POLL: Rework of Order’s Geurilla Warfare Tenet?

[pineappledan]

In this Balance Discussion thread, we discussed how Order's Guerilla Warfare tenet might be improved
This discussion was brought about by the recent Germany change which gave Germany the Landsknecht UU instead of the Panzer, meaning the Panzer icon & 3D model is free to be used somewhere else.

Spoiler Existing Guerilla Warfare Tenet :

Guerrilla Warfare
+15% attack bonus and +50% Experience for Military Units in friendly territory. Can build Guerrilla Fighters

Spoiler “Guerrilla fighter” :

Guerrilla Fighter (infantry replacement)
unlocked at combined arms
1200
62 CS (+2 CS from infantry)
2moves
DFPs
Guerrilla (+50% vs wounded, ZOC, ignores terrain costs, 10HP in friendly lands, +20% flanking)

Spoiler Criticisms :

Criticism of the tenet itsel:

• friendly lands bonus is bland. There is also a civ trait (Shoshone) and a wonder (Himeji) that give this same bonus. Removing it from Order would make the other two feel more unique.
• Order is supposed to be an ideology that helps with conquest. This tenet is the only combat bonus in the entire Order tree to help you with that, yet it's purely defensive, and much weaker than any of Autocracy's several combat tenets. The only offensive tool that Order currently has is the Guerilla UU; everything else is a bonus that helps with infrastructure and consolidating conquered cities (eg. Iron curtain, People's Army).
• The XP in friendly lands is a direct downgrade from Autocracy’s elite forces, which gives the same bonus, but not locked with territory. Too similar and invites an unflattering comparison
• Perhaps the biggest problem with late-game combat is this: How do you conquer fast enough and keep momentum so you can beat CVs, SVs, and DiploVs? Autocracy does this by unlocking Airports in all cities, allowing you to teleport your armies anywhere in your empire for free, usually before you have even researched Radar. Order has no similar ability to make fighting faster.

Criticisms of the Guerilla Unit:

• Guerrillas are a bit too good, and does everything. Basically the guerrilla fighter promotion gives the guerrilla every basic bonus available to the scout and armor units, but not available to Gun units. They are all very common bonuses, Nothing about it is unique or special, but it’s everything and the kitchen sink. Combined with the ability to upgrade a lot of melee UUs, they can be really dangerous.
• Guerillas are too general of a concept, much less specific than Autocracy's Zero or Freedom's B-17. The other two ideology units have precise makes & models that narrow down the years and nationality of the unit.
• Guerilla warfare is not a uniquely socialist/communist thing. There have been Guerilla wars fought by communists (eg. Chinese Civil War, Vietnam, Cuban Revolution, Columbian FARC), but there are also tons of examples of Guerillas with different ideologies (eg. Mujahideen, Paraguayan War), or only weak ties to socialism (eg. Tamil Tigers)
• Guerillas are not thematically appropriate as a mainline infantry replacement. In general, if you are fighting a guerilla war, it is because all your real infantry are captured or dead, or are actively fighting you. Guerilla warfare is defined by its asymmetry, so it just doesn't make sense. Guerillas would make way more sense as scout-line UUs.
• Guerillas are the only of the 3 ideology units that doesn't replace a base unit with a Strategic resource requirement. At 1300, Guerillas are also slightly cheaper than Fighters (1400) or Bombers (1500), which also have Air Slot limits per city on top of their SR requirement. This makes Guerillas extremely spammable and hurts late game army composition, because Order has this 1 unit type that is stronger, more flexible, and cheaper than any other option, and has no production constraints other than your total war supply.
• Guerrillas are stacked with another policy-unlocked unique unit: Authority’s Mercenary, which is weaker. Having 2 unique policy units stacked on each other feels bad, because 1 of them may as well not exist. Authority/Autocracy players functionally get 2 unique units while Authority/Order players only get 1.

