Feedback: Units

[Nightstar]

Playing as Perikles (Creative/Philosophical), fighting Abu Bakr (Spiritual/Imperialist). Attacked his stack (which contained two Catapults and ten Battering Rams) in forest next to one of my cities with both a Horseman and a Horse Archer (both of which are described as flanking Catapults, Trebuchets, and Bombards). The Horseman (with Combat I & II and Formation) killed a Swordsman. The Horse Archer (with Combat I and Flanking I & II) withdrew from combat with another Swordsman.

The problem is that neither attack caused any flanking damage. At all.

 

[davidtylr]

I was thinking what if we have units that can only be built once. For example. trojan horse - which allows you to sneak units behind enemy lines. The crusades or the red baron.

 

[Simon_Jester]

Several problems.

One is that if these units are drastically superior to normal units they become like wonders- and the AI won't think to build them as avidly as it should. If they're not drastically superior, then while it's a cool idea it's a little awkward to implement in a game that's meant to cover the full sweep of civilization's history: what's the difference between a Red Baron unit and a promoted Fighter unit?

Another is finding model art for these units, especially if we try to make them multicultural.

 

[davidtylr]

Several problems.

One is that if these units are drastically superior to normal units they become like wonders- and the AI won't think to build them as avidly as it should. If they're not drastically superior, then while it's a cool idea it's a little awkward to implement in a game that's meant to cover the full sweep of civilization's history: what's the difference between a Red Baron unit and a promoted Fighter unit?

Another is finding model art for these units, especially if we try to make them multicultural.

Thinking outside of the box if these units are produced for example being the first to discover a tech or being the first to produce 10 fighter units you get one of those units. Finding the art work will be a task but if there is only one unit i don't think we have to worry about making them multicultural.

 

[lindsay40k]

Given that it'd only work once, the Trojan Horse is begging to be a World Wonder: Melee units are not expelled from enemy territory when you declare war on them, obsoletes with Medieval Era or declaring war.

Unfortunately, Xyth won't be able to teach the AI how to use it, nor to close its borders when someone builds it or when it's unbuilt and someone has pairs of Axemen heading towards their hinterland cities. So, this looks like a lovely idea that'll go on the cutting room floor

 

[davidtylr]

I am fond of having the trojan horse in the game but the trojan horse is just an example of an idea of having great units.

 

[Simon_Jester]

So I went into my own personal copy of HR and edited all the upgrades for melee units, to remove the Musketman bottleneck. I still have Longbowmen and Crossbowmen upgrading to Musketmen, since Musketmen are superior to those units in all situations. But I have Macemen, Pikemen, and the Maceman-based elite units (Samurai, Pombos, and maybe one or two others I forget) upgrading to Riflemen instead.

This is particularly important for Pikemen, as Knights and Cuirassiers are actually more effective against Musketmen than they are against Pikemen- if Pikemen upgrade to Musketmen it guarantees an ahistorical era of ascension for cavalry. In real life "pike and shot" dominated warfare until the rise of the bayonet in the 18th century, precisely because musket-armed formations needed pike blocks to fend off enemy cavalry.

I also made the Legionary upgrade to Riflemen, but that's a personal preference and admiration for their road-building capabilities.

 

[Howard Mahler]

This may be a useful change.

However, with respect to your discussion of Pikeman one is never forced to upgrade.
Thus the difference I see with your change is that one can build Pikeman for a while longer but can not upgrade Pikeman until somewhat later. In some circumstances this can be helpful while in others it can be harmful.

So I went into my own personal copy of HR and edited all the upgrades for melee units, to remove the Musketman bottleneck. I still have Longbowmen and Crossbowmen upgrading to Musketmen, since Musketmen are superior to those units in all situations. But I have Macemen, Pikemen, and the Maceman-based elite units (Samurai, Pombos, and maybe one or two others I forget) upgrading to Riflemen instead.

