I'd say, this is entirely conform with the original design approach, supports it ("holes" in the tech tree).
The Point is not to force the enemy to attack, it is to keep enemies away from other units, especially ranged and siege units and if the unit is next to the enemy you do gain some flanking bonus and you can Always attack the enemy unit to kill it. Unit placement is pretty important for how valuable they are, a sperman on a random hill wont do much but one placed in a choke Point can be much more annoying. Also units should not operate alone but in Groups.
Two units is not much to come with, even in the early game. Also the frontline don't have to be spearmen, you can use Heavy chariots that cost the same as spermen but destroys warriors. The Point is you don't build a wall by leaving big gaps in it so if your frontline have big gaps in it, it wont work, but if it don't have gaps, the enemy options are going to be limited.
like warriors would result in a much more viable choice IMO. Warriors would still beat spears by 5
, but they'd be equal or inferior in every other aspect. I doubt beelining them would be attractive with any smaller change.) if we'd reduce the price, due to being the only AC unit that can compete with melee or horses on the power curve.
movement up to oil, can I have my legion unit lose the builder charge and get 46
instead? helos but I'm drifting...) Hey, the Black Army was 50 strength in the Hungary reveal video. Just saying, there's precedent. is a 50% attack and defense bonus. So to balance two identical units at X and X+10 strength, the weaker unit needs to be about half the price - because the stronger unit expends 1.5x less HP to kill 1.5x more unit. Total efficiency ~2.25x. If you think it should only be a 1.5x factor, ask yourself: If you could build either a Tank or a Modern Armor, which do you make? A tank costs 480 vs MA's 680, 70% of the price. A 1.5x factor would suggest a 33% cost reduction or about 460. That's incredibly close - does anyone think Tanks and modern armor are that close in combat? vs 160 for about +10. Shouldn't even be in the ballpark, everyone should prefer swords.It make sense that Heavy chariots beat warriors harder than spears..
Both the melee and anti cavalry line is pretty weak currently, sure better now than Before but melee units are simply outclassed by cavalry and more so as the game progress and the siege advantage melee have is lost while anti cavalry while do better against cavalry have issue with melee units.
Past the early game, it is pretty much cavalry + siege spam. The issue is the other units are simply too slow which make them vulnerable and also harder to use while cavalry can flank, snipe damaged units, pillage, retreat quickly and also move to one end of the map to the other. Siege units which include naval and Aircrafts are the only good way to get rid of defence as infantry and cavalry both perform poorly here.I don't think the current scale of civ6 battles is as conducive to a cost based balancing as it is to strength based balancing. At least for something the devs might actually change. Since we don't currently see a huge P&S or At crew spam, I am quite confident that spears+pikes getting boosted to 30 & 45 respectively would do great things for combat. (Swords still beat pikes for half the price. You might have to actually build pikes in the middle ages! Gasp! the horror!). Extending the same logic to making AT+infantry 75 and Modern AT 85 (at least give these guys some love!) would fully round out the cast.
If it makes medieval cav falter too hard, we can always round their strength to an even 45 & 50 so things are generally consistent through the ages. (I would also love to see 85
Well you said this Before:
So here you are giving atleast one situation in which the enemy bring in AC.
Heavy cavalry is superior to melee units as the mobility make a huge difference that melee units can pretty much never make up for. The only reason to use melee units if you the enemy bring in anti cavalry and if it is like you say, that nobody use anti cavalry, there is no reason to use melee units past warriors and maybe swordsmen, but swordsmen is already outclassed by horsemen and its only advantage other than destroying anti cavalry is to attack walled cities but you probably going be better of building proper siege units than can also be upgraded later on. Another advantage with melee/anti cavalry line over cavalry is they get their production cards earlier but with careful management and use of upgrading this can be pretty much nullified..
To me, the horses aren’t fortifying: they are concealing themselves BETWEEN the woods or hills to surprise the enemy; because I consider woods and hills to represent multiples, not individual features.
I think long term, making AC work will be 75% of the battle, and the last mile will be stripping some of the hidden utility power -fortify/terrain defense, ZOC ignore, etc from HC/LC. You can't have combat and move advantages for minimal production differential plus all the utility upsides. On an open field, HC at +5
will sweep away everything that isn't nailed down. For all the ZOC talk, i would feel a lot happier if HC suffered ZOC but LC didn't, to give an actual reason to use LC (which are just as fast as HC but weaker.)The strength and movement advantage of HC is pretty much just too much to overcome. River defense is a +5 modifier. HC is usually 3-5
stronger than same-era infantry. It's like they have amphibious for free.
I think the AC v Melee comparison is pretty logical. They're both foot units with a lot of bonuses that apply to both in the realm of attacking walls, oligarchy, etc. AC are supposed to be great cav counters but as is recounted in this thread they aren't very good at that; plus AC don't get to exclusively attack cav, no unit can solely rely on attacking one thing. Since melee really outshine AC in the "everything else" department it's just a logical line of inquiry if you're better off dropping AC.
Again, a tank hits another tank just as hard as an AT crew does and moves twice and fast and hits all other units for +10 over the AT. For a mere 20% more production + 1 oil. Maybe you can't make 20 tanks but in the realm of 4-6 you definitely can.
The cost difference between legions and regular swords is over 20%, for goodness' sake. If we just chalk the +2
I don't think the current scale of civ6 battles is as conducive to a cost based balancing as it is to strength based balancing. At least for something the devs might actually change. Since we don't currently see a huge P&S or At crew spam, I am quite confident that spears+pikes getting boosted to 30 & 45 respectively would do great things for combat. (Swords still beat pikes for half the price. You might have to actually build pikes in the middle ages! Gasp! the horror!). Extending the same logic to making AT+infantry 75 and Modern AT 85 (at least give these guys some love!) would fully round out the cast.
If it makes medieval cav falter too hard, we can always round their strength to an even 45 & 50 so things are generally consistent through the ages. (I would also love to see 85
Insofar as cost goes, it is a noble goal and i would love to see a lost of cost rebalancing in the game, but +10
Similarly, swords vs military tactics UUs like the khevsureti - 90
Units in general go up 10 strength per era and the cost rises extremely fast for most of the game. Yet we all rush for upgraded units...
I mention this because if you have an equal amount of production split between two armies, one of stronger and one of weaker units, the stronger units will generally win on the field most of the time. They have a lot of advantages in healing, attacking, the fact that civ6 fights don't all occur on an infinite featureless plain, and so on. And then there's stuff like the strong units can kill off a weaker unit faster than the reverse on all but totally open terrain, so the next turn the weaker army has to counterattack with a reduced force.
Anyways, Strength buffs FTW
The combat formula works out such that 1 point of strength increases the combat factor by exp(1/25) or 1.041x, multiplicative. So while 0 is 1x, and +30 is 3.3x, +10 is always ~1.5x combat factor (technically it's like 1.492x iirc.)
If you line up the strength of the foot units in most eras, the efficiency of using melee against anti cav when it's "just" +10 difference (instead of our favorite +21 sword on spear genocide) is massive, and you could still make AC appreacible cheaper than melee and cav without messing up the balance at all.
