New Version - 2.6 (August 16, 2022)

[nekokon]

I'll take a look at his modmod then. I don't mind the drag if enemy AI has the same military strength as I do, but it grinds my gears when I wiped them out (or they didn't even have that many units in the first place) and still had to sit tight for a long while just to take down 1 city.
Probably not a bad idea to give all siege units double the current bonus to city or something.

 

[Legen]

Coming back from Humankind/Endless legend really reminded me of how terrible warmonging in VP is.
Even historically you only need x3 enemy's force to siege, and x10 to out right attack a fully fortified location. Here you need x10 enemy force over a long period to grind down 1 city, even if they don't pump out reinforcement. Kept having to cheese the AI by baiting/killing units and pillaging to rack up ww for a better truce deal instead of actually doing the conquering.

You can conquer relatively fast if you are willing to be suicidal with Drill infantry units. Especially as Japan, France or Sweden. The long grind usually happens due to the conqueror playing safe with his units and minimizing losses.

I can tell that from experience, and from seeing other players do that in Deity on their playthroughs/photojournals.

 

[nekokon]

Suiciding units to fast capture city is even worse than wasting time grinding it down. Noone would pick such an obviously bad choice except for vengeful AI who doesn't care about losing the game for a war.

On unrelated topic, I just noticed some old reactive - anti alpha strike promotions are removed (on top of my head I can only remember withering fire - reduces enemy dmg when they attack or the one that dmg enemy attacking unit within range like intercept but against land unit). Back then I thought it was a good direction we're heading into, given players cheesed AI a lot by alpha striking hit and run. Anyone know the reason why we're going back from that ?

 

[CppMaster]

Well, then no surprise here. The more safe you play the longer it'd take. Sometimes it may be good to sacrifice a unit or two to capture a city few turns earlier.

 

[nekokon]

It's not about playing safe. If you sacrifice units unnecessarily you might break the blockage or create opportunity for AI to break it, thus making it even harder/longer to grind down, not to mention you already lose extra effort to build new replacement units and bring them to the frontline. Also no way you can just sacrifice one of two unit and able to capture the city a whole few turns earlier tbh (unless you already play badly by leaving everything at full health all the time while holding the blockage).
Tbh it would be much better to just pump up the city dmg bonus from siege units compared to using bal's weaker city defense, since there won't be any bliz capture cheese with high dmg melee units (which is the reason for city defense buffs in the first place since a long time ago), and at the same time still reduces the unnecessary long wait time for siege unit to take down city.

 

[Zanteogo]

I don't have an issue with the length it takes now to take a city with the current version. As stated, yes, if you play super careful and attempt to play without any unit loss it takes somewhat longer, but that's the trade off.

If we give siege units too much power we run the risk of cheese rush attacks being the norm. They are already the best unit for taking cities, as they should be, by a mile.

Also, the AI is horrible at doing long term unit placement strategies. The human player can wait for it's AI neighbor to attack another neighbor and do a rush attack that will usually force the defending AI to vassal. This happens currently, and I don't have an issue with it working sometimes, but it will always work if we make cities too easy to take.

 

[nekokon]

I don't think you can rush with siege units, as they're already slow enough. It's not really a cheese when you use the unit best for the job to do that job (which was not the case with horsemen/knight in vanilla).
That's why I prefer to change the dmg bonus for siege units instead of just lowering city defense (but too bad I don't have any modding knowledge to do it).

Imo if you already put in enough effort to have a full blockage and siege units around the city should go down quickly instead of just being a dmg sponge. With AI's late game production and mobility (from road/railroad) it's a serious pain to take any city at all unless you're way ahead, as every turn you're stalling around a city unable to capture it you have to deal with constant waves of reinforcement while having penalty inside their territory. It just makes the war drag on, and you're better stay away from their city, pillaging and killing their units until you can get a great truce deal (which is more cheesy than actually taking city).

 

[stii]

I do think siege units are pretty weak even cannons rarely seem worth it. They just speed things up when you've already gained control of the area around the city.

But I also don't see an issue in taking cities. It doesn't take that long even on the highest levels and you only need to take two to make them your vassal. It is perfectly possible to do a world conquest victory and later on it gets easier and easier to take cities.

 

[nekokon]

Not an issue when you start warring early and get a big lead from vassal or good chunk of land/city, after that you would already be way ahead of other civ so taking over the rest isn't a hard task.

