Fixing the Melee Line

[BSPollux]

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.

I disagree. I think no matter how balanced the game will get, the people who want to abuse the rules will allways find a way to do so and the people who want to be annoyed will allways be annoyed as well.

Civ can never be balanced because it is way too complex for that. And most people dont even want it to be balanced. Even many of those who say they want balance dont realy mean it. You need a given degree of understanding of the game to find the imbalances. And you need a specific attitude to abuse it. And, again, it needs a specific attitude to came here and say 'you need to find a way to stop me from abusing this mechanic' (basicaly: 'its your fault i cheated because you implemented the cheat'). These players want to play the game as 'effective' as possible. They dont say so, maybe they dont even realise, but they want to find ways to make the game 'too easy' and afterwards brag about it.

In every complex scenario with a predefined goal (victory condition) there will be easy and hard ways to reach that goal. If you limit your playing experience to finding the 'perfect' path, you shouldnt be annoyed once you found it. Thats basicaly what you are doing here. You found the most devastating unit composition and now youre annoyed because you got nothing left to play for. You want the designers to 'hide' it again, so that you can search again. You will find it again and you will demand they hide it again and so on.

And thats why I dont agree with you.

 

[mitsho]

But how do you define the point where using archers turns into abusing them? It's a fishy border, no?

Two other points: a) There's a difference between total balance (which of course is not wanted per se as you point out; some units are allowed to be stronger and some combinations are just good strategy) and 'exploits' (something far off the balance scale; those are often combined with faulty and/or badly designed mechanics, i.e. the archer + newly built archer + ship + city = 4 attacks from an AI city per turn). I classify the archers as a an exploit, hence the need to fix it. You see it as a minor balance problem.

b) On another note, if the 'optimal path' requires you to spam one unit, it does hamper flavour and it's not a binary question here (between gameplayers and simulationists). You can be a bit on both sides and I'd say the game designers want their optimal path to include a variety of game elements. That's why modders/game designers did make the National College start weaker, why we remove happiness from the game after religion was introduced and why in the end there are different unique abilities for the civs that let you play differently.

You also didn't address multiplayer concerns. I'm also not convinced you saw my point on "not playing with Assyria, Mayans, that honor policy, Longbowmen, the Pyramids or any other game element that is supposed to be very strong".

In the end, we gotta agree to disagree, I suppose.

@kaspergm Yeah, I agree mostly. The main problem with civV warfare in my mind however lies in how the game is set up: There are no open battlefields, it's all about capturing the cities which due to computer processor power lie quite close to each other. Think it the other way around: What if between each city, a minimum of five tiles would be needed. This would a) give mobile units the ability to go around the cities, b) avoid fields of death where 2 cities + garrison can focus fire on a single target, c) allow you to approach a city from the best angle instead of having to power through.

As it is, the unit design supposes various tactics and strategies that the map doesn't support. But a map of the size needed to achieve it would kill most computers (and would need big readjustments of the economic side (to not let big amounts of the map get wasted which then would reduce strategic decisions since you could work the best tiles more easily...)

For the current civ, this means to me simply 'nerfing' archers in cities and versus cities. But I'm not sure this would solve the problem at all. You're minor suggestions (river crossing, cover for siege, etc. ...) sound good as well. It's about the small stuff here after all..

 

[Matthew.]

I don't mind ranged being optimal (there will always be one strategy that works better than others; no way around it). But melee could use a small buff to make them a viable option.

And really, melee actually are not bad if and once you begin stacking lots of promotions. Any changes needed wouldn't have to be major. I'd be happy with something like double experience gain on melee units (they already have more than ranged, but increase it further). Either that or give them some promotions like free cover to help them begin stacking those promos quicker.

 

[BSPollux]

@Lord Olleus:
The best strategy is to allways play on settler. That one decission alone will make the biggest diffrence concerning your overall performance in any game. But you decide not to use it (I guess). Why is that?

@mitsho:
I adressed your concern regarding multiplayer: I said I dont see any problems. Same goes for the other examples: You are free to chose to use them or not. If you dont want, then dont.

 

[Vandal Thorne]

After thinking about this issue for some time it seems to me that simply making units stationed in forts and citadels immune to non-siege ranged attacks (much as they are in cities) would go a long way towards fixing the whole problem. Adding further bonuses to horse/tank units against ranged/artillery units would also help. Military units should be a bit rock-papers-scissors to reward mixed militaries and reduce unit spamming.

