infantry upgrade tree

[davidlallen]

I'd like some advice on how to handle the infantry upgrade tree. Today I have a wrench-armed survivor, a rifle-armed guardian, and a machine gunner. In version 0.6 I will move the SAM guy so he can be built directly, instead of coming from the depot spawn point. Also I have added the AT guy from vanilla. So that makes 5 different foot units.

Upgrades seem to be really expensive, or at least way more than I am willing to pay. The game engine computes the upgrade cost somehow. Today the survivor can upgrade to guardian, but it costs 155 gold each. In the mid or late game I can build a guardian in 4-5 turns and I only have maybe 700-900 gold in my treasury, so I would never spend 155 on an upgrade.

I can override the price easily (for example, upgrading worker to highway worker is free by design) but I don't understand the base computation.

Refar commented that it should not be possible to upgrade everybody to everybody, or else all the end game units will be the same ones.

Any suggestions on adding more, useful infantry, or how to handle the upgrade tree and pricing?

 

[Jabie]

Machine guns count as the defensive, maybe you could use an offensive unit akin to Marines. Call them "Stormrunners" or somesuch.

One promotion which would fit quite well in the game is the Desert Adaptation promotion from the Desert War scenario that came with Civ4 originally. I imagine it's just a case of nicking the relevant lines of XML.

 

[seZereth]

i would suggest making the Guardian be able to get the SAM or AT promotion when you have a depot. then simply add the bonus against AIR / TANKS and update the grafics (which is definitely possible). I think that is the best way.
Guardians should be the main Ground fighting force.
If you want, I can do some more units, maybe as an offensive promotion, with helmets and automatic rifles...

 

[davidlallen]

@Jabie - I looked into the Desert Adaptation promotion tree, I had not noticed that before. I am already using part of it in the Road Warrior promotion -- double movement in desert. I am not 100% happy with the RW promotion today. I wanted to give +25% on "open terrain" -- tundra, desert, plains, grassland, but not hills, jungle or forest. What I wound up with is a +25% with -10% for hills, forest, or jungle. This is complex but it comes out to +25% on flat with +15% on hills *or* forest *or* jungle, and +5% on hills *and* (forest or jungle). There is no simpler way outside of the SDK.

I think a plus on "just desert" may be too specific.

 

[davidlallen]

@seZereth: giving SAM and AT as a promotion is an interesting idea. We should discuss this more. There are a few different mechanics, such as promotion, unit upgrade, or new unit. Each of them has some different tradeoffs.

From the mechanics standpoint, I am not yet able to get the unit graphics to switch correctly when a promotion changes. Refar has gotten me started by contributing the "grounded gunship" artwork, so when a gunship is out of gas it is on the ground instead of hovering. I can switch them, but I am having some trouble getting the "next experience level" right. Please see this thread for the technical discussion.

Promotions with different graphics for the ute will definitely be cool, I want that. For infantry I am not sure yet.

 

[Refar]

I think a plus on "just desert" may be too specific.

Your maps have a lot of desert tho

I am with seZereth on upgradeable - [SIZE="+1"]Edit:[/SIZE] via Promotion, not via Gold-Upgrade - multi-role guardian. Seems a cool way to prolongue a units lifespan and something i did not seen in other mods so far (well to be honest i did not play that many mods...)

The AT / SAM variants of guardian should be slightly weaker, than the "real" AT/SAM Soldiesr you can get from depots, keeping those depot soldiers usefull / desired but still giving a civ that was not lucky enought to pop many of them a chance to stand against a tank assault.

Mercenary system might be cool - but i would like it simple so the AI can actually get something of it - i am thinking a "One-Per-Civ" Building, that has a chance to pop a merc from time to time. Those mercs could come with a random promotion.

This would make it simple enought so the AI can just use a merc if it pops one, and still gives those mercs some "unique personality"

 

[davidlallen]

On the discussion of bidding for unique mercs, and whether the AI can do it, I am not too worried about the AI part. I am more worried about the multi-player part. It would come as an after-turn event with a popup, and I can access all the AI's "bank accounts" to see how much they would bid. I have no idea how this would work in a multiplayer game, either simultaneous or hotseat.