This is particularly important for Pikemen, as Knights and Cuirassiers are actually more effective against Musketmen than they are against Pikemen- if Pikemen upgrade to Musketmen it guarantees an ahistorical era of ascension for cavalry. In real life "pike and shot" dominated warfare until the rise of the bayonet in the 18th century, precisely because musket-armed formations needed pike blocks to fend off enemy cavalry.

I also made the Legionary upgrade to Riflemen, but that's a personal preference and admiration for their road-building capabilities.

 

[Azoth]

I support Simon Jester's suggested upgrade chains.
Standard BtS uses them precisely because it avoids the "Musketman bottleneck."
It's good for balance and historical accuracy.
(As Simon says, musketmen did rely on melee support.)

In fact, even if a separate Skirmisher line (Slinger -> Javelineer -> Longbowman) is introduced,
I see no reason why the Melee and Archery lines should converge at Musketman.

 

[Simon_Jester]

This may be a useful change.

However, with respect to your discussion of Pikeman one is never forced to upgrade.
Thus the difference I see with your change is that one can build Pikeman for a while longer but can not upgrade Pikeman until somewhat later. In some circumstances this can be helpful while in others it can be harmful.

Unless you have a huge army of Pikemen and are getting flattened by enemy Crossbowmen and Macemen, I don't think it's a problem. Whereas losing the ability to build more Pikemen simply hurts you- because you can no longer build these cheap, effective counter-cavalry units, and the only other way to counter cavalry is with Elephants, which require a special resource.

It's even more blatant for Macemen, because Musketmen are drastically weaker against a wide range of more primitive units than Macemen, while seldom being much stronger (basically, they have a very slight advantage against other Macemen, and a significant advantage against Crossbowmen. Against anything else, it doesn't make much difference).

And of course it's still more frustrating for some elite units- I'd take a Pombos over a Musketman almost every time, unless my enemy is so advanced they have only gunpowder units left in their army. Upgrading a fast, strong Pombos to a slow, often weaker Musketman is silly, and losing the ability to construct Pombos the minute Musketmen show up is absurd.

 

[Xyth]

Playing as Perikles (Creative/Philosophical), fighting Abu Bakr (Spiritual/Imperialist). Attacked his stack (which contained two Catapults and ten Battering Rams) in forest next to one of my cities with both a Horseman and a Horse Archer (both of which are described as flanking Catapults, Trebuchets, and Bombards). The Horseman (with Combat I & II and Formation) killed a Swordsman. The Horse Archer (with Combat I and Flanking I & II) withdrew from combat with another Swordsman.

The problem is that neither attack caused any flanking damage. At all.

I'm not quite sure what's going on here. What I suspect is that there might be a maximum number of units that can be flank attacked at once, and perhaps the unflankable Battering Rams are 'absorbing' the attack leaving the Catapults untouched.

I don't honestly remember why I made Battering Rams and Siege Towers unflankable. May even have been an oversight because my description for the Assyrian Siege Ram states "...Siege Rams were heavily protected, making them more effective and immune to flank attacks, first strikes and collateral damage."

So I'll make Battering Rams and Siege Towers flankable in 1.18 and we'll see if the issue you describe still occurs then.


Great/Wonder Units

I have some limited ability to override unit AI, so there is some scope for such one-off 'world' units. There are several other mods I've seen that have a few units along these lines so there may well be some useful code I could borrow. Art availability would be a restriction, as always.

It's not something I wish to look into at this time but I'll definitely add it to the todo list.


The Musketman Bottleneck

It's been a long time since I played unmodded BTS and I assumed that it had this issue as well. Must have come about via some change I made at some time, I don't recall when or why. Changing Heavy Footmen and Pikemen (and relevant UUs) to upgrade to Riflemen sounds reasonable, done.

