General Combat in G&K

[Roxlimn]

I searched for a bit and got a bunch of results, but not a lot of what makes G&K changes special and how they affect the game's combat feel overall. Specific discussions here can be spun off if they get extremely in-depth, but I feel that a general combat milieu thread would be nice.

I felt that with all the changes made to G&K's tech tree, unit mechanics, and unit distribution, there'd be a profound change in the combat milieu since pre-patch Civ V. That proved to be correct. Here are some overall impressions:

1. The interplay between Swordsmen and Spearmen and the choice to go for one or the other is a more interesting decision now. Make Warriors-Swordsmen or Spearmen-Pikemen is no longer a done deal, and it's made more complicated because Pikemen don't upgrade to infantry but to cavalry. This meant that my Immortal spam as Darius led to me having to reconstitute the main bulk of my infantry during the Renaissance.

2. Composite Bowmen constitute a continuous improvement line where ranged combat matures alongside melee combat with no period of melee combat superiority; and it's situated with Construction, which is a key economic tech. I'm not sure how I feel about that. It diminishes the role of melee in general in war, unless you don't have a lot of troops.

3. Siege units are much more powerful, and they're selectively powerful against cities. This is a good change. Additionally, the AI favors attacking nearby melee units over siege units; so if you're bringing along a Siege unit to do most of the city damage, it pays to serve up melee units for the AI cities to target.

4. I'm not sure if the promos have changed, but the new combat milieu makes it feel as if it has. Units lasting longer means that Charge (+33% vs. damaged units) is more valuable. It boosts Bushido similarly, since you can leave a unit as an attacker for longer without losing it.

Moreover, it makes the defensive value of promos and defensive promos more inviting. Whereas in Civ, I favored the Shock line of promotions to protect my melee troops from fire while they closed (and to help them massacre AI troops on open terrain), in G&K, I prefer Drill; and in particular Drill2+Cover or Drill2+City Raider, which now adds +50% vs Cities. A Drill/Cover promoted melee unit on a hill can Fortify and attract a lot of ranged fire turn after turn without dying, particularly if it has an adjacent Medic2 to provide Discipline bonus and healing. A Pikeman/Immortal attracting AI fire like that is practically, well, immortal.

5. Askia's UA is really entertaining. By that, I mean the promos part, not the bonus gold part, which was left unchanged. War Canoe and Amphibious applying to all his units doesn't just make the Marine obsolete; it makes all of Askia's units Marines - every single one. Faced with a slog of hills and jungles towards a well defended city, I simply embarked my Riflemen and took it from the sea. Awesome.

6. Mounted Units!

Since I was forced to use a lot of them, I found to my shock that the Lancer, and the UUs associated with it - Sipahi and such, have been somewhat improved. They no longer have any unique defensive penalty; in fact, they're pretty much Better Knights. This marked a sea change in my land army strategy; mostly to make it more interesting, but also to greater efficacy.

Since I no longer use melee units to assault cities directly, and ranged units don't always do enough damage to kill enemy units, I have come to rely on cavalry to provide the finishing blow, particularly for fleeing wounded AI units, enemy siege or ranged AI units, and so on. Once I control the land, melee+siege operations can begin (behind a screen of cavalry, natch).

The Sipahi is very good at doing this because it has +1 Sight and can spot reinforcements or fleeing units from a ways off, and has the +1 speed to effectively hit-and-run without giving the enemy unit a chance to retaliate, if it's melee and the conflict is on flat terrain. If nothing else, you can give it Sentry and use it as a powerful Scout. Very useful for exploring foreign continents on Open Borders.

The Conquistador is even more so. Not only can it take out barb camps, see everything; it can also found cities if you happen to find a fantastic spot.

Lastly, the Cataphract from the Byzantines combines all the things I want from a melee unit except that it makes Byzantine Swordsmen unnecessary. Since I'm never going to attack a city with a melee unit until it's got no hp, its one downside essentially doesn't exist. It can even serve as range fodder since it benefits from terrain bonuses.