 

[Seek]

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.

And in a competitive multiplayer setting *you're* gone as soon as you decide to not use it. This argument is not convincing at all, sorry..

 

[BSPollux]

And in a competitive multiplayer setting *you're* gone as soon as you decide to not use it. This argument is not convincing at all, sorry..

I dont believe its impossible to survive a game if you mix your army. Instead I'm quite sure most armys will be mixed to a given degree.

 

[kaspergm]

After thinking about this issue for some time it seems to me that simply making units stationed in forts and citadels immune to non-siege ranged attacks (much as they are in cities) would go a long way towards fixing the whole problem. Adding further bonuses to horse/tank units against ranged/artillery units would also help. Military units should be a bit rock-papers-scissors to reward mixed militaries and reduce unit spamming.

Hey, a penalty for normal ranged units to attack a Fort is a great idea, that would also give people a (more) reason to build Forts than they currently have.

 

[MrL567]

It is a good idea to have that penalty, ontop of the 50% defense boost from forts, it makes them actually viable because you can now have a real chockpoint an prevent units from killing the stationed unit.

 

[Circuit]

@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. ...?

For simplicity, I made the terrain flat, and I would have made it all flat if it weren't for limitations of IGE. If I had made the terrain hills, BOTH CBs AND horsemen would have their mobility limited, but the archers would have suffered more. Both their mobility and their range would be limited, while the horsemen could probably still maneuvered to be able to withdraw. The only advantage the CBs would have had would be the defensive bonus.

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.

On defense (or an offensive that has successfully captured cities), horsemen can also benefit from cities because there will frequently be connected by roads, improving their mobility. If maneuvered correctly, after attacking, they can retreat even further into a deeper part of the empire, making a ranged attack by the CBs even less likely. On offensive, consider the city as a stackable ranged unit. Yes, it is better than CBs, and I probably wouldn't perform an attack against a city with mounted units unless they were maybe cataphracts, but the last game I played I used stealth bombers to weaken city defenses and then used GDRs to attack and capture it. One thing interesting about those attacks was I found that the ability for the GDR to move after attacking was that it could move into position to attack outside of the city's defensive range, attack, and then move out again, making room for more GDRs to attack and also saving itself, so they were actually fairly effective. Granted, they were GDRs, but if they were modern armor I wouldn't be surprised to find the same principle apply to modern armor. In most offensive situations, though, I'd still probably go with CBs over horsemen for attacking, but I'd still want a few horsemen around for dealing with stray enemy units.

3. Every unit started out the same, no experience, no policies, no great generals I assume.

Indeed. In terms of experience, horsemen receive five experience while CBs only receive two when they attack. I didn't go for any honor policies for either side. GGs probably would favor archers more because they move the same speed, granted.

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.

I chose seven because "seven CB rush" is a famous strategy, and I gave both sides seven to reflect the 1:1 ratio of hammer cost. Yes, building only one type of unit is unrealistic (unless you're talking about ranged units, apparently); I would never only build mounted units, but there is an argument to be made for keeping a few around, as they can deal with ranged units more effectively than any other type, which then implies that one should also keep (more than one) melee unit as well to protect archers from mounted units.

As for swordsmen, I did some calculations last night and found that one can have roughly four spearmen for three swordsmen (costs are roughly the same) and the spearmen would collectively have 44 combat strength while the swordsmen would only have 42, and the spearmen would have the bonus against mounted units. Granted, you save unit upkeep for having swordsmen, but I doubt the savings is worth it. Swordsmen do need a buff, even as little as +1 strength, cover, and a bonus against cities.

 

[Aaron90495]

I don't think ranged units are a huge problem. What I think needs fixing is the "slow" melee line, because they have pretty much no use outside of meatshielding.

 

[kaspergm]

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).

It's an interesting experiment - to me, it shows that balance is off. The Horsemen should be able to absolutely crush the Bowmen if fighting in open terrain and with no units to protect them. So even if the Horsemen win, if it's only by a margin, balance is way off.

