[GS] New units in Gathering Storm

[acluewithout]

@AriochIV Well, I’m not saying they’re going to base a third expansion off three units. I’m just saying that if they were planning a third expansion, they may have decided late in the process that they’d rather hold back those units.

Wishful thinking? Well, maybe, ... I don’t know really. There’s a lot that seems consistent with getting a third expansion, and the general trend of the gaming industry is longer support cycles, but there’s also no real confirmation and no one here knows what the financials look like. I’d say it’s more likely than not that we’ll get a third expansion or some chunky / decent dlc, but that’s as high as I’d put it.

I like Neighbourhoods and Aqueducts being districts. Makes them feel more weighty, and you can play around with adjacencies for other districts and policy cards that provide yields per district. Seems odd to me that SeaSteads - which seem to be just floating Neighbourhoods with extra - are not. Indeed, SeaSteads sort of undermine Neighbourhoods given they give so much flat housing with just a single builder charge. It would be good to have some more late game districts too.

That said. For Neighbourhoods or whatever to really shine, population needs to be more valuable particularly in the later stages of the game. Maybe some of the changes to Democracy etc will achieve that.

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

Obviously, the designers are assuming 'Settlers' include people scouting ahead for a good settlement site.
That produces two problems, as I see it:
1. We have no really useful 'scout' Unit; our current Starting Scouts don't have the vision to go with their mobility, while the 'scouting Settlers' don't have either the vision or the survivability to be Scouts.
2. Labeled Scouts get used as Combat Units, which is not really their function.

Now, it's obvious why Scout units have a useful Combat Factor: without it they would evaporate without accomplishing anything given the ubiquity and persistence of Barbarians in the early game. But the lack of vision tells against that, because they blunder into Barbarian Camps and units on a regular basis. You don't have to play too many turns of Civ VI before your Scout bumps into a horde of 3 - 4 Barbarian Warriors or Horsemen with Slingers or Horse Archers behind them and has to run for its life across half a continent...

Historically a Scout Unit is artificial: until very recently, armies used Skirmishers or Light Troops or semi-civilian spies for 'scouting'. At the Civ scale, people who 'scouted' unknown territory were Colonists, Traders, Envoys or Missionaries: military 'scout' units stayed pretty close to the armies.

But Civ has always had Scouts, and always had the mechanism where you sent a unit to find out what was on 'the other side of the hill' rather than (as in reality) getting most of that information from 'invisible' traders, travelers, or second-hand tales from foreigners.

Skirmishers would give us a unit that could survive Barbarians and a useful military unit and a unit with the mobility to go scouting in the Civ sense - exposing new territory.
Of course, 'light infantry' 'light troops' or skirmishers were almost always armed with some kind of missile weapon: most commonly javelins or throwing spears, less frequently (in Europe, at least) bows.

For me the ideal 'scout' at Start of Game, then, would be a Skirmisher (Greek Psiloi, Roman Velites), with current scout mobility and melee factor, a small Ranged Factor before Melee representing the thrown javelins, and Vision 3 to Start with, and the Recon Promotion 'Spyglass' changed from +1 Sight to something like "reveals exact Modified Strength and Promotions of any visible unit" - which would make them very dangerous scouts when accompanying friendly combat units!

Clearly this is before GS was released. mmmmm but you proposed Pike&Shot being Anticav rather than firepower' (I prefer the term 'Infantry' class due to the actual roles in the army rather than what it does)... and Swordsmen being melee and can be upgraded to this class without mentioning any Medieval or even the actual 'Renaissance' melee units. eh. so Swashbuckler/Rodeleroes should be Renaissance upgrade to swordsmen or do you prefer 'Man at arms' to be Medieval melee that will ultimately becomes P&S in Renaissance?

Moderator Action: This thread is over 18 months old. There have been many changes in the game through multiple updates. Please do not necro old threads. Thread closed. leif
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