 

[turkeypotpie]

The main change is that they "slowed down" combat somewhat. In other words, units are now more tanky relative to the damage they do, so you have more time to move units around during a battle.

And there are lots of smaller changes too, like the ones you mentioned, mostly related to changes in the tech tree.

 

[Roxlimn]

Also, changes to the upgrade path. Longswordsmen upgrading to Musketmen and Pikemen upgrading to Lancers has all sorts of implications. Crossbowmen having a totally badass unit upgrade path also makes making ranged units game-long a more attractive proposition (as if it weren't attractive enough!).

Aside from all that, there's also the unit strength relationship changes. This matters more than the units being more tanky. Swordsmen are now somewhat weaker than Pikemen; that's significant. Musketmen are now noticeably stronger than Longswordmen and upgrade from them. This makes Longswordsmen less of a watershed unit and more of a "good enough" unit.

 

[gunter]

Anyone speaking about modern units as well ?

I still have to buy G&K so I'm just collecting infos.

Thx

 

[Udey1]

100hp really changed the game, and it made it quite a lot better IMO.

Among one of the many improvements it brings is that completely obsolete units can no longer effectively "plink" more advanced units. Whereas before, an archer could damage a mech infantry for -1. or 10% of its health, (since that was the minimum) now they will be lucky to do more than 1%, which moves things more in line. (esp when fighting an outdated china for example)

As the player, this much greater durability means that armies truly can stick around from ancient to modern quite easily, and losing units is much more unacceptable.

Horsemen also greatly benefit from this, no longer does their counter unit kill them outright, which gives them a much better time doing hit and run attacks.

 

[Lakissov]

What hasn't been mentioned is the change to naval combat. Several significant changes, in fact.

- The ability of embarked units to defend themselves against naval assault has made naval invasions a tad less risky; they are now quite useful even for invading an enemy on your own continent, because troops can often move faster on water than on land (they were useful also before, but now the risk associated with losing all your army to a bunch of triremes is much smaller).
- The addition of melee naval units, as well as great admirals, has made naval combats much more meaningful; combined with the ability of naval melee units to take cities, the role of naval warfare has grown significantly; it's now not just about carrying bombers to enemy cities to support your land-based units.

Also, it was already mentioned that the new upgrade path of ranged troops has made them much more viable. I'd say that one important aspect contributing to this is that the promotions they get aren't lost when upgrading.

 

[Roxlimn]

Lakissov:

It's not just the additional of melee naval units that made the change; it's the specific naval units, and in particular, the Prize Ships promotion that the Ottomans feature on all their ships.

The addition of the Privateer and the city attack promos on ships means that it's now possible to work over enemy cities (and city states) for gold, without ever conquering them. A highly promoted fleet of Ironclads and a coastline of juicy cities means a surprising amount of gold.

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

yeah, the naval improvements now make me look forward to continent type games. im playing much more of them now that naval units can take cities. im still largely unfamiliar with great tactics/strategies but figuring them out is more fun now.

i dont care for the upgrade to gatling gun though. cbows are better even when weaker from an extra tile away. im still learning all these new things, that's just what ive gotten so far.

 

[Lakissov]

i dont care for the upgrade to gatling gun though. cbows are better even when weaker from an extra tile away. im still learning all these new things, that's just what ive gotten so far.

Gatlings can protect themselves pretty well, so being right next to an enemy isn't that big of a deal (and you can still attack the enemy without retaliation). Plus, you can get +1 range on your fourth promotion, if you wage war often.

 

[PhilBowles]

.

2. Composite Bowmen constitute a continuous improvement line where ranged combat matures alongside melee combat with no period of melee combat superiority; and it's situated with Construction, which is a key economic tech. I'm not sure how I feel about that. It diminishes the role of melee in general in war, unless you don't have a lot of troops.

