Pikeman

[Ekolite]

I never thought the Hippus were at a disadvantage, their strength is in the early game, before anyone gets pikemen anyway. They're supposed to become less competitive in the later game when civs like the calabim become more powerful.

 

[Kael]

We got rid of pikeman because they were undervalued. They weren't frequently used and we wanted to expand the "macemen" level unit to a more civ specific function instead of a generic unit. We really combined macemen and pikemen into one unit.

Functionaly we didn't like that our attacking line (melee) turned into the strongest defenders in t4 (shield wall and phalanx). And the defender line (archers) turned into strong attackers (flurry). So both lines were reworked to remain consistent.

The third nail in the coffin was that pikemen are a foil for mounted units. Which don't need a counter. It isn't specifically for the hippus, I think the Hippus have a decent reason to make mounted units. Its really for everyone else who never made mounted units because they weren't effective.

Another advantage of cutting it (besides simply tightening up the game) is that it removes 21 art requirements from the game (well, technically 20) bringing us closer to our goal of full art replacement. We wouldn't cut a unit just because we don't have art, but I dont want to waste the art teams time on units of middleing value.

 

[Sureshot]

I would call axeman -> soldier or something like that, and champion -> elite infantry

Soldier would be a nice replacement for Axemen. It used to be partially that atleast for Dwarves (when their axemen were/are called Dwarven Soldiers)

 

[onedreamer]

The main problem with the defender line (Archers), like I said, is that it's the most underpowered of the game. I see 6 lines here:
- melee
- recon
- mounted
- divine
- arcane
- archery

The first two have units buildable right from start. This means you will have a decent amount of units level 3+ (10+ xp) before Archery is even discovered. In my case, it is very common to have several combat 5 warriors and at least a coupla combat 5 scouts or later even more combat 5 hunters, before I discover Archery. These units can later be upgraded and retain both their xp points and current promotions. Divine and Arcane units gain experience with time, so you will always have a decent amount of experienced units of this kind. Mounted units are very offensive, so even if they come later (still NOT as late as archery units), it won't be hard to have a decent number of experienced units. Mounted units are easier to loose, but those who resist the lower levels will be quite strong. Now... the archery line has a big problem. It is very weak offensively (an adept has sometimes better chances at winning vs a Goblin than an Archer) and due to the tech tree they come very late. Melee and Recon like I said from the start, Horsemen are on the way to Trade, Adepts one tech from Writing (quite appreciated ^^), and Divine units really don't need to come early due to their potential. But anyways I generally discover Priesthood before Archery. Archery is too late in the tree (also because in an uninteresting position) and by the time you can build Archers (don't forget you also need to build archery range to have them...) they will gain xp very slowly because of their low offensive potential. This means that in most cases an experienced Melee unit will do a better job at defending a city than an archery unit, at least against strong opponent units. You can upgrade a warrior to an archer but you will most likely end up with unappropriate promotions. This is why I really LOVED Flurries, because they could use those early combat 5 promotions from a warrior (but I do agree with you that melee units becoming defensive -Shield Wall, not Phalanx who looked offensive to me - was a bit fuzzy). One big and unbalancing component in all this matter, as I said in the Drill thread, is that Combat promotions and experience are overpowered in FFH, which makes archery units less important. If combat promotions weren't so strong and if it wasn't so easy to promote a unit to combat 5, the archery line would have more sense, but as it stands it is little more than elven flavor.
So while I understand your design reasons in the changes you made, Kael, I can't really appreciate them from a strategic point of view.

 

[Seidrik_The_Gray]

Kael, those are good thoughts. I'm assuming then, that it came down to forcing the player to specialize his units via promotions, rather than unit type?

I actually like the idea of having a defensive and offensive version of melee, and archer unit types. Your mounted units would be more effective if they had less defense and more offense and more mobility. For example, give the horseman 3 moves, 6/1 for offense/defense, with a -20% city attack.

