Getting Started

[alpaca]

Frankly, I think a player with iron should have an advantage over a player without. If there are some players that end up with zero iron, so be it, with this caveat: A player should not be heavily penalized for not having iron, but instead buffed for having it. Therein lies the current "iron issue". Early warfare basically requires iron thanks to it being a key component in ALL early siege, and standard military line units. Iron is a resource that historically everybody had, because it is everywhere. Since spamming iron everywhere is not really desirable, the other solution is to just remove the requirement.

Exactly. I think removing the iron requirement from siege units is a very important point with the nerfed horsemen and buffen cities. In vanilla, having iron is practically compulsory to waging an offensive war in the classical or medieval eras (unless you play Songhai, Greece or Siam who can do some damage with their horse units).

I don't agree about removing Aluminum, I'd prefer having both Oil and Alu as requirements for some units (Modern Armor and Stealth Fighter come to mind) and adding some buildings that allow a peaceful use of these resources, too. Highways like Ahriman suggests, or a Public Transportation like in Civ4 would be obvious candidates for Oil. Something that uses semiconductors (internet, or even just a semiconductor plant) would fit Aluminum, which I personally also interpret as a placeholder for modern materials like rare earths and some of the more exotic metals used for doting, etc.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Alpaca does make some good points. I'd go so far as to say that *all* resources should have some kind of building based effect to make them more interesting-either by boosting the output of a worked tile (like stables), boosting a building if you have *access* to the resource (like the Smokehouse) or by having the resource be a requirement for constructing the building (like coal & power-stations). Even post patch I still feel that the difference between resources-especially bonus resources-is too small to make them very interesting, but this kind of change would certainly help IMHO.

Aussie.

 

[Ahriman]

I think Sneaks has a fair point about iron.
If iron is removed from siege, then guaranteeing horses and iron to every civ is a bit boring, and removes a fair bit of being forced to respond to terrain circumstances.
I don't mind having some uncertainty here, as long as its still possible to war without iron.

I don't agree about removing Aluminum, I'd prefer having both Oil and Alu as requirements for some units (Modern Armor and Stealth Fighter come to mind)

The point that Thal makes very well is that if modern era units require aluminium rather than oil, then its basically impossible to make oil important, because oil is necessary for only a single era.

This is a big reason why oil is so weak in vanilla, because you breeze through it to mech-inf so quickly.

So I think I lean towards removing aluminium completely and have uranium as the only late-game resource. Alternatively, if you keep it, then make it a purely civilian resource, like coal.

 

[Hyronymus]

But aluminium can be a decisor if you 'need' a space victory in your game.

 

[Thalassicus]

Something I realized from the past week of analyzing the staring location placement file is they designed horses and swords to both be important tracks of unit development, and roughly equal in power. There's two indications of this: in release-CiV they had roughly equal strength and capabilities (IMO the primary balance issue with horsemen was the huge open terrain penalty, which has been changed). The second indication is how they determine resource placement.

For minor deposits of strategic resources, a spot is picked to place a strategic, then the code determines if it's going to be iron or horse. Open terrain tends to place lots of horses, while forests and hills tend to place lots of iron. In other words, a civ with a start location surrounded by lots of open terrain is going to get a massive number of horses, and vice versa for rough terrain and iron. These are the terrain types they're naturally valuable. Therefore, nerfing horsemen to a secondary role of relative uselessness (as I agree they did) is a mistake.


@basta
I agree with many things you said, about the relative uselessness of archers, spears and horses. I've avoided too many buffs in the past because I didn't want people to feel I was doing outrageous changes, but I tend to feel the same way as you. Based on what you've said, I'm going to do a few things.

