Fixing the Melee Line
- Thread starter Aaron90495
- Start date
No going back to original thread, fixing the melee line. My idea is as follows:
Make all units take significantly less damage with every additional ranged attack in same turn
Example: You have 2 Swordsmen (Laurel and Hardy), and enemy has 3 Archers (Moe, Curly and Larry). Now, if Laurel gets attacked by Moe, he takes normal damage. When Curly strikes, he already cowers in and takes only 2/3 of normal damage. By the time Larry attacks, he is so entrenched he only takes 1/3 of normal damage, whereas the Larry would inflict 100% damage to Hardy or the city they are attacking.
The reason for this sort of system is I think the main problem with ranged units is they become far stronger the more of them you have, thanks to the ability to kill off units and taking no damage at all.
So instead of simply nerfing their attacking strength, which in my opinion would lead to single (too few) ranged units being useless and only worth to be built in blocks, I thought of this system, that keeps the balance for small ranged armies, while "correcting" the damage for those massive ranged armies that can turn the front line into a death zone.
Of course those numbers in the example are just an example, but I picked those to demonstrate the basic idea.
Make all units take significantly less damage with every additional ranged attack in same turn
Example: You have 2 Swordsmen (Laurel and Hardy), and enemy has 3 Archers (Moe, Curly and Larry). Now, if Laurel gets attacked by Moe, he takes normal damage. When Curly strikes, he already cowers in and takes only 2/3 of normal damage. By the time Larry attacks, he is so entrenched he only takes 1/3 of normal damage, whereas the Larry would inflict 100% damage to Hardy or the city they are attacking.
The reason for this sort of system is I think the main problem with ranged units is they become far stronger the more of them you have, thanks to the ability to kill off units and taking no damage at all.
So instead of simply nerfing their attacking strength, which in my opinion would lead to single (too few) ranged units being useless and only worth to be built in blocks, I thought of this system, that keeps the balance for small ranged armies, while "correcting" the damage for those massive ranged armies that can turn the front line into a death zone.
Of course those numbers in the example are just an example, but I picked those to demonstrate the basic idea.
El Caballerion
King
Great idea!
Very similar to my thoughts that ranged units should NOT be able to kill any units, but instead give percentage-based damage so a nearby melee unit can more easily kill the weakened unit. I only think that once the GATLING GUN has be obtained, that this restriction be removed and ranged units be able to kill a unit.
mitsho
Deity
Trade Routes are supposed to last 30 turns. Not sure if you can 'abort' a route. If not, sending the production there has quite a payoff in terms of gold you could make somewhere else. I'd say, especially in the late game production routes might not be worth it (since you can buy it with gold), but food ones still might be (as you can't generate food as easily as you can substitute production with gold). In any case though, I'm not so sure atm how powerful this would be.
On topic, I do like Antiphon's suggestion, but I'm not sure how a) easy this could be implemented into the civ5 system (and I still prefer a army system for the next game) and b) how you can teach this to the AI (should be doable, right?).
kaspergm
Deity
- Joined
- Aug 19, 2012
- Messages
- 5,832
Sorry, but such a solution just doens't make any sense at all. Why should the target take less damage just because it has already been targeted before? This seems like a very illogical and hence unsatisfactory solution to a problem which can be solved by other means. In order to be able to attack with a lot of archers on the same unit, you will need to either be lucky with placement, or send them unguarded to the front. If they can survive being send unguarded forward, then the problem is either that archers have too high melee strength or that the units that are supposed to take them out (mounted units) have too low melee strength. If archers do too much damage, then they have too high ranged strength. There are many variables one can adjust before turning to strange, counterintuitive game mechanics.
Altisma
Warlord
- Joined
- May 31, 2012
- Messages
- 271
Cover I doesn't solve the problem of five archers teaming up on your one swordsmen and destroying him the moment he moves forward.
Aaron90495
King
True, but five units SHOULD beat one unit. This way, it'll take five ranged units (instead of, say, three) to kill the melee unit, allowing you to move in with your other troops.
It's not perfect, but as stated, it's really simple and would help this problem a lot.
Razonatair
Chieftain
Actually it does make some sense in terms of actual warfare. Suppose you have two platoons, one of swordsmen with shields and one of archers. The swordsmen are packed in a typical rectangular formation. The archers fire, and arrows manage to find their marks on 50% of the swordsmen resulting in 50% casualties. The swordsmen likely are now spread out somewhat more than before, with gaps between them due to having just lost 50% of the platoon. The next time the archers fire, they could well only manage to take out 50% of the remaining platoon, because a platoon of archers cannot really concentrate fire on individual soldiers to increase their chances of hitting, they can only do the usual massive disperse volley.
As for artillery, even in fairly modern day situations such as WW2, shelling of entrenched forces in cities couldn't successfully wipe out entire forces for instance. The accuracy simply wasn't and really still isn't there, especially for ancient ranged weapons.
