Promotion Tree Balance Brainstorm

Unit promotions are currently...


  • Total voters
    44
  • Poll closed .
you should be maxing certain trees late game into information era at the very least, defender should be having logistics (own tile advantage) coup de grace stands for final blow so if say its more aggressive and the attacker should have more units than the defender id be asking why the AI would be going to war with hardly any units AI should be at least programmed with the ideal tree
 
I do not think there is much need to change the structure of the promotion tree, just rebalance/replace some really good and bad promotions. Honestly its time for logistics to have an "unfortunate accident".
 
Some tier 4 promotions are game-defining; you always want to rush them regardless of the path (e.g. Logistics for naval ranged, Air Logistics for bombers). Those are the promotions we need to nerf most.

Some tier 4 promotions are only overpowered when the unit already has a certain other promotion (e.g. Indirect Fire isn't that strong on its own without range 3). We should separate those promotions, or somehow implement mutual exclusivity.
 
I’ll just come out and say I’m not in favor of nerfing the top promotions and I don’t really care that they are broken. Getting indirect fire, range, logistics, etc is what makes using those units fun. On ranged units those promos are the only ones that aren’t just boring 5-15% CS modifiers.

Only way I would support nerfing those promos is if they had engaging alternatives.
 
what about defensive promotions to counter those tier 4 ? plus standard speed your probably going to end up with those if your activly warring and winning sometimes theres no way a tradition civ will match an authority one as authority is built for war and killing units.

think the issue is deeper than just nerfing ranged promotions i pretty much guarantee if you nerf them city sieges will take much longer
 
Getting indirect fire, range, logistics, etc is what makes using those units fun. On ranged units those promos are the only ones that aren’t just boring 5-15% CS modifiers.
In the example, I try to give Range a niche as anti-infantry/ranged. It has a telegraphed use case, it largely fills its same role, and it still comes with the fun-feeling range bonus, but it also has a reason to consider something else. If you're up against a mounted-heavy enemy, you won't want to pick it. You'll have to adapt. That feels healthier than just blindly picking 50% Range, 50% Logistics.

There's probably space to spice up the +CS-only promotions like Coup De Grace and Firing Doctrine. I don't want to get bogged down in numbers and details too much though, the idea I wanted to discuss was whether grouping promo branches into taller niches had appeal, as opposed to the current layout where you basically hit T4 and then just scoop up all the high-end promos.

think the issue is deeper than just nerfing ranged promotions i pretty much guarantee if you nerf them city sieges will take much longer
I'm not worried about Ranged becoming less powerful against cities. For one, city health can be shifted down with these changes. Secondly, Siege should be the one with an inherent advantage against cities, not Ranged. That is why I'd pair a similarly structured rework of the Siege lines with any change to the Ranged line.
 
what about defensive promotions to counter those tier 4 ?
I'd think that stronger defensive options would reduce the ease of steamrolling even-tech AI in the late game. Units with range, logistics, etc. in the hands of a human player makes breaking through the enemy lines very easy, even when the AI has similar promotions, simply due to tactics.

My dream is that blitzkriegs would occur mostly on the back of solid army composition and maneuvers (e.g. using mounted melee to push archers and siege, and flanking effectively from multiple/unexpected angles with amphibious units & skirmishers. As it stands, once I get range field guns and stalwart landships (or just normal landships), the challenge I get from waging war seems to evaporate unless the AI is ahead of me in tech.
 
Last edited:
I typically play a style where I am an aggressor later in the game. So I don't usually have incredibly stacked units other than a few and my scouts.

That said, if this is an issue I am ok with trying different promotion styles including the OPs proposal.

As a slightly off topic (since this is a brainstorm thread ill throw in my hat) if you wanted to simplify and make promos a bit more meaningful we could attempt almost a class system. Instead of having a big tree, why not once your unit gets promoted it chooses a "class" (which of course would be the initial promotion). The class can then level up X times. At the final level up the unit is maxed and cannot gain any more promos. This should prevent the issue of people (or AI) having overpowered units. Also I think this could be balanced easier.
The classes themselves can be specific to unit type (melee , cav etc) and can have pros and cons for what they are trying to accomplish. This would also allow you to customize how you want your army to operate. Also a class system would seem easier to balance them against each other as packages versus specific promos. Not sure how difficult this would be to create but it is something to think about if promotion balance is an actual issue.
 
ranged units also have 2exp per hit in a 500 turn game thats 1000 exp possible, not every turn your going to fight 1000 exp is about level 12 i believe (dont quote me as i dont have the math) youll never get that on a non war policy choices. I know you have stuff like oil monopoly and the 50% more autocracy to increase that its very rare for my games that siege and ranged units exceed level 7 or so.

