Japanese units always fight at full strength?!??

[Kordanor]

Well, I am also wondering whether its overpowered or not.
But to be able to make a decision about this we have to know first how fights are calculated.

Lets say that my Samurai is at 2/10 and the normal unit is at 6/10.
Now the first question is, with which power these units fight.
I guess the Samurai is fighting with 10. The other unit probably at 6, but as bjbrains stated it might also be different.
Now when these both are matched together, the question is how the fight is calculated.
IF the Samurai does 10 dmg instead of 2, and the normal unit 6 and gets screwed by the samurai I'd agree its too strong.

But we have to take into account the other civ abilities:
Germans: Seem to be pretty weak for me, at least in mid to endgame.
Americans: Also seem to be pretty weak if you arent into heavy tile buying.
Ottoman: Also pretty weak

but now lets take a look at the stronger (at least in my opinion) civs:
Iroquois - Jungles and Forests as roads? this means you save probably lots of cash for not having to maintain roads, probably huge.
Aztec: Culture for killing other units? Seems huge for me, depends on the amounts you get of course but they might be the only ones who can effectively fight their way to cultural victory.

Personally I like these strong individual characteristics of Civs. But honestly I doubt they will be balanced that well.

Edit: Another question is of course how fast 2k/Firaxis will react in patching obvious imbalances.

 

[Schuesseled]

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

no they said that killing a tank with a spearman was impossible, they never mentioned samurai and riflemen.

And it think its strange that for an impossible task there is an achievement based on it.

 

[civ_king]

Samurai should get absolutely slaughtered by European units, but no they some how are good
(in real life a samurai going toe to toe with a knight would lose horribly)

realism constantly gets sacrificed in Civ

 

[12agnar0k]

Yes the bushido ability is pretty cool, however did anyone else notice, the trebuche did hardly any damage when it had low health, so perhaps bushido only works for melee attacks, or doesn't work for siege units.

 

[Schuesseled]

Samurai were extremely deadly back in the day, it wasn't until pretty much every soldier could get thier hands on a gun that they went out of fashion.

 

[migkillertwo]

Yes the bushido ability is pretty cool, however did anyone else notice, the trebuche did hardly any damage when it had low health, so perhaps bushido only works for melee attacks, or doesn't work for siege units.

considering that the sort of damage that any ranged unit would inflict is purely physical and determined entirely by how much firepower they can project in a given amount of time, I'd say that it is entirely realistic that ranged combat would not be affected by bushido.

 

[Schuesseled]

i'm pretty sure it is, he killed an awful lot of units after he got damaged.

 

[Louis XXIV]

He killed two. I think that was luck, though. They generally lost to riflemen, they just did a ton of damage before going down.

 

[bjbrains]

He killed two. I think that was luck, though. They generally lost to riflemen, they just did a ton of damage before going down.

Don't forget that he almost always had a Great General within two tiles, as well as multiple promotions on top of the free shock 1. Rifleman with 25 versus 18 with samurai isn't especially bad to begin with.

 

[hardcore_gamer]

Samurai should get absolutely slaughtered by European units, but no they some how are good
(in real life a samurai going toe to toe with a knight would lose horribly)

realism constantly gets sacrificed in Civ

I don't recall Civ ever aiming to be very realistic.

Also, if would it not do horrible things to game balance if all Asian civs were at a disadvantage just for fighting against Europeans? This isn't a history simulator, if you want one then go play Europa Unuversalis 3.

 

[Polobo]

Samurai should get absolutely slaughtered by European units, but no they some how are good
(in real life a samurai going toe to toe with a knight would lose horribly)

realism constantly gets sacrificed in Civ

We all agree; and we prefer it that way.

If we wanted realism we'd turn off the computer and go outside.

 

[SeismoGraf]

A Katana can cut a body in two pieces with one powerful flourish, but using it on the plate armor of a knight is probably a bad idea. Also, it's not as if these riflemen did wield some shiny M1 Garand, but rather an unreliable and inaccurate piece of equipment available at the late Renaissance, where Rifling has been placed on the tech tree.

 

[civ_king]

Samurai were extremely deadly back in the day, it wasn't until pretty much every soldier could get thier hands on a gun that they went out of fashion.

deadly against peasants maybe, their armor could be cut with a knight's sword and the knight's armor would be impervious against a samurai's weapons. Contrary to popular belief the knight's armor wasn't difficult to move in (you could do friggin cartwheels in it!), they weren't slow and their weapons weren't heavy (very few weighed more than four pounds and the majority were three pounds or less)

 

[rastak]

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

What he SAID was an Ancient era unit cannot defeat a Modern unit.

 

[12agnar0k]

i'm pretty sure it is, he killed an awful lot of units after he got damaged.

No, I saw him fire 2 shots against a unit he normally would kill in two shots (the rifleman) and he barely got it under 75% hp. Certainly the HP amount affected the trebuche. The question is, is that limited to siege weapons, or all ranged units.

 

[SeismoGraf]

The trebuchet was a beast with 2 ranged attacks per turn and the AI seemed pretty oblivious of the danger. No serious attempt to destroy it. No tactical retreat to bait it onto more open terrain or at least avoid wasting units. How many kills and HP damage did the trebuchet inflict? Too many.

This reminded me of the BattleIsle franchise. Usually the player started with 2:1 or 3:1 numerical inferiority. The only way to win, was to conserve units, utilize choke points and let artillery gain lots of experience, by blasting away wave after wave.

 

[bjbrains]

Well, Napoleon hadn't counted on the trebuchet suddenly being able to shoot twice. Also remember that Napoleon is really aggressive and will not give up on wars easily - he's obviously willing to fight out a war of attrition, which he was definitely winning.

 

[ButSam]

You people crack me up. If you listen to a lot of the posts, Japanese ability is overpowered, and yet the Japanese ended up losing in the demo game to a force one level up in tech despite having a hold of the primary choke point.

Also, if I interpret the ability correctly, it is only when Japan attacks, not when Japan defends -- so Japanese units are still just as easy to kill, they just are more dangerous on offense.

 

[Louis XXIV]

Yeah, Napoleon's war of attrition was practically to his advantage. He waged wars against two other civs at the same time. His failed attempts to get through forced Japan to continue to stay in military mode, while Napoleon both expanded and advanced in tech.

Note: I'm not saying that he did it entirely intentionally. It's possible that he simply wanted to get through and did the other things independently, I'm just saying it wasn't too detrimental to him. In the end, Greg was boned

 

[SeismoGraf]

Also, if I interpret the ability correctly, it is only when Japan attacks, not when Japan defends -- so Japanese units are still just as easy to kill, they just are more dangerous on offense.

According to the Civ5 Analyst Site:

Bushido (Japan): Units fight as though they were at full strength even when damaged.

My guess is, that there is a simple linear relationship between hitpoints (HP) and combat strength. Each military unit, regardless of type, has 10 HP. At 5HP the unit has lost half of its men/material. Makes sense. Therefore it fights at only 50% of nominal strength. Half the amount of men - half the amount of damage.

A Japanese unit will always fight with 100% strength, whether it has 10, 5 or 1HP. So it will always inflict maximum damage, but be as "easy to kill" (*), as a regular wounded unit without the benefits of Bushido. My guess. Soon we'll have certainity.

(*) Inflicting major damage on the enemy, before dying, as in the word K.......