May 6 Balance Change Proposals

[pineappledan]

We are developing a bit of a backlog of change proposal ideas on the discord, and we have been asked to list them here, and open them up to forum-goers for voting:

A common theme in all of these changes is weakening Logistics and lowering the number of units that have access to Logistics

Spoiler Proposal: Only the first attack in a turn gives XP :

This change affects Blitz and Logistics, preventing your second attack in the same turn from givin you XP. This would weake both of these promotions slightly, making them less obvious as top tier picks. Logistics has been considered the best promotion in the game by a wide margin, combining both utility and power by enabling units to move after attack and generate XP from combat faster than other units. This change to XP generation would help bring logistics back into line slightly

Spoiler Proposal: Naval Ranged Promotion Tree adjustments :

Spoiler current Naval Promotion Tree :

• Remove access to Logistics
  • too strong, invalidates all other promotions with its relative strength
  • makes naval vs naval combat too fast
  • Opens up player land bombardment cheese strategies, allowing human players to move towards coast, fire on coast, and move back, effectively giving Frigate and later naval ranged units a 4 Range attack against land targets that can't be countered until Air units
• Re-add Range as a T3 Leaf promotion available to both Bombardment III and Targeting III
  • Only available to Frigates and later (1 Range ships cannot use)
  • Does not greatly increase damage output like logistics does, and has less impact in ship vs ship combat
  • Compensates for the loss of move-shoot-move vs coast, allowing ships to potentially outrange land defenders until artillery/Arsenals without giving access to 4+ range, which has no answer until air units
• Make Indomitable unlocked by both Bombardment and Targeting
  • It's a very useful utility pick for both sides
• Move Shrapnel Rounds to Targeting and lower bonus vs land units to +35%
  • Targeting is the line with bonuses vs land units, so it doesn't make sense for a large T3 leaf giving bonus vs land to be given to the anti-city promotion line
• Replace Broadside with Volley promotion (+50% vs Cities and Fortified Units)
  • Strengthens the Naval Ranged units' anti-city ability slightly, which will have been lowered by the loss of logistics
  • Slims down on total promotions in the game
  • Compensates Bombardment line for loss of Shrapnel promo and gives them anti-fortified bonus, which is a unique bonus for naval ranged.

Spoiler Overhaul Submarine Promotion Trees :

Currently, Submarines have access to 3 promotion lines: Dreadnought, Targeting, and Wolfpack
For Submarines, both Dreadnought and Targeting only have a total of 4-5 promotions, with targeting ending with access to only Indomitable and Logistics.
Wolfpack is by far the best tree, with larger bonuses and extra sight, movement, and withdraw chance on the main stem promotions. The only thing that makes Targeting viable is access to logistics at level 6.

Spoiler New Promotion Tree Proposal :

• Remove access to Targeting and Dreadnought.
• Rename Press Gangs to "Salvage", rename Piracy to "Commerce Raider"
• Remove 50% chance to withdraw from Piracy/Commerce Raider. Replace with Gold from Pillage
• Remove Sub's ability to see other subs as an innate ability, and move it to a pickable T2 Leaf Promotion
• Torpedo 1 / 2 / 3 :: +25% attack and -25% vs cities at each level
• Tier 1 Leafs
  • Navigator 1 and Navigator 2 :: +1 movement and sight at both levels
  • Supply :: can heal 15 hp outside friendly territory
• Tier 2 Leafs
  • Wolfpack :: +30% RCS for each friendly adjacent submarine
  • Interdictor :: +100% vs embarked units
  • Hunter-Killer :: +33% vs other submarines. Can see other submarines
  • Piracy (renamed to Commerce Raiders) :: 100 Gold from Pillage. Gain 100% of the Combat Strength of defeated Enemy Units as Gold
• Tier 3 Leafs
  • Infiltrator :: +25% in foreign land and vs wounded. -15% per adjacent friendly unit
  • Indomitable :: +25% Defense, Plague Immunity
  • Predator :: Ignores ZOC. 15 HP on Kills
  • Press Gangs (renamed to Salvage) :: No movement cost and full healing from Pillaging.