I don't find that this is the case, mainly because Civ battles rarely take place in the open field and are mostly concentrated against cities - against which ranged units tend to be weak, and which they can't capture. It's much the same as the situation you note with pikes to cavalry vs. swords to infantry - cavalry are very good in open battle, but you can't flank a city and you suffer penalties when attacking it, so ultimately you still want a core of infantry.

3. Siege units are much more powerful, and they're selectively powerful against cities. This is a good change. Additionally, the AI favors attacking nearby melee units over siege units; so if you're bringing along a Siege unit to do most of the city damage, it pays to serve up melee units for the AI cities to target.

It's not been my experience that the AI will preferably target melee. In my current game I needed to dislodge Tonga from a peninsula with the space to attack with only one melee unit, so I parked a spearman there - and attacked from behind it with a catapult. Unless the spearman was the more damaged unit (having already attacked the city), the city would prioritise the catapult as a target.

The main determining factor in AI priority-setting seems to be how much damage a unit has already taken - if you're finding it's prioritising melee units that may just be a consequence of the fact that by their nature melee units will usually take more damage than ranged ones.

5. Askia's UA is really entertaining. By that, I mean the promos part, not the bonus gold part, which was left unchanged. War Canoe and Amphibious applying to all his units doesn't just make the Marine obsolete; it makes all of Askia's units Marines - every single one. Faced with a slog of hills and jungles towards a well defended city, I simply embarked my Riflemen and took it from the sea. Awesome.

I used Askia on an archipelago map to try this out. I ended up never going to war, so I only got to see it against barbarians where of course the player gets a bonus anyway, but I did get to a point where I actively hoped his barbarian ships would commit suicide by attacking my embarked units. I'm not sure why Askia needs the Amphibious promotion, though - the gold effect alone has always given him one of the strongest UAs, and War Canoes by itself is superior to his old 'defend while embarked' effect.

6. Mounted Units!

Since I was forced to use a lot of them, I found to my shock that the Lancer, and the UUs associated with it - Sipahi and such, have been somewhat improved. They no longer have any unique defensive penalty; in fact, they're pretty much Better Knights. This marked a sea change in my land army strategy; mostly to make it more interesting, but also to greater efficacy.

Same game, I had a pikeman who ended up upgrading to a lancer (I think via a ruin). Again it only had barbarians to fight, but I was using it as an explorer and, with appropriate retreat and fortify to heal, it proved pretty good against barbarian pikes.

Lastly, the Cataphract from the Byzantines combines all the things I want from a melee unit except that it makes Byzantine Swordsmen unnecessary. Since I'm never going to attack a city with a melee unit until it's got no hp, its one downside essentially doesn't exist.

If you aren't attacking cities until they're down to 0HP, surely the Horsemen would make all Swordsmen redundant with that playstyle, not just the Cataphract?

The addition of the Privateer and the city attack promos on ships means that it's now possible to work over enemy cities (and city states) for gold, without ever conquering them. A highly promoted fleet of Ironclads and a coastline of juicy cities means a surprising amount of gold.

One key change resulting from this affects Korea. The Turtle Ship has absurd strength for its era, and if you have enemy cities reachable by a ship confined to coasts, the new melee ship rules make it exceptional for capturing enemy cities. Two turtle ships are worth anyone else's full fleet at that stage in the game.

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

Gatlings can protect themselves pretty well, so being right next to an enemy isn't that big of a deal (and you can still attack the enemy without retaliation). Plus, you can get +1 range on your fourth promotion, if you wage war often.

that's interesting about the promotion. i will look into that with my current warmonger game. while they dont get retaliation on their attack they take a good amount of dmg the next turn. they can only undure it once (usually) before the next attack might be their last. them absorbing one attack for half life then retreating to heal feels much less useful (unless your japan with their UA).

 

[Yzman]

I am not sure how you usually tech, but in my games, gatling gunners are typically the strongest thing on the field for quite a while it seems, taking very little damage until infantry are discovered.

