Hello Max,
I have quite some Civ experience and enjoyed your mod in the version prior to 5.3 in several games (one complete WW2, 3 times the WW3 scenario by some other guy) - so I feel qualified to make some suggestions regarding the units in your mod
The ships:
- When I saw the new 5.3 unit "light cruiser" I had a problem. The thing is, I somehow like the word cruiser for a ship, because it sounds so powerful. But the light cruiser isn't, it's (judging by it's look) a WW1 ship which badly looses to any WW2 ship.
-> I'd like to rename it to "WW1 cruiser"
- In WW2 I'd like to make the destroyer a bit weaker and introduce light and heavy cruisers
- a real WW2 destroyer had no armor, rather small guns, torpedos, waterbombs and some AA weapons
- the (US) light cruisers had light armor, medium sized guns and rather strong AA, sometimes also torpedos
- heavy cruisers had strong armor and big guns but not so much AA (because the other ships were supposed to do that)
- and finally the battleships with heavy armor and huge guns
-> so I suggest:
- destroyer (DD): strength 28 (due to lack of armor), movement 7 (current value +1), can see subs,
no bombarding (due to small guns) and interception probability (IP) maybe 20, if WW1 cruiser has 15
- light cruiser (LC): strength (STR) 32, movement 6 (MOV), can bombard, IP 30 (DD +10)
- heavy cruiser (HC): STR 36, MOV 5, can bombard
- battleship (BB): STR 42, MOV 5 (they were huge but not too slow), bombard, collateral damage
- that would make the LC the allround unit which the DD is now and make the DD more of a support unit and easy prey for the bigger ships (as long as they're not damaged)
- subs (which I won't change) could kill the DD easier but could also be spotted easier (MOV +1 for DD)
- I would make the LC a bit more expensive than DD, the HC somewhat more expensive than LC and the BB much more expensive than HC (maybe 1.5 times) because BBs were really seldom, they should be powerful and valuable units which are not easy to rebuild
- I would change some of the BBs in the WW2 map to HCs and some DDs to LCs and maybe add 2 more DDs per big Civ
- The US-DD (now STR 32) could get vision +1 instead to account for them having radar and STR 28, maybe with a first strike (firing torpedos first, after seing the other guy with radar)
The land units:
- Not many problems here, just 2 points.
- The mobile SAM is way too strong as a land unit (same STR as modern infantry). In the WW3 scenario no one has mechanized infantry yet, so everyone is building solely mobile SAM to defend the cities. This is rediculous to see modern main battle tanks being hit by anti-aircraft-missles (which have explosive warheads but absolutely no armor penetration) and being destroyed.
-> I suggest to give the mobile SAM STR 17 or 18 and +50% versus air units and vs helicopters (they could still fight off infantry if skilled for city defense.. can think of that as using 23mm or 30mm AA machine cannons)
- alternative: give them -50% vs armor
- The M113 as replacement for EU mech infantry looks ugly (well, you can't do much with it's shape, but it's color is too dark to fit the surroundings) and a M113 is basically just a battle taxi, it's not meant for fighting (and has almost no armor). It fulfills the taxi function by carrying 1 infantry in Civ4, so it's STR is really unjustified. If you could get a model of a regular "Schützenpanzer" like the German Marder (which is not that good, btw), that would be the one to use. These guys perform the same role as the BMP-2 and Bradley. If you can't get such a model I'd rather use the standard model and standard mech infantry properties for EU. The M113 can be given the same properties as the BTR-80. However, I'd reduce their speed by 1 point - just 1 point above normal vehicles (in wild terrain the main battle tank Leopard 2 is actually faster than the infantry-support Marder, let alone the M113).
The air units:
- Here my plan is not so clear, but I certainly have a problem: in WW3 scenario when I was defending Europe from the Russian invasion I wanted to use my F16s to attack tanks in front of my cities. But I couldn't because they would almost always be shot down by Mig 25 and 31 which were
guarding the Russian cities!
