets Pikes, and that's a Replacement Unit, because Pikes do Not use exactly the same tactics as spears.

Graphically, the basic Spearmen could be shown in stiff leather tunics with wooden or leather shields, then change to bright bronze shields and chest covering, without the basic graphic figure changing - that's an Upgrade. Replace it with a Pike unit - whole new graphic. Learn, say, better tactics against cavalry or chariots - that's Experience, and requires no new Graphic.

In other words, "Incremental Upgrades" if done right, could tremendously enhance the game: something that the specific category Promotions starts to do now, but I don't think takes it far enough...

I really like your insights and suggestions Boris. I think an overhaul of that size will need to be saved for the next edition of Civ though. Maybe you could email Ed and Anton

 

[RohirrimElf]

Vanilla game badly needs some inbetween units like longswordsman and rifleman. I`m using MOAR unit mods for as long as i can remember.
Also the unit promotion trees are not that interesting if you ask me. I also would like to see an xp increase like older civ games instead of a bonus when new xp is gained. When building specific buildings like certain encampment buildings (barracks etc)

 

[Victoria]

I think the paths are great when compared to the validity of the units power. Its all a bit messy.
Its the gold upgrade cost that's too easy to handle. It really need some fix like removal of the 50% upgrade discount card. Way to easy for a fast slot n swap. It makes the whole idea of building a unit beyond the ancient age foreign, so wrong.

 

[Phrozen]

As a military historian who has written and lectured on topics as different as Alexander the Great's Army's Drill Manual, the tactical differences between British, French and Swedish infantry in 1705, and the Deficiencies of the German Tiger tank of WWII, I can say that Civ VI's Unit Selections and Upgrade Paths Suck Like a Starving Leech

First, they have distinctions (Melee - AntiCavalry - Ranged) that are increasingly artificial as the game goes on, they have artificial 'requirements' for Upgrading or building units, and, finally, they have neither incremental Upgrades nor Any Upgrades for some entire classes of units for a looooong time.

First, let's take Spearmen/Pikemen: the Basic Units/Weapons of the majority of civilized and semi-civilized armies in the Ancient, Classical, and Medieval Eras. Firaxis seems to have been distracted by the evidence of the Roman Legion: the ONLY unit of primarily swordsmen in the World prior to the early Tercio, and even that unit only had a minority of swordsmen ('sword and buckler men', to be exact) in a majority of pikemen and an increasing percentage of men with firearms. Spearmen are not anti-cavalry, they are Cheap to raise, train, and maintain. Men can learn to use a spear on a part-time basis and still be effective - see the Greek Hoplite Phalanx of amateur citizens or the northern European Shield Wall of, basically, farmers with shields and metal-pointed sticks.

Swords are more flexible and allow more flexible formations in a variety of terrain, but they require a lot of practice - professionals, in other words, which are either some set of militant Aristocrats who pay for themselves (Celts), or a Standing Army that costs lots and lots of coin (Romans).

Spearmen, then, should be Cheap to produce, Swordsmen gain the current bonus against them only in forest or rainforest or hills, but Swordsmen are more expensive and have about 4 x the Maintenance Cost of Spearmen.

Mounted Troops have two basic purposes: smash the enemy with the weight of the horse and weapons of the rider, or use the mobility of the horse to stay away from the enemy and Mess With Him from a distance. That's your Heavy versus Light Cavalry distinction in a nutshell, but the Light Cavalry all tend to be for
Reconnaissance (Scouts)
Raids
Pursuit
Whenever they get too full of themselves and start charging the enemy, they also start getting heavier and end up just like all the other 'Heavy' Cavalry.

So, for the 'Pure' Cavalry, you have One Type: Heavy 'Battle' Cavalry. Starts with a Chariot which may or may not have a range factor (Egyptians) but most will be Melee units (Hittites, Chinese, Celts), changing to Horsemen in the Classical Era, Knights in Medieval, Cuirassiers in Renaissance, Cavalry in Industrial, Tanks in Modern, Modern Armor in late Atomic.

The 'Scout' line should have a third Upgrade Path: Mounted. You can build or upgrade scouts to Light Cavalry in the Classical Era, which can become Dragoons in the Renaissance Era, Armored Cars in the Industrial Era (late) and Helicopters in the Atomic Era. All these Mounted Units (Uniques like Cossacks go in here, too) would use the Mounted Scout Promotions, and would as a rule be the fastest units in their Eras, but with Melee Factors not quite good enough to go 'toe-to-toe' with that era's infantry/Melee units.

