Paratroopers after drop can't take cities with only sea, air or missile units

[mrt144]

Exactly the second option. if there is a non-land military visible unit ( like a worker , a GP ( except a GSpy ), a missionary , a corp exec, a visible sub, planes, missiles and ships other than submarines ) the city is not takeable. Otherwise, the city is takeable ( even if it has 400000 undetected submarines ). The real fun in this is the submarines: if you pass a airship in recon , you can't take the city ( airship makes the submarines visible ), if you don't use the airship you can take the city. Completely unintuitive.

Completely nuts. The change is penalizing you for employing a basic tactic; Recon.

 

[r_rolo1]

This is not the change. This is as 3.17 and 3.19 behave without any modifications... AFAIK this is how paratroopers always behaved in BtS

 

[mrt144]

This is not the change. This is as 3.17 and 3.19 behave without any modifications

So to get down to it, the change in the Better AI mod did exactly what to the paratroopers?

I feel like I'm going in circles here. Although I don't know if I ever encountered an AI city that had non combat units in it after clearing it out. It could really be a great Role Playing scheme; passive missionary holds back paratroopers.

 

[r_rolo1]

The change that jdog did was to make the paratroopers always unable to take cities in the turn they drop , for the reasons that himself stated some posts ago. As you can also read, I disagree with his aproach somewhat.....

I pretty much discovered this when trying to take a coastal city that was the city with the enemy AI navy in with gunships and paratroopers ..... but even workboats will stop the paratroopers

 

[mrt144]

The change that jdog did was to make the paratroopers always unable to take cities in the turn they drop , for the reasons that himself stated some posts ago. As you can also read, I disagree with his aproach somewhat.....

I pretty much discovered this when trying to take a coastal city that was the city with the enemy AI navy in with gunships and paratroopers ..... but even workboats will stop the paratroopers

Gotchya. I was having a 4 PM brain fart here at work. I was having a hard time distinguishing between what was changed: Non combat units blocking paratrooper city capture on paradrop turn vs. the changed rules where paratrooper city capture is blocked completely on the paradrop turn due to attack action mechanics.

Under the change though, how will people use Paratroopers?

 

[Roland Johansen]

By far the quickest way to understand why the changes were made this way is by reading the first 15 or so posts in this thread. It's not that much work. Probably less work than the various posts that you've already made in various threads about the subject.

edit: I guess you've read it now; too late with this post

 

[Roland Johansen]

Under the change though, how will people use Paratroopers?

Mostly in situation where the opponent is inferior. Inferior due to heavy bombing of everything in range of the paratrooper landing spot, inferior due to numbers or inferior due to technological disparity.

You can weaken the enemy up to that point and then use paratroopers to:

-pillage resources on the turn they land
-destroy units on the next turn after landing

In these situations they can be quicker than other units but I think their use is fairly limited. However, their use was also fairly limited in real life.

The real world use where paratroopers would be used to hold key positions for short periods of time until heavy reinforcements would arrive doesn't work and I wouldn't know how to implement it in the game. The 'hold key positions until heavy reinforcements arrive' suggest at least a single turn of holding ground as a single turn is the shortest span of time in civ. And that is an unlikely feat when the enemy hasn't been weakened significantly (by bombing) before that moment and the enemy has access to indestructible (by bombing) railroads. I guess that is one of the limitations of a turn based game that isn't meant as a detailed combat simulation and where turns represent significant amounts of time.

 

[mrt144]

By far the quickest way to understand why the changes were made this way is by reading the first 15 or so posts in this thread. It's not that much work. Probably less work than the various posts that you've already made in various threads about the subject.

edit: I guess you've read it now; too late with this post

you're having 1:30 AM crankiness

 

[Roland Johansen]

you're having 1:30 AM crankiness

Rereading my post, I can see that it can seem that way, but it wasn't meant that way. I really thought that reading the first part of this thread would be the quickest way to get your the information that you wanted.

 

[Elkad]

Don't like this UP item either. Could we get an option with the alternate behavior (can take city if no land combat units present)?