Does anybody know of a working model for bidding type events? If there isn't one, I will drop that particular idea to near the bottom of the to-do list.

 

[davidlallen]

On the discussion of promotions vs upgrades for SAM and AT, the only difference I can see is that one comes from experience and the other comes from gold. I am not aware of any other mod that gives such big advantages by promotions, as the ones I have for the ute like weapon mount. (+50% !) This one is important for the feel of an elite unit that has been through a lot and can take on anybody.

In the case of SAM/AT, I think it is more access to the right kind of equipment, which you get from a munitions resource or depot. So it seems to fit the upgrade/new unit model, rather than the promotion model. I have switched the SAM and AT to be buildable in version 0.6.

Maybe the right upgrade path is survivor -> guardian, guardian to any one of machine gunner, SAM or AT, and that's it. With linked unit art, I think this might come out well. What do you think?

 

[Refar]

This one is important for the feel of an elite unit that has been through a lot and can take on anybody.

This is exactly what i was thinking on the guardian unit, as i like the idea of same units beeing useable through a long period of time. (Like the better part of the whole game . Would be great if you can achieve it with UTE, but a additional foot unit with similar boon would not harm)

Also a promotion somehow "feels" better, if you are going to use the same art for the 3 (i.e. seZereth "Old Guy")

There is another difference but Money - ungraded veteran units loose XP and are unlikely to achieve promotions ever again (unless they were rookies - in which case there is not point upgrading them).

Promoted units keep XP, so they only need to collect those needed for a new level, rather than re-gaining lost XP.

While thie nets in maybe just one extra promotion in the end - or maybe even none - those promos become XP expensive rather fast - but it helps preserve the "Veteran Feel" of the unit.

Maybe the right upgrade path is survivor -> guardian, guardian to any one of machine gunner, SAM or AT, and that's it. With linked unit art, I think this might come out well. What do you think?

Upgrading Guardian to MG/SAM/AT would leave us with specialized choices only, without a general purpose infantry at that point of the game. But if you re-add some kind of regulat infantry, it's fine.

Buildable SAM/AT are a definitely step forward IMO.

Overall with 0.6 rather close i would prefer seeing trying it first with the changes made so far, and then look if and what needs to be improved or changed.

 

[Polycrates]

At the moment, the early-game infantry balance seems a little off.

The survivor gets eaten by anything else around - completely fair enough, but maybe it gets eaten a little too badly, too quickly. If they could hold off a poorly-planned rush of a couple of early-tech units through sheer numbers, that might work better. But I think they themselves are okay, it's maybe just an issue with the crossbowman and the guardian.

The crossbowman's only role seems to be an ultra-early rush. Sure, it can stop an early survivor-rush cold, but so can other survivors at a quarter of the price. It has this tiny window where it can do a (kinda cheesy) bumrush of an enemy capital before they've got any defenders better than survivors (and this is the sort of mechanic where a human can exploit the hell out of the ai's weaknesses), and then after that it's kinda useless.

Also, the guardian obsoletes them both very quickly, especially since the tech can be found from a village within the first few turns.
This happened to me in one game, and in the vulnerable early turns, I was unable to build any units that cost less than 60 hammers.
Similarly, the guardian makes the crossbowman irrelevant since it can do everything as well as or better than the crossbowman for the same price.

And the guardian is pretty much untouchable by anything else around for quite a long while - it has high strength and no counters, and it can get both city raider and city garrison promos.

As a side note, it seems really counterintuitive to me that firefighters are anti-vehicle rather than anti-infantry. For earlyish anti-vehicle, how about molotov throwers? Give one of your many fantastic infantry guys the grenadier animation and a lit bottle in their hand, and you're in business. Firefighters would perhaps make more sense as a later-game anti-infantry unit.

