New Beta Version - August 21st (8-21b)

[amateurgamer88]

My biggest worry with the changes of units is how the AI will handle it. I feel that warmongers will get a huge advantage since their techs are conveniently put in one location. With AIs, I have seen them go for Sailing or Writing as their first Classical era tech. With the new changes, these AIs will have Warriors and Archers without Walls facing off against Horsemen and Spearmen of Warmonger AIs. I think it's obvious who will be victorious here.

 

[pineappledan]

@Stalker0, drill I will conflict with Alhambra.

The late ancient buildings, Barracks, walls and markets, define what you can realistically do. Walls for defense, barracks for stronger units, markets for bigger armies (and some flexibility). The others are niche.
For units, it's the same. Swordsmen may be worse than catapults at taking cities, but they can be produced earlier, so there's some opportunity. The same could be said about ships.
Rushing trirremes and dromons should grant some unprotected coastal cities, the same as rushing swordsmen should grant some unprotected landlocked cities. While catapults are useful everywhere.

I'd say let swordsmen start with the city assault promotion (+50% CS vs cities) so they can take cities on their own if rushed.

Or, OR, Alhambra could give a different promotion. I fear giving swordsmen city assault would hurt their perceived flexibility. Far better, I think, to stick to stem promotions for swordsmen.

This would also provide an opportunity to differentiate Alhambra from SoZ, since they both give anti-city promotions right now.

 

[Rekk]

I think there are 5 prereqs and then Mathematics is going to be so hard to acquire. That seems quite ridiculous.

It looks like:

Sailing: Fishing, Trade
Writing: Trade, Calendar
Mathematics: Trade, Calendar, Construction, Military Theory
Masonry: Construction, Military Theory
Iron Working: Military Theory, Bronze Working

Nine techs to get Mathematics seems like a lot, given you can get the others in 4 or 5.

 

[tu_79]

Or, OR, Alhambra could give a different promotion.

I proposed something like this four years ago and it got rejected by several well argumented points, among other things 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it'.

I fear giving swordsmen city assault would hurt their perceived flexibility.

Why so? It's still a solid unit with great strength, that requires a strategic. The only thing it should be doing but it's not really achieving is conquering cities in the small window before catapults become online.

 

[Rekk]

I proposed something like this four years ago and it got rejected by several well argumented points, among other things 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it'.

Well, four years ago Gazebo hadn't just proposed a change to swordsmen.

 

[Bromar1]

If you get a low iron start you can no longer use swordsmen at all, if you get a 0 iron start I guess you either rush cities before walls or built or just never conquer? It is good or the game is some units don't require strategic resources. Catapults are made of wood.

How crazy would it be to make "Strategic Balance" the default resource distribution for VP? If we can assume that every civ gets ~4 iron at the start then it would be easier to balance early game warfare.

 

[tu_79]

How crazy would it be to make "Strategic Balance" the default resource distribution for VP? If we can assume that every civ gets ~4 iron at the start then it would be easier to balance early game warfare.

Too much. It has worked fairly well until now, with all kind of maps. Find Iron? Fantastic. Exploit that. Don't find any? Then wait for catapults.
It's the same with horses. They are a good boon to your army, but you can do without them.

Again, if it wasn't broken, why fix it?
The only issue was that Iron working was negligeable because rushing it doesn't give a clear advantage. Make swordsmen better at taking cities and we're good to go.

 

[Stalker0]

G,

I will say that I do applaud the look at the tech tree. I have my own feelings and concerns about it, but its one where I would be willing to try a beta of it to see how it feels.

The sword and cat changes I feel like I have enough experience with them that I know how these changes will go. My view, which has been echoed by several others, is that Swords already have an anti-infantry role in taking out spearmen. They currently already have a 59% stronger CS than a spear, that's a lot! Ultimately its not melee attacks that do swords in, its the ranged ones. If you have a line of spears and I have swords, than I will crush you. You have a line of archers with good terrain, and I'm in trouble. Swords don't take a lot of damage from archers, but it doesn't take a lot of damage to get into the vulnerable position where you have to retreat or risking losing a critical early unit to AI focus fire. In other words, its not the first volley that's the problem, the sword can take it. Its the threat of the second volley, which forces me to run my sword....which means that I effectively lost a unit for a good portion of time, and in early wars those few turns can mean a lot.

That's why I noted the Cover idea as a way to give swords even more defense against those threats.

For cats, I agree with others that iron is too precious, and cats too important. It will simply mean that instead of swords, I'll build cats. If you do want to weaken cats you can further increase the penalty against land units, so they aren't just your ranged unit substitute. But we have tried that in the past and its always been a flip flop. On the one hand you don't want cats to be dominant, but on the other your hammers are precious at that point in the game, and you can't expect the same level of combined arms where I have every unit for every niche represented that early in the game. I will also close this note that I don't agree with Tercio/Cannon transition as an issue that this change fixes. In my experience, the AI has 0 issues with this, because they tend to upgrade their units very quickly after getting techs. So the longswords upgrade to Tercios, and their iron is freed for the cannons.