 

[Roxlimn]

PhilBowles:

I don't find that this is the case, mainly because Civ battles rarely take place in the open field and are mostly concentrated against cities - against which ranged units tend to be weak, and which they can't capture. It's much the same as the situation you note with pikes to cavalry vs. swords to infantry - cavalry are very good in open battle, but you can't flank a city and you suffer penalties when attacking it, so ultimately you still want a core of infantry.

I'm only playing on Prince and Monarch - difficulty levels wherein I can win easily. I really don't like to lose. I play Civ more as a builder with a side of tactical combat. Always have.

I don't really find Civ combat to be focused on cities. Generally, I dictate where the combat will take place, as the AI isn't really too bright about that sort of thing. This can be around my own cities or around a culture-neutral point of my choosing. I rarely fight the AI's armies around its cities. That makes war needlessly difficult, IMO. You can always start taking cities once you've exhausted the AI's units. Could be different when the AI has ridiculous build and gold bonuses.

In general, I like to wage the main bulk of wars around my own borders, since those allow me to heal faster than the AI.

It's not been my experience that the AI will preferably target melee. In my current game I needed to dislodge Tonga from a peninsula with the space to attack with only one melee unit, so I parked a spearman there - and attacked from behind it with a catapult. Unless the spearman was the more damaged unit (having already attacked the city), the city would prioritise the catapult as a target.

The main determining factor in AI priority-setting seems to be how much damage a unit has already taken - if you're finding it's prioritising melee units that may just be a consequence of the fact that by their nature melee units will usually take more damage than ranged ones.

They don't take more damage. Generally, they take less from a given attack. They usually take damage more often, though. Perhaps that is what you meant.

I don't find it advisable to attack cities with melee until they're below the point at which the melee unit will take over. Attacking units with melee takes longer since they have to approach closer, and they usually take lots of damage when they attack. In general, the melee unit will take damage coming in, usually from the city or from the ranged garrison. In any event, it'll take damage once I rotate the ranged units. At that point, the city generally prioritizes it as a target, even if it's something like 90/100 with a Medic 2 behind it.

I used Askia on an archipelago map to try this out. I ended up never going to war, so I only got to see it against barbarians where of course the player gets a bonus anyway, but I did get to a point where I actively hoped his barbarian ships would commit suicide by attacking my embarked units. I'm not sure why Askia needs the Amphibious promotion, though - the gold effect alone has always given him one of the strongest UAs, and War Canoes by itself is superior to his old 'defend while embarked' effect.

Not really sure, either, but it sure does have a powerful effect. Having every single one of your units be Marines is a game-changer, definitely.

If you aren't attacking cities until they're down to 0HP, surely the Horsemen would make all Swordsmen redundant with that playstyle, not just the Cataphract?

Nah. Horsemen units are generally really bad at taking damage. It comes of the "no terrain bonuses on defense" deal. The Cataphract is notable for not having this penalty, allowing it to take damage as well as a Swordsman can. Better, in fact, since it has the movement rate to allow it to go back to friendly territory for healing if necessary; so a trio of Cataphracts can rotate to soak damage and still be up for serious combat.

 

[GhostSalsa]

I don't really find Civ combat to be focused on cities. Generally, I dictate where the combat will take place, as the AI isn't really too bright about that sort of thing. This can be around my own cities or around a culture-neutral point of my choosing.

I've only had one grand open-field battle in several games of G&K and yes, mounted units really shined, including lancers.

Dictating terms of battle is not always easy if you are trying to conserve your DOWs to avoid the Warmonger tag. I wish the game on the harder levels let you war for fun without throwing away your game -- and then I could probably have more open field battles -- but it doesn't.

Overall, I find horses less meaningful elements of war in G&K than Vanilla. And swordmen and longswordmen have also been hit. Lately I have been agreeing with some of the more negative assessments that G&K has made early strategic resources meaningless (iron, of course, is still vital for frigates).

