indirect fire & range promotions

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Tekamthi

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Does anyone ever see the AI accessing both of these at once on archer units? I've only ever seen one deity AI babylonian bowman that achieved this, whereas the core 4-6 or more of my archers eventually get there in nearly every game. I don't necessarily track every AI unit promotion, and its possible that this one bowman, behind the great wall in very hilly lands this one game, was just a particular pain and stands out to me, though more and more I have been looking for these in recent games while at once noticing how OP my own archers become at this level.

Accepting that there are big differences in human vs AI military play especially, I wonder if this promotion combo too heavily favors human playstyle? Can they be set to exclude one another w/o a lot of work (ie xml tweak only.. no lua/dll)?
 
Babs bowmen have indirect fire by default :p

Yes, I understand this... this is my point.. that I've only ever seen the AI use these two together on a unit that is given a headstart with one of them for free. I've rarely/never seen them get there otherwise, although its possible I've just missed them in the AI's misuse of these super-valuable units.

I suppose making them exclude one another would be somewhat of a nerf to bowman UU... I wonder then if indirect fire effect can somehow only be applied to original range of unit. I'm sure thats not xml though
 
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Oh, I'm not even sure AIs gets to level 5 on ranged units that often tbh, they don't tend to value highly promoted troops like us humans. I can't remember seeing any archer so high promoted either.
 
AI tend to pick second part of skill path and i see quite a lot skirsmishers/ archers with logistics.

true I've noticed this as well... while logistics is powerful, I find the indirect fire/range combo unique in the archer cheese it creates... then again maybe its just MY playstyle that relies too heavily on said cheese lol
 
true I've noticed this as well... while logistics is powerful, I find the indirect fire/range combo unique in the archer cheese it creates... then again maybe its just MY playstyle that relies too heavily on said cheese lol
Does not matter, the logistics path is the superior one in the hands of a player, not because of the increased damage, but because of the double experience the unit can acquire per turn, it is literally twice as fast to get extra range after logistic than it is to get logistic after range.
 
Does not matter, the logistics path is the superior one in the hands of a player, not because of the increased damage, but because of the double experience the unit can acquire per turn, it is literally twice as fast to get extra range after logistic than it is to get logistic after range.

right, so I think we agree logistics is strong but works just fine: the AI accesses logistics w/o issue, as already noted.

Regardless of what choice is made w/ logistics, the instantaneous tactical effect of combining range/indirect seems stronger than any other combo (outside logistics), and in hands of human it seems to happen way more often than for the AI in the games I run. The moment where I get just 1 or 2 range/indirect archers deployed correctly usually tilts battles vs AI significantly, and I often get to 5 or 6 fairly early in most games I play (granted I play deity/marathon often, exaggerating this effect), whereas the AI usually gets 0 or 1, even late into the game. I'm curious whether this truly is just my playstyle rather than a general balance issue...
 
right, so I think we agree logistics is strong but works just fine: the AI accesses logistics w/o issue, as already noted.

Regardless of what choice is made w/ logistics, the instantaneous tactical effect of combining range/indirect seems stronger than any other combo (outside logistics), and in hands of human it seems to happen way more often than for the AI in the games I run. The moment where I get just 1 or 2 range/indirect archers deployed correctly usually tilts battles vs AI significantly, and I often get to 5 or 6 fairly early in most games I play (granted I play deity/marathon often, exaggerating this effect), whereas the AI usually gets 0 or 1, even late into the game. I'm curious whether this truly is just my playstyle rather than a general balance issue...
I said this a while ago, and I still stand by it, marathon, even on deity, is impossible to lose, unless you play to lose to try to disprove my point, war is still the ai weakest link and war on marathon is so in favor of a human feedbacks from it need to be taken whit a massive grain of salt, ai goes for logistics patch because its the patch that offers greater power and more danger for the opposing player, since the ai is not capable of min maxing those archers to level 20, if you found yourself winning so hard try on standard where by the time you get range and indirect fire on your archers the ai is 10 techs ahead.
 
