G&K Multiplayer Balance issues so far

TheHanzou

Chieftain
Joined
Feb 20, 2012
Messages
93
I have played G&K in multiplayer a good deal by now (either league 1vs1, 2vs2, 3vs3 or FFA games) and these are the issues that are bothering me:

1. Great Wall. Was overpowered in vanilla and still is now. The GW (Great Wall) is banned in every league game, for obvious reasons. Its ability is far to strong stopping any and all posibilities for attack. In addition it works on the whole team making it even stronger in Team games. This thing needs to be reworked, badly. When a wonder is removed from every game by default because its too strong, it needs to be changed.

Solution: Stops barbarians from entering your territory, all enemy units that cross your borders in either direction have their turn ended. Still strong, but not game breaking anymore. Can get additional culture or faith, that doesnt matter.

2.Overpowered special units: another big problem are overpowered units or civs, mainly spain, england and arabs. These factions are also banned in league games because their special units or abilities are far to strong. England Longbowmen are grossly overpowered and so are camel archers, while spain gets game breaking amounts of money and happiness, as well as tile yield. seeing 4 cities by turn 25 is not uncommon when facing spain, enhanced religion in turn 50 as well, depending on wonders found. Theres not even a good fix to it.

3. great generals: With great generals more often than not what you see in multiplayer is the so called 'citadel wars'. Since they got nerfed in their bonus and buffed with culture bombs, they are thrown away most of the time. In addition they are spawning a lot more now. So what happens is ,You place a citadel, you enemy places one adjactend to yours, taking yours away. You place another one taking both away. You enemy places another one etc etc. I have seen up to 9 citadels next to each other. It sucks. It ruins the gameplay. Its no fun. Simply put a great general should not have a citadel and a culture bomb in one.

Solution: Remove the culture bomb of the citadel and make it an either or ability. either u place a citadel or you get a culture bomb not both. Citadels are strong. Citadel wars are ********.

4. Swordsmen: These guys are almost obsolete now. its far more efficient to build composite archers and a scout or horsemen to attack a city than building any swordsmen at all. They are weak, composite archers can hold them off even in melee and have huge positional advantages. Getting them upgraded to longswordmen takes very long and they require iron. Most people dont even tech iron early anymore because composite archers can defend and attack better while pikemen are already stronger and dont require a ressource.

Solution: Probably need a strength upgrade or slight cost reduction because of their special ressource requirement.

5. Air combat system/Bombers: First of all i believe most people dont even know how air combat works. Since the expansion getting air units is a lot more common especially in FFA games, cause early rushes are a lot harder to pull off now thanks to composite archers and games last longer in general.

So one the one hand, bombers are like artillery, just a lot stronger and with tripple range. Bombers have no real counter. the first problem with air combat is the fighters: fighters are useless. They work like bombers but have less range, power, and no upgrades vs cities or land units so as normal units, they are weak.

Now fighters have 2 special abilities, but the problem with that is, they cannot be used offensively or pre emtively:

You can either clear the way for your bombers with your first ability, but this only means If the other side has fighters, every fighter of yours that attacks occupies one enemy fighter for the turn. This ability is basically useless because it does nothing to stop bombers. You cannot attack bombers directly with this, only fighters!

On the other side, you can put your fighters on guard duty. this means that whenever a bomber or fighter attacks you, every fighter of yours will rush in and fight against the attacker once per turn. the problem with this is that ,first off all you can easily get 3 upgrades on bombers by default giving you 50% reduced damage against these types of attacks. The real problem is that bombers work surgicaly. You dont need to attack if your bomber is low on health, and you can attack the same target with multiple bombers taking it out asap while the fighters cant take out your bombers at all in the same time. Fighers cannot attack bombers, they can only defend against them.

As a result fighters are very weak and bombers are basically unstoppable, even by flak units, which do work a lot better however. Anti air units work like fighters in that the protect against 1 attack each turn, but they deal more damage and are very hard to take down with bombers, in addition they dont need any ressource, so they are cost efficient. However this technology comes only AFTER flight has been researched. So if you are in the unfortunate position that you researched fast dynamite (which by the way means almost 100% a loss in multiplayer these days), while your opponent went for public schools, industrialisation and flight, theres no way to stop these bombers.