Spoiler “New Tenet Proposal” :

Patriotic War
Land units gain +20%Strength when in or adjacent to a City. When you Conquer a City, all units are healed. Can build T-34s

Spoiler “T-34” :

T-34 (Tank)
Unlocked at Combined Arms
1600 (down from 1800)
requires Oil
82CS (up from 75)
5 (6 with Mobility)
No Defensive Terrain Bonuses
Can Move After Attacking
Armor Plating I
Armor Plating II
Mobility

Note: the base tank icon/model is a T-34. The Panzer icon/model will become the base tank, while the current base tank art is used for the unique ideology unit.

Spoiler How these changes improve the existing tenet :

• Changing the friendly lands bonus to a city adjacency bonus gives Order an offensive tool outside of the UU.
• Order now has a unique incentive for unit positioning and strategy. Now you are incentivized to fight close to cities and rush into position fast. You can still turtle, but now it is about city sieges, rather than your border blob.
• The city adjacency bonus is only used on 1 other unit in the game: The Chinese Chu Ko Nu. Here is the only time melee units can use this city adjacency bonus, giving it more of an offensive feel, and unstacks the tenet from Shoshone and Himeji.
• Takes out Order's XP bonus so that it is not just a worse Elite Forces anymore.
• Addresses Order's issue with conquest speed by eliminating healing downtime between city siege pushes. This helps address the time crunch concern that late-game combat needs to address in a different way from Autocracy.
• The T-34 is more specific, with make, model, years of service, and a nationality. A T-34 is also strongly associated with communism.
• This is opinion, but T-34s are just way cooler and more sensible than whatever the Guerilla is supposed to be. It was the single most influential and successful tank design of WWII, and it widely regarded as an excellent tank. Guerillas aren't cool. If you are fighting a guerilla war, that means you have already lost some very important strategic battles, and are hanging by a thread. That's uncool.
• T-34s are more consistent with the B-17 and Zero, having a strategic resource requirement, and leaving room for other unit types in your army composition.
• Authority Mercenaries aren't stacked with order's UU anymore

 

[Zuizgond]

• Order is supposed to be an ideology that helps with conquest.

To me, Autocracy should be more suited for conquest than Order. So I am not sure I would make it too offensive, but agree that Guerilla Fighters should be changed.

 

[Rekk]

(The Guerilla could then be used in place of some partisans whenever they would appear, after the atomic era arrives)

 

[InkAxis]

I voted for the Germany UU change partially with this in mind, so at least conceptually I support it. I could be swayed to some other bonuses for the the tenet. But it the unit is better than the guerilla.

 

[Stalker0]

Just some quick combat stats to show what this thing will look like:

T-34 on Defense
Drill III T-34 on Defense: CS 164 (+30% promotion, +50% AP II, +20% near city)
Shock III Infantry with 1 flank: CS 93 (Unit does ~20 DPS, takes 45)
with 0 flank: CS 78 (Unit does ~16.5 DPS, take 54)
Shock III Tank with 1 flank: CS 116.25 (~24 DPS, takes 37)
with 0 flank: CS 97.5 (~21 DPS, takes 43)

T-34 on Offense
Drill III T-34 on Offense: CS 123
Shock III Infantry: CS 78 (T34 does ~41 DPS, takes 22)
Shock III Tank: CS116.25 (T34 does ~31.0 DPS, takes 29)

Shock III T-34 with 1 flank: CS 143.5
vs Shock III Infantry (T34 does 47 DPS, takes 19)
vs Shock III Tank (T34 does 33.8, takes 26.6)

If someone can remind me what the machine gun CS/RCS numbers are (away from my main comp so I can't look it up) I would add those as well. So the big note here is around Infantry. Lets say some T-34s are banging on your city, and you want to use infantry (because that's all you have). Effectively your infantry could get one shoted, they will attack the T-34 taking loads of damage, and then the counter from the T-34 has a good chance to kill it outright. A tank will probably need a 2 shot but it will also go down very quickly.

Once these guys get on the front lawn, they will very hard to remove.

 

[chicorbeef]

On paper they look almost overpowered, but don't forget that cities tend to have arsenals and huge defense levels by this time, and that Guided Missiles and Bombers are strong deterrents to Tank rushes. These would be awesome with a a tech advantage, but not so much against an AI of equal or slightly higher tech. And I think that's a good power level for these units to have, I wouldn't mind trying them out.