ALL gunpowder units have a Range Factor, but many of them are also tactically expected to attack and 'close with and destroy the enemy' (to quote the US Army Infantry School). BUT the original gunpowder-firing individual troops had almost no melee factor at all: the matchlock musket was a clumsy 15 - 20 pound club and their only other weapon was a cheap sword that they were very rarely trained to use. Musketmen, then, are in game terms Support Units, to be 'protected' by someone else while they fire (Pike and Shot). The Fusilier, carrying the flintlock musket and socket bayonet, was the first 'universal infantry' - able to fire, charge, and defend against cavalry all by himself. The black powder rifle did not appreciably change this, because black powder smoke makes the extra range almost useless: you can't see a target more than 100 meters away after the first few volleys fill the air with smoke.

Okay, this could go on for pages, so let me summarize:

Scouts: Include a Mounted Promo line, can Upgrade to Light Cavalry (Classical), Dragoons (Renaissance), Armored Cars (Industrial Era), and Helicopters (Atomic Era)

Melee: Now incorporates both the 'Melee' and 'Anti-Cavalry' artificial definitions:
Upgrade Path: Warrior - Spearman OR Swordsman - Pikeman OR Man-at-Arms - Pike and Shot* - Fusilier* - Infantry* - Mechanized Infantry*

Cavalry: "Battle Cavalry" Only, primarily Melee Units: Heavy Chariot - Horseman - Knight - Cuirassier - Cavalry - Tank - Modern Armor

Ranged: Slinger - Archer - Crossbow - Cannon - Artillery - Rocket Artillery

Siege: Battering Ram - Tower - Catapult - Bombard - Siege Train (Industrial)
NOTE: These are all 'Support' Units, in that they have almost NO factor against units that can move faster than a Wall, and virtually no defensive factor other than the side arms carried by their crews

* = unit that has a Range Factor as well as a Melee factor, possibly among the lines of the Civ V Zulu 'Fire Before Melee' mechanism.

Many of the ridiculous and artificial units in the game now should be special incremental Upgrades or Promotions for units: Machine-guns add Range Factor to Infantry, for instance, and Antitank Guns/Rockets/Missiles would be an Anti-Mounted Upgrade Line for Melee Units (or Helicopters = Promote to Gunships)

Of course, to make these Upgrades really work, we also have to massively Improve the current Abomination of a Tech Tree, but that's for another thread entirely...

I don't think that Melee should get ranged because even though guns are ranged, the majority of infantry battle still occurs at relatively close range. What guns do get you was faster training and later rate of fire. Long range infantry battle never really happened as the main uses of Infantry now is to take land and hold land. They are really the only unit that can do it. Particularly in rough terrain like city(districts) and forest.

 

[Krajzen]

There are pretty significant changes that are obviously needed IMO. I've made them for 8 Ages of War, everything works much better that way.

If I may ask, what are the most important changes you made?

 

[Uberfrog]

The alternating dominant unit class with each era needs making more consistent in my opinion. Adding Pike & Shot is good, but both cavalry classes have equally large gaps without an upgrade.

At a minimum, we need units to fill these gaps.

I would propose moving the Industrial Cavalry unit we currently have to the Heavy line so it upgrades the Knight. I would then add a Lancer unit to the Light cavalry line in the Renaissance to upgrade the by now positively geriatric Horseman.

But even then the alternating gaps are still pretty irregular, and the anti-cavalry line really too weak as things stand to really be up to taking a frontline role, even in the eras where there is no Melee unit upgrade.

I think the tech tree and unit trees would benefit from more room to breathe by adding a new era between the Renaissance and Industrial, where we could have Fusiliers, Field Artillery and Ships of the Line to play with...

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I don't think that Melee should get ranged because even though guns are ranged, the majority of infantry battle still occurs at relatively close range. What guns do get you was faster training and later rate of fire. Long range infantry battle never really happened as the main uses of Infantry now is to take land and hold land. They are really the only unit that can do it. Particularly in rough terrain like city(districts) and forest.

Which is why they have to remain Melee Units. BUT neglecting entirely their Ranged Factor, which is more and more significant as you go through the Modern and Atomic and Information Eras, leads to silliness like having separate units of Machine-guns and Bazookas in order to get the Ranged Factor that the basic infantrymen, festooned with rifles, machine-guns and mortars within the units, are missing in the game.

For some solid figures:
"Close Combat Range" is considered about 40 meters - hand grenade and pistol range - where, basically, you have 'closed with the enemy' and somebody has got to leave because short of both of you being in buildings or trenches, you just cannot stay that close to each other for very long.
The Average Range of Infantry firefights from WWII to Vietnam, according to some extensive research by the US Army, was 250 meters. Which is one reason why they adopted the M16 versus the long range 7.62mm rifles they'd used before: having an accurate range of 4 - 600 meters was a waste except for snipers in special situations.