As a fix, I would suggest perhaps first retooling crossbowmen as more a useful defensive unit. Maybe halve the price and give them their bonus on defense only (or even a blanket +50% on defense vs infantry and make them cost 40 or something). A city garrison bonus could possibly work here too.
I would also move guardians further down the tech tree and give them an achilles' heel of some sort. To be honest, the whole early tech tree seems a bit crowded with units, and there's a lot of cool units that don't fully get their chance to shine. A bit more depth to the early, cheap parts of the tech tree might help with that?

As far as early rushes, I think your horseman fits that role nicely - it's deadly for rushing, but with its high cost and resource requirements, it takes a bit of planning and dedication (like the axeman in vanilla) - and it can be countered. I like it.

 

[davidlallen]

You have some very well-thought-out observations. Thanks!

Let us discuss the tech tree part on the "possible new techs" thread.

Regarding the flamethrower unit, this is the second or third comment I have gotten about its unexpected effect, I guess I should change it. There is a scene in Mad Max: Road Warrior where an emplaced flamethrower trashes one of the attacking cars; that is why I set it up that way.

I like the idea of molotov-throwers as an early counter to vehicles. There is a molotov guy somewhere in the revolutions mod, maybe I will look that up.

In my games I come to Small Arms fairly late, so I considered that the crossbow had a long enough life. Especially in the case of popping Small Arms from a goody hut, I can see this is not always true. I was considering giving the crossbowman his 50% bonus also against animals, since I have more trouble with animals than rushing AI's in the early game.

Partly unrelated note, I think the game should work correctly in network multiplayer, but I am not aware of anybody who has tried it that way (including myself). A special bonus for the first network MP feedback!

This is definitely worth some more thought and discussion.

 

[Polycrates]

I agree that you've got pretty much all the units you need (though I have to admit I'd love to see a V8 interceptor thrown in there somewhere, somehow ), so I would be inclined to go the opposite way and really cement the intended roles (and strengths/weaknesses/niches) of the various units and the approximate time you want them to appear, and then from there pad the tech tree out as needed so that units don't overlap. After all, it's the units that are the real stars of this mod (and it's hard to make infantry balance suggestions independently of vehicles).

Maybe as a starting point: at a tactical level, what's your general idea with infantry vs vehicles etc?
My thoughts as an example:

I would see infantry as the best defenders, the best at using terrain, good at city assault if they ever get that far, reasonably cheap, and very vulnerable out in the open. They're also the guys who would be the most specialised from the start (eg the antitank/antiair etc)

I would see light/road vehicles as being pretty ordinary defenders, pretty lousy with terrain, fairly expensive, very fast, and dominantly powerful on open ground and roads/highways. Not so great in cities but fantastic for destroying enemy stacks in the open, for pillaging, and controlling territory to support the advance of city-busting units or prevent the advance of the enemy etc.

I would see heavy vehicles as being better all-rounders; pretty fast, high brute strength, not terrible in terrain but not as overwhelmingly powerful in the open as light vehicles, capable city attackers, but expensive and with fuel limitations. Horsemen would probably fit closest as the early version of this category, I would reckon (partly because of their strength and because horses aren't hindered by terrain as much as cars etc).

The ute is its own special case (and damn it's an awesome unit!); closer to a light vehicle but versatile - customisable with its upgrades to be the deadliest road/open ground unit around (and thus a controller of territory), or into more of a heavy vehicle role or a specialised (anti-infantry?)/anti-vehicle/anti-air role.

Is that fairly close or waaay off base?

As a related note, is it possible to have combat bonuses based on roads/highways (and would you intend to if you could)? Flavourwise, it almost seems like a necessity, but it would seriously change the dynamics of the various units - dominating the roads with light vehicles would really be the key to making a fast advance along roads with other units; otherwise it would require moving cross-country to avoid annihilation. Could be fun; it would certainly expand tactical roles, at any rate.

 

[davidlallen]

Here's the way I tend to use the units. This doesn't mean it is the best way, and I am not sure it indicates any clear, grand strategy for the unit design.