I'm not worried about Ranged becoming less powerful against cities. For one, city health can be shifted down with these changes. Secondly, Siege should be the one with an inherent advantage against cities, not Ranged. That is why I'd pair a similarly structured rework of the Siege lines with any change to the ranged line

perhaps thats whats needed but if i go warlike (policys, religion wonders etc) then the AI is so trivial and weak.

I'd think that stronger defensive options would reduce the ease of steamrolling even-tech AI in the late game. Units with range, logistics, etc. in the hands of a human player makes breaking through the enemy lines very easy, even when the AI has similar promotions, simply due to tactics.

disagree ive seen the AI steamroll myself at even tech: authority AI will beat an even teched peaceful human due to its bonuses and equally peaceful AI, ive experienced defeat to a much stronger AI (1 in 10 ganes) but its mainly an even keel due to AI tactics
 
I typically play a style where I am an aggressor later in the game. So I don't usually have incredibly stacked units other than a few and my scouts.
I'm also a big fan of turtle strategies, and it's the main reason why Assyria is my favorite civ, but when playing other civs and staying peaceful for a long time, going into an industrial era war without tier 4 promotions is a big struggle. Once I get rolling, though, I can really start making headway into the enemy territory.

disagree ive seen the AI steamroll myself at even tech: authority AI will beat an even teched peaceful human due to its bonuses and equally peaceful AI, ive experienced defeat to a much stronger AI (1 in 10 ganes) but its mainly an even keel due to AI tactics
I haven't gotten utterly overwhelmed in a while (maybe it's time for another attempt at bumping my difficulty), but recalling the times it happened with even-tech civs: whole world declared on me as very wide Polynesia; I started between Assyria and the Aztecs as Egypt; and old-patch Genghis Khan ate the entire world and hit my 2-city coast with 30+ ships

Joint wars are what really facilitate getting run over IMO. Even in the worst position of fighting Denmark, Iroquois, or Songhai in their favored terrain, I'm at the point where I can anticipate and fortify my borders enough to lessen the inevitable damage if I fight them alone, and after their power spike, I might even be able to get a city off them.

It's also been mentioned in this thread and in the congress, but indirect fire does feel like a big contributor to the absolute power of tier 4 promotions. It can turn chokepoints into meat grinders, and make heavily forested terrain a deathtrap for the AI. Going from Cannons to Field Guns brings a big shift in strategy largely because of the indirect fire. On archer units, I almost always pick it before range because of the versatility. I know I mentioned more effective defensive options before, but even still I almost never choose cover on archers when I could have this combo; being able to shoot an enemy that cannot retaliate is 100% less damage vs. 50% less only against other ranged.

As a slightly off topic (since this is a brainstorm thread ill throw in my hat) if you wanted to simplify and make promos a bit more meaningful we could attempt almost a class system.
I feel that this is essentially what the main post is describing, albeit without the xp cap. There's already a bit of this for units with medic and cover, but forcing even more specialization sounds appealing to me for taming the power of highly promoted units. It would be interesting to see march units who have no hope of also grabbing overrun, mobility, and medic promotions (or maybe only one of those, much later on) due to deeper branches in the tree.
 
Last edited:
Don't see much value in making the trees more complicated, as in the OP.

things like range or an extra attack are discrete values. If you want to make promotions weaker you can't have abilities like those, because they can't really get any smaller than they already are. but people like those abilities.
 
For the promotions stacking: I did not find the premise of the topic to be true for my games. Maybe I play too differently or not well enough, but on King marathon which I usually play, I've never encountered the described problem. These units are few and between.

Aside from that, the higher level units with promotions are a part of the fun, they are much more interesting than just some modifiers here or there.

In general the ideas with the rationale of "humans have advantage over the AI" can be a bit dangerous, IMHO. It is way too easy to reduce the fun of the human players, and the AI won't care that it became more "fair", and the game won't even necessarily become more interesting.

I think the VP approach of asymmetrical balance works well enough, and there's no need to try to squeeze out every bit of imbalance to make the playing field level between the human and the AI. And some imbalance might be intentional, it isn't necessarily a problem.

Just my 50 cents.
 
Last edited:
Don't see much value in making the trees more complicated, as in the OP.

things like range or an extra attack are discrete values. If you want to make promotions weaker you can't have abilities like those, because they can't really get any smaller than they already are. but people like those abilities.

