light unit/heavy unit dichotomy?

[migkillertwo]

THis is more of a proposal for someone to mod, but I dont think it's entirely implausible or unrealistic

So here's a list detailing light and heavy units and their roles in a possible battle in civilization V

Heavy units:
-These units should perform much better in open combat than should light units. Heavy units would be the front line units that attack an enemy
-These units, however, are slow compared to light units, which is why they should, again, be used as front line units

Light units:
-These units will perform not so well in combat against their heavy counterparts, and because of this, they should not be used as front line units
-However, these units should be much faster than heavy units. As such, they should be the units that exploit weak spots and move to the enemy's rear in an attack, or they should be used as reserve units to respond to flanking attacks, or to plug holes that develop in a moving line.


And this could, theoretically, apply to all classes of units
Light tanks vs. heavy tanks
Light cavalry vs. heavy cavalry
Light infantry vs. heavy infantry

And the point to all of them is the same; Heavy units are your front line troops, light units are there to exploit enemy weak points

My reservation to this is that it would reduce Civ to that tired old rock-paper-scissors formula we've seen so many times before.

 

[spyroware]

I think light/heavy would make combat too convoluted. In most games that have such distiction I always end up recruiting the heavy units.

 

[insaneweasel]

I think light/heavy would make combat too convoluted. In most games that have such distiction I always end up recruiting the heavy units.

It worked fine in age of empires.

Seriously, why does everybody seem to want absurdly simple units?

 

[AriochIV]

Civ V does have a kind of light/heavy unit system. For example, spearmen and pikemen are "light" melee units, with slightly inferior stats, but they don't require resources. Swordsmen and Longswordsmen are the "heavy" infantry units, with better stats but limited by iron. There are also light and heavy mounted units: Horseman vs. Knight, Lancer vs. Cavalry.

 

[Disgustipated]

As mentioned above, the current system is pretty good, and you usually end up only building the heavy version.

ROM in civ4 had light tanks, medium tanks etc. I usually waited to build the heavy ones (it required additional tech), as the ai usually built those too.

 

[Polobo]

Light/Heavy infantry would make more sense if combat was truly tactical instead of psuedo-tactical. I figure within a warrior or swordman unit you'd have some "light" support units (edit: squads) in order to aid in tactical manoeuvers but at the strategic level they would operate as a single unit.

Not much use in strategically faster infantry if the front line that is needed to defend them is going to slow them down anyway.

 

[Xetal]

To do a reasonable job creating a difference between unit "weights" you would need to do two things.

The first is complicate the resource system so that some units can use more resources than others.

The second is to change the way maintenance costs work so that some units require 1 gold/turn while others require more.

I think this type of system would be good for the game, but it looks like they're not going in this direction. As far as we can tell, a battleship and a destroyer both require the same amount of resources and maintenance, as does a Mobile Sam and a Missile Cruiser.

I'd like to see Civ5 move away from the "all units are equal" model, but I'm guessing it is too late in development for that.