Foot units: survivor, crossbow, guardian, flamethrower: city defense. In the early game, exploration and settler escort. In 0.5 the SAM spawned in depots and I used them in a slow city attack role because of their base strength, but in 0.6 and later it is more rare.

Light vehicles: ute and cavalry. Scout, harrassment, pillaging. Midgame settler and fuel truck escort. Convenient because they do not need fuel, enough strength to (mostly) not fear random punk encounters. Today, even with a few good promotions, the ute cannot take on fortified city defenders.

Heavy vehicles: jeep rifle, humvee, tank. Primary attack units. In 0.6 there are a lot fewer tanks and the humvee comes later, so the jeep rifle shows up a lot more for me now.

Rarely built: biker, jeep crossbow, catapult, artillery, gunship. Even though artillery spawns for free, I tend to use the heavy vehicles to make offensives go fast with movement 2, and the artillery always winds up lagging behind. For some reason I rarely research flight so I rarely get gunships.

I added the crossbow and flamethrower based on early feedback about missing rock/paper/scissors interaction. Crossbow is a melee counter, flamethrower today is a vehicle counter, AT could be a vehicle counter. You have made an excellent point that there is no guardian counter and the crossbow is not a very effective counter. I am not sure what to do about it. Maybe Guardian should be in a different unitcombat; it is a gunpowder unit like tanks, which may not be the best choice. Maybe it works better in "ranged", which would allow a different set of counters.

 

[davidlallen]

As a related note, is it possible to have combat bonuses based on roads/highways (and would you intend to if you could)? Flavourwise, it almost seems like a necessity, but it would seriously change the dynamics of the various units - dominating the roads with light vehicles would really be the key to making a fast advance along roads with other units; otherwise it would require moving cross-country to avoid annihilation. Could be fun; it would certainly expand tactical roles, at any rate.

Interesting suggestion about combat bonuses specifically for being on road/highway. There is no way to do it outside of the SDK. If I could detect being on road/highway, there are two things I would use it for. First, I would prevent foot units from getting fast movement on the highway. It is handy, but "feels" wrong, to put my survivor on a highway and explore along at a movement rate of 7. Second, I would re-do the Road Warrior promotion for the ute. Today the text is complicated, but it works out to a big bonus on "flats" with much less bonus if there are obstacles like hills, forest, jungle. It seems clear that the RW promotion ""should"" apply to roads.

 

[Polycrates]

Here's the way I tend to use the units. This doesn't mean it is the best way, and I am not sure it indicates any clear, grand strategy for the unit design.

Foot units: survivor, crossbow, guardian, flamethrower: city defense. In the early game, exploration and settler escort. In 0.5 the SAM spawned in depots and I used them in a slow city attack role because of their base strength, but in 0.6 and later it is more rare.

Light vehicles: ute and cavalry. Scout, harrassment, pillaging. Midgame settler and fuel truck escort. Convenient because they do not need fuel, enough strength to (mostly) not fear random punk encounters. Today, even with a few good promotions, the ute cannot take on fortified city defenders.

Heavy vehicles: jeep rifle, humvee, tank. Primary attack units. In 0.6 there are a lot fewer tanks and the humvee comes later, so the jeep rifle shows up a lot more for me now.

Rarely built: biker, jeep crossbow, catapult, artillery, gunship. Even though artillery spawns for free, I tend to use the heavy vehicles to make offensives go fast with movement 2, and the artillery always winds up lagging behind. For some reason I rarely research flight so I rarely get gunships.

I added the crossbow and flamethrower based on early feedback about missing rock/paper/scissors interaction. Crossbow is a melee counter, flamethrower today is a vehicle counter, AT could be a vehicle counter. You have made an excellent point that there is no guardian counter and the crossbow is not a very effective counter. I am not sure what to do about it. Maybe Guardian should be in a different unitcombat; it is a gunpowder unit like tanks, which may not be the best choice. Maybe it works better in "ranged", which would allow a different set of counters.