As far as ideas for Spears and Pikes....what if you gave them overrun by default? So by themselves, they aren't very strong (could even consider a CS nerf). But with support, suddenly their CS power explodes, and they do extra damage when they kill units through the splash hit. This can represent the power of lines of cheap mass units...individually weak, but together get incredibly strong.

 

[Wumper]

I like everything here except for two things.

First, the plane limit. The reason I love air units in VP is that they can break the stalemates that usually form in the mid game when most empires produce so many units that advancing front lines is nearly impossible for a while. Artillery and bombers break that and finally speed up the game a little but this change would push that point out significantly until you can get airports. Once you have them though, planes would be incredibly overpowered I think if they don't take up supply. Especially since that I doesn't always have the right level of anti air. I'm not sure how will this change effect the flow of games but I'm afraid it will slow down wars significantly in the industrial era and give an even bigger edge to humans since the AI is still not great at using planes.

My other complaint is the iron requirement for ships. Strangely enough, iron has consistently been the biggest limiter for me in the late game and I can't even imagine playing this way on maps that require lots of naval presence. It would literally mean giving up artillery or ships entirely since. Maybe adding a building like the coal refinery in the mid-late game would solve this, making a navy more expensive to maintain but not entirely phase them out?

 

[Bhawb]

Too much. It has worked fairly well until now, with all kind of maps. Find Iron? Fantastic. Exploit that. Don't find any? Then wait for catapults.
It's the same with horses. They are a good boon to your army, but you can do without them.

Again, if it wasn't broken, why fix it?
The only issue was that Iron working was negligeable because rushing it doesn't give a clear advantage. Make swordsmen better at taking cities and we're good to go.

Giving some more guaranteed Iron, maybe out of Ironworks, would be one way to give quasi-SB. I don't personally want any of these changes but if we did want to look at some guaranteed SRs we have a basis for that on multiple accounts (Iron/Coal/Aluminum).

 

[Cat-du-fromage]

I'm currently in the middle of a multiplayer game and starting industrial era i found that iron became too valuable, each Boat need iron (melee/range) as long as your artillery.
for some map this isn't an issue but when you play on a map where both naval and land are important, this is too much, you are force to use all your iron for naval in order to control the sea but then your land army can't advance correctly because of the lack of artillery.
against AI it's ok, but when you play against player, the balance became a big deal when all ships need iron. (bad RNG for iron / the one who gets more win the battle for exemple)
Is there anybody who experience the same issue with war?

 

[tu_79]

I'm currently in the middle of a multiplayer game and starting industrial era i found that iron became too valuable, each Boat need iron (melee/range) as long as your artillery.
for some map this isn't an issue but when you play on a map where both naval and land are important, this is too much, you are force to use all your iron for naval in order to control the sea but then your land army can't advance correctly because of the lack of artillery.
against AI it's ok, but when you play against player, the balance became a big deal when all ships need iron. (bad RNG for iron / the one who gets more win the battle for exemple)
Is there anybody who experience the same issue with war?

When I see that, I pick Statecraft.

 

[SpankmyMetroid]

G,

I will say that I do applaud the look at the tech tree. I have my own feelings and concerns about it, but its one where I would be willing to try a beta of it to see how it feels.

The sword and cat changes I feel like I have enough experience with them that I know how these changes will go. My view, which has been echoed by several others, is that Swords already have an anti-infantry role in taking out spearmen. They currently already have a 59% stronger CS than a spear, that's a lot! Ultimately its not melee attacks that do swords in, its the ranged ones. If you have a line of spears and I have swords, than I will crush you. You have a line of archers with good terrain, and I'm in trouble. Swords don't take a lot of damage from archers, but it doesn't take a lot of damage to get into the vulnerable position where you have to retreat or risking losing a critical early unit to AI focus fire. In other words, its not the first volley that's the problem, the sword can take it. Its the threat of the second volley, which forces me to run my sword....which means that I effectively lost a unit for a good portion of time, and in early wars those few turns can mean a lot.

That's why I noted the Cover idea as a way to give swords even more defense against those threats.

For cats, I agree with others that iron is too precious, and cats too important. It will simply mean that instead of swords, I'll build cats. If you do want to weaken cats you can further increase the penalty against land units, so they aren't just your ranged unit substitute. But we have tried that in the past and its always been a flip flop. On the one hand you don't want cats to be dominant, but on the other your hammers are precious at that point in the game, and you can't expect the same level of combined arms where I have every unit for every niche represented that early in the game. I will also close this note that I don't agree with Tercio/Cannon transition as an issue that this change fixes. In my experience, the AI has 0 issues with this, because they tend to upgrade their units very quickly after getting techs. So the longswords upgrade to Tercios, and their iron is freed for the cannons.

As far as ideas for Spears and Pikes....what if you gave them overrun by default? So by themselves, they aren't very strong (could even consider a CS nerf). But with support, suddenly their CS power explodes, and they do extra damage when they kill units through the splash hit. This can represent the power of lines of cheap mass units...individually weak, but together get incredibly strong.

If we drop CS on spearman more they stop being an effective answer to horse units. As of now the ancient spearman line and horseman line do pretty much matching damage despite the 50% combat buff (with the spearman having the distinct advantage on defense due to to terrain bonuses). Horsemen are already dominant...