Which means, by ignoring the Range Factor of rifled small arms from about 1880 (adoption of smokeless powder firearms) to 2017, you are leaving out that 200 meters in which the unit is preparing their assault with fire, or stopping an assault with fire.

Thus, I argue for including a Range Factor for those units, of varying strength, usable only Before Melee. The Range Factor should always be less than the Melee Factor, though, so that the units will be used as the Melee Units they really are.

The biggest shift within those units, by the way, would be between the Fusilier (flintlock smoothbore musket with bayonet) and the Rifleman (what Civ V called the Great War Infantry) (smokeless powder magazine-fed bolt-action rifle). The Flintlock was almost an order of magnitude better than the matchlock that preceded it ("Musketman") and could defend against Cavalry (socket bayonet) but still didn't have enough firepower (Ranged Factor before Melee) to actually stop a charge very often. By contrast, the long range rifle literally stopped charges by infantry or cavalry in their tracks - see the Boer War for specifics, but even the black powder breechloading rifles of the Franco-Prussian War could stop most infantry before they ever got into Close Combat range.

And finally, the big change from hand weapons to gunpowder was that Gunpowder Kills. Men in armor of any kind (even just stout shields) with weapons in their hands are hard to get at - as long as they are facing you. The mass casualties occurred when they broke and tried to run, or got out-flanked or surrounded - when it became a massacre. By contrast, there is no traditional (metal/leather) armor a man can wear that will protect him against a .60 inch musket ball coming in at 1000 feet per second, much less a .303 inch rifle bullet coming in at 2800 feet per second. Some of the best body armor ever worn (metallurgically) was the cuirass worn by heavy cavalry in the Napoleonic Wars: high quality steel, curved to deflect swords or lance points or pistol shots (every French cuirass was 'proofed' by firing a pistol at it, so each one had a small 'dimple' in it when issued)
But after Waterloo the British infantry, who had been fighting off French Cuirassiers all day, could not find a single cuirass (which made excellent kettles for soup or tea, if intact) without a bullet hole straight through it.

But enough of the Historical Trivial Pursuit stuff...

Bottom line, a better game would be had by accurately reflecting the real differences between and capabilities of the units in the game, including the Range Factor of Gunpowder Infantry. This would also allow the separate Ranged Category of units to accurately reflect the really powerful modern Ranged Units: the black powder Cannon of the 17th - 19th centuries (Renaissance - Industrial Eras), the indirect fire Artillery of the 20th Century (very late Industrial - Atomic Eras) and the modern Artillery Systems (rockets, missiles, rocket propelled artillery projectiles) of the 21st century (Information Era).

And leave the 'included/artificial-for-game-purposes ranged units' like Machine-guns and Bazookas/AT Rockets to be Specialized Upgrades/Promotions for the Infantry.

For example, want more Ranged Factor in your Infantry? With the technology (or a Hiram Maxim Great Scientist!) you can 'equip' an Infantry Unit with machine-guns - possibly requiring the unit be in an Encampment District for retraining, but definitely requiring Gold to pay for the new weapons, and increased Maintenance Cost because the unit is going to burn through ammunition at a greatly increased rate. The result would be a unit whose Range Before Melee Factor is now Higher than its Melee Factor: still useable as a Melee Unit, but also with a nasty ability to Stop Melee Attacks with Fire and thus Hold Ground.
Oh, and ideally, now one of the figures in the unit would now be hauling a wheeled Maxim behind him, and spin it around to fire when attacking/attacked - a visual graphic reminder of the unit's 'special status' among your infantry.

 

[Phrozen]

It depends on how far down you want to define down what counts as a unit. On the squad level medium and heavy machine guns, mortar, and anti-tank would be separate units as they were their own squads. If you define it down to the company level they wouldn't be as every standard company had a anti-tank unit and a mortar squad. Some would have heavy or medium machine gun squad instead or in addition too the two specialized squads. In modern warfare 250 meters is short range and it gets closer when the battlefield becomes more cluttered with obstacles like in a bombed out city.