• I'm going to un-nerf horsemen a bit further. I think I'll reduce their vs city penalty from -33% to -10% like it was in Civ IV at one point. I prefer the buff to the Siege promotion (which horses cannot get) as a nerf for them against cities instead of a direct penalty. Horses and swords do have equal cost and strength, so I feel we can fiddle with them a bit and get them properly balanced. Horses were too powerful pre-nerf, and too weak post-nerf.
• You and some others have suggested primarily using 2-size deposits of iron. I think what I'll do is just go with 2s everywhere instead of 1s and 3s. While it isn't particularly interesting to have the same deposit size everywhere, 1s seem to be psychologically demoralizing and 3s+ are too powerful if we get a handful of them. It wouldn't be too hard to add a single super-node like you recommend, either.
• I'll reduce the cost of math back to normal. I was just concerned people would think it's overpowered if cats can be built too much earlier, but I agree with you their use is somewhat cumbersome
• I'll reduce the cost of archers and spears further. I agree with you completely about them. They might seem powerful on paper but with their pathetic 1pt of damage against cities, use is rather limited.

In addition to what you've pointed out, I'd also say the balance between Longswords-Knights is off just like the balance between Swords-Horses. Knights are much harder to get and have pikes as a hard-counter, while longswords have no counter, and knights additionally have the same -33% vs cities penalty. I'd also say crossbows are just as useless in their era as archers are in the ancient era.

Would you say it's reasonable to buff Knights/Crossbows if I buff Horses/Archers? I'm thinking about equalizing the availability of longswords-knights somewhat, and make crossbows a little easier to get. I'd rather buff ancient/classical era siege capability instead of players being forced to rely on a longswords beeline just to get anything done.


@alpaca
The thing is I'm very hesitant to add new buildings to solve problems. The only times I've done so in the past are the aqueduct and national wonders, and two of those national wonders got added in the patch, so they seem to be a good direction to go in. Over the past two months I've also been carefully considering unique replacements for aircraft/ships, but am moving cautiously in that regard.

It's easy to go down the road of adding new units/buildings, but more is not always better. I'd prefer to make existing stuff more important and fit in better with the game whenever possible. Right now oil and aluminum basically serve the same purpose (used for everything at their tier), so making them actually fill the same role I don't think will fundamentally alter the game much.

In addition, the game has a standard of only requiring 1 resource per unit. I'd rather keep with this norm if possible.

It also fits precedent to have two resource tracks: oil and uranium. Sorta like how early game has the horse and iron tracks. Uranium for big superweapons like nukes and GDRs, oil for conventional warfare. This means oil can have an economic building (spaceship factory) to compliment uranium's econ building (nuclear plants).

While having 3 resources in this era seems good in theory, the timeperiod is too short to really differentiate all three resources without adding a ton of new stuff to the modern period.


@Ahriman
That's basically my goal. Rather than guarantee iron's availability to everyone, I'd prefer making horses equally valuable. This way, whichever one you get you can still operate early wars effectively.


@Hyronymus
Aluminum is indeed valuable in CiV, the problem is oil is not. It's rather simple to ignore oil for the most part and build just mech infantry + aluminum users. This doesn't really make sense based on the real world at all, and having a relatively worthless resource like oil doesn't make sense from a gameplay perspective. Since aluminum is actually quite abundant in the real world yet wars are fought over oil, it seems to be logical to make oil much more important in CiV.

 

[Tomice]

• I'm going to un-nerf horsemen a bit further. I think I'll reduce their vs city penalty from -33% to -10% like it was in Civ IV at one point. I prefer the buff to the Siege promotion (which horses cannot get) as a nerf for them against cities instead of a direct penalty. Horses and swords do have equal cost and strength, so I feel we can fiddle with them a bit and get them properly balanced. Horses were too powerful pre-nerf, and too weak post-nerf.
• You and some others have suggested primarily using 2-size deposits of iron. I think what I'll do is just go with 2s everywhere instead of 1s and 3s. While it isn't particularly interesting to have the same deposit size everywhere, 1s seem to be psychologically demoralizing and 3s+ are too powerful if we get a handful of them. It wouldn't be too hard to add a single super-node like you recommend, either.
• I'll reduce the cost of math back to normal. I was just concerned people would think it's overpowered if cats can be built too much earlier, but I agree with you their use is somewhat cumbersome
• I'll reduce the cost of archers and spears further. I agree with you completely about them. They might seem powerful on paper but with their pathetic 1pt of damage against cities, use is rather limited.

Would you say it's reasonable to buff Knights/Crossbows if I buff Horses/Archers?

I agree in general to your points!