Artillery on the other hand is almost useless now. The window of opportunity for artillery attacks is VERY small now, and after that you get outteched by faster public schools, and destroyed by far superior bombers while you cannot deal any significant damage to strenght 50 let alone 70 infantry with artillery anyway, which you can get very fast if you dont aim for artillery. The next upgrade step to artillery is so far back (rocketry) that artillery is pretty much useless now. It gets 2 shoted by world war 1 bombers let alone real bombers, while you can only get an upgrade for them if you basically entered WW3.

Solution: fighters should be able to attack bombers directly, and they should protect bombers from other fighters as well. We need real battles for air supperiority. As it stands theres no point building fighters. Just spam bombers and destroy everything in sight and if you engage fighters recover a turn or 2 sometimes. Because bombers are not stoppable what you see now is massive bomber spam with no fighters at all.

6. Tradition is bad and piety is terrible. They reworked Order, autocracy,Freedom and mercantile in pretty viable policies (allbeit freedom beeing a bit weak for competetive multiplayer, but still ok). honor was always good but still needs a rework to fall in line better with tradition and liberty as a viable starter policy tree and patronage got an indirect buff with the new city states.

Piety however is a mess for competetive multiplayer. it should get a complete rework and it should be made aviable from turn 1 onwards, like liberty/tradition/honor.

Tradition is also very, very bad as a starter policy. Liberty is superior 100% of the time, even after the switch of the settler. The problem with tradition is that the second policy is completely useless at the time u take it (free culture building) because u dont have the technology nor the settlements to take advantage of it, and you already have a monument in your capital. The next policy (+2food +10 growth) is also weak. These 2 need to be swapped and the +10 growth needs to be turned into +2 production in the capital. Free garison is completely useless in tradition because hey, i picked Tradition im not going big empire im going small. So what good is it to have no upkeep cost for 2 or 3 units? this could fit into honor easily, but not tradition. We need a complete rework for this one. The rest is ok.

The setback of tradition is insane compared to liberty, while the benefits are really small and not nearly enough to justify that.

7. simultaneous turns. Well yeah this game would be a thousand times better with turn by turn play as an option but i think it will not happen anymore at this point.
 
i found tradition can out build liberty by late game given a peaceful buildup with minimal units and himeji/ defender ofthe faith

this happens in a nq style game 6 player, the last player to be conquered by the lib warmonger if has himeji can defend to out build.

in league style liberty is stronger due to constant war hammers>science

i have managed an arty rush, albeit vs weaker players. now inf is same tech as plastics and superstrong unit, this also favours the tradition science player, if they can get to inf ahead of the game they usually safe if hammers are good.

agree longbow and camel archer op
despite the love for keshik in these forums its never considered strong in mp the click race element seems to make keshik hard to get the most out of.

if i go trad, i go worker first usually or scout worker and wait 15 turns for opener
i find 10% growth +2 food does result in a big cap, and if that means good improved tiles to work then its really strong.
 
I do not play civ competively, but I pla ya lot of multiplayer game with frind. So keep in mind my opinion might differ from a *true* hardcore gamer.

1. Great Wall.

I have to give you this point, the great wall is very hard to go trough if its a decent player behind it. One way to go trough is to go behind it with a good navy. A bunch of triremes can do wonder to take a city if caught unaware. But I still tend to agree that a smart player is almost immune to attack while behind the wall.

2.Overpowered special units:

I disagree with you there, while Spain CAN be very lucky and get tons of gold very early, or get nothing at all. You got spain in the game? SPAM those scouts! Regarding really powerful units(Camel archer, keshik and longbowman) I still think its a bad idea to remove those civ from the game. Sure, they are VERY good, but if you still manage to destroy them, your victory will be greater! Beside, you know they will be coming, prepare yourself correctly!.
3. great generals:
Trench wars are awesome! You saw 9 citadels close to each other one time, wich mean I will have 9 of them if I win. Thats a great war objective and, in my very humble opinion, represent well a long drawn-out war, where each side build defenses trying to stall the other force.