Circuit
Writing Letters
That's why you build more than one swordsman!
Anywho, this discussion really got me thinking, so tonight I set up some games using IGE and a hotseat mod where I set seven horsemen against seven CBs on open terrain and had them fight to the death (I played both sides). I don't think it's too difficult to get seven horses, and horsemen and CBs cost the same amount of hammers, so the ratio of horsemen to CBs should be accurate. Some more rules for the duels included never fortifying for the purpose of healing, only horsemen can enter hills (always when retreat) and whenever a promotion was earned, the units would insta-heal. In the first battle, the horsemen routed the CBs; in the second battle (where the CBs got the jump on the horsemen and got the opening shots, due to poor maneuvering by the horsemen), the CBs barely eaked out a win.
So important things to note from my little experiment: first, remember that horsemen get +5 XP whenever they attack, while CBs only get +2 XP; in the experiment, this translated into the horsemen being able to insta-heal much more easily than the CBs, a valuable advantage. In game, this would mean that if you can preserve your mounted units and use them right, they can level-up faster than ranged units. Second, the chief advantage of ranged units over other units is not only the range but their ability to inflict damage without taking any themselves; other units have to receive in order to give. Mounted units, though, can reduce this advantage by retreating after they attack, hampering ranged units' ability to "gang up" on them. Also, by retreating after attacking, mounted units free up space to allow others to attack as well; this means that in sufficient numbers, mounted units can gang up on other units just as easily as ranged units and focus their attacks to eliminate a healthy unit very quickly. Because ranged units have an inferior combat value (as opposed to range combat value) and mountain units can frequently get a flanking bonus, mounted units can inflict significant damage in combat without taking much themselves while maintaining the ability to retreat out of range after attacking (notwithstanding maneuvering and how many spaces were used for attacking).
Thus, notwithstanding resource availability, I still feel that mounted units have an advantage over ranged units. Resource constraints may result in there being more ranged units than mounted units, but a handful of mounted units may be able to defend a civilization from a CB rush. I'd say that mounted units do well against ranged units, ranged units do well against cities and infantry units, and infantry units do well against mounted units and cities (usually serving as a front-line for ranged units against mounted units).
kaspergm
Deity
- Joined
- Aug 19, 2012
- Messages
- 5,832
Yeah, others have said it, but this is a really bad argument. Try pitching 1 archer against 5 swordsmen and se how THAT turned out. Does that make swordsmen overpowered?
I half buy that for realism. I still say if you have 10 archers aiming at 1 person, there's a fairly good chance that they take him out. It's true that if you have 10 archers aim at 10 persons, chances are they'll take more than 1 of them out, in that sense making total damage larger, but that doesn't prevent them from taking that 1 person out. You cold make a model where half of damage is fixed and other half scales with target health as a compromise between these two, but I'm not sure I think it would make for better gameplay.
mitsho
Deity
@circuit Your experiment has several holes:
1. What was the terrain? Flat open terrain obviously favours mobile units. Also, why were the Crossbowmen forbidden to enter hills? That is one obvious advantage of them... Also, was there coast, rivers, etc. ...?
2. Were there no cities? Due to the small size of the battlefield in civ, cities will always have an influence. And that extra damage + archer can be very important.
3. Every unit started out the same, no experience, no policies, no great generals I assume.
Lastly, it's unrealistic that you'd only build units of one type and the number of 7 units does seem quite arbitrary.
I understand why you would want to keep the conditions the same, but it simply doesn't work as the game is more complex than that.
@kaspergm Sure, but then in civ were not talking about 100 archers, but 1000 to 10'000. Obviously, that's totally unrealistic to have one army consisting only of archers, but that's the civV warfare system for you. In any case, I wouldn't buy too much into the 'realism' side if it helps gameplay... (and can be reasoned one way or the other as razontair points out.
1. What was the terrain? Flat open terrain obviously favours mobile units. Also, why were the Crossbowmen forbidden to enter hills? That is one obvious advantage of them... Also, was there coast, rivers, etc. ...?
2. Were there no cities? Due to the small size of the battlefield in civ, cities will always have an influence. And that extra damage + archer can be very important.
3. Every unit started out the same, no experience, no policies, no great generals I assume.
Lastly, it's unrealistic that you'd only build units of one type and the number of 7 units does seem quite arbitrary.
I understand why you would want to keep the conditions the same, but it simply doesn't work as the game is more complex than that.
@kaspergm Sure, but then in civ were not talking about 100 archers, but 1000 to 10'000. Obviously, that's totally unrealistic to have one army consisting only of archers, but that's the civV warfare system for you. In any case, I wouldn't buy too much into the 'realism' side if it helps gameplay... (and can be reasoned one way or the other as razontair points out.
Wouldnt that problem be fixed if you just started to build more balanced armys?
Noone forces you to abuse this weakness. I mean, if you think that 'Settler' is too easy to win on, you dont ask for it to be harder. You just play on a higher level.