But it gets annoying when you have to fight civ around the same level later half of the game, you don't have overwhelming advantage thus having to deal with constant reinforcements while withering down their city slowly isn't very fun.
Practically if you want to warmonger you have to do it very early and get a head start, else go full peaceful builder mode, because without big early lead no way you can prevent someone's victory through military intervention mid game onward.

 

[Zanteogo]

Not an issue when you start warring early and get a big lead from vassal or good chunk of land/city, after that you would already be way ahead of other civ so taking over the rest isn't a hard task.

But it gets annoying when you have to fight civ around the same level later half of the game, you don't have overwhelming advantage thus having to deal with constant reinforcements while withering down their city slowly isn't very fun.
Practically if you want to warmonger you have to do it very early and get a head start, else go full peaceful builder mode, because without big early lead no way you can prevent someone's victory through military intervention mid game onward.

I would recommend playing on an easier difficultly level.

All your issues seem to center around taking cities takes too long or is too hard. To be more specific due to the insane bonus the AI gets in the later eras on the higher levels.

Yes, the AI can pump out units faster than you can kill them. I think it's immersion breaking, and the main reason I stay away from the higher levels myself. Having to kill units at a 3 to 1 ratio to "win" is just goofy to me.

Now as for siege units, they are already one of the best units in the game. They come with so many bonus baked in during the later game that they make ranged units kind of pointless for the most part. If we make them even better at taking cities it will compound this issue. Once they get the volley promotion they murder cities as it is.

As for siege units not being able to rush cities, I do it now. Just wait for the AI to get into a war with it's neighbor flood into their territory, and quick capture 1 or 2 cities. This will often be enough to force them to vassal. If you take their capital this way they will always vassal. This is why I am against making them even better. It will be even easier to do rushes.

 

[4CV]

It's not about difficulty though. I'm just talking about low reward/effort playing aggressively. I can still win wars, but for all the effort to get there it's better to just play peacefully and gain a lot more.
...

I think, this is just like it is supposed to be now, because before, warring has been considered a too easy way to win. Most of my games, I do nothing but warfare and I think, if it were much easier, fighting could easily be as boring as tourism.

 

[stii]

I think the opposite is true on higher levels too.

Attacking early is hard, it is much easier to build up and attack with muskets. (this feel like mid game to me but this is somewhat subjective). Much later on you have tanks and if you have enough oil you can roll over pretty much every thing.

 

[SpecifiedUsername]

Attacking early is hard, it is much easier to build up and attack with muskets. (this feel like mid game to me but this is somewhat subjective). Much later on you have tanks and if you have enough oil you can roll over pretty much every thing.

It's boring when half of the game units gets unused in an optimal way to play.

 

[Zanteogo]

It's boring when half of the game units gets unused in an optimal way to play.

I agree, and it's something that has creeped into the mod.

The biggest offender right now are ranged units, and melee mounted units before tanks. Though tanks have their own issue.

Ranged units are ok around crossbows, but they are just too easy to kill for what they can do. Melee units backed with siege weapons just work way better. Siege weapons only downside is the slow movement they have in enemy territory, and they are also easy to kill if attacked, but so are ranged.

Melee mounted units used to be really good as their CP and quick movement allowed them to circle around units to attack behind melee walls. However, I find in practice you just end up trading your unit, to kill a single enemy unit, as the next turn you exposed unit get murdered. I think this changed because the AI is just better at unit movement and moving units in formation. In theory, particularly on defense, you can use your roads to do hit and run attacks, however ranged melee units just do this much better. Once you start getting into tanks they start to get somewhat better, but the oil cost limits how much you can really use them. Plus when they start to get REALLY good, as in modern tanks, you end up converting them a couple turns later into Giant Death Robots because the late game tech scaling issues.

My answer to this would be to remove the ZOC and terrain movement costs when attacking (if possible). This would allow better hit and run attacks if attacks always only cost 1 movement. I would allow mounted units to use enemy roads to make this more of a thing too. Also looking at the tech scaling issues in late game will allow actual tanks to have more of a use.

My answer to ranged would be to to first rework the first two promotions. Attacking 50%+ or 50%- health bonus needs to go. Instead we need to have a defense bonus (that gives a bonus when defending in forts and cities) and a general attack bonus in the other tree. This will allow someone to not only specialize their range units, it would also give them a niche they sort of lack now. If my memory serves me the original change to the promotions from a city or unit bonus was the AI is too dumb to understand to use their specialized units in a specialized way. I am not sure if this is still the case? I would also bake in a bonus to attacking units close to full health in ALL ranged units.