Yeah, I agree with a lot of this assessment, and pretty much exactly the same barely used units. I reckon you'd get better mileage out of some of the units with a clear role for their time period. That's kinda why I suggested the infantry/light vehicle/heavy vehicle thing as (potential) general categories for unit roles so everything gets a necessary job to be good at.
So e.g bikers could be the early "light vehicle" role unit - fast, cheap, good outside cities; and cavalry the early "heavy vehicle" (as-is, they fit this role really well - prohibitive resource requirements, high cost, brute strength etc). Bikers are too weak to beat anyone even on open ground, and they're too late to really be a scout-equivalent. But I think strengthening them in that sort of hybrid scout/outdoor-fighter role could work well. Maybe a higher strength with a corresponding penalty to city combat; maybe a free sentry I promo
The jeep crossbow - I'm not sure exactly where that fits, which I think is part of its problem. Don't really have any constructive suggestions right now.

As for artillery/catapults - almost every unit can currently get the City Raider promos - these are an incredibly powerful set of promos (a whopping +75%, +85% vs guardians), and crazy powerful on strong fast-moving units (and vehicles can get CR2 straight out of the garage too). I reckon you ought to seriously consider limiting the City Raider promotions to infantry + tanks (+siege?). Heavy vehicles would still have a significant city assault role - fast, surprise assaults on weakly defended cities deeper in their lines, and as support against the big cities; but they would struggle taking well-defended cities alone.
It makes sense, too; vehicles are going to have trouble getting past the most rudimentary of rubble barricades, and they're not ideal vs infantry dug into buildings. Like in Road Warrior - the cars couldn't get past the fort wall and they needed guys on foot to scale their way in.

That way, you actually need artillery for city assaults unless you're prepared to face huge troop losses. A slow-moving stack of siege and infantry would then make up viable heavy assault forces, but would have to be defended carefully from the vehicles that would make easy pickings of them out in the wastes. This gives infantry more of an offensive role too (and if you're waiting for infantry too, the artillery isn't "lagging behind" so much).

One thing about having infantry in a purely defensive role is that using them becomes kinda a case of build-fortify-forget, which seems kinda a waste of cool concepts and amazing art, when they'd be way more fun mixing it up a little. I reckon you could probably use more excuses to get them out of the house. City assault is one; control of rough terrain could be another- in real life, pretty much every vehicle except the tank is far worse in rough terrain than anything in vanilla - it could be an interesting dynamic to reflect that (and make the terrain more strategically interesting too) with a bigger terrain influence. There's a bunch of things you could do for that - examples: bring back the woodsman promos and beef both them and guerrilla promos up; remove defensive bonuses from light vehicles (or even all vehicles); give infantry an attack bonus vs vehicles in terrain; have some terrain-compensation promo for vehicles; give horsemen some terrain bonus too (after all, guys on horses fare way better than guys in cars in hilly forests).

Anyway that all got rambly again so sorry about that

 

[davidlallen]

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?

 

[Refar]

Sounds good.

I had a few other things on account of units:

Flametrhower would make sense with a bonus vs. Animals - those really do not like fire. I am not sure - i think animals are combat type melee.

I would like to see *some* animals that are actually "Animals" - i.e. will not go into cultural land.

My Suggestion would be make Wolfes and Spiders animals again (so they will not enter safety boarders.)
Deathclaw, Radscorp and Horse (those would make more sense as animals, but they need to go inside boarders...) beeing Barbarians, so they will enter Boarders.

Also humanoid Barbs might need a small boost - right now i am more afraid of radscorps than of those. Meybe revisit some units - i feel i.e. Barb Catapults beeing odd - they do not have the Ability/AI to actually be dagerous, but they look odd, walking the land on they own. Also Barbarian Punks probaly not have the KnowHow/Organization to field those.

 

[davidlallen]

I will think a little bit more about animals.

Regarding punks, it is true they "top out" with utes. In vanilla, I don't recall what barbs "top out" at, but I know there are always barb catapults running around. I figured that eventually they would assault a city, and without the cats it would be ineffective. I haven't looked into the barb AI, I just made sure to disallow any more powerful units.