4. Swordsmen
I do agree that swordman got hit pretty hard with the expension. Still, a good beeline for Iron working can work wonder if you manage to get some irons near your capital. Tough its not as effective as in vanilla. And Legion are still uber powerful anyway.

5. Air combat system/Bombers

Remember that you can build Anti-air Unit. A few AA unit around your units/city that act in concert with your fighters will absolutly destroy any airforce. Both unit will attack any bomber in range and protect your most valuable city.
6. Tradition
Tradition is really powerful if used right. The 4 free monuments work with FUTURE city as well, making your 2nd, 3rd and 4th city with a monument as soon as they are fonnded, the extra growth make your capital even more productive and the free garisson do wonder if you are trying to defend yourself.
7. simultaneous turns.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=455596

There ya go, enjoy !
 
Agree with the OP on all points, except that Tradition is weak. It does require defence early, but it comes into its own later with those four free aqueducts! And defence is easier now anyway. Not sure about piety.
 
Also agree with nearly everything. GW is insanity but I haven't built it in ages because as you said it is banned in every form of league game played.

Looking forward to a GMR game as Mongolia (I think it is Big Gamble? not sure)where the Keshiks will come into play vs whatever neighbor has the best land. As its GMR I will get full use out of them too as there will be none of the spam click fest of live MP. Lost a CTON last week to the English basically without even shooting back. I had to fight off my western neighbor from very early so when the longbow army came marching from the east I was FAR away from having sufficient horse units to take them down.

Swordsmen: I can't say that I've built very many since G&K was released. I have upgraded warriors into them ofc but new hammers are nearly always devoted to the mighty CB instead - it is just x100 more useful right now. Exception is legions. Legions kick butt as always.

Tradition definitely has its place. I have used it successfully multiple times. (Make sure you take the free amphitheater not monument) That said I go Liberty in probably 90% of the games I play. (and in all of the league games I play)

I have only used Piety in SP when going for a cultural victory.

GG: So far I do not enjoy the citadel spam style of warfare much at all. I think I preferred culture bomb to be on Artist.

On the topic of simultaneous turns: SHIFT MOVING is the single most blatantly wrong thing in this game. I enjoy NQ very much for having banned it. I use it always in league games because it is necessary there - you will lose every war to a shift clicker if you do not shift move yourself.
I also have a very large problem with the fact that it does not always work when you shift move civilian units. I once lost 3 settlers in the same game because the settler did not complete its queued move to stay with its guard unit and got picked off by enemies. What are my options here? I can either queue the moves or I can move separately and get it stolen. When the queue for the settler doesn't work it gets stolen anyways. 3 times in one game. Very frustrating. If they insist on having this horribly designed feature in the game then they should at least make it work.

Can't comment too much on Bombers as I haven't played very much in that era since the arrival of G&K but I will say this - I have built many bombers in civ5 but I think I can count the number of fighters I have built on one hand.
 
"Citadel wars are ********" - this is an insult to ******** people! :mad: Citadels are so incredibly stupid now, it is making the game not fun. :mad: Especially if you have to war vs China (or any other civ that gets a great general bonus with special units) they will get more generals than you, and they will plant them in your face until your key city has one next to it! :mad: Your citdels instantly become theirs! :mad: When planted next to your city, the unit INSIDE the city takes damage from it!:mad:

:mad::mad::mad:
 
7. simultaneous turns. Well yeah this game would be a thousand times better with turn by turn play as an option but i think it will not happen anymore at this point.

this pretty much destroyed all of rest.

I do agree that spain is ******** with right nw next to it. But then crying about civs is pretty useless - u can allways pick the same civ as some1 else does or just ban it.

And what does help some nice fast city when it gets rushed later by op huns or china? There is a counter to everything.

Also its just wrong that lib is so much stronger as trad - it isnt anymore at least not in a buildfest. Piety is crap - but so it is in sp - its a tree soly built for cult or religios win not for kill.

GW was never totaly op - its just anyoing - it makes a stalement but also can be overcome easily with shift moves and espacially for archer units shift moving into land its no stoper at all if attacker got stronger army - not to speak of gg basicly making it useless at all.