A few comments:

- changing horses from -33% to -10% might be a too big change to make in one step. Maybe -20% or - 15% and see how it works?

- I'm in the always-2-iron-deposit faction, maybe even prefering 2 units of horse on every tile. The problem about single-unit deposits is not only workers being occupied too long for little result. A micro-deposit is also no reason to ever build a city somewhere. I might send a settler to get 2 iron/horses, but for only 1 of them it makes no sense.

- Archers are still only built if I have already used up all iron or have so many melee units that they block each others path. Making them cheaper might help, but the main problem is the rather unattractive path of archery/mathematics. You really only need it for massive offensive actions, especially if your enemy has walls. What about an economic item on mathematics?

- Spearmen are cheap enough, they are only 12% more :civ5production: than warriors. What about 8 strenght and 50:civ5production:, though? If you buff horses, you might buff their counter as well. Also, our goal is to make iron rare and desirable, but non-essential to fight effectively.

- Kinghts and crossbows may well need a buff, too. Especially knights with their massive penalties, late tech and only three move look weak-ish. They don't represent their 1000-year battlefield dominance.

 

[Thalassicus]

It seems reasonable to buff Mathematics or Archery economically somehow, they've only got the Hanging Gardens right now. Hmm... what if the Aqueduct is placed on Mathematics?

Essentially, I felt horses were in a very well-balanced position pre-patch in this mod:

• Equal cost and strength to swords.
• 50% Siege promotion available to only swords, instead of a large vs city penalty on horses. Promotions give the player much more flexibility than built-in modifiers.
• 10% penalty vs cities (precedent: Civ IV).
• Reduced open terrain penalty.
• Buffed spearmen.
• Narrow window of opportunity between Horseback Riding and Civil Service.

I never really agreed with adding a half-dozen nerfs to horsemen without improving the underpowered/useless vanilla Siege promotion. Also, we're trying to make the horse and sword tracks equally valuable in taking cities. So here's what I'm thinking of... you and I had similar ideas.

Archers and spears at 50 cost, with spear strength raised to 8. With these buffs to archers/spears, chariots back to the same att/def values as archers, but at 60 cost. This will make spears a little more viable vs cities or swords as well. The buff to spears counterbalanced by returning horses to their pre-patch mod state listed above.

So basically archers/spears +25% stronger than warriors at +25% more cost, somewhat of a better bridge between the warrior/scout and sword/cat/horse phases. Swords/horses would be +40% stronger than archers/spears, instead of 80% and 60% (respectively).

At the very least it's worth testing out a while in a dev version to see how it interacts with 2-unit resources everywhere, and see what flaws there might be.

Incidentally, another reason cities are so much stronger now is a change I didn't see documented anywhere in patch notes. Shock/Drill used to work against cities, and no longer do. That's a huge buff to city strength, also means getting the Siege promotion is actually worthwhile now (delaying March). I could also make the Siege promotion available right away instead of at level 2. The idea is to encourage units to specialize in vs-unit or vs-city roles to some extent.

 

[Tomice]

Agreed, at least to 90%:

- I guess chariots could be left as is, since they can avoid damage pretty well. I also don't see the AI building many horses, which slaughter chariots.

- A small city attack penalty on horses may be justified (and logic from a realism POV). A siege promotion has to be earned first, and there are alternatives that might seem more useful.

Spears ad archers should be tested with the suggested values IMO.

 

[Ahriman]

But aluminium can be a decisor if you 'need' a space victory in your game.

But I think Uranium can fit this role too.
I think Uranium is more interesting if it is both a military resource for nukes and GDR *and* a civilian tech for achieving space, so in the extreme late-game there is a tradeoff.

I'm going to un-nerf horsemen a bit further

I'm ok with this in principle as long as horses feel rare enough that its hard to get more than a couple. I haven't tested enough to get a feel.
However:

I prefer the buff to the Siege promotion (which horses cannot get) as a nerf for them against cities instead of a direct penalty

I don't think this is a very good way of nerfing horsemen, the promotion is a rare thing which takes significant experience.
I think it is *very* important that you can't easily use horses alone to capture cities.
I think weakening the city-attack penalty is a mistake.
There has to be something that horses Just Can't Do, otherwise they're better than swordsmen.