The higher endurance of units has also started to trouble me. G&K has forced me to build units much earlier because invading armies can't be wiped off the map as quickly: but I miss letting myself be caught unprepared like in Vanilla, and surviving. In general, the "randomness" of combat in Vanilla made it more exciting. Every battle was a gamble.

Now I feel perpetually prepared and consistently unchallenged. Sure it's a challenge balancing units into the build order more, but, I miss the blood.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

i dont care for the upgrade to gatling gun though. cbows are better even when weaker from an extra tile away. im still learning all these new things, that's just what ive gotten so far.

The gatling gun and the machine gun that follows can radically alter your war fighting tactics. I'll give an example:

My first G&K game, I was in a long, bloody war with Oda. I slowly slogged my way into his territory but by the time I pushed to Tokyo, I only had mounted units and a crossbow left. I was almost ready to sue for peace when I was able to upgrade my crossbow to a gatling. I decided to try the new unit out before going for peace.

I parked the gatling on a hill outside of Tokyo at the end of a turn. All of a sudden, samurai rushed forward on roads through the fog and attacked. I thought I was screwed as ranged units get shredded in melee attacks.

But then, a miracle happened. It was exactly like the final battle in the last samurai. Oda's samurai units rushed up the hill and got cut down by the wall of bullets the gatling rained on them. I then used the gatling to push forward against the main Japanese counteract while my mounted units screened my flanks and waited in reserve to hunt down stragglers. I won the war soon after.
__________________

With gatlings and machine guns in your army, you don't have to worry about protecting your ranged units as much (ranged meaning gatlings and MG's, not artillery). Whereas before, you had to continuously escort your ranged units to keep them from being slaughtered.

Now you can completely detach your mounted units to go make flanking attacks, pillage and pick off stragglers. Similarly, your melee units aren't tied to your ranged anymore - you can use them more actively than you could if they had to protect your ranged. With the gatling and MG upgrades, your ranged units can stand on their own and if you set up a good crossfire, you can actually chew your way through an enemy carpet of doom pretty easily. There are many other ways you can change your tactics with gatlings and MG's now, this is but one. Give it a try.

 

[tmhantti]

This is not going to be 100% serious post, but bear with me...

Namely, one aspect of G&K combat reminds me of World of Warcraft (WoW) raiding. That is capturing enemy cities. For those not familiar with the game, the pinnacle of WoW are raids where you typically fight with your co-players against AI boss(es) (big monster, dragon or demon or whatever). There players have three roles: tanking (that would be melee unit with cover promotion and who thus tries to soak the damage), healing (that would be adjacent melee unit with healing promotions) and damage dealing (that would be ranged units). Hence the term tank and spank.

In CiV, I find this kind of set-up pretty boring. Most of the challenge arises from getting to the vicinity of the city and placing your units so that ranged units dont get excessive amount of fire from the city. And then you tank and spank for a few turns and hope that AI does not decide to fire your ranged units or don't send mounted units from fog of war to your back.

I do not know know how to improve this aspect though. It is still better than those silly swordman rushes in vanilla or stack of dooms in Civ 4. I only hope that the combined damage from city+ranged unit parked there would not be able to kill ranged/badly placed unit in one shot. So maybe some fine tuning here could be in place.

Putting the bad tactical AI aside, this applies also to defending: it is silly that how easily you can counter early AI invasion by sitting in a walled city with a composite bowman and shooting countless hapless AI units until the survivors flee.

Again, I emphasize that is not meant to be whine post - I actually enjoy the game!

EDIT: some practical suggestions came to my mind. First, introduce "Cover 2" promotion which would reduce damage from ranged attack by 35% (it's 25% with the current cover promotion, if i remember right). Second, walls etc increase cities hit points as they do currently, but do provide smaller increases to city attack damage.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

This is not going to be 100% serious post, but bear with me...

