Fixing the Melee Line

[KrikkitTwo]

I do disagree with revealing iron at mining...
I could see bronze working, but id rather ironworking just be an earlier tech.

Having it too early diminishes the choice... At bronze you are at least committing to a military path


I don't like cover promotion for sword...swords should be stronger v. All and ranged weaker v. All

Ranged attacks doing less damage to all=good

Ranged units do no damage to their melee attacker=somewhat good...an extra mounted boost.

Beefing up cover to 25-33% bonus would be good

 

[Dunkah]

In the GEM mod it is revealed at Iron Working but can't be used until later on.

This allows you to plan accordingly just when you are thinking about your second or third city.

Nothing worse than plunking down your third city and watching the last of your spare happiness start to dry up. Then realizing your source of Iron is in a different location!

 

[whyidie]

I like iron revealing early. I strongly stand by my very simple idea though. Attacking ranged units with melee is like trying to catch an armed and dangerous porcupine who can shoot you. I have seen a samurai take 27 damage by attacking a crossbow. That is absurd no matter what. Attacking them over a river can exceed 30hp. By the time you've won your unit needs to retire from the field or be picked off (that is if he didn't already die in the process).

I skipped right over your initial suggestion. I agree with the statement. Melee is often spent by the time they can finish off a ranged unit. How to implement ? As simple as reducing combat strength of ranged line, or a (free) promotion given to melee ?

I do disagree with revealing iron at mining...
I could see bronze working, but id rather ironworking just be an earlier tech.

Having it too early diminishes the choice... At bronze you are at least committing to a military path

Right you are. Mining is too early. Should have stuck with "earlier" for general agreement.

I don't like cover promotion for sword...swords should be stronger v. All and ranged weaker v. All

Ranged attacks doing less damage to all=good

Ranged units do no damage to their melee attacker=somewhat good...an extra mounted boost.

Beefing up cover to 25-33% bonus would be good

Doing all three seems like too much and I would prefer that ranged keeps current effectiveness against some unit types.

 

[kaspergm]

Having it too early diminishes the choice... At bronze you are at least committing to a military path

Right you are. Mining is too early. Should have stuck with "earlier" for general agreement.

Well I disagree. Horses are revealed at Animal Husbandry. I really don't see the difference. Currently "committing to the military path", as you put it, is not a choice. It's a gamble. And I don't like gambles in strategy games.

I will even venture to say that perhaps the melee line is in fact not as bad as people think - when you do have iron. But because you don't know whether you have Iron when deciding to beeline the melee line, you may set yourself severely back - and therefore this becomes a bad strategic choice, not only because the units are *perhaps* not the best in game, but also because the gamble may go against you.

 

[whyidie]

Well I disagree. Horses are revealed at Animal Husbandry. I really don't see the difference. Currently "committing to the military path", as you put it, is not a choice. It's a gamble. And I don't like gambles in strategy games.

I'm fine either way. Just show it earlier...

I will even venture to say that perhaps the melee line is in fact not as bad as people think - when you do have iron. But because you don't know whether you have Iron when deciding to beeline the melee line, you may set yourself severely back - and therefore this becomes a bad strategic choice, not only because the units are *perhaps* not the best in game, but also because the gamble may go against you.

Swords are bad because you don't need them, and their tech tree is separated from the critical tech path. Ranged is separated too, but they're powerful enough to justify making a detour. Swords are not powerful enough to justify a detour.

 

[Joneill]

Well I disagree. Horses are revealed at Animal Husbandry. I really don't see the difference.

The difference is that warriors can be upgraded to swordsmen, which means you can prebuild and level up your army before getting to iron working.

The problem with archery units is that they are much more effective for a human player than they are for a computer opponent. And most nerfs would just increase that gap: Reducing their melee strength would hit the AI much harder, since it cannot really protect it's ranged troops and making them ineffective against cities would seriously cripple early AI aggression, because it's so horrible at using early siege units.

Honestly, archers used to be just fine in early vanilla (in human hands), but they were buffed to help the AI, which would do even worse in a melee-dominated game.

 

[Tabarnak]

A nice balance would be a tic-tac-toe system.

x>y>z>x

Another problem come from the capacity of a ranged unit to not take damage when it does to another unit. There is 3 options here :

-Reduce strength of ranged units
-Make melee units more resistant to them
-Make ranged units taking damage when attacking like planes

What we don't want is a spam of a single type of unit that can resist almost everything. Something that civ5 didn't make up so far. First we had the ''apocalyptic'' horses from vanilla, then later swordmen and LS were ruling the entire world without a problem, then from GnK with CBs and Xbows.