 

[chicorbeef]

Giving Swordsmen Drill I and having Alhambra give City Assault seems like a good solution to me.

It allows a player to focus on either city attack or ranged defense if they want and gives Swords a strong defensive niche with the easier access to Stalwart.

Alhambra's Drill is partially wasted if you choose to go Drill early on. This would solve that issue as well, opening up the two lines more seems good to me.

 

[pineappledan]

I would prefer if Alhambra were to be changed from drill, that it not give a more or less identical boost than SoZ.

The vanilla Alhambra gave Drill I, which used to be a bonus in ROUGH terrain, which is fitting because of Granada’s surroundings. The original wonder’s design had nothing to do with a city attack bonus. What if we restored that rough terrain flavor with a unique promotion?

Camisado - +15% in rough terrain. +15% vs ranged land units (archer/mountedRange/siege)
(A play on the existing ambush promotions)

Then swords can get either drill or shock as a free promotion.

Then, my proposed formation change for spears would add a lot of desirable flavor

 

[Gazebo]

I would prefer if Alhambra were to be changed from drill, that it not give a more or less identical boost than SoZ.

The vanilla Alhambra gave Drill I, which used to be a bonus in ROUGH terrain, which is fitting because of Granada’s surroundings. The original wonder’s design had nothing to do with a city attack bonus. What if we restored that rough terrain flavor with a unique promotion?

Camisado - +15% in rough terrain. +15% vs ranged land units (archer/mountedRange/siege)

But new artwork from Asterix...

 

[Kim Dong Un]

I proposed something like this four years ago and it got rejected by several well argumented points, among other things 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it'.

Why so? It's still a solid unit with great strength, that requires a strategic. The only thing it should be doing but it's not really achieving is conquering cities in the small window before catapults become online.

I've also brought this up in the past about Alhambra. I just experienced it first hand again while playing a Zulu game; every unit I build from the Capital (so the majority of units built early/mid game) gets shock, when in reality I should be climbing the drill line, but don't in anticipation of getting Alhambra and not wasting a promotion. If I don't get Alhambra then I'm sh*t out of luck. Having to make hard choices is a fun part of VP, but this is a decision I've never been a fan of.

Pre-Impi, the exp from Ikanda/Armory (and Orders) leaves me with boosted swords/longswords that spawn with the drill line almost filled on top of the default free shock. Despite this as well as SoZ bonus, these units still have a relatively hard time capping cities by themselves if few in numbers without any ranged support/cats/trebs. Once medieval hits and castles are online, it doesn't matter if I've got stacked longswords with Drill III because you'll still require a few siege units for city capture. Alhambra's bonus activates, and then you can't utilize it...

If I could just take the drill line from the start without worry and then receive something impactful like City Assault (which I suggested a long time ago, like Tu), it becomes tangible and allows me to keep attacking cities with melee throughout medieval and into renaissance. Currently, without taking any ranged damage from other units or the city itself, even my buffed Impi - a UU from the next era with a ranged element - only get off 3 attacks against a castled city before having to heal. That's with SoZ/Alhambra... Throwing an attack or two towards a castled city usually means unit suicide for a civ with standard (long)swords. As it stands, I find getting quick Blitz for my Knights to be the most beneficial outcome from Alhambra usually, which shouldn't really be the intention. Authority is about conquering, and the finisher giving the best city attack promo - a promo I would never actually choose otherwise due to siege being the only efficient option once they come online - is fitting, even if it's not a main stem promo. Dan is right though, Line Breaker would probably be a marginal upgrade compared to shock that doesn't move the needle, while also bringing up issues others have already stated. I agree that Cover is probably best, but Dan's proposal to swords and formation change is legit.

I wouldn't be mad if swords got Cover, City Assault, etc., but I know 100% the iron changes for siege can't happen.

 

[pineappledan]

But new artwork from Asterix...

yeah... maybe not the best. I can’t think of another way to get Alhambra unstacked from SoZ except to either create a new promotion, or to change Alhambra so that it gives no promotion at all.

The cover idea doesn’t sound so bad either, I just can’t seem to get excited about it, but that’s a matter of taste for me.

 

[Kim Dong Un]

Bonus: If nobody has heard this before, here's one of the greatest classical guitar pieces ever written, and a personal favourite of mine to play almost daily for the past 5+ years (after a lot of practice). There's something about the tremolo technique in this piece, used to simulate the breathtaking flowing/trickling fountains throughout Alhambra, that soothes the soul. Even Glorious Leader Kim has a soft side...

 

[Gazebo]

Okay proposal #2:

- Reverting Heroic Epic/SoZ location swap (but keeping GG on HE)
- Construction and Military Theory will swap spots
- Catapult moves to Iron Working
- Comp. Bowman moves to Mathematics, RCS down to 12
- Currency and Engineering swap spots
- Swordsman/Longswordsman lose Shock I, gain Cover I (Legion gets Cover II)
- Quarry improvement moved to Mining
- Temple of Artemis moved to Calendar (makes more sense near archers)
- Pyramids moved to Construction (makes more sense on construction)