Defensive melee: Guardsman +25% city defense, 3/5 base, Maceman +25% vs. melee 4/8 base, Phalanx +25% city defense, 8/14 base.
Offensive melee: Axeman/Swordsman +10% city attack, 6/2 base, Foot Knight Immune to First Strike, 14/8 base
Balanced melee: Warrior 3/3 base, Footman 5/5, Infantry 8/8, Elite Infantry 12/12

Defensive Ranged: Archer 2/4 base, +50% city defense, +50% hills defense, 1 first strike. Longbow 4/8 base, +50% city defense, +50% hills defense, 2 first strikes, Elite Longbowman 8/12 base, +50% city defense, +50% hills defense, 2 first strikes.
Offensive Ranged: Peltast 4/2 base, Guerilla I promo, +25% hills attack and defense, 1 first strike. Ambusher 8/4 base, Guerilla I promo, +25% hills attack and defense, 2 first strikes. Flurry 12/8 base, Guerilla I promo, +25% hills attack and defense, 3 first strikes.

My 2 cp. The Elites can only come from units of lvl 4 or higher, the others can be built, but you would also restrict the range of promotions available based on unit type.

 

[Seidrik_The_Gray]

The main problem with the defender line If combat promotions weren't so strong and if it wasn't so easy to promote a unit to combat 5, the archery line would have more sense, but as it stands it is little more than elven flavor.
So while I understand your design reasons in the changes you made, Kael, I can't really appreciate them from a strategic point of view.

I'm with you here. Getting a cumulative combat strength promo line is rediculous! I promote everything to CS 5 before I start specializing. +100% STR is too hard to pass up. Sphener with CS5 is a GOD. It's not uncommon for me to get Sphener with some CR and heroic strength increases too, lol. Start walking Sphener over everything. More to the point, though, Onedreaner is absolutely correct concerning Archers coming in too late and therfore being underpowered.

 

[Ekolite]

Maybe a way to make archers more powerful defenders would be to stop them from needing the archery range to be built. Then for every turn the archer spends in a city with and archery range they gain exp up to a certain level, then to increase their exp beyond that level you need a bowyer which will give them exp up to another certain level. If this needs balancing to stop them from becoming to strong attackers they could not get exp from fighting, only from practicing in town, to give you a reason to keep them at home or they could have 0 attack or something.

The only exception i think would be the ljosalfar, i think attacking archers fit well with their theme.

 

[marioflag]

One big and unbalancing component in all this matter, as I said in the Drill thread, is that Combat promotions and experience are overpowered in FFH, which makes archery units less important. If combat promotions weren't so strong and if it wasn't so easy to promote a unit to combat 5, the archery line would have more sense, but as it stands it is little more than elven flavor.
So while I understand your design reasons in the changes you made, Kael, I can't really appreciate them from a strategic point of view.

I completely agree with you onedreamer.What really makes Archery line underpowered is that promotions are more powerful than in civ4 vanilla and you also get experience a lot faster, so units initial strength and abilities don't matter as much as experience and promotions.......it isn't a problem related only to Archers but in general to defensive units.
Honestly i think that a real solution would be an option to slowdown a bit combat experience gain, otherwise archer needs some further buffs but i don't think it would completely solve the problem

 

[Kael]

The main problem with the defender line (Archers), like I said, is that it's the most underpowered of the game. I see 6 lines here:
- melee
- recon
- mounted
- divine
- arcane
- archery