I'll reduce the cost of archers and spears further

I oppose this.
Attacking cities is not the main/only purpose of units. These guys are still valuable for field fights.
Plus, the whole point is to make horses and swords into elites, governed by resource availability. If you make archers and spears really cheap and spammable, then you're reducing the gap by which the Elite units are actually better.

Knights are much harder to get

I don't think this is fair, because they come at a tech line which also provides many other things, whereas Longswords come on a purely military techline that gives nothing else.
Having said that, if horses are rare enough, I could live with a small knight buff (maybe strength 19?) - or perhaps a small longsword nerf is better?

I'd also say crossbows are just as useless in their era as archers are in the ancient era.

While technically I agree, this is because I think neither is underpowered. Resourceless units are supposed to be relatively weak, and I think you massively underestimate the power of bombardment attacks. I do not think crossbows need any buff, particularly when you're converting their promotions into melee promotions when they become rifles.

That's basically my goal. Rather than guarantee iron's availability to everyone, I'd prefer making horses equally valuable. This way, whichever one you get you can still operate early wars effectively.

I think this is fine, but I think its important to make them *differently* valuable.
Horses are for mobility, pillaging, and field armies.
Iron is for city assault.
If you can use pure horse mass to take cities, then you're back to the pre-patch vanilla problem, where a civ with lucky horse placement (or Russia, or Greece) can pwn the world with horses alone.
This is why I think keeping the city attack penalty is important.
Let horses be the same strength as swords, but with extra mobility, but less city attack.

Archers are still only built if I have already used up all iron

I do not see this as a design failure.
Resource units are supposed to be superior.
If you want to build resourceless units over resource units even when you have the resource to spare, then *that* is the design failure.

But comparing archers to swords isn't really fair, since swords are two tech tiers further in.
An archer or two is very valuable in the warrior/spear/war chariot era.

So basically archers/spears +25% stronger

I would *strongly* oppose this. That is way too much of a boost, where I don't see a need for a boost at all.
We do not want archers to be able to do 4-6 damage to swordsmen or horsemen in a single volley.

Whenever you change things btw, make sure to also think about their UU replacements.
Particularly hoplites, companion cav, etc.

 

[Thalassicus]

I agree it's important horses alone cannot capture cities, as in release version CiV. However, I do believe horses+cats should be effective at it. Vs cities with level 2 units it's currently swords>spears>warriors>horses and I feel it should be swords>spears>horses>warriors.

The Siege promotion requires level 3, which isn't really rare or a lot of XP. I get it all the time from barbs for initial units, and brand new units can start with it after Iron Working (Armory).

I agree resourceless units should be weaker than resource-using ones, but the 60-80% difference in strength is a little much. Basically, spears/archers take too long for pre-wall rushes but get clobbered by swords afterward, I've never really felt threatened when facing these. I agree with basta that they just don't fit in anywhere (against difficult AIs). Swords will still be 11 v 8 against spears, so it's not that big a change, but helps out a bit.

There has to be something that horses Just Can't Do

Fighting spears . . . ?

 

[Ahriman]

I agree it's important horses alone cannot capture cities, as in release version CiV. However, I do believe horses+cats should be effective at it.

Agreed, but I still think balancing around a promotion isn't wise.
For example, the AI doesn't use specialist promotions very well. Even if the human player can go on a conquest rampage by using a powerful siege promotion on melee units, the AI isn't going to be able to do that.

I think its much better to balance around core stats.
If there's a promotion that you want a particular unit to have, then build it into the unit.
For example, you could build a mini-Siege promotion into Swordsmen to specialize them, like in Civ4.

Swords annihilate archers and spears, I've never really felt threatened when facing these.

Right, but thats as it should be. If you start making big 25% buffs, that isn't going to stay being the case.

 

[Ahriman]

I seem to be getting a replicable crash to Desktop after hitting Next Turn.

Running 1.09.7BDev, all Combined mod components active.

Save attached.

 

[Sneaks]

Personally, I think using horses against cities with walls should always prove to be a terrible terrible decision.

 

[Thalassicus]

Swords annihilate archers and spears, I've never really felt threatened when facing these.