I said this a while ago, and I still stand by it, marathon, even on deity, is impossible to lose, unless you play to lose to try to disprove my point, war is still the ai weakest link and war on marathon is so in favor of a human feedbacks from it need to be taken whit a massive grain of salt, ai goes for logistics patch because its the patch that offers greater power and more danger for the opposing player, since the ai is not capable of min maxing those archers to level 20, if you found yourself winning so hard try on standard where by the time you get range and indirect fire on your archers the ai is 10 techs ahead.

Forgive me if I've overlooked some subtle hyperbole here, but while its way easier (and no one has claimed otherwise from what i've seen on these boards), I do accept your point "with a grain of salt", so to speak, cuz its definitely not impossible.

Every time someone re-rolls their starting location they are effectively losing a game... if you play with what you are handed by the map scripts w/o cherry picking, as the AI is forced to, you will lose on marathon sometimes. Especially if you're playing VP... horrible starts aside, given that dev work isn't finished, i'd estimate 1 out of 10 games I get into sees some crazy **** happening before 1 AD, like the entire tech tree being finished by 1-2 AIs etc... the threads on this board are full of these impossible-to-win stories.

Ignoring these extremes entirely, in my case, 100% of the marathon games I play, a human loses, and anything less than that rate is impossible.

Anyway this marathon rhetoric is old and tired, and is not really on point here. The combo of range/indirect is what I'm hoping for feedback on. Logistics will almost always have already been chosen at this point, whether you're AI or human. Regardless of whether you compare the combo with or without logistics, though, it doesn't matter: This combo has a much stronger impact than any other single-archer-click you make in the game, and the disparity is magnified by human/AI styles, at least with the few humans I've played with.

When I play single-player (not often), I play standard -- I never play quick, admittedly -- I still find this combo OP, although usually i get 2-3 of these, a little later, to the AI's 0, instead of 4-6 on marathon. Is it not a noticeable disparity for anyone else? Am I alone in wishing indirect only applied to unit's original range? Or maybe some other "fix"?
 
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So you gave a problem whit indirect fire + range, a combo that is not even necessary if you say, put the ranged unit in a hill, and what? want it removed?

Youre complaining about a couple of super late promotions wen playing on a difficulty that makes building things 200% slower makes researching things 200% slower yet does not make unit moevement or xp requirements 200% slower off course things are going to break, expecially against an ai whos not good at keeping their super promoted units alive.

Its impossible to have 3 range indirect fire archers in standard speed, unless you never research composite bowman that is, but by that time the deity ai has knights, who can literally one shot an composite attacking from 3 range on the open field, and while, you may say how this is kind ao cheese wen you have super weird terrain whit lots of trees and hills everywhere,but promotions cannot be balanced arround terrain, vanilla tried it and it failed, especialy since every player arround here likes to play on their own map script whit their own custon settings, give me a 2 shoot composite on that same scenario and due to my human brain I will be able to do what the long range + indirec fire did twice as fast while geting more experience.

Extra range and indirect fire is a combo, just like blitz + charge is a combo, just like march + medic is a combo, combos that require hundreds of experience, and are a reward for playing good and keeping your units alive,rewards that sadly mostly benefit the human player, beind earth, the civ game everyone already forgot, made all unit promotions just give a bland +10% combat strenght, and every single one complained about how bland they are.

You could say anything about any high level skill and it would be a convincing argument, i ocould right now say somethign along the lines of, every single time I get march + medic 2 every single battle vs ai is tilted, and I just snowball out of control, and my example is even better tham youre because at least the ai knows how to use 3 range, they have no idea how to use the medic promotions, my point is any level 10 unit or 6 in your case will massively tilt the battle in yoir favor, since civ is 1upt every single promotion adds massive power to the limited number of units we can field, the root cause is how easy you can ahieve said super units, and in marathon its almost impossible not to hit said units, the games lasts way longer.
 
So you gave a problem whit indirect fire + range, a combo that is not even necessary if you say, put the ranged unit in a hill, and what? want it removed?

Youre complaining about a couple of super late promotions wen playing on a difficulty that makes building things 200% slower makes researching things 200% slower yet does not make unit moevement or xp requirements 200% slower off course things are going to break, expecially against an ai whos not good at keeping their super promoted units alive.