The first two have units buildable right from start. This means you will have a decent amount of units level 3+ (10+ xp) before Archery is even discovered. In my case, it is very common to have several combat 5 warriors and at least a coupla combat 5 scouts or later even more combat 5 hunters, before I discover Archery. These units can later be upgraded and retain both their xp points and current promotions. Divine and Arcane units gain experience with time, so you will always have a decent amount of experienced units of this kind. Mounted units are very offensive, so even if they come later (still NOT as late as archery units), it won't be hard to have a decent number of experienced units. Mounted units are easier to loose, but those who resist the lower levels will be quite strong. Now... the archery line has a big problem. It is very weak offensively (an adept has sometimes better chances at winning vs a Goblin than an Archer) and due to the tech tree they come very late. Melee and Recon like I said from the start, Horsemen are on the way to Trade, Adepts one tech from Writing (quite appreciated ^^), and Divine units really don't need to come early due to their potential. But anyways I generally discover Priesthood before Archery. Archery is too late in the tree (also because in an uninteresting position) and by the time you can build Archers (don't forget you also need to build archery range to have them...) they will gain xp very slowly because of their low offensive potential. This means that in most cases an experienced Melee unit will do a better job at defending a city than an archery unit, at least against strong opponent units. You can upgrade a warrior to an archer but you will most likely end up with unappropriate promotions. This is why I really LOVED Flurries, because they could use those early combat 5 promotions from a warrior (but I do agree with you that melee units becoming defensive -Shield Wall, not Phalanx who looked offensive to me - was a bit fuzzy). One big and unbalancing component in all this matter, as I said in the Drill thread, is that Combat promotions and experience are overpowered in FFH, which makes archery units less important. If combat promotions weren't so strong and if it wasn't so easy to promote a unit to combat 5, the archery line would have more sense, but as it stands it is little more than elven flavor.
So while I understand your design reasons in the changes you made, Kael, I can't really appreciate them from a strategic point of view.

I dont understand how the early start doesn't apply to archers as well. Warriors upgrade to archers so if you have a 3rd level warrior you can make him an archer as easily as an axeman. There isn't any inherent loss just because his unitcombat changes in the upgrade.

I do agree with you that the increased emphasis on combat (from xp and promotion improvements) makes it more difficult to play a defensive game and weakens the archer line. I think archers are good in some strategies, I focus on them in some games, usually when Im playing sheaim/armageddon or other builder focus strats. But as you say they arent that useful in your typical rush/attack game (which is a popular and effective strat).

 

[Nikis-Knight]

Ditto horses from scouts. But, to be fair, in the case of archers, if I have a highly promoted unit, I'm not likely to relegate him to guard duty unless I'm losing already.

 

[galahadba]

Maybe a way to make archers more powerful defenders would be to stop them from needing the archery range to be built. Then for every turn the archer spends in a city with and archery range they gain exp up to a certain level, then to increase their exp beyond that level you need a bowyer which will give them exp up to another certain level. If this needs balancing to stop them from becoming to strong attackers they could not get exp from fighting, only from practicing in town, to give you a reason to keep them at home or they could have 0 attack or something.

The only exception i think would be the ljosalfar, i think attacking archers fit well with their theme.

I like the ideia of giving free xp to archers... the ideia of taking off the requiriment of the archer range to build it is good too (so it would be the unit of choice on new conquered cities) and to give free xp to archers that stay on a city (training ), until it gets to lvl 5 for example, this would acheive 2 goals

- Make the archer a unit that you will actually build someday...
- Boost AI, as now it is very easy to get some lvl 4-5 units go to a enemy citie and get >90% chance of beating their unpromoted archers, to get a city defended with garrison 3, more some drill would make it harder, i would even begin consider using siege weapons in my games...

The archery range could give garrison 1 + drill 1 promotions, as if you were a protective leader in normal civ... so it would be a very good build to do.

As for the drill being weak, i disagree, it alread scales with the other promotions... if it is easy to get cs5 unit that give 100% strenght, try getting drill after it and you will change your opinion of underpowered promotion...

 

[Ekolite]

yeah drill promos are good for dealing with swarms of weaker units.

 

[onedreamer]

I dont understand how the early start doesn't apply to archers as well. Warriors upgrade to archers so if you have a 3rd level warrior you can make him an archer as easily as an axeman. There isn't any inherent loss just because his unitcombat changes in the upgrade.

Of course there is (hence my post)
Early units can only be promoted with combat, which is not the best promotion for an archery unit defending the city. Sure it can help, but I'll always prefer to upgrade to another melee unit, since thanks to those promotions he is likely to earn more xp killing units that try to pillage my plots rather than just sitting in the city and defending (less xp), and on the long run he will be much more effective, especially with metal promotions.

