Pikeman

[Basil II]

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...

Crossbowmen were converted to national units... Also as I said archers can get city defense and melee cannot. I don't see any problem with melee being 'better' than the archer line, but if so there needs to be some reason to use archers: cheaper to build/research seems the best solution.

 

[Willgar]

Crossbowmen were converted to national units... Also as I said archers can get city defense and melee cannot. I don't see any problem with melee being 'better' than the archer line, but if so there needs to be some reason to use archers: cheaper to build/research seems the best solution.

Was talking about standard crossbow men? (BY national unit , do you mean limited to just 3?) the current crossbowmen are pretty dam tough on attack and defence... they chew up attacks from multiple Champions...

 

[Nikis-Knight]

I think players would use archers more if the ai did what the players do--get warriors promoted with shock 2 and steamroll all the melee units guarding cities...

 

[Basil II]

Yes, that too.

 

[Ekolite]

Does the ai not specialise units?

Maybe archers could have their own set of promotions to make them more useful, ie. much more powerful defenders when they get enough exp.

 

[Calavente]

well,

I don't like archers.

you can't do nix with them. just stay fat and happy in a city.
as offense is almost the best defense, and attack gains more xp than defense, I'd rather attack those pillaging barbs with my 2+2 warrior with iron weapons and combat 3+ than wait for them with my 0xp archer that cost twice as much as the warrior.

at the time I could have this 0xp archer I could have hunters lvl4-5 or swords lvl 4-5 that are as powerful in attack as the archer is in defense, are not dependant on the enemy being bold and earn more xp when they win the fight.

only interesting archer units were marksmen, flurry and great-X-bow
but they come late game.

pikes were useful

snif... long life to the pikes !!!!

 

[onedreamer]

I think players would use archers more if the ai did what the players do--get warriors promoted with shock 2 and steamroll all the melee units guarding cities...

Wrong. The AI wouldn't steamroll anything if it did what the players do. In fact, if it promoted its warriors with shock 2 like the player does, these promotions would null each other, but due to the superior ability of the player to protect the most experienced units, the AI would still loose any day of the week. Not to mention that City Raze is a better promotion for attacking cities since it is effective against any unit, so if the AI would do as the player does, archers would remain near useless. Archers are "somewhat" useful when you lack the metals, period.

 

[onedreamer]

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?

You can't get Cannibalize at level 1.... you need Combat 2.

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...

Makes no sense. To make the unit stronger you need to win fights, so Drill should help in this the Archery units (at least) as much as Combat promo does.

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...

What other promotions are you talking about ? It's the same 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...

I'm proposing to change Combat, not Drill.

 

[onedreamer]

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)

Yep, I did point out this. And it is a very important component in making the Archery line the least important of all.

 

[Ekolite]

well,

I don't like archers.

you can't do nix with them. just stay fat and happy in a city.
as offense is almost the best defense, and attack gains more xp than defense, I'd rather attack those pillaging barbs with my 2+2 warrior with iron weapons and combat 3+ than wait for them with my 0xp archer that cost twice as much as the warrior.

at the time I could have this 0xp archer I could have hunters lvl4-5 or swords lvl 4-5 that are as powerful in attack as the archer is in defense, are not dependant on the enemy being bold and earn more xp when they win the fight.

only interesting archer units were marksmen, flurry and great-X-bow
but they come late game.

pikes were useful

snif... long life to the pikes !!!!

Yes. This is exactly the problem, people woud just rather use melee because its multipurpose andyou get economic and production bonuses along the melee tech line. I would suggest that archers are increased in defense, decreased in cost, and have some sort of useful building along its tech line. Just as an example, Archer Competition (crappy name I know) - +2 (can spend money each turn to give archer units in that city exp? - could work the same as hiring mercs does so should be easy enough to code)

 

[Nikis-Knight]

Wrong. The AI wouldn't steamroll anything if it did what the players do. In fact, if it promoted its warriors with shock 2 like the player does, these promotions would null each other, but due to the superior ability of the player to protect the most experienced units, the AI would still loose any day of the week. Not to mention that City Raze is a better promotion for attacking cities since it is effective against any unit, so if the AI would do as the player does, archers would remain near useless. Archers are "somewhat" useful when you lack the metals, period.

Why is city raider better when it is only melee units defending? Shock also protects you from counter attacks by the melee units.
City raider is only better if the human is already using mixed units--which you say you don't much, except hunters, who are weaker unless experienced, so aren't the main problem.

Of course the ai can't steamroll an experienced player, but that is what players do when there is only melee running around because shock gives such an advantage in that situation, over the ubiquitous combat for the ais.