 

[Xyth]

Horse Archer
Requires Riding
Requires Horses
6 , 2 , 50
•Immune to first strikes
•Doesn't receive defensive bonuses
• 30% chance to withdraw from Combat
• Targets any Axeman, Swordsman first in combat outside cities


Horseman
Requires Employment and Riding
Requires Horses, Copper or Iron
6 , 2 , 60
• Immune to first strikes
•Doesn't receive defensive bonuses
• 20% chance to withdraw from Combat
•-50% city attack
• +50% vs. Siege Units
• Flank Attack vs. Siege Units


The Horse Archer loses its effectiveness against Siege but is able to avoid Spearmen when attacking a stack, instead picking a fight against melee units it has a more even chance against - Axemen and Swordsmen. This only works out in the field; against cities they may still need to face tougher foes, and it only works when attacking, not defending.

The Horseman retains the vital anti-Siege role and gains a withdrawal chance to help with that. It no longer has a bonus against Melee units and is still weak if attacking cities.

Let me know what you think of these. I think this is the way to go role-wise, but let me know if you have any suggestions to refine this better.

 

[Simon_Jester]

Interesting. Using cavalry effectively against ancient armies becomes a more subtle thing.

The problem I see with this is that the Horse Archer is superior to the Horseman in almost all situations. It can attack cities effectively, it can pick off enemy Axemen to soften the enemy up for your own counterattack with Axemen. It's less powerful against siege engines- but siege units don't have very high strength anyway, so the Horse Archer is still fairly effective there, while the Horseman can't do any of the other things. Also, as a rule, if you can knock down the 'ordinary' defenders, anything can handle the siege units in a stack.

Also, the Horse Archer is cheaper and has no other prerequisite besides Riding. Taken together, you've given the Horse Archer more combat power at a lower price. Either the Horseman should be made stronger, or it should be made easier to get. Is there any tech we could use as a second prerequisite for Horse Archers (aside from Archery, which is cheaply available), while making Horseman have no prerequisite other than Riding?

 

[Nightstar]

Playing as the Chinese in the early modern era, versus the Inca (who are in the early industrial era). The Incan Workers (they don't have Railroad yet) are showing up as red hemispheres.

 

[Howard Mahler]

Horse Archers now seem to be vastly superior to Horsemen.
Cost less.
No need for special resource.
Available one row sooner in the tech tree.
Higher withdrawal chance.
No negative on attacking cities.

I would lower the horse archer to strength 5, same as axemen.
(They are in the same tech row as axemen.
Versus swordsmen, horse archers would have to depend on their withdrawal chance and their on average higher experience from Stables.)

Maybe the horse archer should share the negative attacking cities.

I am not sure that horsemen should be immune to first strikes.
We are mainly talking about archers, who it seems would get a volley off even against horsemen.

In any case, this all needs significant work.

Horse Archer
Requires Riding
Requires Horses
6 , 2 , 50
•Immune to first strikes
•Doesn't receive defensive bonuses
• 30% chance to withdraw from Combat
• Targets any Axeman, Swordsman first in combat outside cities


Horseman
Requires Employment and Riding
Requires Horses, Copper or Iron
6 , 2 , 60
• Immune to first strikes
•Doesn't receive defensive bonuses
• 20% chance to withdraw from Combat
•-50% city attack
• +50% vs. Siege Units
• Flank Attack vs. Siege Units


The Horse Archer loses its effectiveness against Siege but is able to avoid Spearmen when attacking a stack, instead picking a fight against melee units it has a more even chance against - Axemen and Swordsmen. This only works out in the field; against cities they may still need to face tougher foes, and it only works when attacking, not defending.

The Horseman retains the vital anti-Siege role and gains a withdrawal chance to help with that. It no longer has a bonus against Melee units and is still weak if attacking cities.

Let me know what you think of these. I think this is the way to go role-wise, but let me know if you have any suggestions to refine this better.

 

[lindsay40k]

So, then, we've got a mounted archer who zips around enemy armies and snipes at the shock troops whilst keeping away from the pointy things. And an early mounted shock troop that engages a unit in the enemy line and tries to get past it to massacre siege crews, but doesn't have the heavy armour needed to confidently attack enemies in fortified locations.

