Pikeman upgrade to Lancers?

[Txurce]

.... .... fixed

Of course - destroyers are melee! I have a very hard time keeping that particular one straight.

By the way, totally OT, I just played an approximately 200-turn war (my Dutch vs the Byz) and 1) Byzantium deployed its defenses amazingly well. It was tough for me to close in with the Sea Daggers and later the ironclads. It was similar on land, although there I was outnumbered. The AI is very good at building the appropriate counter units, as well as not walking into traps too often.

The other noteworthy thing Theodora did is, after having no CS allies for me to raid for maybe 150 turns, I lost control of one Mercantile CS for one turn - at which point she promptly took it and six other unaligned CS to DoW me.

The AI could be more aggressive overall with CS alliances. However, they are spending their gold.

 

[MadDjinn]

The AI could be more aggressive overall with CS alliances. However, they are spending their gold.

I like hearing when the AI actually does something right

unfortunately they still don't spend enough of their gold all the time.

 

[Peng Qi]

I like hearing when the AI actually does something right

unfortunately they still don't spend enough of their gold all the time.

I actually very rarely see the AI with more than 1K gold these days.

 

[KillingMeSoftly]

Pikemen upgrading to Lancers is a stroke of genius, if you ask me.

I never expected them to do this, but it makes sense. It's little things like this that turn around Civs like the Ottomans. Going from perhaps the worst Civilization to a very good one. They really did nothing to the Ottomans; just changed little things that indirectly salvaged an entire Civ. Allowed a unit to upgrade to Lancers. Allowing a unit to upgrade to Musketmen. Creating the "Prize Ships" ability for Privateers, and then saying it makes a lot more sense than the clunky ability the Ottomans had. Yet the flavor remains the same. This also helps all the other Civs that most people said were terrible, due to not being able to upgrade to their unit, such as America and Spain.

Voila, amazing!

 

[blackcatatonic]

Heh. I'm finding this irritating in my current game, if only because I have no Horses, so my Pikemen are stuck as Pikemen until I scrape together to cash to buy someone's Horses...

 

[gunter]

Do you know where I can find a G+K unit table in pdf where are shown also promotions ?

F.i. Lancers promote themselves to ?

 

[Seek]

@gunter: The civilopedia is accessible from the main menu now, you can find that info there (you could also try the manual, which is a PDF, but I'm not sure if it has that info).

 

[gunter]

@gunter: The civilopedia is accessible from the main menu now, you can find that info there (you could also try the manual, which is a PDF, but I'm not sure if it has that info).

Thanks a lot mate but I still have to buy G+K so I am looking for a unit list with pictures to be already prepared when I'll buy it

I am considering to wait for the first patch, just to fix the main issues that a " new " game almost certainly have.

 

[The_J]

Then why not take a look at Civilopedia online ?

 

[Seek]

Thanks, The_J! I wasn't aware it had been updated.

 

[The_J]

Yeah, it's really suprising how fast nebular was with updating it. It's great to have him here .

 

[Esoteric Arcane]

Very nice J,

I wish the civilopedia could add a flow chart of the unit upgrades, i have seen the flow chart of promotions as well on the forum atleast, but that too isnt in the civilpedia, be an easier reference for people. I might take the time in doing it and posting for Vanilla as I dont have the expansion yet.

Edit:
Just noticed that page has the G&K, ill see what I can do

 

[gunter]

Then why not take a look at Civilopedia online ?

Much appreciated, thank you.

 

[Yzman]

To me this is a silly thing to find flaw in. The game is designed now so that all units find uses and have upgrade paths so that they keep their same purpose.

And here is the best part, people find this ridiculous pikeman -> Lancer

But see this as totally logical -calvary -> tank and lancer-> helicopter

Using the same argument that is done in this thread,

"It makes no sense, this guys rides a horse! Now he can automatically drive??"
or
"This is ridiculous! All of my horse units upgrade to something that requires oil! I don't have oil and now I am stuck at calvary!"