Its impossible to have 3 range indirect fire archers in standard speed, unless you never research composite bowman that is, but by that time the deity ai has knights, who can literally one shot an composite attacking from 3 range on the open field, and while, you may say how this is kind ao cheese wen you have super weird terrain whit lots of trees and hills everywhere,but promotions cannot be balanced arround terrain, vanilla tried it and it failed, especialy since every player arround here likes to play on their own map script whit their own custon settings, give me a 2 shoot composite on that same scenario and due to my human brain I will be able to do what the long range + indirec fire did twice as fast while geting more experience.

Extra range and indirect fire is a combo, just like blitz + charge is a combo, just like march + medic is a combo, combos that require hundreds of experience, and are a reward for playing good and keeping your units alive,rewards that sadly mostly benefit the human player, beind earth, the civ game everyone already forgot, made all unit promotions just give a bland +10% combat strenght, and every single one complained about how bland they are.

You could say anything about any high level skill and it would be a convincing argument, i ocould right now say somethign along the lines of, every single time I get march + medic 2 every single battle vs ai is tilted, and I just snowball out of control, and my example is even better tham youre because at least the ai knows how to use 3 range, they have no idea how to use the medic promotions, my point is any level 10 unit or 6 in your case will massively tilt the battle in yoir favor, since civ is 1upt every single promotion adds massive power to the limited number of units we can field, the root cause is how easy you can ahieve said super units, and in marathon its almost impossible not to hit said units, the games lasts way longer.

Is there no way to make the promotions come slower on Marathon? I really like playing Marathon, but I do not do not want an easier game than a standard player.
 
So you gave a problem whit indirect fire + range, a combo that is not even necessary if you say, put the ranged unit in a hill, and what? want it removed?

Quoting myself from #3: "I wonder then if indirect fire effect can somehow only be applied to original range of unit." Then from #10 "Am I alone in wishing indirect only applied to unit's original range". 'bout as specific as I can get here, acknowledging this "solution" is not quite fully cooked yet, I'm not sure what else I can say to explain... I don't know where you see having it "removed" in this thread.

Now, from my last post "When I play single-player (not often), I play standard -- I never play quick, admittedly -- I still find this combo OP, although usually i get 2-3 of these, a little later, to the AI's 0". Forget marathon, it doesn't matter. The last three games I completed, before this post, were standard, if that helps you move on here. When I said "not often", this was a subjective, relative reference. Standard games, imo, are a little more excel and less civ, but it hits the spot when the time and players for a proper game aren't available.

The difference you keep missing back on point here is that these two promos, combined, have an effect, if you're using them right, that increases the utility of these units exponentially rather than incrementally, as nearly all the others do. Yes there are other strong combos, but compared to the other combos you mentioned, while still strong, they don't come with a similar instantaneous jump in near-invincibility that is never/rarely accessed by the AI. You also keep going back to logistics.. again this doesn't matter, just compare apples to apples, ie think of range/indirect vs just range or just indirect, on top of w/e other promos, logistics or no logistics. The moment you hit the range/indirect combo, you jump in power like no other combo, other than logistics (but again we have no problem there cuz the AI accesses logistics frequently enough).

Its impossible to have 3 range indirect fire archers in standard speed, unless you never research composite bowman that is, but by that time the deity ai has knights

When I'm referring to "archer", i'm referring to the way the game's sql tables, which apply promos to "unitcombat" types. An "archer" in this context is any unitcombat_archer. This should be obvious from the discussion re: bowmen in the OP and following posts.

promotions cannot be balanced arround terrain, vanilla tried it and it failed,

I think you have things backwards here.. vanilla tried to give promos based on terrain, remember +% in open or rough? This creates imbalance on terrain, and was scrapped in favor of VP's terrain balanced promos. Indirect is a holdover, though, and I highlight it in the hopes that a workable solution is floated by someone here, that if nothing else I can work into my own VP fork in my next housemate deity marathon game :D
 
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Is there no way to make the promotions come slower on Marathon? I really like playing Marathon, but I do not do not want an easier game than a standard player.

TBH I figured this was such an obvious solution that it must have been already discarded for good reason. While the marathon xp is secondary to my OP concern, I wonder too if just reducing xp rate on marathon has ever been tried? reducing xp for human on deity would also be cool, and in a roundabout way might fix my indirect/range issue
 
Quoting myself from #3: "I wonder then if indirect fire effect can somehow only be applied to original range of unit." Then from #10 "Am I alone in wishing indirect only applied to unit's original range". 'bout as specific as I can get here, acknowledging this "solution" is not quite fully cooked yet, I'm not sure what else I can say to explain... I don't know where you see having it "removed" in this thread.