Spoiler Chu Ko Nu / Hwacha Promotion swap :

Currently the Chu Ko Nu has a free promotion, which gives +25% when adjacent to any city (friend or foe), and gives 5 Splash Damage on attack
Currently, the Hwacha has free Logistics

I propose to swap these two promotion between the two UUs, and rename the City Bonus/Splash promotion to Singijeon

• Logistics has had the XP from its 2nd attack disabled, so it is a slightly weaker promotion overall, but still a great damage-dealing bonus. There has been a bit of concern that the Chu Ko Nu went from being one of the best UUs to being one of the worst, and China already has 1 lackluster unique component with the Paper Maker
• The Chu Ko Nu had logistics in BNW, and the Hwacha did not, so there is an argument for consistency
• The Hwacha does not have a bonus vs cities, but this bonus for being adjacent to any city would give them a primarily defensive, city-based bonus which fits with Korea's turtling game
• As a siege unit, the Hwacha has access to Splash I and II, which it can use to augment the extra splash from the free promotion. It seems more fun to be able to invest in and capitalize that bonus, rather than giving splash to an archer unit that can't get more splash.
  • We could even make Singijeon a prerequisite to Splash I and II, allowing players to immediately invest their starting XP into maxing Splash if they wanted to, and not forcing them down the Field line to max the Splash, giving the Hwacha more flexibility.

 

[pineappledan]

Also note that removing logistics from using Indomitable as a prerequisite promotion, or removing it from the Naval Ranged promotion tree entirely will also mean that England's Ship of the Line will not be able to pick Logistics at level 1 as a free promotion. This change would remove another UU that can abuse logistics too easilly, leaving Chu Ko Nu (or Hwacha, if people vote to keep the promotions as is) as the last UU with Logistics.

 

[Rekk]

The Range promotion is very bad against land unless paired with indirect fire.

I had proposed giving Range to Bombardment, Indirect Fire to Targeting, and then putting in the work to give a unit that gains a redundant free promotion XP.

This would give Bombardment Battleships access to Range, Indirect Fire, Shrapnel Rounds to deal with land units, while Targeting Battleships gets Targeting I-III, Indirect Fire and Splash to deal with the same. Earlier Targeting ships can still blast further in-land by picking Indirect Fire earlier, then swapping it out for something else.

Early Broadside ships can instead get Range to attack cities safely, and, since it's locked to the anti-city line, the Range promotion won't have as large of an effect on naval battles as it would on a Targeting ship.

 

[pineappledan]

edit: added poll for if people want the XP for the 2nd attack in the same turn removed

 

[zeofig]

The submarine changes sound good.

However I am against nerfing logistics. What does the nerf truly accomplish? Logistics is fun. Logistics is powerful, but it doesn't break the game. On land units, range is almost just as powerful, and even more essential in many wars. Double XP is fun, but it usually won't net you more than 1-2 extra unremarkable promos. You can sometimes reach logistics+range, which I think is fine because it's rare and takes a lot of work, and it's really difficult to get it on more than a couple of units. Every time I've gotten a logistics unit in years of playing VP, I've greatly enjoyed it.

 

[pineappledan]

The main benefit of No XP on second attack is that it makes it much easier to justify giving logistics as a free promotion. As you say it doesn’t matter much if you are getting logistics on a lvl 6 unit that requires another 70xp for the next promotion while they already have the best one. On something like the Hwacha or SotL, however, logistics acts as +100% XP on attack from level 1

 

[zeofig]

That's true. It would be nice to have logistics as a free promotion sometimes.

 

[Rekk]

The Chu-Ko-Nu/Hwacha swap is tied to XP on first attack.

 

[Stalker0]

I feel like if logistics if removed from naval, you don't need to remove XP on the second attack. I don't really feel logistics is OP on land units (I don't even think its the strongest land promotion), its just naval where its too strong.

 

[andersw]

I feel like if logistics if removed from naval, you don't need to remove XP on the second attack. I don't really feel logistics is OP on land units (I don't even think its the strongest land promotion), its just naval where its too strong.

I've been swapping from barrage -> logistics to accuracy -> range with land units and I feel its stronger, even more so when I get indirect fire.
Its so much dmg to fresh units, I guess ideally a mix is good but its so much unit micro management.

Edit:I think logistics is too good on a UU, rather than swapping Cho-ku and Hwacha I'd want Hwacha to get a different promo.
Buff Cho-ku if its too meh but logistics is too much.

 

[Rekk]

I feel like if logistics if removed from naval, you don't need to remove XP on the second attack. I don't really feel logistics is OP on land units (I don't even think its the strongest land promotion), its just naval where its too strong.

In my opinion, the problem is that logistics has a built-in +50%-75% XP that cannot be separated from the second attack, same can be used as long as there is an enemy in range (requires much less heal time unlike samurai).

By itself, the option of two attacks or attack then move is powerful enough on its own that it doesn't need to have an XP boost to make it even stronger.

 

[Stalker0]

I've been swapping from barrage -> logistics to accuracy -> range with land units and I feel its stronger, even more so when I get indirect fire.
Its so much dmg to fresh units, I guess ideally a mix is good but its so much unit micro management.