-> the long range and high IP of the 25/31 is quite game breaking. The only western plane to counter that is the F18, which you don't have in the beginning
- If you take a closer look at the
MIG 25 you'll see that it
* is fast but not maneuverable (which counts a lot in modern air combat)
* due to it's high fuel consumption it has a rather limited range
* it can only carry air-to-air missiles
* it's combat results have not been that impressive
- the
MIG 31 is considerably improved
- and, very important, the
F14 is a long range interceptor! A range of 4 for that plane is rediculous. Also it can carry some bombs, but it's not meant for attacking ground targets. It has decent long range missiles against ships though.
"Furthermore, the powerful emissions from the AWG-9 [F14 radar] are detectable at great range with a radar warning receiver. Iraqi fighters routinely displayed countertactics as soon as the Tomcats "lit up" them with the AWG-9. The Iraqis would immediately abandon the attack while well out of range, perhaps indicating their familiarity with both the Tomcat and the AIM-54 from previous encounters with Iranian F-14s."
-> ... so:
- make the MIG 25 the same STR (if it hit's it's still a missile after all), but range 1 less (to 5, still a lot!) and IP down to around 60 (due to it's strong but old radar, old electronics and non-existent dog fight capability - if the first missiles are being dodged, which really happens, it can only run away) and totally remove it's bombing capability
- make the MIG 31 range 6 (really a lot) and IP down to around 80 (still a lot) and remove it's bombing ability
- make the F14 range 6 (or 5, if you really don't like it that strong) and STR 18 with +50% vs air units and +50% versus ships. IP could be 70.
- starting from the F4 as a carrier plane, the only other (western) carrier planes should be F14, F18 and F35 (not F16!). The F14 does not obsolete the F4 due to it's role as interceptor with limited bombing. Both are obsoleted by the F18.
- The -50% vs air untis of the F16 is totally unjustified. I know it's for the scheme of strike fighter / jet fighter, but really, if an F16 carries AIM120s it's roughly as good as F15 or F18 in air-air battles. And +50% vs armor? I guess it's good vs tanks, but so are the other planes carrying the same missiles. Why not make it a relatively cheap range 4 plane with stronger STR than the standard jet / strike fighter? Maybe roughly the same as Eurofighter, Grippen and Ji-10.
- The high range and high collateral damage of the F117: I know that generally the newer Civ planes have to be better in every way than their predecessor, but the F117 is really just delivering bombs to specific points. It only has 2 mounting points for weapons! Compare that to a B52 with.. oh, maybe the weight of 2 complete F117s just as bombs. I would decrease F117s range to 8 and decrease it's collateral damage to at most 1 unit, but retain it's STR and an evasion prob of at least 50%
- Due to that it might be good to keep the F117 as a supplement to the former non-stealth bombers. Only B2 / Tu-160 would obselete these old ones (like B52).
- I'd give the B2 just the same range and number of collateral damages as the B52, because that was really already the king of bombers. Flying halfway around the globe and still dropping tons of bombs. The B2 has to get better stealth than F117 though. And has to be expensive
- Helicopters: the Mi-8 as a battle helicopter?! You're stretching it quite a bit here
Look at that thing.. it's just a large transport helicopter which just so happens to be able to carry some rockets. Maybe transport with STR 20 would be justified.
- The AH-64D is called "Longbow Apache" because it has the Longbow radar on top of the rotor. This is not yet seen in the model. Maybe this could be fixed?
- If you could get a model of the Eurocopter Tiger it should be quite good looking and the unit itself might be nice. Especially considering that the German version has no gun, just missiles. It's a dedicated tank destroyer with some support ability. It could get STR 32 or 34 and +125% vs armor.
- What about some air-based pure recons? Like an AWACS for the land (high range, 8 or 10, no carrier, STR 0, no bombing) or / and a sea recon (shorter range, maybe 6, carrier, can see subs, STR 0, no bombing)
.. for those of us who don't have satellites
-> this is not intended to be final tuning of the air units, that would be a bit too much for now, especially since I don't know how you like my suggestions in general. So please let me know what you think about this!
Regards, MrS
(( 
Great mod
