infantry upgrade tree

[The_Coyote]

started to play and yes it´s funny, three loses in a row [noble, two vision and one time i was overrun by the AI] .
I lost only one city to punks so far (nearly founded, was attacked three turns in a row and so they overrun my two Crossbows), but was fast conquererd back.
Perhaps trying it with some kind of event, (opt.: make a single punk to a punk leader unit), create an event, in the ruins of city X near city Y a punk horde of was seen and create the punk leader with some unit

 

[davidlallen]

started to play and yes it´s funny, three loses in a row [noble, two vision and one time i was overrun by the AI] .

Thanks for the info. On the vision losses, I would like to know more. About what turn number did it happen? Did you have any warning that it was happening? If so, did you feel like there was anything you could do about it? For example, had you already founded a capitol and started sending advocates?

 

[Polycrates]

You have made a bunch of really good points. All of this can be adjusted in the XML, so after some more thought, I put in the following changes to my local version.

+ Increased ute strength to 9. Until people complain it is too strong, I will keep bumping it up a little.
+ Combined "gun" unitcombat, including guardian, into "ranged"
+ Changed flamethrower to anti-personnel (melee and ranged). This makes it a guardian counter. We still have AT inf as vehicle counter.
+ Replace ranger promotion and guerilla series with woodsman series, big terrain bonuses for infantry and cavalry only
+ Removed City Raider promotion and defense bonus from all wheeled vehicles
+ Reduced strength of catapult from 10 to 8, increased bombard damage from 8 to 16. With city raider removed from most units, you will need it more. With the lower strength, the AI should stop using it as a scout!
+ Remove jeep crossbow. By the time you have refining you have small arms so you would build the jeep rifle instead.
+ Left biker as-is. The real purpose of this unit is a fast, cheap barbarian raider. It works well for this, I keep losing workers and damaged units to them, but they can't really threaten even a survivor who is fortified in a city.

I think this addresses all the key points you raised. What do you think?

Sounds good to me! Shame about the jeep crossbow, but I think it's a good call.

As for bikers, that still leaves the human-built version kinda useless. There's no situation where a biker would ever have a combat advantage against another full-healed unit (barring huge promos), so there's not much reason to build them. One thought: if you gave them str8 with -25% city combat, that would keep them just as bad against cities (actually slightly worse, I think) but make them useful outdoors. It would also let them act as a useful counter to cavalry (at least when cost is taken into account), which could be a good thing.

As for terrain stuff, yeah it's a bit of a tricky one to combine hill/forest/jungle bonuses. It could work with some lower bonuses to both (10% or something); but perhaps boosted forms of both Guerrilla and Woodsman individually might work better (and I think there's room for both of them if they're each strong enough). I reckon Fall From Heaven had the right idea here by also giving attack bonuses at all levels of the promo. E.g:

Level 1: +25% defence, +15% attack
Level 2: +20% defence, +20% attack, double movement
Woodsman 3/Guerrilla 3: As in vanilla (attack bonus plus special bonuses)

That way, level 2 guys have a 10% bonus on attack vs unpromoted infantry, unprotected vehicles are slaughtered in terrain (as you'd expect), and attack gets more of a chance, so infantry forest fights don't get bogged down in eternal defensive stalemates.

 

[Deon]

If I implement my tech-tree, what about a gangster unit? If you see, you can get "Mafia" tech which allows you to get "Cosa Nostra" social civic. I'd like to have here a "gangster" unit which has a strength of guardian and some gangster-specific promotions which help them to fend off early and mid-game vehicles.
This would be another way to get combat units without researching the engines/arms branches.
The more different tactics, the better, right? Also really armed gangsters do not require ability to make weapons en masse.
They should require the [("mafia") and [("salvaging") or ("caravans")]] technologies - that's how the real mafiozi get their weapons, through salvaging or trade .
Also it would be good to allow to train them only if the mafia civic is enabled and to disband them when it changes, it will make it a hard decision to advance further if your defence is based on gangsters, and it would be real because in RL it wouldn't be easy to switch from huge population-wide families to something else.

Then we'll need an allmighty seZereth or another god of modelling to make a gangster unit .
I have 2 ideas on his look:
1) Yakuza-like, 3 or 4 men for 1 unit, in black cloth/leather tight clothes, one with a wakizashi, one with a rifle and one with a bomb. They should get very customizable promotions as I told.
2) Sicilia mafia-like, men in suits and in hats, with tommyguns.

 

[davidlallen]

I am not so sure about gangsters. I think a little corruption fits the post-apocalyptic theme well, so I am in favor of casinos, black markets, and so forth. But I don't want to focus very much in this mod on organized crime.

 

[Deon]

I am not so sure about gangsters. I think a little corruption fits the post-apocalyptic theme well, so I am in favor of casinos, black markets, and so forth. But I don't want to focus very much in this mod on organized crime.

Well, I think everything post-apocalyptic should become crime-filled if you go the wrong path =).
I just remembered the fallout families and gangsters and they seemed nice.
However if you think more then yes maybe it's a too specific unit to make.
What about a guardian unit avaliable at "mafia" tech? So they'll require small arms OR mafia. This would mean that crime lords/secret society can get weapons in illegal way to train their mercs and provide them for city defence but they won't go further because more advanced weaponry requires mass-production and control to be used in armies?