My experience to a T (if that expression doesn't translate to other cultures its slang for "I have had the exact same experience as you did")

 

[zeofig]

I still don't think the extra XP is that strong, or that logistics is a problem. It's fun and I like it. The cost of promotions goes up fast, and I find it's rare for even my best units to reach logistics+range, even skipping indirect fire. Range is the more important promotion, although it's worthwhile to have a handful of logistics archers/siege

Logistics CKNs will still be imba without the XP thing, because the crossbow is a strong unit, and you will soon enough reach logistics+range on a bunch of CKNs/musketmen, which the AI absolutely cannot handle. The treb/hwacha is slow and fragile, and perhaps a bit underrated in its current form because people don't tend to warmonger as Korea. With some planning it can be godly late game with easy range+logistics artillery, but it will never be as easy and fast as crossbows with free logistics.

 

[Tekamthi]

I'd prefer to keep logistics, but the elimination of xp on 2nd attack seems appropriate. Removing makes the flattest part of the game (naval warfare), even flatter

 

[adan_eslavo]

I'd prefer to keep logistics, but the elimination of xp on 2nd attack seems appropriate. Removing makes the flattest part of the game (naval warfare), even flatter

Is there anything that can be done to make it better?

 

[Rekk]

Is there anything that can be done to make it better?

Essentially, naval combat needs positional sight blocking and defense increases like land has, as well as tiles that cost more to move through. Since it's extremely difficult to justify additional terrain in deep ocean (even if we had the art assets for it), it somewhat falls to new promotions and dll work therein.

I can see the addition of a "screen" promotion, where the unit acts as a mobile piece of high altitude land, or something that increases defense to units being attacked behind/beside the unit with the promotion. A better version of minelayer that makes it cost more movement to attack/move into a tile would help the movement side of land combat, in addition to the boarded condition.

Otherwise, it relies on the maps people play in. Oval/Pangaea maps have uninteresting coastal water features, so it's difficult for players with a smaller navy to use their home terrain to advantage like one can on land. On more varied maps with interesting coastlines and island chains, battles become much more dynamic due to the large amount of sight blocking and movement restrictions inherent in such terrain.

 

[Tekamthi]

Is there anything that can be done to make it better?

Assuming by "it" you mean logistics, and by "better" you mean address the problem described in OP re: 1) it makes naval combat too fast, and 2) it gives an effective 4-range attack that can't be countered w/o air:
1) should be tune-able via adjusting the RCS malus further, no? or maybe distribute malus more heavily to the first attack rather than the 2nd?;
2) isn't the counter to build a navy, or move away from coast? I realize that AI isn't as adept in these regards but thats always gonna be the case i think, with many of VP's features. Ultimately naval bombardment didn't really have a great counter irl either, and this suits my tastes in this regard. Maybe greater malus on naval rcs vs non-embarked land units? Or limit/prohibit movement after the 1st attack? I don't generally get enough logistics boats for this to skew my games all that much.

imo VP's aim to be bring balance to vanilla features should minimize outright removal of vanilla features as much as possible

Essentially, naval combat needs positional sight blocking and defense increases like land has, as well as tiles that cost more to move through.

I'd prefer to see something in this direction -- probably requires some rather heavy lifting code-wise mind you. I've modded in some minor variability to water movement, though even that effort became rather lua-heavy. Wishful thinking maybe, but I'd love to see some kind of weather or wind mechanism to modify movement and vision at sea

 

[pineappledan]

Added poll option for proposal to give Indirect Fire as a T3 leaf for Targeting and Range as a T3 leaf for Bombardment only.

 

[Rekk]

imo VP's aim to be bring balance to vanilla features should minimize outright removal of vanilla features as much as possible

VP has completely overhauled vanilla promotion trees already. That ship has sailed, in my opinion.

I've modded in some minor variability to water movement

What did this entail?

 

[Tekamthi]

VP has completely overhauled vanilla promotion trees already. That ship has sailed, in my opinion.

You're right in many respects, but logistics boats were in vanilla iirc.

What did this entail?

There is an old mod that allows double naval movement in water tiles within 3 tiles of lighthouse. Great idea but too inefficient in how it accomplishes the effect (checks every tile of owned cities for every player every turn, significantly delaying turn times). I recreated similar effect with reduced resource use (though still a somewhat lua-heavy mod). Tweaked it to build the effect out a little further; I've described in more detail on the mods subforum, albeit with more changes than just this feature. Doesn't really address the problem of attack-and-move cheese in human hands, mind you.

As I alluded to last post, back when I was more actively working on mods, I had sketched out an idea that may serve to vary both movement and visibilty at sea, though never got around to implementing it:

• there are recolored "clouds" elsewhere on civfanatics; grey and black versions
• could these serve as art for some kind of weather terrain feature? ie reducing movement and/or visibility?