To give my reasons for this point, each unit needs to have pros and cons:

• Archers: Pros - can attack without suffering retaliation. Cons - vulnerable to direct attack.
• Horsemen: Pros - strong in direct combat, fast, can attack and move away. Cons - weak vs. cities and pikes, no defensive bonuses.
• Swords: Pros - mediumstrong in direct combat, gets defensive bonuses. Cons - slow.
• Pikes: Pros - strong vs. mounted, gets defensive bonuses. Cons - mediumlow combat strength, slow.

This will ensure a rock/paper/scissor model: Archers are used to weaken melee units, but needs to be guarded behind another unit to avoid direct attack. Horses are used to take out Archers and weakened Swords by moving in, attacking, and moving out. Swords are used as your front-line infantry, fairly strong in offence but also fairly durable. Pikes are used specifically if you need to counter enemy Horses.

On the bottom line, if an army of only Crosbowmen stands up to an army of only Horsemen, there is a serious problem - because Horses have the specific role of taking out Archers, and flat terrain should favor them unconditionally due to their high movement. Looking at the numbers, that's not even surprising, Crosbows have a ranged attack of 11 and a melee defense of 7, whereas Horses have a ridiculous attack of only 10 [edit: I just went and checked this because I thought that it couldn't be right, and GnK value is 12, so seems wiki was off on this one], which makes them barely stronger than the Archers in melee. I would give the Horse an attack of 15(!) and give the Pike a 100 % bonus (instead of his current 50 %). That will make the Horse marginally stronger than the Sword (14), but given that he has a specific counter, plus he doesn't get defensive bonuses, that should be ok.

I would be really interesting in hearing how an experiment pitching 7 Crosbows against 7 Swords would turn out.

 

[Verified_Confection_Being]

I think the best way of going about it really would be to vary the amount of damage units do to each other significantly. At the moment, most like-era units more or less do the same damage to each other, especially early game... Make it so there is a real "super effectiveness" to certain units attacking others and we could get some really mixed army combos.

I mean super effective to the extent that if a swordsman is on its own undefended, it is wiped out by an enemy horseman. If it has the flanking bonus it just survives (most of the time).

A spearmen does the same thing to a horseman, a swordsman does the same thing to a spearmen.

Archer's are especially vulnerable to all 3. Archer's still do a bit of damage to all types but not particularly effectively, probably about how they are now damaging for about a third (or less).

Siege units are also especially vulnerable to all 3, hardly receive any damage at all from archers. But seige units are barely effective against units normally. Extra effective against cities and units in forts however. And equally, other types of units are horribly ineffective against cities and forts.

Make it so it is MUCH more punishing to suffer an attack you didn't want to from a unit you didn't wanna see and people will be forced to build counter-units.

This also would get rid of the stupid kinda defending that means you can sit a ranged unit in a city and withstand virtually any attack from almost any number of foes. You need an army to defend an army.

 

[Ulthwithian]

Well, if I may, the issue seems twofold.

First, that missile does too much damage to melee because of their other advantages (mainly, no counterattack). Second, that there is very little to stop you from spamming missile troops.

Most people in this thread are addressing the first issue. There is probably a fine balance point where the numbers could be tweaked to address the issue this way, but there has to be an implicit assumption about what the desired exchange ratio should be.

Examples would be how many CB should eliminate how many Swordsmen, etc. etc.

The second issue is actually the easier to balance, at least from a gameplay perspective. Each military unit has a type: Melee, Missile, Mounted, Siege, etc. What you could do is that you could increase the cost (all costs) associated with a given unit if you have more units of that type than another type.

So, if you had 2 Horsemen and 5 CB, it would cost substantially more to create the 6th CB than it would to create the 3rd Horsemen. This would also have the effect that cities with bonuses to producing a certain type of unit (Mounted units in Cities with a Stable, e.g.) would allow you to 'specialize' your army.

Now, this is fairly heavyhanded on the side of gameplay balance over realism/immersion/etc., but it would be a self-correcting issue, to some extent.

 

[mitsho]

@circuit You bring up overall useful points, but my main argument is a question of how much such a experiment can really tell us when you have to tinker with the conditions so much? And you can make arguments for pretty much all conditions why they are the best one. I don't want to go too much into the numbers because I only play with the GEM mod. In any case, my main argument was that the limitations of the map spacing (and the unique role cities play) are what make ranged attacks so powerful.