Now, from my last post "When I play single-player (not often), I play standard -- I never play quick, admittedly -- I still find this combo OP, although usually i get 2-3 of these, a little later, to the AI's 0". Forget marathon, it doesn't matter. The last three games I completed, before this post, were standard, if that helps you move on here. When I said "not often", this was a subjective, relative reference. Standard games, imo, are a little more excel and less civ, but it hits the spot when the time and players for a proper game aren't available.

The difference you keep missing back on point here is that these two promos, combined, have an effect, if you're using them right, that increases the utility of these units exponentially rather than incrementally, as nearly all the others do. Yes there are other strong combos, but compared to the other combos you mentioned, while still strong, they don't come with a similar instantaneous jump in near-invincibility that is never/rarely accessed by the AI. You also keep going back to logistics.. again this doesn't matter, just compare apples to apples, ie think of range/indirect vs just range or just indirect, on top of w/e other promos, logistics or no logistics. The moment you hit the range/indirect combo, you jump in power like no other combo, other than logistics (but again we have no problem there cuz the AI accesses logistics frequently enough).

When I'm referring to "archer", i'm referring to the way the game's sql tables, which apply promos to "unitcombat" types. An "archer" in this context is any unitcombat_archer. This should be obvious from the discussion re: bowmen in the OP and following posts.

If you read my post you will see that my point is that ANY high level unit can reach overpowered levels, you just so happen to think only a single one of the several combos is way to good wen there is plenty of examples to speak off.
The ai is fully capable of using range + indirect fire, an argument you are super incorrct about, they just go for the logistic one because its the stronger one short term and they only think short term, you kill more units shooting twice tham you do shooting once from long range.

To apply indirect fire to the units original range may not only be impossible code wise, but its super unintuitive (a big no-no for this mod and for ai) and also completely makes indirect fire useless a promotion, promotion that only sees any use by 2 units lines, the archer and the siege, there is also the slipery slope argument, where if we give special treatment to one promotion why not give to x promotion or to y promotion or to z promotion in conjuction whit w promotion, and unless youre winning your games by industrial, how are these 3 range archers invencible against planes for example? As a matter of fact how much a diference indirect fire really makes on some maps vs others an archer whit 3 range on hill can most of the time shoot as if he had indirect fire...
It clear from teh replies and the lack off such complain in the existence of this forum its clar as day you are the only one whit such a problem, remove the promotion from archers and nothings will ever be lost, especially once machine guns come into play.

Gazeboo is but one man, and it simpossible to balance all the civs all the game mechanics in all the difficulties in all the game speeds and in all the game sizes, marathon is forgotten because overall very few people play it, and while some solutions may be obvious they still take time to code and implement, time taht sometimes is better used on features that affect more people, while this may sound kind aelitist I remind you taht vox populy is a community project and youre free to subimit code and changes you think will improve the game, more often tham not Gazebo will implement those changes.
 
Do people realize that a unit with indirect fire + range is doing drastically less damage than one with logistics + (I forget the name) is? Or compare to melee units with blitz + stalwart, there are a bunch of unfair combinations. Really range is somewhat weak because you sometimes are forced to take indirect fire just to use it. Yea that unit attacks every turn, but it deals such little damage

The high level XP system is very favorable to human players over the AI. It there was a way to may promotions require more XP on slower speeds it would help make those difficulties harder, currently they are much easier than standard
 
Do people realize that a unit with indirect fire + range is doing drastically less damage than one with logistics + (I forget the name) is? Or compare to melee units with blitz + stalwart, there are a bunch of unfair combinations. Really range is somewhat weak because you sometimes are forced to take indirect fire just to use it. Yea that unit attacks every turn, but it deals such little damage

The high level XP system is very favorable to human players over the AI. It there was a way to may promotions require more XP on slower speeds it would help make those difficulties harder, currently they are much easier than standard
And my earlier point is that the extra damage from logistic is not even the main point, the unit is also literally getting twice the experience of the +range one, not to mention logistic is also a great defensive tool as it allows you to shoot and them move back a win-win-win.