And about special units - its same as with civs - they define the civs ..

I mean you talk about "op" stuff - but with so much other op stuff it just cancels out and in end the better player who takes most advantage of his op stuff wins
 
I haven't played much games in mp yet but i think that Tradition has his place especially in ffa games.

Artillery? With proper teching you can get a large window opportunity if you really beeline it. 7-8 of them are annoying enough to destroy a civ or 2 during their passage.

The GW...well i think that would be better if units could take 10% damage each time they cross it(i mean it's only a big wall after all...they surely need to drop down somewhere and get hurt a bit :lol:)

And citadels...some guy did that to me...he put like 3-4 of them close together ad finally took my inner city after a long and waging war...while i was defendig to the north against another one...so yeah it was a 2vs1 for a millenium so i can't comment very well on this trick yet. Oligarchy really hurt with a CB in there(big point for taking Tradition and defensive games). You can kill a swordman in 2 turns parked into a citadel with a GG close of you.
 
i think that mechanics of citadels shoul be bit different disallowing to take enemy citadel tile by just placing my one next to it - it also does not making sence ...
 
Maybe they shouldn't be allowed right next to each other. It's not terribly realistic, is it.
 
I still think that citadel should be replaced by trenches in the industrial era. Will look more realistic!

Also, anyone else think that citadel should have a build time? If it take 2-3 turn to build, they will be easier to stop, but if left uncheked, they will have the same powerful effect. And the great general itself(and the unit defending it) will take damage if trying to build one right next to an enemy citadel, thus making it a very-high risk venture.
 
I still think that citadel should be replaced by trenches in the industrial era. Will look more realistic!

Also, anyone else think that citadel should have a build time? If it take 2-3 turn to build, they will be easier to stop, but if left uncheked, they will have the same powerful effect. And the great general itself(and the unit defending it) will take damage if trying to build one right next to an enemy citadel, thus making it a very-high risk venture.

nice solution, hopefully they will implement something like this
 
Can't say how much I hate Citadel wars. The worst thing is when you see citadels built a tile next to an enemy city, functioning like a citadel super siege weapon...... I try to avoid using citadels like this because I don't want citadels all over the place and I think it's gamey as hell, but my opponents don't hasitate to use it..... ;)
 
"Citadel wars are ********" - this is an insult to ******** people! :mad: Citadels are so incredibly stupid now, it is making the game not fun. :mad: Especially if you have to war vs China (or any other civ that gets a great general bonus with special units) they will get more generals than you, and they will plant them in your face until your key city has one next to it! :mad: Your citdels instantly become theirs! :mad: When planted next to your city, the unit INSIDE the city takes damage from it!:mad:

:mad::mad::mad:

Pillage the Tile and keep pillaging them. The Cidital doesn't work when pillaged. Oh, and have horsemen ready to sack there workers if they dare try and repair them. LOL!
 
Never seen citadel wars...people really generate that many GGs? Guess my MP games are a lot more peaceful, usually generate 1-2 GGs in a game.
 
Never seen citadel wars...people really generate that many GGs? Guess my MP games are a lot more peaceful, usually generate 1-2 GGs in a game.

Imagine the Mayans taking his first UA's gp as a GG, then take Liberty finisher for a GG, got 2 in fights and...bla bla bla.
 
I find GGs to be a bit vulnerable - I'd far rather get and use a Great Engineer with the Maya UA than get a GG and risk losing it.

That said, I completely agree that citadel wars sound ********. I've not seen it in my games, but I play with friends who are a lot less bloodthirsty.
 
The reason for the Maya GG is that when you take GG near beginning it doesn't increase your time for natural spawning GE or GS etc. You just grab the GE or whatever you would've gotten later with the UA rather than earlier to get more great people overall. Otherwise their UA makes it tough to ever spawn any great people naturally.

Also: GG are pretty good. Between citadel spamming and combat bonus they win wars.
 
Hmm, I suppose you're right. If you find GGs very useful though, I don't see why you wouldn't play China to double their effectiveness.
 
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