Regarding the rock-paper-scissor system, I feel you can't push it into extremes. That's easily seen by how you try to fit four types into the system. On another note, it's interesting that pretty much everyone ignores the warfare of the later eras (with new types such as the short-ranged one and new abilites like more movement points overall) and the naval system, but that's another topic. In any ways, these "A beats B" things are influenced so much by so many modifiers that the system gets muddled more and more. Also, does the map allow this type of thing at all?

Lastly, @ulthwothian's proposal is okay and all, but I feel like forcing your idea of a mixed army on the player is the wrong way to go. They want the highest level of freedom after all.

 

[Justice1337]

The whole thing could probably use a bit of fixing. One thing I haven't seen mentioned - Swords requires Iron, Horsemen requires Horse, Bow requires nothing. So strategic resources only have the effect of limiting the number of inferior units you can make.

Also, Swordsmen require lots of tech in the lower part of the tree, while CB's can be your third tech if you want. Things even out at X-bow, but L Swords still require their own tech that is very far underneath what a power teching player would be hitting. The whole thing seems to suggest this idea that Swords would be the be-all, end-all of Classical combat, while a lot of the time Civil Service and Pikes are obtainable before then, sometimes even before Bronze Working. It's just incredibly awkward.


It's not really that I want some new puzzle to figure out, or a zillion complicated ways of structuring an army. I would just want some realistic trade-off's here and there that would give a player at least some justification to go a route other than just CB's every single game on T70. If you can't get strategic perfection, at least get some variety.

 

[Matthew.]

It's not really that I want some new puzzle to figure out, or a zillion complicated ways of structuring an army. I would just want some realistic trade-off's here and there that would give a player at least some justification to go a route other than just CB's every single game on T70. If you can't get strategic perfection, at least get some variety.

Pretty much sums up my thoughts. How it is currently you are actually penalizing yourself by going swords. The detour away from Education along with melee being less than spectacular on the battlefield and you end up further behind than if you just ignored swords all together.

Like I side, I don't mind ranged being optimal, it would just be nice to have swords be a viable option.

 

[WiseGreen]

Do you folks think it would be more realistic if ranged units dealt less damage to already damaged units, due to a more sparse formation of the latter army, with "holes" on it due to dead/fallen soldiers? If there are such "holes", shouldn't it mean that the defending army is unable to keep/reform a line and maintain proper cover, so it'd more likely to be slaughtered and not the opposite?

 

[Fluffball]

I think the core issue is that melee just aren't strong enough.

This has been improved some since G&K where HP was increased but it is still in a similar proportion to before so against equal tech units you still effectively take the same damage which means if you attack with a melee unit you lose health and lose you defensive bonus and thus can still get 1 or at best 2 shotted by any ranged unit(s) of equal tech.

In vanilla there was a great mod i used to use which tripled the HP of everything but the damage the units did was the same so you could take a chance and try to push because if you found yourself in a sticky situation you could at least last a whole turn of full pounding so could withdraw after.
You could also attack with melee units because doing so didn't automatically mean they would be destroyed next turn if there was a ranged unit in the vicinity or even a couple of other melee units which the AI are willing and can easily afford to sacrifice.

With the current situation, like many strategy games we fall into the simple problem that against any force of strength the best strategy is to dig in and let them beat their heads against your dug in line while you pound them with ranged because if you come out of your well defended line your units will simply get chewed up.i.e. attacking actually puts you at a severe disadvantage which means that ranged units become king because ranged units shine best on the defensive where they can sit still in a protected zone and fire at will.

Going back to the example of that mod i used to use it also opened up the importance of other strategies such as surrounding your enemy because they were harder to kill and they had chance to withdraw so you had to make sure they couldn't escape when you wanted to kill them.

 

[Kurtbob]

I think one of the problems is the failed Rock Paper Scissors mechanic found in the game. In Civ IV, spearman vs axeman vs chariot vs swordsman was balanced. In CiV, spearman vs swordsman vs chariot vs bowmen is completely awkward. It's no longer RPS, but a jumble of units with odd tech tree placements, upgrades, and gameplay.

I think the bonus vs mounted promotion of spearman and pikemen are leftovers from civ IV and should be removed. Spearman, pikemen, and to a lesser extent lancers should become the no resource melee line which should be weaker than any contemporary units with resource requirements. A civ should be better in combat if it has mounted units or iron units, not be penalized since the enemy can build loads of cheap anti mounted units and ranged units.