Japanese units always fight at full strength?!??

[hardcore_gamer]

I just finished watching the live stream where they spent almost 2 and a half hour talking about Civ 5 and one thing that caught my attention was when they said that one of the Japanese special advantages was that Japanese army units always fight at full strength even when injured.

For example, if a unit with 6 men has a attack value of 6 while at full strength and only an attack value of 3 when at half strength then the Japanese unit would still retain its full level 6 strength even after having lost half its men and the only way to render it useless is destroying it completely.

This sounds horribly unbalanced to me and by the sound of it could give the Japanese huge advantages over other civs. There is a possibility that he was only talking about the Samurai unit I admit, but the way he phrased this ability did not directly indicate it, or did I miss something? This was a live feed after all so I could not watch that particular moment again to confirm this as a fact.

But if this is true, then is it really a wise design decision?

Discuss.

 

[Louis XXIV]

They still have less HP. A Japanese unit of 6 strength, but 2 HP would only need 2 hits to die, while a full strength one would need 10 hits.

It's also their only Unique Ability, so they're at disadvantages in other aspects of the game.

 

[VikingMaekel]

That is in fact Japan's SA: Bushido
Works for all their units.

Is it unbalanced? I don't know I'll play the game first
Friendly reminder: Civ is not a wrgame, it is a game where you can have war ;p

 

[Ogrelord]

Samurai vs French Musketeers.

Who won by the end of the broadcast? The French.
Rank when game ended:

1. Unknown Player
2. France
3.
4.
5.
6.
7. 2k Greg

 

[Wuddel]

Hard to say at this point. You still will know which units are injured and can pick them off with ranged units.

 

[bjbrains]

Yea, I wouldn't call it overpowered at all. First off, this isn't Civ 4, and it does not look like there's a direct reduction in strength based on hp (aka, a unit with 2/10 hps fights at 20% strength), so it's not that extreme of a bonus. It also gives you absolutely no economic advantages whatsoever (one of the few that doesn't). And it's not like Japan has an especially early UU to take advantage of it (since Samurai are late medieval, and zeros are late industrial).

 

[dodobird]

well the live feed showed injured samurai defeating uninjured riflemen id say thats pretty powerful

 

[Zhahz]

Discuss.

Already been discussed thoroughly.

 

[Schuesseled]

Yes very throughly.

I am now of the opinion that the japanese are bloomin awesome. Those samurai were ripping those riflemen apart, until they all died horribly of course.

 

[Polobo]

Samurai vs French Musketeers.

Who won by the end of the broadcast? The French.
Rank when game ended:

1. Unknown Player
2. France
3.
4.
5.
6.
7. 2k Greg

Except it was more like Samurai vs. Artillery; the game was lost long before the Samurai came onto the battlefield.

 

[Schuesseled]

he started with samurai on the abttlefield but unfortunately for greg, as soon as he pressed next turn the first time, riflemen quickly replaced napoleons other units. I was alike he's beeped, but then the samurai actually did suprisingly well, well at least for a while.

 

[Feyd Rautha]

If he'd continued his strategy he could have kept them at a stalemate if he just kept sacrificing units over at the Suez. We pushed him to it.

Granted previous posters were correct. The game was over before he started. Say what you will about lack of expansion in this game as a strategy, but I imagine a few more cities taking advantage of the natural resources in Africa. No costal cities? Barely improved territory? "C'est la vie...c'est la mord" as Napoleon would say in a few turns after the game closed.

FYI, no way I'd ever make it in Immortal either so kudos for lasting 211 turns!

 

[SeismoGraf]

Bushido will be strong. In the stream they said you should fight the Japanese with ranged units. Certainly you want to minimize the number of melee attacks on Japanese units, prior to the expected kill. Especially avoid attacking with injured melee units of your own (bad surprise, if you accidentally confuse a Japanese with an English unit).

There will be two types of fights: those against the Japanese or those against all other Civs. The American, Iroquois and English will be a bit special, too, but their UA is comparable to a unit promotion.

From the Japanese perspective, with Bushido they must balance the risk of losing wounded units with taking advantage of their full combat strength. Ranged units will probably benefit less from their UA, because they normally fight from further back and at full health.

All this fighting made me curious to see the detailed combat mechanics/formulas...

 

[migkillertwo]

I just finished watching the live stream where they spent almost 2 and a half hour talking about Civ 5 and one thing that caught my attention was when they said that one of the Japanese special advantages was that Japanese army units always fight at full strength even when injured.

For example, if a unit with 6 men has a attack value of 6 while at full strength and only an attack value of 3 when at half strength then the Japanese unit would still retain its full level 6 strength even after having lost half its men and the only way to render it useless is destroying it completely.

This sounds horribly unbalanced to me and by the sound of it could give the Japanese huge advantages over other civs. There is a possibility that he was only talking about the Samurai unit I admit, but the way he phrased this ability did not directly indicate it, or did I miss something? This was a live feed after all so I could not watch that particular moment again to confirm this as a fact.

But if this is true, then is it really a wise design decision?

Discuss.

others have said that they still have fewer hit points. But Greg pointed out in the ustream feed that you can counter this with ranged units, and we saw already that ranged units are very powerful. Indeed, I think we're going to hear a lot of complaints in the future that ranged units are overpowered given that they can destroy units outright from afar.

I personally welcome the change though

 

[InterAl]

Before the samurai war part, they talked about how low-tech units cannot destroy high-tech units (mathematically impossible, no less). Yet the samurais did beat the out of the riflemen more than once in that video.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Before the samurai war part, they talked about how low-tech units cannot destroy high-tech units (mathematically impossible, no less). Yet the samurais did beat the out of the riflemen more than once in that video.

Samurai< Rifleman

Spear <<< Tank

 

[Louis XXIV]

He had terrain, flanking, and a great general, though.

 

[InterAl]

Samurai< Rifleman

Spear <<< Tank

Sure, but that's also true in any Civ game. They said it's impossible, yet we clearly saw it's not.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Sure, but that's also true in any Civ game. They said it's impossible, yet we clearly saw it's not.

They talked about a Drastically higher tech unit

Riflemen are basically the next upgrade from Samurai... 24 v. 18 or something like that?

At that point, the lower power unit can win (although if poth are fully healthy, probably neither will die)
Also if the Samurai has bonuses, they might actually be More powerful


A Tank is probably 3-5 x more powerful than a spear, at that point.
1. A Healthy Tank will never die to a Spear
2. A Healthy Spear will almost certainly die to the tank
3. Even a Spear with extreme bonuses would probably still be outclassed by the tank in power so it would not die


The point is not
Higher tech Always beats lower tech
it is
The Stronger unit will Not lose to the weaker one if there is a big enough gap in their strength. (accounting for health, etc.)

 

[Ahriman]

But if this is true, then is it really a wise design decision?

Its really too soon to tell, because we don't know the details of the combat mechanism or how strength degrades as you take damage.

Its not the same as it was in Civ4.