Why do neither of these arguments hold with anyone? The reason is because this is new and people fear change. End of topic. The other things make sense to people because thats how they started, and if you think about this change for 10 seconds it follows the exact same logic.

People will stop complaining about this as soon as they have done a few games and adjust to the new path. Wow.

 

[Olleus]

To me this is a silly thing to find flaw in. The game is designed now so that all units find uses and have upgrade paths so that they keep their same purpose.

And here is the best part, people find this ridiculous pikeman -> Lancer

But see this as totally logical -calvary -> tank and lancer-> helicopter

Using the same argument that is done in this thread,

"It makes no sense, this guys rides a horse! Now he can automatically drive??"
or
"This is ridiculous! All of my horse units upgrade to something that requires oil! I don't have oil and now I am stuck at calvary!"

Why do neither of these arguments hold with anyone? The reason is because this is new and people fear change. End of topic. The other things make sense to people because thats how they started, and if you think about this change for 10 seconds it follows the exact same logic.

People will stop complaining about this as soon as they have done a few games and adjust to the new path. Wow.

Not. At. All. Why I object.

To summarise my previous post, if pikemen were used only as anti cavalry units, upgrading to lancers make sense. But if you've ever seen the AI play, you'll know that pikeman are also a standard infantry unit for when you don't have iron, have run out or are feeling a little cheap. Having a unit which specialises in digging in and holding the line upgrading to one who's role is flanking and hit and run attacks is annoying.

Note how I didn't mention realism once! Or whether the lancer is a better or worse unit than the musketman! The point is that function should be preserved in upgrading.

Cavalry upgrading to tanks makes sense - both fast powerful units who don't get defensive bonuses.

 

[Louis XXIV]

Changing upgrade paths make sense for gameplay to prevent the rich from getting richer, though. If you have to build line infantry from scratch, your army won't continue to dominate as much.

 

[Peacemongerer]

It's only irritating to me bc in like 4 straight games now, I haven't been able to get placed near horses. I'm dominating in the Iron Age, but whenever I get pikemen, they stop being useful quickly and I can't upgrade. They should like have a second condition on the upgrade tree where when you research rifling, you have the option to upgrade any still extant pikemen there. It's enough of a wait to make the Lancer useful, but not so long that promoed pikemen in empires with no horses are dead-ends.

 

[Txurce]

Changing upgrade paths make sense for gameplay to prevent the rich from getting richer, though. If you have to build line infantry from scratch, your army won't continue to dominate as much.

I agree, and think it's one of the underlying precepts of G&K. Religion and espionage do something similar - shake up the game and not allow you to build quite the same unstoppable head of steam.

 

[Olleus]

Changing upgrade paths make sense for gameplay to prevent the rich from getting richer, though. If you have to build line infantry from scratch, your army won't continue to dominate as much.

Now you're just making excuses for the game. Two reasons why that is nonsense:

1) You don't dominate with spearmen/pikemen. You make do. Either because you don't have iron or because you are using mounted/range units do the bulk of the work. Playing england/china you might have well promoted xbows; playing Songhai, well promoted mandeluk. Apart from Germany, nobody aims to use lots of pikemen as the source of the power in their army. Thus, losing them on upgrade is annoying but not the loss of the power core of an army.

2) The game designers have done out of their way to do the opposite of your premise. The archer line, which was a natural dead end, has been extended so you can keep using your highly promoted units (without losing the promotions). If they wanted to force the players to disband units or make them less useful, they would have done it a different way. For example, making cavalry upgrade to helicopters so they're are useless for two ages. Have longswords upgrade directly to riflemen (or great war infantry) so there is a stage when you either have to be weak or build stronger units. Or not have gattlings/machine guns.

 

[Olleus]

I agree, and think it's one of the underlying precepts of G&K. Religion and espionage do something similar - shake up the game and not allow you to build quite the same unstoppable head of steam.

You mean like city states which give you influence if you are researching techs faster than others? Or for being allied to lots of other city states thus bumping up your culture/faith?

Or faith buildings/beliefs which help you generate more faiths?

I agree with you on espionage, but the other two are pretty big and obvious positive feedback loops.