Namely, one aspect of G&K combat reminds me of World of Warcraft (WoW) raiding. That is capturing enemy cities. For those not familiar with the game, the pinnacle of WoW are raids where you typically fight with your co-players against AI boss(es) (big monster, dragon or demon or whatever). There players have three roles: tanking (that would be melee unit with cover promotion and who thus tries to soak the damage), healing (that would be adjacent melee unit with healing promotions) and damage dealing (that would be ranged units). Hence the term tank and spank.

In CiV, I find this kind of set-up pretty boring. Most of the challenge arises from getting to the vicinity of the city and placing your units so that ranged units dont get excessive amount of fire from the city. And then you tank and spank for a few turns and hope that AI does not decide to fire your ranged units or don't send mounted units from fog of war to your back.

I do not know know how to improve this aspect though. It is still better than those silly swordman rushes in vanilla or stack of dooms in Civ 4. I only hope that the combined damage from city+ranged unit parked there would not be able to kill ranged/badly placed unit in one shot. So maybe some fine tuning here could be in place.

Putting the bad tactical AI aside, this applies also to defending: it is silly that how easily you can counter early AI invasion by sitting in a walled city with a composite bowman and shooting countless hapless AI units until the survivors flee.

Again, I emphasize that is not meant to be whine post - I actually enjoy the game!

Do you not use naval or air units? They add a lot of depth to the game.

I think one big problem with combat is simply that the AI kind of sucks at it still. If they were better, I think it wouldn't seem so straight forward.

BTW I was pleased to see the AI actually using air units in my last G&K game, whereas before if they built an air unit, it would just sit on the tarmac doing nothing. I've also seen the AI use naval units effectively. I fought Dido in a lake once and though I brought frigates to the party and all she had was triremes, she still effectively harrassed me and kept her navy alive for a long time while denying me access to the coast to bombard her land units.

 

[tmhantti]

Do you not use naval or air units? They add a lot of depth to the game.

I agree on this and yes, I use them when possible. But when I warmonger, I usually do it in early/mid game. And often you simply can't utilize navy to help assaults.

Marine type of maps (Archipelago, large islands, smalls continents) are actually very enjoyable to me. There is a sense of discovery and exploration + countless naval/aerial fights to have I'm also pleased that AI also builds navy and uses it. I remember that back in Vanilla, AI did not to that.

BTW I was pleased to see the AI actually using air units in my last G&K game, whereas before if they built an air unit, it would just sit on the tarmac doing nothing. I've also seen the AI use naval units effectively. I fought Dido in a lake once and though I brought frigates to the party and all she had was triremes, she still effectively harrassed me and kept her navy alive for a long time while denying me access to the coast to bombard her land units.

I had a game where AI attempted a naval invasion through use of battleships, carriers with bombers+fighters, followed by melee units (AI was residing on another continent). I was pleasantly surprised by seeing it. But as usual, mistakes were made: insteaded of intercepting with fighters, AI attacked with fighters against my units. Few turns later, those carriers went down thanks to my bombers. And his melee units were more interested in fighting with a neighbouring city state rather than landing to my island...

 

[jango76]

The gatling gun and the machine gun that follows can radically alter your war fighting tactics.

Yeah...

It seems that as time goes by, ranged units get tougher relative to melee units from the same era. A warrior will crush an archer, or a sword crush a CB, in a couple of attacks... Then crossbows can hold their own pretty well, but by the time you get to gats and MGs - damn those guys are tough. Even when you're hitting them with GWI or modern infantry, those suckers just never die.

The AI seems to beeline them, too...

 

[Dogmouth]

I'm loving the xbow promotion line with China. Gattling guns that start with logistics and will quickly have range (or already have range) due to bonus XP from multiple attacks? Yes, please. Once you have range and logistics with gattling/machine guns, the promos just keep rolling in as bodies stack up! The extra beefiness also gives the CKNs lots of opportunities to double-shoot. Give it a try. You'll have level 7 gats in no time.