If too many ranged units imbalance the game, just dont use them. But maybe asking you to NOT break the game is asking too much? It doesnt need to be fixed if you dont break it.
Noone forces you to abuse this weakness. I mean, if you think that 'Settler' is too easy to win on, you dont ask for it to be harder. You just play on a higher level.
If too many ranged units imbalance the game, just dont use them. But maybe asking you to NOT break the game is asking too much? It doesnt need to be fixed if you dont break it.
mitsho
Deity
That argument is absurd because by extrapolation, they wouldn't need to fix anything in the game now. Just don't use it. You think Assyria is too strong. Just exclude them from the game. See, doesn't work, does it?
Also, this certainly doesn't work in multiplayer where most of the complaints come from.
Also, this certainly doesn't work in multiplayer where most of the complaints come from.
Sure it would work there. Why shouldnt it?
mitsho
Deity
Because you exclude part of the game from your experience. Or have you met anyone playing chess that thinks "Well, the Queen is so strong, it destryos the game, so I'm just not gonna use her?" or "let's play without our queens". Sure, you might wanna do it sometimes to play for fun or get better at the game (my #1 tipp to any low-level player "Play a game without building a single wonder"), but it's not how you are supposed to play the game.
But that is exactly what you are demanding here! You're asking for removal of the advantage the ranged weapons provide. The only diffrence is that you ask for the decission to be taken away from you by the implementation of a fixed rule instead of just deciding for yourself how much you want to abuse the game mechanics. But that will never work. There will allways be some way to abuse at least one of the units in the game. as long as you search for that abuse and use it, it will allways be there. But its gone as soon as you decide not to use it.
kaspergm
Deity
- Joined
- Aug 19, 2012
- Messages
- 5,832
Well I think we actually agree on most of this discussion, but the point I wanted to make was that if you pitch 5 units against 1 unit, no matter what unit you talk about, the single unit will always lose out, given that they are contemporary. Does that make the single unit weak?
I know that many people currently use armies consisting mainly if not solely of Composite Bowmen, and that this might even be the best approach. So we are not in disagreement that something needs to be tweaked. But given you have an army of 5 CBs, you can only evaluate the strength by pitching it against an army of about the same size. Your 5 CBs might well be able to take out my single Swordsman in one turn, but if the Swordsman is backed up by 4 Horsemen, those Horsemen will (or should*) be able to take out not just one but several of your CBs in the next turn, and given a couple of more turns, I will even wager that I can eliminate your army before you can eliminate mine, unless terrain features like narrow passes or many rivers work against me**. And then who had the better army - and can we still conclude that the swordsman was underpowered?
As I see it, CBs are not particularly overpowered - sure, they might need a cut down of one point on melee and/or ranged strength, but I don't see any need for major adjustments there. I would bring back their penalty against cities, however, because CBs should not be your favoured siege weapon, Catapults should be. For that reason, we also need to give Catapults Cover I promotion as discussed elsewhere. If you make CBs less of an all-round unit, I think that would go a long way to promote more mixed armies.
* But then again, it depends on which way you turn the coin. You say CBs are overpowered, I would say Horsemen are underpowered and would increase the strength of Horsemen. The net effect will be pretty much the same.
**Here's an idea, how about a River instead of using all movement simply uses double movement or even just a single movement point to cross the river itself. This will have the same effect on melee/ranged units with a movement of 2, but for Horses, with a movement of 4, this will mean a major buff!
mitsho
Deity
I'm asking for the removal of the advantage of ranged weapons, not of ranged weapons. See the difference?
And if you go back you see that I'm not wholly enthusiastic of the fixed rule of diminishing returns of ranged weapons. To be clear, I dislike the fixed rules and the civV warfare system in general. I simply state that it's one way worth exploring in our quest for balance. That we will never reach it completely and that always there will be some unit that's too strong/easy to exploit, whether it's the horseman rush at the start of the game or that Honor policy granting extra experience (and that is taken out by most balance mods), this simply doesn't mean that we should give up trying to reach balance. We can still get as close as possible.
Ranged units at the moment are strong not only because of their strength, but because they can focus fire, hide in cities and so on. It's the game mechanics of 1 unit per tyle that leads to their strength more so than their strength points alone. Hence, need to adress that.
And if you go back you see that I'm not wholly enthusiastic of the fixed rule of diminishing returns of ranged weapons. To be clear, I dislike the fixed rules and the civV warfare system in general. I simply state that it's one way worth exploring in our quest for balance. That we will never reach it completely and that always there will be some unit that's too strong/easy to exploit, whether it's the horseman rush at the start of the game or that Honor policy granting extra experience (and that is taken out by most balance mods), this simply doesn't mean that we should give up trying to reach balance. We can still get as close as possible.
Ranged units at the moment are strong not only because of their strength, but because they can focus fire, hide in cities and so on. It's the game mechanics of 1 unit per tyle that leads to their strength more so than their strength points alone. Hence, need to adress that.