 

[VainoValkea]

I think you mean "Rock-Paper-Scissors" -system, and I guess that's what they've been trying... mounted units can strike ranged units before getting shot that many times, footmen have good counters against mounted units and ranged units deal nice damage against footmen without taking any themselves.

 

[mitsho]

Theoretically yes. Though in practice I often find that terrain (hills, coast) and city placement (3 tiles inbetween) make it impossible to maneouver in a needed manner. The map is not set up for movements and this battle system. But I'm repeating myself...

 

[VainoValkea]

Indeed, the system doesn't work as well because the rugged terrain makes it difficult for units to close in towards ranged units fast enough. They do limit the ranged units as well, but not nearly as significantly.

 

[Knut_Are_M]

A simple nerf to archers would be to buff mounted unit speed.
a simple way to boost svordsmen/longswordsmen would be to give them cover 1 for free and allow iron to be revealed at mining or bronzeworking.
it will give you a reason to go for them, as well as a reason to get them before muskets.

Another way is to reduse cossbowmen to 11 melee defence strength.

also boost mounted/tank movement by 2, and lower strength by 10%.
so they can hit and run.

The biggest problems are still camels/kesiks/longbowmen and frigates. All 4 of those units have no counter but themselfs. Totally broken.

A camel cost as much as a samurai and has 4 movement 17melee/21ranged. now because it is so strong it can take a beating even in untrained hands. it is broken beyound words.

if playing archipelago without iron and playing england with iron you might as well resign. privateers have 25 melee strength. SOTL have 30/31. no way to beat them once you get a few of them. With lighthouse and that commerce policy you have a fleet to be feared even in low numbers.

Also something needs to be done so we begin to use catapults/trebuckets for siege. currently they die so easily to ranged fire. Also archers get 1 shot in before siege weapons since they need to setup.

 

[VainoValkea]

Would it change the situation for the better if cities dealt less damage but were more resilient? Archery units would have a tough time attacking cities because of the increased HP, while melee units would still be effective and wouldn't get punished as bad because of the reduced damage.

 

[Hulking Lummox]

Would it change the situation for the better if cities dealt less damage but were more resilient? Archery units would have a tough time attacking cities because of the increased HP, while melee units would still be effective and wouldn't get punished as bad because of the reduced damage.

I'm all about reducing the static power of cities and modifying that balance in some way. They are just so oppressive when it comes to maneuvering, especially when trying to probe your way forward against tightly packed cities.

My idea for a while has been archer's attacks against cities hit the garrisoned unit first as a buffer to damaging the city. The garrisoned unit should heal either 10hp per turn if it moved/attacked or 25 if it fortifies and receive a defense bonus (that scales up with oligarchy and that pantheon belief you cant ever get on higher difficulty). [Note: my hp numbers have not gone through balance testing] Siege and melee attacks target the city straight up just like they should, and because cities are less powerful themselves and less devastating they can actually start to do damage in conjunction with your archers fighting the garrison.

Some neat things about this idea are if you're under siege and have a swordsman with cover II he might actually be better placed in the city if there are a lot of ranged attackers or if you need him to sally to attack battering rams or another adjacent unit.

Also it takes power away from the almighty city and gives it to the standing army, allowing for strategic play. On the defense, killing ranged first or the last melee unit is so cut and dried right now. You will see a true strategy dynamic form from having to decide whats better to target, kill off the archers to spare your garrison or kill off the meat and siege to save the city. More battles will revolve around keeping a city able to receive fresh troops and not getting surrounded, because if you can't keep a healthy garrison or sacrifice the occasional unit, your city will take double damage when the archers start hitting true.

There would and should be dynamics beyond cities being the wrath of the gods on the "battlefield." I mention a city on the battlefield with some contempt, as they are far too strong. Militaries should be what determine outcomes, not just some proven turtle social policy and tech path.

In my opinion this whole post is part of one huge suggestion to buff melee units and soften range.

Edit: Just one other thought for right now: Medics next to cities = a high value target that makes a lot of sense when extrapolated. They could contribute more significantly to city sieges/defense strategies than ever before, giving power to the units and taking it away from the dumb space fortresses that are cities.

 

[Matthew.]

Yeah, in theory a rock/paper/scissors system is what should be in place, but doesn't work as intended. Horsemen (in the players hands) do somewhat decent against ranged and pikes do somewhat decent against horses, but swords are still the odd one out.