 

[Benzombie]

Personally, I liked V's unit roster better than VI right now. It had flavor, more different units fighting each other. I also liked the idea of poor civilizations being able to use 'outdated' artillery and maybe a tank or two, while the rich civilizations could use units that require aluminum and nuclear fusion and can yield more of them. VI does have some of that but I feel like V did it better. Even if I didn't use some of the unit upgrade paths as a main force, it was still an option.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

...For what it stands, I think a shot-and-pike unit is profoundly misguided. Shot-and-pike is perfectly well represented at the moment by having an army of mixed pikes and muskets. in 8AoW, pikes are strong enough to be significantly better than muskets against cavalry, so are very much needed. Having an army which is partially muskets and partially shot-and-pike makes no sense to me. As I see it, the principle ages of early modern (European) warfare are represented by:
Shot-and-pike era: Pikes, Muskets, Knights
18th Century: Fusilier, Muskets, Cavalry
7-years-war / Napoleonic Era: Fusilier, Muskets, field cannon and Cavalry
American civil war: Fusilier, Infantry, field cannon (and some Cavalry)

Which, with a very limited stretch of the imagination and seeing some slight evolution of equipment for the same unit across different epochs, makes good sense.

Actually, from a purely Historical point of view, Replacing the Musketman with Pike and Shot makes perfect sense: the matchlock musket and its predecessors were Never used as separate units, because they had, as I've mentioned before, virtually no melee factor for either defense or attack. My own original contention was to make the Musketman a Support Unit so they could 'stack' with a Pikeman to represent the Spanish Tercio - Swedish Brigade - Dutch Battalion, etc. pike and shot combination. A single unit makes much more sense, but so far, at least, there's no indication that it replaces the old Civ standard, the Musketman, as it should...

I would modify your conception of Early Modern European Warfare slightly:
Late Renaissance: Pike-and-Shot, Knights, Dragoons - 'Dragoons' being the Light Cavalry of the 16th - 17th centuries, being the scouts, raiders, etc but having No Business charging anybody on horseback.
18th Century: Fusiliers, Field Cannon, Cuirassiers, (Light Cavalry) - the Flintlock-carrying 'Fusilier' started appearing as a specialist troop in the 1690s, and by 1708 was Universal (last adoption: the Russian officially-adopted Tula Arsenal flintlock of 1708) and Pikes were utterly obsolete. The trunnioned Field Cannon was also universal throughout the century. Heavy, sometimes armored cavalry predominated on the battlefield, regardless of whether they were called Cuirassiers, Heavy Dragoons, or even, confusingly, 'Light Cavalry' by the French (they were lighter than Knights, seems to have been the thinking, but they were also trained and expected to Charge Home sword in hand). Light Cavalry was a mixed bag that kept sneaking onto the battlefield as Hussars, Light Dragoons, Uhlans, Cossacks, etc. but without a lot of special attention (Frederick the Great's Hussars, for instance) they were never as good as the 'Heavies' at the battlefield stuff.
This lasted throughout the 18th Century and to the end of the Napoleonic Wars in the early 19th century. While there were lots and lots of incremental changes, the Fusilier-Field Cannon-Cuirassier 'model' dominated from 1702 when the War of the Spanish Succession started until 1815 at Waterloo.
American Civil War or 'Industrial Era until smokeless powder'. Fusiliers with smoothbore muskets got incremental upgraded to black-powder Rifled Muskets and then black powder breechloading rifles, but basic tactics didn't change much from 1815 to 1880, by which time the basic tactics were getting almost suicidal. Field cannon increasingly got rifled and longer-ranged, but still had to see what they shot at, which limited range to the nearest ridge or tree line or village. Biggest change was in the mounted troops, which regardless of their titles all became carbine-carrying unarmored Cavalry that still occasionally tried to charge, and against rifle-carrying infantry usually failed miserably to get within 50 meters of their target alive.

The adoption of smokeless powder and real long range fire in the 1880s changed Everything, because simultaneously Maxim's machine-gun also became available. Infantry battles from then until the end of WWI became a set of increasingly desperate attempts by all armies to find some way for infantry to attack without getting massacred by fire as soon as they showed their faces to the enemy within a quarter mile. The addition of lots of supporting firepower to the infantry (Melee) units was the answer, and after WWI everybody's infantry included various kinds of machine-guns, light mortars, light cannon ('infantry guns') and other 'support' weapons to suppress the enemy and allow your own infantry to advance.[/QUOTE]

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Mounted melee: Horseman - Knight - Cavalry - Landship - etc.
Mounted ranged: Chariot Archer - Mounted Bowman - Dragoon - Airship - Helicopter Gunship ... (all of these have range 1)

I like this idea a little better than what we have now.
Mounted melee could be like heavy cavalry with stronger defense but move a little slower.
Mounted ranged could move a little faster and be stronger on attack, but weaker on defense.