 

[onedreamer]

As for the drill being weak, i disagree, it alread scales with the other promotions... if it is easy to get cs5 unit that give 100% strenght, try getting drill after it and you will change your opinion of underpowered promotion...

Your own statement contradicts you, the fact that you suggest taking drill AFTER combat 5 means that Combat 1-2-3-4-5 are more important. And I do agree. Not in Civ4 though, believe me.

 

[Silverkiss]

Can you make so Archers units, when defending, gain more exp ? So it wouldn't be so tough to lvl them up, and defending with them wouldn't be a bad strategy even if you have a unit who can kill the attacker.

 

[Basil II]

Of course there is (hence my post)
Early units can only be promoted with combat, which is not the best promotion for an archery unit defending the city. Sure it can help, but I'll always prefer to upgrade to another melee unit, since thanks to those promotions he is likely to earn more xp killing units that try to pillage my plots rather than just sitting in the city and defending (less xp), and on the long run he will be much more effective, especially with metal promotions.

I have to agree but...Archers still make great, cheap to build defensive units (particularly in cities built on hills, which is something I try to do if possible). My strat is usually to as you say, promote my experienced early units along the melee line. But, nowadays (after being rushed by the AI too much) I often supplement them later with an archer or two in each city. Archers can get city defense, melee cannot. The other thing of course is archers aren't resource dependant like melee is. Elves have bonuses to archers that make them more valuable, plus the Hero... Last of all, if you always focus on melee in MP then foes can specialize their promotions against you.

 

[Basil II]

If there is an imbalance of the lines, I'd go back to the fact that researching the melee line also improves the economy/production of your kingdom by allowing mines/forges/shipyards etc, whereas archery does not. Same can be said of many of the other lines (horsemen allows the key Trade tech, Arcane allows node development, etc)

 

[DeaExMachina]

A poll would have been really nice on this before the change was made Kael. I'm not sure how many people were part of your play circle but I know you realized from the get go that there are people who used Pikemen and I don't really know many people who use Archers before Flurries.

Not to mention Longbowmen, those are even worse. I think I used them twice, once as the Ljo and once as Falamar just because I had the money, it wasn't like they ever fought a battle.

Pikemen on the other hand tended to make up the bulk of my troops when I was going down the melee/merc line. Mercs would go in and clean stuff up, Pikemen protect against the Warchariots and then stand guard at the cities.

 

[galahadba]

Your own statement contradicts you, the fact that you suggest taking drill AFTER combat 5 means that Combat 1-2-3-4-5 are more important. And I do agree. Not in Civ4 though, believe me.

No contradiction, just diferent caracteriscts (or Atributes i don't know what is the right in english)... some promotions are good for low level caracters, others not... is like getting canibilize for a lvl 1 undead, what is good to heal when you kill a unit, if you are weak and will probably die tring to do it?

the same for Drill, you get combat rounds for free... what is good to have some free rounds if you cannot win it? it just makes sense for you to get your unit strong first and then chose if you continue to improve it strenght, or if you give combat rounds for free to not get hurt killing mid-low level units...

And compare to vanilla civ do not make sense either, the other promotions are much diferent for comparision, it is almost an entire diferent game...

Other problem with changing drill is that it alread scales with the unit power, if you give more strenght to it, you would get it overpowered when given for exemple to a CS5 unit for example, that is not dificult to get anyway...

 

[Willgar]

A Crossbowman in a hill city, with Garrison 1 and a few turn to fortify is a 30str defender - did i do my sums right, because if so that seems pretty good to me for a non-national unit!

Personally i dont like the idea of archer units being all powerfull. A garrison unit that sits in a nice walled city, chasing petty market theives should not be as tough as a battle hardened champion that has been out fighting barbarians, wild animals and capturing enemy cities. I play archer units as cheap, garrison units - it would be great if they received a form of Gaurdsman promotion or were less expensive to build or maintain but i personally dont understand what the problem with them is....if it aint broke....

sidebar: combat 4 warriors upgraded to crossbowmen are also a tough foe...