 

[nekokon]

Now as for siege units, they are already one of the best units in the game. They come with so many bonus baked in during the later game that they make ranged units kind of pointless for the most part. If we make them even better at taking cities it will compound this issue. Once they get the volley promotion they murder cities as it is.

Are you talking specifically about late game siege units ? Because before getting range 3 my siege units are really bad and can only offer little help with damaging the city.
Practically I can only move 2-3 in range (usually would take some chunk of dmg from city and range unit inside), attack next turn while pulling out the almost dying one, rotate another one in if I have extra, repeat. Basically only a few attack max per turn while taking forever to get out out enemy land to heal up unlike skirmishers who can get in and out/heal up much easier thus contribute a lot more.
And I don't know about them better at killing units than skirmisher/range unit, they have dmg penalty and tend to die too quickly due to being slow and not having terrain defense bonus, so even if they can do more dmg in 1 or 2 attacks then die it doesn't mean much.

 

[stii]

It's boring when half of the game units gets unused in an optimal way to play.

I mean maybe but we would need to agree on what that means.

I think the exact opposite of the other poster here. My army consists almost entirely of ranged units with a few melee units to buffer and a few siege units to take down cities once I have cleared everything out.

And it doesn't really matter which is the optimal way to play, but it does show there are plenty of different ways to play.

 

[nekokon]

I have the same army composition too, a lot of ranged/skirmisher to safely/effectively focus and kill off enemy units, with a few melee infantry to hold the line/create blockage and a few siege units to speed up city grinding (which is the slowest and least effective part). Never able to successfully knight/armor rush enemy without taking heavy dmg in return, and heavy infantry comp get blocked easily with AI's production.

 

[andersw]

This is nothing new, I watched a lot of marbozir (BNW no mods) way back and part of the reason for his success was to NOT LOSE UNITS, keep upgrades all the way and at some time have ridiculous units, admittedly a lot of cheesy stuff was also possible at that time.
Not losing units means you can use production and gold for something else.
Killing enemy units is good yields if you are authority, its ok if cities doesnt fall very fast.
And yes the AI bonuses in wars and unit production is silly at higher lvls.

 

[beginner_]

@balparmak Personally I'd say those are valid points re: the UI if those are not displayed. I've always found those useful.

Also, everyone, I've fixed a few crashes that have been reported for 2.6. Replace your DLL in MODS > (1) Community Patch with this one to apply the fix. Savegame compatible.

I don't have time to make a new autoinstaller at the moment.

This broke my save game of initial v2.6

Crash to desktop when loading the saved game. tried different saves of same game with same effect.

 

[Zanteogo]

Are you talking specifically about late game siege units ? Because before getting range 3 my siege units are really bad and can only offer little help with damaging the city.
Practically I can only move 2-3 in range (usually would take some chunk of dmg from city and range unit inside), attack next turn while pulling out the almost dying one, rotate another one in if I have extra, repeat. Basically only a few attack max per turn while taking forever to get out out enemy land to heal up unlike skirmishers who can get in and out/heal up much easier thus contribute a lot more.
And I don't know about them better at killing units than skirmisher/range unit, they have dmg penalty and tend to die too quickly due to being slow and not having terrain defense bonus, so even if they can do more dmg in 1 or 2 attacks then die it doesn't mean much.

Siege units are the only realistic way to take cities after walls for the most part. You have to plan and line up 2 or 3 at once because the AI is smart enough to target them over your melee walls.
Siege units really shine when they get the level 3 volley promotion that adds in an extra +50% to attacks on cities. You will eat away 15% to 20% of the cities health each hit. You will usually be attacking cities close to your boarder, make sure you have your roads going right up to the boarder of the enemy territory. If you have them to spare using a great general to expand your territory makes this even easier. If you can snipe the capital, you won. The AI will always vassal once you take their capital. This of course can become an issue if your aren't attacking a civ that shares boarders with yourself, but that's the game and reflects real life.

Skirmishers only scratch cities, and if you are using them to take cities it will take forever. Skirmishers are amazing defensive units because you can use your roads to hit and run units. They are alright on the offensive, but it depends heavily on terrain. If you have lots of open terrain you can pick off whole armies. Because ranged mounted units are so good, melee mounted are kind of garbage.

Ranged units draw back is they do crap damage towards cities. You can use them to get your melee close to cities because they are alright support units, but after than they are just in the way. Your main goal should be attacking enemies that share your boarder, I find if I try to use ranged units they end up having to pull back to make room for my siege units before they really do much. Due to ranged mounted units are so much better you should focus on using them in place. Ranged units also tend to get worse and worse as the game progresses while siege units just get better and better.