Right, but thats as it should be.

This is just baffling because by "annihilate" I mean "typically one-shotted"... should it really be that lopsided? A civ starved for resources has no chance...

What I'm talking about is swordsmen at +40% more strength than spears instead of +60%. They'll still clobber spears but it won't be free XP like now.

The thing is, archers/spears aren't quick enough for a pre-walls rush and get whacked by swords by the time you can get catapults for walls, so they're never useful at city conquest. If they also get one-hit or two-hit killed out in the field while doing a few damage in return they're just plain bad.

This is the reason why so few people build them, including myself, basta, Tomice, and probably many people. They're just very poor units and not worth the effort; the buffs make them halfways decent.

Personally, I think using horses against cities with walls should always prove to be a terrible terrible decision.

I agree, basically my plan is to make 2-promo units as (swords>spears>horses>warriors) vs cities instead of (swords>spears>warriors>horses). Even spears will still be a much better idea, and anyone with cats has spears. I could use some more opinions on this though, as I honestly don't play with horses since their nerfs. Should horses stay worse than warriors vs cities?

 

[Seek]

Personally, I think using horses against cities with walls should always prove to be a terrible terrible decision.

Agree, but is it possible to give walls a defense bonus against horses?

@Thal - If the above is possible a mounted buff *might* be reasonable, but keep in mind you've buffed them quite a bit already. Otherwise I think the early game units are very well balanced at this point - aside from removing the iron req for siege, which I support. Further changes should be implemented only if something major pops up imo.

 

[Ahriman]

By "annihilate" I mean "typically one-shotted"..

I have no problem with swords one-shotting archers in melee.
I do not observe swords one-shotting spears, unless its a highly promoted sword with great general against a spearman in open terrain.

What I'm talking about is swordsmen at +40% more strength than spears instead of +60%

Well, 37.5% (11/8), so barely more than 1/3, for a unit that is massively more expensive, requires an expensive tech, requires a strategic resource, and doesn't get the horse bonus.
Compare your strength to cost ratios.
For reference, compare longswords to pikes.

archers/spears aren't quick enough for a pre-walls rush

Sure they are. Particularly in the early game where the objective is to capture a worker or two and pillage all their stuff, thus knocking them out of the game.
Building walls asap isn't generally a good strat anyway, and isn't something the AI does, a library or another unit is normally far more useful.

* * *
In my current game as England, Longbows are game-breaking. I build a wall of longbows and advance up the continent, nothing can stop me. I advance and shoot every turn, with sentry-promoted horseman to scout.
Crossbows and longbows were balanced at strength 12, and even then the longbows were one of the best UUs.
At strength 14 the longbow is insane.

 

[Tomice]

Personally, I think using horses against cities with walls should always prove to be a terrible terrible decision.

Yes, in realism terms it's very clear, I'd prefer if we kept such things in mind, although gameplay comes first.

Speaking of gameplay, I also believe you're overestimating the the value of a promotion. It might work well for very skilled players, but not for John Doe or the AI.

Maybe I'm a bad player myself, but most swordmen I have in my first or second war are upgraded warriors built before I had barracks up and running. I don't manage to get all of them trained well by clearing barb camps before I need them to capture cities.

Also, a horsemen without city penalty with "march" will often be the better/more versatile unit than a swordman with "siege" promo (if they are the same base strenght).

A small city penalty would be justified IMO, 10-20%.

___________________________

About swords/archers: I think having an army of mixed composition should be the ideal, strongest option.

I'll give a SC2 example again:

Even if you have enough gas and reached tech tier 2 or 3, the mineral-only tier 1 units (marines, zerglings, zealots) are still useful for something, which is a big factor contributing to the awesomeness of Blizzard's balancing.

That said, are improvements for units through a tech theoretically possible? Like +1 damage for archers after iron working? Just being curious here....

__________________________

EDIT: @ Ahriman

The way you calculate spearmen vs swordmen it really sounds as if 7 strenght for spearmen was more than enough. In practical terms, spearmen are very disappointing, though.

They can neither reasonably attack cities, nor can they hold any ground vs. swords. A human player doesn't need them, since the AI doesn't use concentrated cav forces. If the AI uses them (they do a lot) the human outmaneuvers them with horses or crushes them with swords.