Also above poster, I am currently living in MN, too

 

[kaspergm]

Yeah, in theory a rock/paper/scissors system is what should be in place, but doesn't work as intended. Horsemen (in the players hands) do somewhat decent against ranged and pikes do somewhat decent against horses, but swords are still the odd one out.

The rock/paper/scissors system does face a bit of a challenge here. In theory, the order would be:

Pikes > Horses > Archers > Swords > Pikes

In order to achieve this, we would probably need both an attack and defence stat in melee as well as ranged as discussed above. However, one quickly runs into a dilemma here: If Swords need to be vulnerable to Archers, they need to have low (ranged) defence, but that will also make them completely useless during sieges, which is contrary to what one would want, because swords would seem to be the desired melee unit to bring to sieges.

Another scheme would be like this:

Pikes > Horses > Archers > Pikes
Swords > Cities
Siege Weapons > Cities

The rock/paper/scissor of Pikes/Horses/Archers comes pretty naturally from Archers being able to attack without taking damage, Horses being able (theoretically at least) to move in, attack, move out; and Pikes getting their bonus against Horses.

Taking out Swords from the regular rock/paper/scissor and focusing them more against Cities would be good in many ways, but leaves the dilemma of how Swords should interact with other units. I guess having it somewhat even with the Archer (both are vulnerable to each other), having it at slight advantage towards the Pike (Sword has the higher attack) and a slight disadvantage towards the Horse (Horse has higher attack and movement) could work.

 

[Roxlimn]

I think the current balance is that Pikes beat Mounted, which beat Archers, which beat Pikes (or Basic Infantry). Swordsmen and Longswordsmen are Heavy Infantry, which are meant to be powerful additions that beat Pikemen, but are still strong against the other two - hence why Iron unlocks after an expensive out-of-the-way tech.

On Prince and King, Swordsmen and LSM do serve that purpose assuming you get them early enough and fast enough. Fast Mohawk rushes are brutal against the AI, and deliver war results faster than CBs once they come online. CBs are good because they come with a good tech (so are essentially "free") and are "good enough." Not sure how to rebalance that without going into the early Civ V Horseman ridiculousness.

I think that the Battering Ram unit gives a unique insight into what happens when your enemy's siege is basically immune to ranged attacks while being fantastically brutal to cities. You find that you need that melee a lot more.

I think a case could be made for the following, on Prince and King settings and unit density:

1. Each Iron resource only allows 2 units max. Poor ones only allow 1. This allows Iron units to be powerful without being overwhelming, as each Civ can field in only a limited amount. Also makes those City State alliances a lot more valuable. Buffs Iroquois and Russia by a LOT.

2. All Siege units gain basic Cover promotion and can immediately proceed further down the Cover line. The last Cover promo replaces Volley, being both the last percentage decrease in range damage and a + to attack cities and Fortified Units. Battering Ram receives Cover 1 and 2 for free.

3. All Heavy Infantry lines receive +20 attack. Janissaries get +45. This involves the entire upgrade line from Swordsman. These guys are Heavy Shock Troops, meant to attack and take heavy losses, if necessary. They need to be escorted and defended, so they can form the core of an army, but cannot stand alone as they will be decimated by ranged without support.

Extremely limited resources limit them until Gunpowder, at which point the size of everyone's army allows Melee charges to still retain some relevance. The extra attack modifier will naturally allow them to decimate any unit they attack - melee, ranged, mounted, or siege. But they have to catch them, first!

 

[God of Kings]

If iron is being limited, then frigates need to be buffed, as it is the only post-Medieval unit that uses iron.

 

[Roxlimn]

If iron is being limited, then frigates need to be buffed, as it is the only post-Medieval unit that uses iron.

Er, this is G&K Frigates we're talking about, right? The kind that can bombard cities without cities hitting them back at level 4 (straight out with Brandenberg)?

 

[Ll1442]

actually, some british bowmen took out an army, 3 times their size. And gatling guns were super efficient, so in a realistic perspective, ranged units are superior

 

[Matthew.]

Thinking about it more, a city-assaulting role for swords seems best.

In open space melee do OK for fortifying positions and sniping out weaker targets, but once you get cramped up around an enemy city, that is when ranged really starts to outshine melee. It is difficult to justify bringing in more than one or two melee (to cap city, and horsemen are better at it than swords) because you need the ranged to drop city health and keep enemy targets down without losing too many of your own units.

The previous role of fortifying positions is no longer relevant in such a scenario, because you are on the moving offensive. Perhaps fudge with the numbers a bit to make pikes/horses for holding the line in open space and have swords as specialized city-assault.