Historically, are we on the ball here? The 'flanking to kill catapults' trick - was that generally done by the sledgehammer carthorses with brawlers on their back bursting through and trampling through the rear of the enemy army, or was it the light scouting cavalry's role to get into position and shoot the siege crews? I'm aware that Cavalier cavalry in the English Civil War was notorious for smashing through a Roundhead line and then getting carried away with looting the Parliamentarian camp; would this be a precedent on which we could base the differences Xyth has introduced?

How are you thinking the promotion tree will incorporate these, Xyth? Both precursors to Knights? Or is there an argument for extending the 'mounted archery/mounted melee' split further down the line? There's an argument for heavy mounted archers to accompany Cataphracts/Knights (maybe a mounted crossbowmen UU for a Germanic civ); Byzantium was big on the 'soften up the melee units with mounted archery' trick, and that was with armoured cavalry. Cuirassiers could be reworked into Light and Heavy Dragoons, which had distinct purposes in battle; perhaps have them converge to Cavalry (Mounted Rifles)?

 

[inasnapp]

Given the training involved in producing horse archers they should be more expensive than horsemen (horse archers from the central Asian step were expected to hit targets several meters behind them while at a full gallop) their hit and run tactics also required extensive training.

Maybe the horse archer should share the negative attacking cities.

I am not sure that horsemen should be immune to first strikes.
We are mainly talking about archers, who it seems would get a volley off even against horsemen.

i like these ideas. though the mongol uu would be appropriately excellent if it did not have a city attack penalty.

 

[Xyth]

Thanks for the feedback so far, here's Take #2:


Horseman
Requires Riding
Requires Horses, Copper or Iron
6 , 2 , 50
• Doesn't receive defensive bonuses
• 20% chance to withdraw from Combat
• -50% city attack
• +50% vs. Siege Units
• Flank Attack vs. Siege Units
Upgrades to Heavy Horseman or Horse Archer


Horse Archer
Requires Nobility and Riding
Requires Horses
6 , 2 , 70
• Immune to first strikes
• Doesn't receive defensive bonuses
• 30% chance to withdraw from combat
• +50% Attack vs. Axemen, Swordsmen, and Heavy Footmen
• Targets Axemen, Swordsmen, or Heavy Footmen first in combat outside cities
Upgrades to Cuirassier

The biggest change is that I've shifted the Horse Archer into the mid to late Classical Era (though Nobility isn't an ideal tech, let me know if you have a better suggestion from the second or third column). Historically this makes better sense as proper Horse Archery didn't really emerge until well into the Iron Age but it also remained significant throughout Medieval times. This approach also spreads the mounted units out a bit better; it felt a bit excessive having 3 mounted units in the Ancient/Classical era and only 1 per Era thereafter.

Its cost is increased but rather than increasing their strength further I gave them an attack bonus against their same target units so that they can still be countered by Spearmen and Pikemen in cities.

Due to a lack of art I can't implement Light and Heavy versions of the Horse Archer, so my goal here is to define a unit that has enough of a niche to still be useful alongside Heavy Horseman, without being too strong early on. Thoughts?

I am not sure that horsemen should be immune to first strikes.
We are mainly talking about archers, who it seems would get a volley off even against horsemen.

Standard BTS Knights and Cuirassiers are immune to first strikes too, but Chariots and Cavalry aren't. I'd given it to Horsemen for consistency, but I'm not sure what Firaxis' reasoning is here. Opinions welcomed.

So, then, we've got a mounted archer who zips around enemy armies and snipes at the shock troops whilst keeping away from the pointy things. And an early mounted shock troop that engages a unit in the enemy line and tries to get past it to massacre siege crews, but doesn't have the heavy armour needed to confidently attack enemies in fortified locations.

Yep, that's pretty much what I'm going for. Though in the case of the Horseman, I consider the city penalty to also be mostly about cavalry tactics being ineffective in the confines of an urban area. Hard to charge with walls about.