Not to mention that the barrage line that leads to logistic is vastly superior most of the time, as you usually want to finish their units of via archers to avoid your melee moving foward on kill and getting flanked or in range of even more of their backline.
 
Dark, my friend, you're missing my intention here. I explained as I concluded last post, though I acknowledge we've both gotten a little long-winded here on the marathon tangent.

First, what you're saying is not wrong.. I don't mean to invalidate your opinion re: marathon, though I think you exaggerate a little... and yes on paper (or in notepad) everything w/ promos and AI works just fine... the AI DOES know how to use range/indirect well enough, as was proven to me by that one devil bowman that one game (he had logistics already, too; great wall in hills/mountains had allowed horseless nebu to really xp farm his neighbours), but in REALITY the AI just never gets to this status in most games.. whereas all the other combos I've seen at times on AI units.

I don't dispute that its making good decisions in the context of what it has to work with.. it absolutely SHOULD get logistics first... and its doing much better than vanilla at keeping units alive, but the way things work out, is that the human seems to always get this one big advantage that the AI doesn't. So far no one, including yourself, has confirmed ever having observed even one instance of this promo combo on an AI unit.. so the possibility of this being a real disparity in war, a weak spot for the AI as you acknowledge, seems somewhat legit for now. It might be nothing to the community, sure, but then again it might be worth closing the gap if there is one, especially where a small tweak to the rule at issue here might have disproportionate effect. In my own context, it would definitely bring my almost-untouchable ranged units forward a tile and into striking range quite often against AI, especially when I'm playing tall.

FYI unitcombat_archer in VP extends through all ranged units; doesn't end at machine guns or any other milestone. Your discussion of planes and industrial is irrelevant.. I'm realizing you were not necessarily the intended audience for this post, but I appreciate your feedback anyway.

Personally, I don't have a problem with a human player having more xp generally, i think that works fine, and is balanced well enough by the AI unit spam on deity, though if it were reduced I'd appreciate the mitigating effect it had on this high level unit. There is something inelegant about applying asymmetrical xp rules I think, but I'd still take it.

I'm not asking Gazebo make this change at all, however; thats what his github is for. I'm hoping for ideas from you forum vets that I can implement into my own fork... while my own idea might address the issue, I can't do the dll work that I'm pretty sure it would take. If its lua, mind you, I might just need a hint, as I can usually sort things out once started there.
 
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Them this is an issue you are facing that I sadly, have no diea for you, for I rarely go for archer nowdays ( I prefer the skirmshers) and wen i do, its always logistics for me and I often dont even get range because of the power decrease, and unless youre using those invencible archer to conquer the world every single game eventually bombers will happen and those archers are invencible no more, if you think indirect fire is making the game to easy them go ahead and remove it from the possible promotions, I am 100% positive to "fix" your probrem removing the extra range would be the correct approach but the thing is that the extra range is not only balanced vs double attacks it is also balanced vs barrage, and as I said on my last post, itts the overall better line for archers because unless youre super winning you dont want your melee dudes killing their guys and moving foward deeper into their territory.

Indirect fire promotion always looked to me as a niche pick vs a opponent on really dence forest/jungle or a quality of life my archer can always fire from their max range every time.

Indirect fire and range are overall much more usefull to the siege line of units tham they are to the archer line, because the archers can sometimes take a hit, the siege cannot.
 
And my earlier point is that the extra damage from logistic is not even the main point, the unit is also literally getting twice the experience of the +range one, not to mention logistic is also a great defensive tool as it allows you to shoot and them move back a win-win-win.

right, so I think we agree logistics is strong but works just fine: the AI accesses logistics w/o issue, as already noted.

Them this is an issue you are facing that I sadly, have no diea for you,

Yes, I've realized this already. That said, you were still helpful in my brainstorming here, so thank you:

for I rarely go for archer nowdays ( I prefer the skirmshers)

skirmishers are also unitcombat_archer. So my proposal of restricting indirect to original unit range would not work out so well for them, now that I think this through a little further on your cue there... Xp change is maybe the only way to get at this after all. I'll keep an eye out in case any good ideas come through though, feels like things just need a small tweak to work right..
 
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