 

[KlHannibal2]

The full heal of all units on city conquest sounds OP. It is a very strong ability for Sweden. But conquering late game can happen way more often than getting a general.

 

[Rekk]

The full heal of all units on city conquest sounds OP. It is a very strong ability for Sweden. But conquering late game can happen way more often than getting a general.

The full heal is limited to units in the area around the city you conquer, not the entire world like Sweden.

 

[chicorbeef]

The full heal is limited to units in the area around the city you conquer, not the entire world like Sweden.

I assume this would be the case, but then wording should be tweaked a bit to "When you conquer a city, all units in tiles owned by the city are healed"

 

[pineappledan]

The full heal of all units on city conquest sounds OP. It is a very strong ability for Sweden. But conquering late game can happen way more often than getting a general.

The full heal is limited to units in the area around the city you conquer, not the entire world like Sweden.

… even if it is global, would that be so bad?

Sweden’s global heal is less frequent, but far easier to time (you can just faith-buy a GG any time you want), and has the XP to boot. Healing all units on empire is much less computation than calculating distance from the new city for each unit, or the tile ownership flipping under each unit. Most of your damaged units are probably on the flipped city anyways, and it avoids shenanigans where humans pack as many units into the city as they can for the heal.

either option is new code, but the more I think about the merits of each, the more I think global is the more sensible implementation.

 

[Stalker0]

I assume this would be the case, but then wording should be tweaked a bit to "When you conquer a city, all units in tiles owned by the city are healed"

Agreed, I had assumed it was all units as well.

 

[Solic]

I am guessing the AI will not know how to specifically take advantage of this city adjacency bonus. Also guessing that this is true for Order's bonus, but that one is a lot less specific.

 

[chicorbeef]

I like the T-34's, but on second thought I think the healing is too much. The T-34's are undeniably more powerful than a fresh tank with the Lightning Warfare policy, but the balancing factor is that you can upgrade existing Landships with all their promotions into Tanks and still get the promotion, whereas I assume you'd have to build T-34's from scratch or buy them, so Autocracy could still be better if you already have a large army. But the combat bonuses blur the line a bit, healing so rapidly from conquest is actually more of a Lightning Warfare type bonus than Lightning Warfare itself, and I think we want to avoid that, especially since this is a T1 tenet and Lightning Warfare is a T2 tenet.

I also didn't consider all the added computation regarding city ownership and I think healing all units on city conquest globally would simply be overpowered for a T1 tenet, maybe on a T3 tenet but not on a T1. So it's probably best to remove it altogether.

 

[Hinin]

One idea we had early on was to have a lower CS (and maybe not Armor Plating II) for the T-34, but give it a big bonus to healing (+10 hp, like the Immortals). This would preserve the idea of the grind-focused warfare Order is good at, but focus it on a single unit at the core of the army. Making the bonus less general is also more logical for a a T1 tenet I think (we would still keep the combat bonus near cities).

 

[4CV]

What if all units get healing on city conquest, but not a complete one. All units get a certain amount of HP (42 should be best...). Maybe that is more computing than complete healings for all, but still less than checking locations etc..

 

[Stalker0]

I really don’t think we need to worry about computing time, this call would only happen when a city is conquered, which is a rare event. This isn’t a call that’s made 10 times a turn. Maybe you experience a slight pause when you take a city, no big deal

 

[pineappledan]

The T-34's are undeniably more powerful than a fresh tank with the Lightning Warfare policy, but the balancing factor is that you can upgrade existing Landships with all their promotions into Tanks and still get the promotion, whereas I assume you'd have to build T-34's from scratch or buy them

All ideology UUs can be upgraded as of a few months ago (credit to @HungryForFood for implementing that change). You can upgrade an old Landship into a T34.

healing so rapidly from conquest is actually more of a Lightning Warfare type bonus than Lightning Warfare itself, and I think we want to avoid that, especially since this is a T1 tenet and Lightning Warfare is a T2 tenet.