Promotions aren’t strong in a vacuum, though. Their prerequisite and follow up promotions contribute to their value, and those can be adjusted if a discrete value is too strong. Alternatively, the promotion itself can carry a malus to lessen its impact. Logistics isn’t purely an extra attack; it reduces attack strength too. Blitz doesn’t have that malus because you trade HP and movement for the extra attack as a melee unit.
 
Last edited:
I mostly like the promotion tree. As it stands, it's at the right level of complexity and it forces the player to make a choice between viable options. However, there isn't much of a choice in how to gain XP, which forces players to adopt the same ultra-conservative yet always-at-war fighting style if they wish to reach the higher, more interesting (and fun) promotion tiers.

So here's a proto-proposal: in the late game, add more variety in how XP can be gained but cap the maximum number of promotions a unit can have. These new XP sources would need to be pretty expensive to avoid breaking game balance. This system would directly impact late-game warfare (by allowing high-tier units to be reached faster) and indirectly impact early-game warfare (because the player is no longer forced to prioritize avoiding unit death in order to have a competitive late-game army). This system would naturally allow for AI balancing (e.g. give the AI a higher max promotion cap). It could also be smoothly integrated into policies (e.g. Authority/Imperialisiam/Autocracy raise max promotion cap by +1) to still reward players who invest in military-focused play.

Some ideas for new avenues of XP generation
  • Something like the Gunsmith building from Enlightment Era (bonus XP to gunpowder units, requires Iron to build)
  • A process like Public Works which, when completed, provides XP to all units
  • A line of military national wonders for Land/Sea/Air which can only be built in different cities
    • National Military Academy: +1 Great General point, land units in this city are X% more expensive to train, but start with bonus XP
    • National Naval Academy: +1 Great Admiral point, naval units in this city are X% more expense to train, but start with bonus XP
    • National Air Force Academy: +1 air unit cap per city, air units in this city are X% more expensive to train, but start with bonus XP
  • Secret Service Office: only buildable in the Capitol, units garrisoned in this city gain +2 XP per turn
  • Fully healed units which end their turn stationed in forts/citadels gain +1 XP per turn
FYI, I haven't played in a while, so apologies in advance if some of this doesn't jibe with the more recent updates or if this suggestion is infeasible to code.
 
Adding an XP or level cap sounds a lot like a systemic solution to me. It goes well beyond number tweaking on promotions themselves and changes fundamental parts of the promotion game. This kind of thing has been mentioned a few times, but the sense I have is that it's not actually how people would want to fix this problem? Just some idle thoughts on the dissonance between the poll and the suggestions.
 
Those who calls for nerfing logistics/range promos should bear in mind it means nerfing civs with UU relying on those promos. And some AI at high difficulties are a decent threat with these UU. For example, Gandhi is not a joke to fight with.
Also full-scale rebalance "just for promos to be nerfed" looks silly imo. (decrease damage from ranged units> decrease city-strength etc etc) Machine gun delivering 8-10 damage to not high lvl gunship is a good balance to me, even if this machine gun strikes twice :lol::lol::lol:
 
some stats - i got on a ranged unit (with inf barb xp i might add) logistics around turn 140 on standard, you need to be waring for most of the game to actually get that due to the xp cap on barbs war weariness is going to get you. Theres also the diminishing reutrns on Barbs even if its set to Inf XP so i doubt id even get to level 10 before end of the game. I dont see much of a problem ill go back to my original point if anything id like to see more defensive tanking promotions rather than serious damage ones
 
Those who calls for nerfing logistics/range promos should bear in mind it means nerfing civs with UU relying on those promos. And some AI at high difficulties are a decent threat with these UU. For example, Gandhi is not a joke to fight with.
Also full-scale rebalance "just for promos to be nerfed" looks silly imo. (decrease damage from ranged units> decrease city-strength etc etc) Machine gun delivering 8-10 damage to not high lvl gunship is a good balance to me, even if this machine gun strikes twice :lol::lol::lol:
No UU has Range and Hwach'a rework was voted off because of the same "don't nerf my OP units" reason.
 
Random idea regarding range 3 promo: what if :c5rangedstrength: RCs depended on the proximity to the target? So large range units and promo would still have a great tactical advantage but deal % less damage. This is kinda realistic and could also make for interesting risky tactics of closing in with ranged units. But I guess that'd be a bigger balance change and affect AI.
 
Random idea regarding range 3 promo: what if :c5rangedstrength: RCs depended on the proximity to the target? So large range units and promo would still have a great tactical advantage but deal % less damage. This is kinda realistic and could also make for interesting risky tactics of closing in with ranged units. But I guess that'd be a bigger balance change and affect AI.

A similar suggestion was posed and rejected last session.
 
Top Bottom