 

[jdog5000]

Alright, so this afternoon I figured out how to do it the other way. The options are:

1) As it was. After capturing one worker, a knight cannot capture another worker, cannot capture a city defended by only a workboat, but can capture an empty city. A paratrooper can capture an empty city after dropping, but is blocked by any unit and cannot capture workers.

2) UP 1.00 style. After capturing a worker, a knight cannot capture additional defenseless units and cannot capture even an empty city. After dropping, a paratrooper cannot capture defenseless units or empty cities.

3) Helicopter blitz style. After capturing a worker, a knight can capture additional defenseless units and cities. After dropping, a paratrooper can capture defenseless units and cities.

 

[Roland Johansen]

Not 1: it's logically inconsistent.

I'd prefer 3 over 2 if the AI can somewhat handle it, if it doesn't hurt the AI too much.

For a human player, it's not simply a good move to land a paratrooper near two workers and capture/kill them both. You're likely to lose your paratrooper in the counter attack unless you took precautions to avoid that. But if you have that much control over the battlefield that you can stop the AI from counter attacking a paratrooper, then the AI has bigger problems than losing 2 workers.

 

[phungus420]

I think option2 is the most logically consitent. Either option you pick someone will be unhappy though.

To quote the Bible: You can please all of the people some of the time, you can please some of the people all of the time, but you can't please all of the people all of the time.

 

[r_rolo1]

I have to agree that 2) is more logically consistent with what seems to be the intentions of the original coder. But even then I would prefer 3 ) ( with possibly the option of dropping in top of non-land military units ... c'mon, if the drop is a attack action, why can't I take workers or destroy GP in the drop? What is the logical reason for Archimedes or Zoroaster to stop my paratroopers in the air? ). Good ol'Gameplay vs realism stuff .....

 

[Lord Tirian]

What is the logical reason for Archimedes or Zoroaster to stop my paratroopers in the air?

Obviously because Einstein can do it!

Sorry, I had to.

Cheers, LT.

 

[r_rolo1]

But in your link einstein is stopping a person in the air holding it's sword... and that person looks more like a civ IV spy than with a Civ IV paratrooper

Sorry, but I had to

 

[Elkad]

Ideally I'd like paras to be able to attack from the air even. 50% attack penalty (same as an amphibious assault), plus the already existing chance of interception on the way in.

They should definitely be able to drop directly on top of non-combat units.

That's moving beyond patch to mod though.

Basic version I could live with. Drop on empty tile. Be allowed to capture non-land or non-combat units and cities on the immediate move.

 

[jdog5000]

Yeah, I put #2 into UP 1.00 because it's the most logically consistent ... but #3 would be much more fun and make paratroopers more useful.

I don't think #3 would be too exploitable, at least with the standard paratrooper range of 5. In later era wars the AI keeps its workers away from borders, so you're not going to be able to steal much. The AI won't decide to drop its paratroopers to steal undefended units, but if it does drop them next to undefended workers then it very well might take them. It will drop them next to cities though, and may move in to capture if it's empty.

 

[MadmanAtW]

Well, the new UP has been released with option #3 included, so continuing to talk about it may be beating a dead horse, but my concern with #3 isn't paratrooper abuse, but horse archer/knight abuse. No one used paratroopers enough to really have gotten "used to" the old way they worked, I would argue, but it's really going to take people by surprise when their horse archers can capture two tiles' worth of workers in one turn. While #3 is cool for paratroopers, it feels like a bigger change to the game overall than #2 had been.

But I assume that the coding between them was complex enough that it would be decidedly non-trivial to swap from #3 to #2 in my own install of BBAI? If it's hard I'll just learn to live with it.

 

[jdog5000]

Yes, the change so that mobile units can capture multiple tiles of non-combat units in a turn will probably surprise some, but to me it also makes sense. I remember deciding to capture a worker before attacking a unit back in the day and being shocked I couldn't do both.

It's actually a really small, localized change and the source code for both options (and the original even) are included, just one's commented out. Check out CvUnit::canMoveInto, I wrote explanations for which line of code does what.