The way civ games traditionally calculates combat results, a 11 str unit doesn't win in 2/3 of cases against a 7 str unit, it wins almost always. Also, the difference in :civ5production: cost does not say the truth: both uits have the same upkeep, which is often the bigger problem for me.

What we shouldn't forget here: This is just testing. We can try out the 8 str spears in a dev build, and if it's bad, Thal can change it back to 7 the next day (and it's affecting savegames, too).




On another topic: What you experienced with longbowmen definitively has to be considered and changed if necessary!

 

[Sneaks]

Really? By "annihilate" I mean "typically one-shotted"... you really feel it should be that lopsided? Even with unlimited strategics like in vanilla I still see spears facing me all the time, and a civ starved for resources has no chance... even with unlimited strategics I still see AIs defending with spears against my swords all the time.

What I'm talking about is swordsmen at +40% more strength than spears instead of +60%. They'll still clobber spears but it won't be free XP like now.

The thing is, archers/spears aren't quick enough for a pre-walls rush and get whacked by swords by the time you can get catapults for walls, so they're never useful at taking cities. If they also get one-hit or two-hit killed out in the field they're just plain bad. This is the reason why so few people build them, including myself, basta, Tomice, and probably many people.



I agree, basically my plan is to make 2-promo units as swords>spears>horses>warriors vs cities instead of swords>spears>warriors>horses. I could use some more opinions on this though, as I honestly don't play with horses since their nerfs. Should horses stay worse than warriors vs cities?

Honestly, I think most everything that gets into melee with archers should pretty much decimate them. Swords should also obviously come out on top vs. spears, though in my experience it usually requires 2 turns of combat to kill them.

I always think early combat should be like this:
Spears hard counter Mobile.
Mobile hard counters Range, Siege.
Ranged hard counters Melee. Weak Def vs. Melee.
Siege hard counters City. Weak Def vs. Melee. Strong Def vs. Range/City
Swords no hard counters. Good vs. all. Horses should have slight advantage if terrain favors.

I would not mind perhaps a small increase to ranged damage for Archers/Xbows.

Honestly what I really wish early combat had was a Battering Ram. A simple no resource melee siege that is strong vs. cities and sucks vs everything else.

Other military tech holes I see are a lack of mobile counter in the Renaissance. There is a gap between Pikes and Anti-Tank. I think a Halberd unit really belongs in there somewhere.

I would really really love to see Muskets/Rifles/Infantry have range, though I know this would pretty much screw up the current city capture mechanic.

 

[Sneaks]

That said, are improvements for units through a tech theoretically possible? Like +1 damage for archers after iron working? Just being curious here....

I believe so. It would need to work similarly to Embark, though if I recall, it would not work with advanced starts, since such promotions would need to be added too the PostDefines.

 

[Thalassicus]

I agree anything that can melee an archer should one-hit kill it, which is why I propose making them cheaper instead of stronger. Spearmen are the ones I think could use a little more strength, I agree with Tomice on that.

I do not observe swords one-shotting spears, unless its a highly promoted sword...

I can understand and accept opinions that swords should one-shot spears, because everyone has a different philosophical outlook on how the game should play. I can debate the point over whether one-shotting or two-shotting is a better goal for balance, that's something we can all discuss.

What does confuse me is the view one-shotting requires promotions or rare circumstances. A great general is 2 policies in the honor tree, and open terrain is half the map:

I agree with Sneaks you can't get this all the time, but it's common enough to be a factor in decision-making. One-hit killing defenders while taking just a few damage in return is no challenge at all, and flanking makes things worse. Longswords do indeed annihilate pikes in a similar manner, but it's much more likely for the defender to have some source of iron or horses by then with a viable defensive force. The issue is early game, when the defender might not have swords/horses yet. I'd like to give civs in this situation at least a fighting chance, because right now it's hopeless.

As Tomice pointed out, what might not seem like a big difference in numbers from a theoretical standpoint has a very different effect in practice.

+1 strength doesn't change this much for spears, they still lose badly, but at least shifts one-shots into two-shot territory - which is the point.