Disagree. If we were serious about accurately portraying blitzkrieg tactics then that tenet should have emphasized combined arms, and put special emphasis on bonuses for air units. This rapid resupply and redeployment after city sieges, to me, invokes the Russian war machine's seemingly inexhaustible manpower, morale, and materiel advantage over their enemies, where they fight tooth and nail for every tile, hit their objective, and then just keep on coming. Giving some sort of per-turn healing like @Hinin mentioned -- and that @Stalker0 has been gunning for -- would also invoke this, but centering the heal on objectives makes it overall weaker (less healing in aggregate), and emphasizes the need to push forward. It is my prediction that a global healing bonus would feel too powerful on its own. It's also more unique, since Sweden is the only global heal trigger in the game, but lots of promotions/World wonders/Natural Wonders/UUs give healing bonuses on fortify.

Your comment gets at a larger criticism I have with WWII pop history, where German tactics are placed on a pedestal, and consideration for the other nations' military doctrine fills in the cracks. I don't think that healing bonuses are particularly "blitzkrieg", but the notion that any bonus that makes conquering faster necessarily invokes blitzkrieg is a non-starter for me.

@Phosphoraptor pointed out in the previous discussion that Autocracy's existing monopoly on speed (faster melee/armor units, free teleport on empire) really hurts Order as a domination ideology. You are under a time constraint to lock in a domination victory in the late era, you have to beat other VCs, and 1 ideology has all the bonuses that make conquest quicker, and the other ideology only has 1 combat bonus at all, and this situation is incredibly damaging to Order's viability as a purportedly DomV-oriented ideology.

What if all units get healing on city conquest, but not a complete one. All units get a certain amount of HP (42 should be best...). Maybe that is more computing than complete healings for all, but still less than checking locations etc..

Giving X health on conquest rather than full heal would use almost the same amount of computing resources, so no problem there. However, any 'heal X amount' trigger makes Infantry units and melee boats comparatively weaker, since they have more HP and thus would heal less as a total % of their max HP. I don't think that would be the intended effect.

I really don’t think we need to worry about computing time, this call would only happen when a city is conquered, which is a rare event. This isn’t a call that’s made 10 times a turn. Maybe you experience a slight pause when you take a city, no big deal

It's not a major concern, but it isn't nothing either. Making it global stops human players from gaming the heal by packing units tight into the city before capturing it, or otherwise feeling like this is something they are supposed to do. I think freeing AI and human players from these shenanigans has more advantages than drawbacks.

 

[KlHannibal2]

… even if it is global, would that be so bad?

Sweden’s global heal is less frequent, but far easier to time (you can just faith-buy a GG any time you want), and has the XP to boot. Healing all units on empire is much less computation than calculating distance from the new city for each unit, or the tile ownership flipping under each unit. Most of your damaged units are probably on the flipped city anyways, and it avoids shenanigans where humans pack as many units into the city as they can for the heal.

either option is new code, but the more I think about the merits of each, the more I think global is the more sensible implementation.

A local full heal or a global partial heal feels more reasonable to me. My perspective is mostly from huge maps domination games. Domination is often tough in the beginning until you conquer one or 2 AIs. At some point you have enough units to steamroll one AI or at least make progress agains one while holding off a few other AIs at once.

At the time you would get this bonus, you are often in that position already. With a full global heal, you can recklessly attack with every unit you have whenever you have a city ripe for capture. That would make the domination late game a complete steam roll.

And even an AI can benefit: I ran several AI only games. When an AI takes a city, the defending army is usually badly damaged, but also the attacking army is bruised. When the attacker gets a full heal, upon conquest, the balance of a war among AIs will tip much faster than now.

When using Sweden's heal on natural general birth, it is rare that you can attack with all melee units on the same turn and then heal. When you hit the threshold, the general is born. You can do it if you buy a general though. But for city capture, you can usually take the city down to 0 health, then attack with everything across the board, then capture and heal.

 

[Solic]

I think the tenet proposal should be limited to only the first time a city is conquered or there can be some wacky pullback methods to intentionally let a city be retaken, so that you could heal to full again on demand.

 

[pineappledan]

I think the tenet proposal should be limited to only the first time a city is conquered or there can be some wacky pullback methods to intentionally let a city be retaken, so that you could heal to full again on demand.

Yes. Unique capture only is usually implied.