Today there are kind of three phases to the game: "don't get killed by animals", "expand and don't get killed by punks", and "deal with the other players". In my playtests, even with the new safety rules, the fog rules greatly limit how many barbs can appear. Even if they got more effective units, their numbers might be too small by that time.

I had been vaguely thinking about barb "great generals". In terms of AI, these would wander around the wasteland for a while and act like a magnet which made the other barbs flock in a small area or a single stack. Then they would change gears and beeline for a city, and then another city, and so on until dead or ineffective.

I don't know if the real barb AI has any of this behavior. Probably not.

 

[Refar]

I must say the "Don't get killed by punks" never happened to me. I lost a city to barbs once - but there was swarm of deathclaw, and the barb Punk only the tip of it.

I agree that barbs should max out. Not getting Gas Powered units makes sense. I was even seriously concidering suggesting denying them the UTE (and hence leaving the Bike they only motorized unit.) This would have the benefit, that all barbs (but the Catapult) would actually be "Unique Punk units"

Then - since most Barb Units are unique to barbs anyway - you can make them dangeroud without allowing access to high tier units. Make those Barb UU's have higher base strenght, than the Survivor Counterparts.
(While normal Survivor Crossbows, Guardians, etc are "normal People" those punks are vicious and only know fighting and pillaging, so they are more dangerous.)

Say:
Punk Biker 10
Punk Crossbow 10
Riffleman 14

You would still have good chancec to stand against them - A survivor crossbow (8:strenght fortified in a city or on defensive terrain, would beat Punk Bikes/Crossbowmen. But they will be a serious danger for weakly defended towns, lone explorers etc.
I.e. the Riffleman, would be the "Best Barb" - stronger than a deathclaw and quite dangerous to any non-military units.
Those Punk Riffles usually start popping up in my games, towards the end, when i burn lots of cities - makes sense that this causes some unrest

-----

A supplementary option would be giving the Barb Punks a random promotion when they are created. Some might get something useless, or noting at all, while other could get CR and become quite a PITA.

-----

There is another thing i noticed with your changes:
+ Replace ranger promotion and guerilla series with woodsman series, big terrain bonuses for infantry and cavalry only

1) Why remove Guerilla ? It's the same as woodsman just for Hills. I would leave it for more choices - you can go Woodsman for Forest Defense or Guerialla for Hill Defense depending on terrain.

2) Cavalry does not receive defensive bonus, so i expect those Terrain-Defense promos not to work on them. Did not check it however.

 

[davidlallen]

I must say the "Don't get killed by punks" never happened to me. I lost a city to barbs once - but there was swarm of deathclaw, and the barb Punk only the tip of it.

Let's get more feedback on this. I find barbs to be quite a pain at the current strength. I often have a 2-3 level ute which is starting to be interesting, but it gets hit by one punk, then another punk kills it while it is healing.

There is another thing i noticed with your changes:
+ Replace ranger promotion and guerilla series with woodsman series, big terrain bonuses for infantry and cavalry only

1) Why remove Guerilla ? It's the same as woodsman just for Hills. I would leave it for more choices - you can go Woodsman for Forest Defense or Guerialla for Hill Defense depending on terrain.

2) Cavalry does not receive defensive bonus, so i expect those Terrain-Defense promos not to work on them. Did not check it however.

I don't think it is quite worth having two different promotion series for this, it seems like "overspecialization". In what I have locally, level 1 gives +25% defense in jungle or forest and +25% vs animals, level 2 gives +25% attack in jungle or forest, and level 3 gives double move in jungle or forest.

I would like to add +25% in hills to this. But then you get +50% in forest hills, which seems excessive. I had the same problem with Road Warrior, I want one plus on "flat" and a smaller or zero plus on "other", but there is no way to get that with the current xml.

Regarding cavalry, Polycrates suggested and I agree, that they should qualify for terrain bonus in general. I changed that locally as well.