How are you thinking the promotion tree will incorporate these, Xyth? Both precursors to Knights? Or is there an argument for extending the 'mounted archery/mounted melee' split further down the line? There's an argument for heavy mounted archers to accompany Cataphracts/Knights (maybe a mounted crossbowmen UU for a Germanic civ); Byzantium was big on the 'soften up the melee units with mounted archery' trick, and that was with armoured cavalry. Cuirassiers could be reworked into Light and Heavy Dragoons, which had distinct purposes in battle; perhaps have them converge to Cavalry (Mounted Rifles)?

Having a heavy version of the Horse Archer would be good, but there isn't enough art. For many civs it's been a struggle finding/assembling even a regular Horse Archer. The situation for Cuirassier variants is even worse.

i like these ideas. though the mongol uu would be appropriately excellent if it did not have a city attack penalty.

And that's exactly what its bonus is!

Playing as the Chinese in the early modern era, versus the Inca (who are in the early industrial era). The Incan Workers (they don't have Railroad yet) are showing up as red hemispheres.

This will be fixed in 1.18.

 

[Howard Mahler]

This is OK.

A couple of general comments.
As you point out, horse archers date to about 900 B.C.
Alexander the Great fought against horse archers in about 300 B.C.
So lots of historical justification for having them appear much earlier.
They were still around when you will have them appear, so if that works better from a game standpoint that is fine. They were still important in the western US in the 1800s.

Nobility seems like the least bad choice for Horse Archer.
This may indicate a possibility of usefully expanding the tech tree a bit in this area, but this is not a high priority.

Thanks for the feedback so far, here's Take #2:


Horseman
Requires Riding
Requires Horses, Copper or Iron
6 , 2 , 50
• Doesn't receive defensive bonuses
• 20% chance to withdraw from Combat
• -50% city attack
• +50% vs. Siege Units
• Flank Attack vs. Siege Units
Upgrades to Heavy Horseman or Horse Archer


Horse Archer
Requires Nobility and Riding
Requires Horses
6 , 2 , 70
• Immune to first strikes
• Doesn't receive defensive bonuses
• 30% chance to withdraw from combat
• +50% Attack vs. Axemen, Swordsmen, and Heavy Footmen
• Targets Axemen, Swordsmen, or Heavy Footmen first in combat outside cities
Upgrades to Cuirassier

The biggest change is that I've shifted the Horse Archer into the mid to late Classical Era (though Nobility isn't an ideal tech, let me know if you have a better suggestion from the second or third column). Historically this makes better sense as proper Horse Archery didn't really emerge until well into the Iron Age but it also remained significant throughout Medieval times. This approach also spreads the mounted units out a bit better; it felt a bit excessive having 3 mounted units in the Ancient/Classical era and only 1 per Era thereafter.

Its cost is increased but rather than increasing their strength further I gave them an attack bonus against their same target units so that they can still be countered by Spearmen and Pikemen in cities.

Due to a lack of art I can't implement Light and Heavy versions of the Horse Archer, so my goal here is to define a unit that has enough of a niche to still be useful alongside Heavy Horseman, without being too strong early on. Thoughts?



Standard BTS Knights and Cuirassiers are immune to first strikes too, but Chariots and Cavalry aren't. I'd given it to Horsemen for consistency, but I'm not sure what Firaxis' reasoning is here. Opinions welcomed.



Yep, that's pretty much what I'm going for. Though in the case of the Horseman, I consider the city penalty to also be mostly about cavalry tactics being ineffective in the confines of an urban area. Hard to charge with walls about.



Having a heavy version of the Horse Archer would be good, but there isn't enough art. For many civs it's been a struggle finding/assembling even a regular Horse Archer. The situation for Cuirassier variants is even worse.



And that's exactly what its bonus is!



This will be fixed in 1.18.

 

[Simon_Jester]

The real problem is making horse archers good enough to matter, without making them so good building Horsemen is pointless.

Or we could just go back to the way the game used to work and have nothing but Horse Archer cavalry in ancient/classical times. But having an expensive 'shock cavalry' unit that is inferior to Horse Archers in almost all circumstances just isn't going to work.