 

[Willgar]

I think players would use archers more if the ai did what the players do--get warriors promoted with shock 2 and steamroll all the melee units guarding cities...

After reading this comment, i tried an early "steamroller" for the first time (a first for FfF and vanila Civ). As Hippus rushing for stables, my 4 combat 5 / Shock 1 horseman killed 3 out of the the 5 AI opponents by turn 124. Heading to the last ai now - the game will be over by turn 150...

Never realised how effective this tactic is (or how weak the AI is) it just feels cheap, going to try it on Deity level now...

 

[onedreamer]

Why is city raider better when it is only melee units defending? Shock also protects you from counter attacks by the melee units.
City raider is only better if the human is already using mixed units--which you say you don't much, except hunters, who are weaker unless experienced, so aren't the main problem.

City Raider 3 is much stronger. 90% vs any unit and 20% vs melee. That's 110% vs Melee defending a city at 10xp. Shock 2 is 80% vs Melee and +10% strength. The downside of City Raider are that it needs far more advanced tech, that it's useless outside cities and that reaching 10xp is harder. If you overcome these downsides though, it's decisively better.

Of course the ai can't steamroll an experienced player, but that is what players do when there is only melee running around because shock gives such an advantage in that situation, over the ubiquitous combat for the ais.

but like I said if all players would do it (in a multiplayer game) there would be no advantage for anyone and the defender would most likely win due to defensive boni.

 

[Rutee]

City Raider 3 is much stronger. 90% vs any unit and 20% vs melee. That's 110% vs Melee defending a city at 10xp. Shock 2 is 80% vs Melee and +10% strength. The downside of City Raider are that it needs far more advanced tech, that it's useless outside cities and that reaching 10xp is harder. If you overcome these downsides though, it's decisively better.

Does anyone else find there to be a logical disconnect here? "These three promotions are better then these two!" Yes, three promotions are better then two, and both are specialized (though Anti-Melee seems a bit more universal then anti-city). Is there some sort of balance problem with level 4 being more useful then level 3?

but like I said if all players would do it (in a multiplayer game) there would be no advantage for anyone and the defender would most likely win due to defensive boni.

I'm genuinely confused; If you know your opponent is piping in Shock units, why would you persist in building Melee with Shock if you can just as easily produce, say, Cavalry with Shock?

 

[TheJopa]

Do Cover II, Shock II and Formation II require some tech? If not, they could have Military Strategy as prerequisite.

And ability to buy XP for Archers would be nice, if balanced properly.

 

[Shakiko]

About archers: I think something about being able to use Weapons, too, would be a nice boost for the Archer-line. Or if that makes no sense (they are shooting anyways, not whacking ppl with bronze/iron weapons) why not add an affinity to e.g. Fire mana (=Fire arrows) to be able to improve the base-strength just abit ?
Right now just the Ljosalfar archers are of any use outside of town (and heck powerful in forests, esp with treetop def.) , but even them seem to be weakened by reducing terrain-defense in 0.30.

That should lessen the "problems" ppl pointed out so far:
Attacking with cheaper units (which also can use Bronze/iron weapons later on) is just superiorly more effective than defending (and normally never getting exp for promotions AND never being able to upgrade/beef up with weapons)




Another way to approach this might be to add a "+25% vs melee" trait to archers.
Kinda like the old stone/paper/scissors - Warriors(melee) beats Horseman (more str, weaponprom.) , Horseman beats Archers (already got +40% vs archers) and Archers beats warriors (due to +25 or +40%, dunno what exactly is needed)
That would make defending archers alot more useful vs Attacking melee units, but you could counter it by using horses or war machines w/o needing to increase the power of archers in general.


*
Sorry for the big offtopic (not about pikemen -.-#) post

 

[Ekolite]

Why doesn't it make sense that archers should get weapon promotions? mithril tipped arrows are bounded to be more dangerous then plain stone ones.

 

[Farmer Bobathan]

I really like the idea of archers not reqiuring buildings but the buildings giving xp.
also i think that the warfare and military strategy line could be combined with archery because in the hundreds years war the english archers won through using unique strategies.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

After reading this comment, i tried an early "steamroller" for the first time (a first for FfF and vanila Civ). As Hippus rushing for stables, my 4 combat 5 / Shock 1 horseman killed 3 out of the the 5 AI opponents by turn 124. Heading to the last ai now - the game will be over by turn 150...

Never realised how effective this tactic is (or how weak the AI is) it just feels cheap, going to try it on Deity level now...

Well, that's part of the reason Shock II was reduced in power.

And archers do get weapon promotions, they just get them one tier later than melee, i think. (Maybe this changed w/o my noticing)

 

[kenken244]

They always get them, but they can not use mithril